Review of Cooliris

First things first, it's time to admit something: I'm an Internet junkie, a geek, a whatever you call it these days. Hours pass just looking at new gadgets and then the grieving for not having the money to buy them. Luckily for me, there's lots of other cool things to see and do on line as well, and sometimes you find an application that really makes you wonder why nobody made it years ago and more importantly, how you managed to survive without it. Cool Iris, formerly known as Piclens, is one of those little gems that, although doing nothing special, make you want to long for your laptop at any given moment just to play with it a little more and stay on line way longer than necessary.

So what does Piclens do? Basically it's just an application that shows pictures and video-clips in a very slick way. Rather than clicking through the whole lot, they all appear on a 3D wall where you can browse through them using a slider on the bottom of your screen. With the black background, the pictures become even more highlighted giving you a true 3D feel. Gliding through the pictures works really fast, and although at the beginning the controls are a little bit awkward, they soon become very natural. Until now, nothing new, I guess, and to make it even worse, it doesn't even work with your own photo collection on your hard disk. It's a pure on line application that only works with certain sites. So what is the fuss all about then, I hear you think..... Well, here it goes......

First of all, the list of programs that use the application is rapidly growing, with social networks like Facebook or photo sites like Flickr already using it. Once you've installed Cool Iris, a little icon appears over your picture and clicking on it will result in all the pictures on that page to appear on the picture wall. But here is where things become really interesting. Besides pictures, movie sites like YouTube also implemented this little application, which comes with a built in search engine. Once opened, you'll find a search box on the right top hand corner with the all too well known icons available. Type in whatever it is you're looking for, and all the pictures or clips appear in the grid, rather than spread out over a zillion pages. You don't even have to leave the application to watch the clips. See something you think a friend would like? No problem, there's a build in option to mail it to them straight away. Want to visit the web-site where the picture was originally found? Just click on the globe and the page opens in a separate window. On that page, a new icon will appear so you can go straight back to your search. All these little things and the incredibly stylish look make you want to discover more and more.

As a last bonus (thus far), there's the so-called 'Discover' button, with a large selection of topics like US News, US Sports and entertainment where you get to see the latest movie trailers.

The application is not completely flawless, with clips not always playing sound or pages loading slower when the application is running, but overall, it 's a fantastic little application which will still improve during future versions. The obvious thing missing is the possibility to use Cool Iris with your own collection of pictures and clips, but something tells me this is just a matter of time. Amazingly enough, the application is still free and hopefully will remain so in the future. Then again, I for one wouldn't mind paying for it if the few bugs that still exist get solved. International versions of the 'Discover' function would be a nice bonus as well, since more and more users outside the US, like yours truly, will surely be using the application.

Conclusion: it's free, so try it out for yourself and see what the future of browsing looks like.....