A small but vocal minority on Flickr are already staging online protests at the prospect of a Microsoft takeover. Flickr is one of several popular Web 2.0 websites owned by Yahoo that loyal users fear will suffer under Microsoft ownership.

As soon as the news hit the wires that Microsoft is proposing a $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, Flickr users began posting anti-Microsoft images, satirical "Flickr Live" logos and announcing they will abandon Flickr if it falls into Microsoft hands, fearing such a move would mark the beginning of the end.

"Well then, I'm outta here!" announced one Flickr user who goes by the name Judland.

While Microsoft has established its dominance on the desktop, its web properties lag behind those of Yahoo and others.

When it comes to building or acquiring hip, community-focused websites, Microsoft has fumbled where Yahoo has thrived. Last year, Microsoft tried its hand at a community site to compete with Flickr by adding photo-sharing capability to its Windows Live web service. But Windows Live Spaces doesn't have the cutting-edge user interface or the Web 2.0 cache that Flickr has. It also doesn't have the closely-knit community of passionate users that makes Flickr so successful.

Chizen said Adobe laid the foundation for a hosted Photoshop product with Adobe Remix, a Web-based video-editing tool it offers through the PhotoBucket media-sharing site.

Like Adobe Remix, the hosted Photoshop service is set to be free and marketed as an entry-level version of Adobe's more sophisticated image-editing tools, including Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Chizen envisions revenue from the Photoshop service coming from online advertising.

"That is new (for Adobe). It's something we are sensitive to because we are watching folks like Google do it in different categories, and we want to make sure that we are there before they are, in areas of our franchises," Chizen said.

Chizen described the introduction of Adobe Remix and the forthcoming hosted Photoshop as part of a larger move toward integrating hosted services into the company's product mix.

First, I took a seat in front of two scanners -- one for each side of my face.

The faceScan III projected a series of light and dark bands to establish the contours of my face. The scanner's optoScan software used that information to generate a slightly patchy 3-D image of my noble visage.

The resulting image file was then passed along to a row of digital artists who primped and tweaked it before sending it to the rapid prototyping machine that would ultimately generate my miniature bust.

(My data could have been further enhanced using a SensAble Technologies Phantom, a haptic sculpting tool, and its accompanying FreeForm software. Together, these allow you to "mold" 3-D images as if they were made of physical clay, painlessly filling out those thin lips and removing any unsightly boils. Alas, my image was left in its natural, sorry state.)

Based on comics master Scott McCloud's recommendation (below), I bought a Cintiq. It does something I've always wanted to do since I first saw a computer. This thing is a pen-based tablet that doubles as a monitor. In other words you draw directly on the tablet, just like a paper-based drawing, but digitally. In fact the surface of the Cintq monitor/tablet feels like paper under a pen. Synchrony of image with your movements is almost exact, and the micro difference doesn't seem to matter. The result is weirdly like ink, or paint, but with all the control and magic of Photoshop. Of course, as a monitor, it will display whatever's on your computer, whether it's animation software or a spreadsheet. (You could hook it up to a $500 Mac Mini and have a fabulous digital art studio.) It's slowly being adopted by film animators and other high-end graphic professionals. A Cintq is expensive ($2,500), big, thick and bulky (it is too fat to sit on your lap like other tablets, but it can lay flat on a desk), but if you are producing digital images for a living, it speeds up your productivity and eases your hurt. It's fun to use.

When it opened its doors this month, ArtdeSoul became the company in the U.S. to use a new Cruse scanning technology to offer artists, illustrators, photographers, museum curators, architects, and archivists a way to flawlessly scan their original works for preservation, reproduction, distribution, promotion, and sale.

The company owns the only Cruse Scanner with this kind of specialized technology in the country, in this size. ArtdeSoul's is an even newer, more advanced model than the Cruse Scanners used at the Beethoven Museum in Bonn, Germany, the Getty Museum and the Vatican Secret Archives.

The Cruse Scanner is unbeatable in image capturing. According to Mike Lind, Cruse technical representative, "The Cruse Scanner excels in five areas: focus, lighting, lens resolution, alignment of the camera to the subject, and alignment of the digital back.

"It's the difference between painting with a roller versus a paint brush," explained Lind. And because the Cruse Scanner features a scanning table, the lighting is fixed while the original art rides past it on rails. The resulting scan perfectly reflects the colors, textures, and characteristics of the art piece.

The Cruse Scanner represents a major advance over previous methods. It is much more accurate than reprographic scanners -- designed for engineering and architectural drawings -- and can handle thick or mounted originals up to four inches in depth. And it achieves perfect focus and even lighting by eliminating human error and using a patented lighting system, while digital cameras are prone to problems in these areas and must be retouched.

Caterina Fake knew she was onto something whenone of the engineers at her Vancouver, British Columbia-based onlinegame start-up created a cool tool to share photos and save them to a Web page while playing.

"It turned out the fun was in the photo sharing," she says.

Fake scrapped the game. She and her programmer husband, Stewart Butterfield, transformed the project into Flickr. In less than two years, the photo-sharing site - now owned by Internetgiant Yahoo - has turned into one of the Web's fastest-growing properties.

"Had we sat down and said, 'Let's start a photo application,' we would have failed," Fake says. "We would have done all this research and done all the wrong things."