In old news Aviary, recently went public, and is a subscription based online photo editing service.

Aviary joins the other companies that offer this service, including picnik, & photoshop express.

Picnik and Aviary differ somewhat in their services offered. Aviary it seems is attempting to create more of an online community, where picnik, taps into existing communities such as flickr and facebook for example.

With CS4 released and soon to hit the shelves here in Australia, I can't help but think, what of the future of desktop computer applications? The average person's needs are being driven down in terms of their must-have software, [it's all online now] factor in the increasingly narrowing focus of users of software such as photoshop, and I'm left thinking, where can this [and other packages] package actually go? Packages, such as Fireworks, Corel Paint. Why would anyone buy software, when there are ample alternatives to the big players?

Several packages have been released over the last 12 months, that have the potential to completely usurp programs like Photoshop, there's Iris, [$79.00 AU] Seashore [freeware], LiveQuatrz [donationware], and I'm sure this list will grow.