With all the interactive, photo, and video technology out there, many people are still attached at the hip to PowerPoint presentations. Under the motto “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” Haiku Deck has pulled in $3 million in a first round of funding today for a presentation-creator iPad app.

Haiku Deck seems to understand two things: that people just can’t let go of slide presentations, and that they don’t know how to make them interesting or visually appealing. (Sorry, PowerPoint, your cool transitions just aren’t doing the trick.) So they created an iPad app that restricts the text you can have on a page and focuses you on one topic per slide. The slides are much more visual, often creating a focal point around a large background image, rather than the text, forcing you to explain yourself in a presentation and not lean on the deck.

This might not, however, be good for those presentations that are simply meant to be sent around as a source of data — which could be a good thing. You know those thick PowerPoint presentations that have chart after chart of information that you just wind up glazing over? A slide deck like Haiku’s might force conversation.

The funding was led by Trilogy Partnership with participation from Madrona Venture Group, Founders Co-op, and angel investors.

Slide decks are still a main way people in many businesses share information. Though the technology to create really cool infographics, organize videos, and set up webinars exists, it’s often time-consuming and sometimes costly. Slide presentations are a quick, cheap hit, but also static and boring. So the new app certainly fulfills a need.

Haiku Deck launched its iPad app in 2012 and is based in Seattle. Techstars previously invested in the company.

Are you creative image via Haiku Deck

Today, you never know what can be taking a picture of you. Computer, mannequins, and security cameras all have the capability to stealthily record us. Now you can add your friend’s phone to the list. That is, if you’re trying to get into it.

Lookout Mobile‘s latest Android mobile security feature takes a picture of anyone who inputs a phone’s password incorrectly three times or more. It’s intent is to help people with stolen phones grab a shot of the thief, perhaps to help police identify and locate the person (and hopefully retrieve the phone). It works silently. The app uses the front-facing camera to snap a picture of the snoop and email it to you.

“We want to help people protect the privacy of their most personal device, and we designed Lock Cam specifically to address unauthorized parties trying to access your phone,” said Lookout lead project manager Jonathan Stull in an email to VentureBeat. “Important to note: You can’t trigger Lock Cam remotely – someone has to be trying to enter your locked device to activate Lock Cam.”

Regardless, willingly installing software that silently takes a picture of anyone standing in front of the phone is concerning. If someone were to access Lookout’s systems, they could theoretically figure out a way to trigger the camera response. However, Chris Morales, a mobile security analyst with 451 Research, isn’t as worried:

“It’s only a concern if the Lookout software itself is compromised,” said Morales in an e-mail to VentureBeat. “It is at risk no more than any other security system. Malware for Android already exists that can take advantage of physical sensors on a device, like the camera.”

Of course, the less pressing issue is that people enter their passwords incorrectly all the time, especially if they’re in a hurry. While it might be uncomfortable knowing your picture is being taken every time, it’s not a huge inconvenience to get the email. If anything, you can see what you looked like that day.

With this update the company also released a new premium feature that allows you to leave a 300-character long message on your phone’s lock screen should you lose your phone. This way a do-gooder could see the message, which might include a phone number to call or an address, and return the phone to its rightful owner.

This feature is only avalable for Lookout’s Premium accounts, which you can get for $2.99 a month.

Android camera image via vegetando/Flickr

Updated 5:11 PM Aug. 30 with a note from Microsoft

Facebook users are adding a stunning 300 million new photos each and every day. So Bing just added a new way to search and browse your friends’ photos without all the clutter of status updates and friend requests.

The new feature is part of Bing’s ongoing evolution to make search more visual. Friends’ photos already show up in search sidebars when relevant, but now interested users can go straight to bing.com/friendsphotos to browse and search all their Facebook friends’ images.

I tried it, and it’s actually better at browsing than searching, but that could be your friends’ fault, not Bing’s. Many Facebook users upload images with little or no metadata, making them difficult to index for search. (Perhaps Bing could license Google’s newest technology for knowing what pictures and video contain.)

Connect Bing to Facebook, and your friends’ photos show up in a Pinterest-like stream:

Search did not work well for me; repeated attempts with “dog,” “baby,” and “beach,” among others, brought up no results. So either I am the biggest loser in the world with no friends, or my friends don’t tag their photos very well:

Update: I received the following note from a Microsoft representative about searching:

I noticed that you had some trouble getting the friends photos search to work. Since this is a new feature, it will take Bing some time to crawl all the photos; but the more you use it, the more photos will surface. Also, you might try searching for your Facebook album titles to see more pictures; and if you’ve recently changed any of your settings, you may also try logging out of Facebook on Bing and logging back in.

What I did find very useful was friend search, which allowed me to view each friend’s photos in a stream, and the default stream of all my friends’ pictures, which is a great way to get visually updated in a hurry on where your friends are and what they’re doing.

But image search? Not a winner yet.

Image credits: Bing

“Images are clearly the central experience on most sites, but nothing has been done with them since the beginning of the Web,” said chief executive Bob Lisbonne in an interview with VentureBeat, “Images are still static and we want to change that.”

