Pikter is a photo and image sharing service that currently targeted at Twitter or Jaiku users. Currently still in Alpha phase, and if you’d like to receive a beta invite, you can leave your email address for them on its landing page.

There are not that many Web applications that let users easily upload and share their photos/images on their Twitter accounts, the most notable is TwitPic, but Pikter expanded its support to Jaiku. It seem that they’ve faced some technical difficulties in working the Jaiku aspect of Pikter’s service, in viewed of its Jaiku’s entry at 28 June 2008, i.e. anyone know a simple way to verify Jaiku credentials via the API using JSON? as well as in its own blog posted in June 30, i.e. Jaiku’s api development site has been down the last couple of days, hindering any opportunity to advance the Jaiku aspect of Pikter’s service.

Nevertheless, I hope that they’ll solve the scripting problems and launch the Pikter beta version as promised in August this month, simply of its motto: Because sharing is nice.

Google continue its shopping spree by acquiring Jaiku for an undisclosed sum. It has been confirmed on the official blog entry that posted onto the Jaiku blog. From the Jaiku Q &A page:

Q: Why did Google acquire Jaiku?

A: Activity streams and mobile presence are important areas where we believe Google can add a lot of value for users. Jaiku’s technology and talented team are a great addition to Google’s current application and mobile teams.

It answered that Google’s Jaiku buy will boost its text advertisement appeal. Are we going to see the text advertisement appear on the Jaiku users’ IM account? We shall know the answer soon. While I am an existing user for both Jaiku and Twitter, I still prefer Twitter despite the fact that Twitter shows an out-of-service bird occasionally. As a result of my preference, I’ve removed the Jaiku widget from this blog.

Nevertheless, congrats to the Helsinki, Finland Jaiku team.

I like Twitter very much, and follow updates from more than 10 people everyday. However, this doesn’t stop me from set up a Jaiku account, and now you can also follow my updates through the tiny widget I just placed onto my blog.

A newly release Pownce has built their own Facebook application (app). It seem it’s too hot to ignore the creation of Facebook app in this year, but it’s not a surprise for many people that a new startup, like Pownce, another IM in the market to assess their market acceptance among the younger generation through the Facebook platform. Facebook/Pownce app, currently has nearly 1,000 users, at the time of my writing, is widen their reach and trying to emulate their closest competitors such as Facebook/Twitter and Facebook/Jaiku.

Pownce, still in private beta and although I did not have a chance to test it, seems to be offered a lot of cool features to its users. As stated in their landing page, this app allowed users to send the messages, files, links, events, or a song to their friends. Users can engage in private or public conversations, and I read some said this app is built by using the Adobe Integrated Runtime. Perhaps, I have to admit that this startup also too hot to ignore just simply because one of the founders at Pownce is Kevin Rose of Digg.

If you’re a Jaiku user and the operating system of your computer desktop is Windows Vista, you should ‘try’ this sidebar widget, i.e. Sideku that I just found on the Microsoft’s Windows Live Gallery. Just released a beta 2 version today and it can help in keep track of every move of an user’s friends, but at this moment not that many users that downloaded this widget.

It allowed an user to use the Jaiku services directly from his/her desktop or laptop. However, the limitations are that only three (3) Jaiku updates an user make are showed on this Sideku and currently it only support Windows Vista.