Cooliris | Media Discovery Beyond The Browser [Review]

A few months ago I came across Cooliris & I saved the link because it looked like something cool that I would want to check out. Well, here it is a 2-3 months later & I’ve finally took the time to install & try it out. I must say, it looks like it does a lot more than it really does but it’s still a great tool to have.

Cooliris is an addon for Firefox 3.0 (Windows XP or Vista) and is 2.4MB. On the homepage it states, “Your favorite sites. Full-screen. 3D.” So, I really thought that Cooliris would be more of a 3D browser type thing like Pogo, but it’s not.

At any rate, Cooliris is an incredible 3D media (images & videos) viewer. Any Cooliris enabled web page that has any type of media on them can be viewed in Cooliris.

In their own words, Cooliris allows you to:

• Transform your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for online photos and videos.
• Effortlessly drag and drop multiple images and videos from the 3D Wall and send to friends via email.
• Channel surf the latest news from around the world.
• Window shop and compare products from Amazon in a 3D environment.

Once you install the addon, there will be a button on your toolbar. Any time you’re on a web page, you can click the button in an attempt to open the page with Cooliris & view the images and/or videos on that page in 3D.

Cooliris is not just for viewing media on a web page, it’s also for discovering new media all over the Web. Cooliris has a search box that allows you to search Amazon, Flickr, YouTube, SmugMug, Google, Yahoo, deviantART & Photobucket for media.

You can also discover new media by using the “Discover” menu. The topics they have to choose from are: Featured (which is currently for Olympics), US News, International News, US Sports, International Sports, Business, Science/Technology, Entertainment, Movies/TV, Fashion/Lifestyle, & Around the Web.

If there is a caption or text that goes along with the image or video, it can be seen when you zoom in for close view. When clicking on an image or video, you will be directed to the original source. It’s also great that Cooliris allows you to email any media you find to a friend.

There’s more that I really can’t explain but you can see it all plus more in a great flash video here, provided on the Cooliris website. Let me know what you think. I know there’s always going to be something better out there but I definitely think that 3D viewing could possibly be the future of Web media.

Have you ever tried Cooliris or something else like it? If so, how do you like it?

[tags]cooliris, piclens, media sharing, images, videos, 3d, firefox addons, media search[/tags]

Technorati Tags: cooliris, firefox addons, images, media search, media sharing, piclens, videos