What’s So Cool About Cooliris?

I just discovered CoolIris, a browser plug-in that lets me surf images and videos in a cool, new way. Browser plugs-in are small pieces of software that extend the capabilities of your Web browser.  In this case, I downloaded the CoolIris plug-in for Firefox, installed it, restarted, and I was good to go.  So what’s so cool about this plug-in?

Cooliris lets me scroll through images and videos on my computer and sites that support Cooliris.  For example, if I want to browse photos from my son’s birthday party, I point Cooliris to the proper directory and the photos will appear as a wall of photos in my browser.  I can scroll through the images by using my mouse to drag images, or I can use the Cooliris scroll tool.

It turns out that many of my favorite sites now support Cooliris, like Flickr, Facebook, Hulu, images from Google,and Getty Images.  I can tell if a site support Cooliris if I hover an image and the double squares appear in the lower left corner of the image.  I can then click on the double squares to launch the photo album, collection of photos or RSS of images and videos in Cooliris.

It’s super fun to browse friends’ albums in Facebook in Cooliris without having to press Next, Next, Next.  And I love being able to surf hundreds of images in Getty Images in one long wall of photos.

Is Cooliris here to stay?  Who knows?  It’s free, it’s cool, it’s convenient and it’s fun to play.  Check it out and let me know what you think!

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