Review of Cooliris

How Browsing Through Pictures and Videos Becomes Even More Fun

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......