Two things are happening to software that should be of interest to trade unionists. First, software that used to cost a great deal of money is now often available completely free of charge. Second, that software – which used to come on CD-ROMs – now is often available for use online, through your web browser.

A good example of this is photo editing software. We have all faced the problem of wanting to put images on our websites, but also wanting such simple things as reducing the image size, or cropping the image, or even getting rid of the dreaded ‘red-eye’ that appears in photos.
In the bad old days, doing this meant purchasing software such as Adobe Photoshop, which today sells for over £500. I used to recommend to unions that they invest in something less expensive such as Photoshop Elements (around £60) or Adobe’s fiercest competitor, Corel Paint Shop Pro, which sells for around £50.
For branches and individual activists, I used to recommend using free software which despite having fewer features could still meet the needs of a small website. The most popular programs were The Gimp and the enormously popular IrfanView (which has had more than 26 million downloads).
All of these programs, from the expensive Photoshop to the free IrfanView required that they be installed on your computer. But the newest software doesn’t even require that – it runs from within your web browser. You don’t need a CD and you don’t need to download anything. And you can use the software on any computer – even one that isn’t yours.
A good example of free, web-based software to do image editing is Picnik (note the spelling), which is available online at http://www.picnik.com .
Using Picnik, we can take digital photos that we want to put on our websites or blogs, and edit them in the same way that we would using software that can cost hundreds of pounds.
The savings is not only in the cost of the software, but in the time it takes to learn how to use it. Software like Photoshop can be the subject of university-level courses. Books about Photoshop make very effective door-stops as they can includes hundreds of pages of text. But using software like Picnik is far simpler and much more intuitive.
The people selling expensive tools like Photoshop (and the courses, and the publishers of the books) will tell you that Photoshop can do much more than Picnik, which is true. But if you are honest about what you actually need for your website or blog, the range of features offered by Picnik is pretty comprehensive.
Picnik is currently free of charge and you don’t even have to register to use it. A premium version offering more features will soon be available.