Seesmic is a relatively new web startup that is already attracting a lot of attention in all corners of the internet. The part French company based in America could be at first glance dismissed as another YouTube knockoff, but delving in further reveals a powerful YouTube/Twitter hybrid brining social interaction to a whole new level.

It’s undeniable that Seesmic is modelled after Twitter considering the company recently acquired Twhirl, an AIR based Twitter client. When you first launch Seesmic after receiving your invite and logging in you’re greeted with what is a very well designed Flash UI (the whole site is one big Flash application) with a large screen for video playback and recent public videos on the left sidebar. Instantly it is obvious that Seesmic is a video collaboration tool allowing you to post videos to the public or to your friends and receive video replies. This is much like the YouTube’s reply that feels somewhat tacked on whereas Seesmic builds itself on this concept.

On the public timeline (just like Twitter) you will find some replies in the form of “RE: title etc”, clicking on it will launch the video reply and the timeline will transform into a list of all replies related to the original. This is where the first usability bug became apparent, I had to scroll right down to the bottom to locate the original video, in this case a I prefer YouTube’s UI that makes it fairly obvious where to find the original. But being in ALPHA stage I am sure this will appear shortly.

Being a Flash based application, Seesmic allows you to record directly from the webpage making communication fairly easy. In minutes I can have one of my egotistic views broadcast across Seesmic and receive troll like responses almost instantly. But here lies another bug that isn’t so much the fault of the service but more of society on a whole, will the public timeline become diluted with random and offensive junk just like YouTube has become? Hopefully Seesmic can deliver an image to the market stating that is more of a thought provoking or collaboration tool, not a place to boast about someone’s next “killer/sick” fight. 

One great use of Seesmic I spotted was the young Daniel Brusilovsky announcing his new idea for a website supporting  the youth in technological activities. Instantly I was able to access all these replies igniting the discussion and brainstorm of this simple idea. This video also had the likes of Robert Scoble encouraging this idea, that was something pretty exciting to witness. I could imagine this sort of brainstorm and active discussion could be replicated over numerous areas such as views on specific news topic or global collaboration between students. Seesmic allows posting to Twitter, so those using Seesmic can be notified of new videos from their friends without leaving the webpage open. 

The use of Flash for the site is also a slight caveat for those used to browsing video sharing websites, the simple browser navigation no longer exists. You cannot use the back button on the browser to go the recent page, because everything runs inside the Flash application. This could take sometime to get used to but isn’t a bad trade-off for not having to wait for the web browser to load another page when switching videos.

One cool feature I’ve noticed popping up is their Wordpress plugin. TechCrunch currently has it installed and gives users to to leave video comments on a blog post even if the user doesn’t have a Seesmic account. This new wave of commenting is a great idea as people are more inclined to leave more beneficial comments if they have a face to the comment. Anyone can hide behind their keyboard.

Seesmic has a bright future ahead of it but needs to adapt quickly if it wants to reach the level of portability and mobility that Twitter has. Seesmic should ramp up production of a mobile client much like Qik, allowing a brainstorm on the go. Without this extension Seesmic could end up as just another video sharing site.

This year marks the start for a new uprising of web services which focus around the concept of Cloud Computing, the ability to run high end and useful applications from the web using an ordinary internet browser. One such experiment is from Adobe Lab’s which is the web version of Photoshop aptly named Photoshop Express (BETA).

Photoshop Express (BETA) is a Flash powered website that allows you to perform the basic Photoshop operations on photos such as colour adjustment, cropping, red-eye removal, and special effects. To get started you simply create an account (currently you can only join by stating your country as the US), login and then upload your photos. Now this presents PSE’s first hurdle, redundancy of data. Now this is intended for quick touch ups and edits, just like it’s competition which is the mediocre applications that ship with digital cameras. The advantage with these applications is that any inexperienced user can plug in a camera and be instantly downloading and editing their photos. I found it annoying to have to use my browser to look for the photo I wanted to edit, it was just a step I felt I could do with out.

What I think Adobe may getting at sooner is extending this service into their AIR platform, allowing the AIR application to directly access the user’s hard-drive and pull all the photos they have on their hard-drive or memory card. This is something that could be a real winner for Adobe, allowing my grandma to visit our house and immediately show us her new photos without having to email a 50MB zip file.

But, Adobe also does allow me to import my photos from Facebook, Picasa or Photobucket so I can edit a headshot of me for later use. Something that if promoted would win over the Facebook crowd.

The first couple of features are pretty stock standard such as Red-Eye removal, Auto Correct and Exposure. One feature that really striked me as quite attractive was the Touchup feature, allowing me to select an area that may be blurred or scratched and replace it with a swatch from another area. It takes a little getting used to because you need to adjust the red circle (the area you wish to copy) before clicking the green circle (the area to replace) otherwise it may accidently take a swatch from the background or some random area.

With White Balance, PSE has some nifty presets for adjusting based on the lighting conditions at the time. Highlight adds extra light to a photo which, unless the photo was taken well, will result in just a washed out photo. Sharpen and Soft Focus perform exactly what their names imply.

Pop Colour is a nifty effect allowing you to select a specific colour and have it stand out, much like those photos you see with a greyscale photo encapsulating a coloured object, for some artistic users they may enjoy producing art basically on the fly. The Hue, Black & White, and Tint effects are what you’d expect from any photo application. Sketch transforms photos into something like it had been drawn while Distort allows you to bend photos creating “fish-eye” effects.

As you may of noticed that effects are pretty standard, but this is a powerful web application for quick edits and novice users. I am found myself using it when I need a quick crop, it saves me the wait of Photoshop to load or to have iPhoto want to first import it into its 6GB library.

Photoshop Express is a winner for anyone on the go wanting to edit that little blemish or produce a mug-shot in a snap, it especially appeals to those running Windows who right out the box want to edit a photo without loading some trialware enhanced application. I will certainly be using this a lot more in the future.