Luminate’s original approach attached relevant ads to images online. The company expanded on that idea and created a platform for publishers to attach any information to a picture, whether it’s an annotation, a link to news stories, or even a display of products that match what you see in the picture. With its apps, Luminate is able to closely identify products and people in pictures. When it can’t find an exact product match, it offers close substitutes.

“Our publishers enable the image apps by adding one line of javascript code to their sites,” chief technical officer James Everingham told VentureBeat. “Our apps then figure out what data is in the image algorithmically and with crowdsourcing.”

The company is now releasing an image app store with 11 apps that can be used to add more context to images. Apps include Editorial Search, which helps people find news related to an image; Twitter Feed, which shows what people on Twitter are saying about someone in a photo; and Music Clips, which link a picture of an artist to their albums. Later this year the company plans to open its platform and app store up to third-party developers so they can create more applications for its products.

Luminate faces competition from GumGum, which focuses completely on advertising attached to images, and Stipple which has a very similar look and feel to Luminate. Stipple is more geared towards advertisers looking to sell images or companies wanting to attach purchasing information to products in photos.

This third round of institutional funding was led by Nokia Growth Partners, with participation from August Capital, CMEA Capital, Google Ventures, and Shasta Ventures. This $10 million round will be used to expand its engineering, sales, and marketing teams. Luminate has raised $28 million to date.

Luminate was founded in 2008 by Lisbonne, who used to work at Netscape as a general manager of the browser division, and Everingham, who came from LiveOps. The company is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has fewer than 50 employees.

Here are a few pictures from the convention in southern California — just to give you a taste, if you couldn’t make it, of what’s happening over in Anaheim.

The initial crowd, a full hour before the doors for the convention center opened.

One of many convention attendees poses for a crowd of photographers just outside the convention center in Anaheim.

A Blizzcon 2010 attendee poses as a mage with her "troll rogue" friend that she turned into a sheep.

A Blizzcon 2010 attendee poses as a "quest giver" just outside the Anaheim convention center.

A Blizzcon 2010 attendee poses as a very professional Lord of Terror outside the Anaheim convention center before the doors opened.

Another Blizzcon attendee posed as a Warlock, a master of dark magic, just outside the Anaheim convention center before doors opened.

A statue of Kerrigan, one of the lead enemies in Blizzard's Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, greets attendees when they enter the convention center.

Blizzcon 2010 attendees come over to watch two of the top player-versus-player arena teams face off.

A Blizzcon attendee poses as a tree-form druid that specializes in healing next to a Frozen Throne replica.

A Blizzcon attendee takes a break from the rest of the convention to play some classic Blizzard games like Diablo.

One of several arenas that Blizzard set up for competitions between the top World of Warcraft and Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty players at Blizzcon 2010.

Members of a large guild in World of Warcraft meet for the first time in real life at Blizzcon 2010.

Blizzcon 2010 attendees get a chance to play Blizzard's newest unreleased game, Diablo III.

Blizzcon attendees leave their mark on a 20-foot-long whiteboard wall just inside the convention center.

Cosplaying Blizzcon 2010 attendees pose in front of a replica of the Frozen Throne.

A live music group plays a number of songs from Blizzard's various soundtracks for Blizzcon 2010 attendees just before the costume contest.

Finalists for Blizzard's costume contest pose on stage in front of a crowd of about 20,000 Blizzcon attendees.

The second-place winner of Blizzard's costume contest at Blizzcon 2010 poses as Illidan Stormrage from World of Warcraft.

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TextPlus

The company claims more than 8 million downloads of the original group texting application textPlus and is looking to make the new version even more popular using pictures.

New photo capabilities include being able to easily text images within both private and public communities. For example, a user who has joined a Boston Celtics group can now share pictures live while at the game. With real photo messaging, users can send, share and save photos one on one and in community settings.

Probably the most interesting feature of the textPlus 4 Pics Edition is what the company is calling “Face Text.” The feature allows users to leverage the iPhone 4′s forward facing camera and automatically sends a fresh pic of the texter along with each message.

The Marina Del Ray, Calif. based company, founded in 2007, has raised a total of $13.2 million in funding. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers participated in both rounds.

Several companies are providing group texting services, including CallVine, which recently landed $4 million, and TextFree, which has reportedly grabbed $11 million in two rounds of funding.

The main difference appears to be a universal format across all content tabs, including photos, playlists, stream, friends and comments. These tabs are nicely lined up vertically on the left side of profiles, which definitely makes it easier to navigate than the previous set up made up of individual boxes. The top navigation bar, made up of tabs to games, video and music, appears to be the same, though a “More” tab (similar to Facebook) has been added to reduce a long line of choices (see image below).

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the new setup reminds me a lot of Facebook, which might be a smart move by MySpace. Perhaps mirroring the most popular social network will give its users the simplicity they may be looking for with the customization that Facebook doesn’t allow. As part of the new look, MySpace has also upgraded its theme gallery, providing choices such as celebrities, landscapes and movies. For adventurous users, there’s the option to start from scratch.

The new format might also have something to do with MySpace’s recent purchase of some technology and employees of Threadbox, a startup that helped users organize their communication.