I bear great news for Safari users. Cooliris (previously, PicLens) is now fully Safari 3.1 compatible! The previous release only supported Firefox on the Mac and Safari users had to make do with a rather outdated version. According to the developers, Safari didn’t have market share enough to warrant them making a new release specifically for it—I guess times have changed now. However, it’s worth nothing that this is a beta version and should only be used in non-mission critical environments.
Cooliris, if you don’t know what it is, is a Flash plugin that offers an alternative way of browsing YouTube, Flickr, Amazon and others such Web 2.0 applications/websites. And, by alternative, I mean that this is completely different from the ways you’ve been used to so far.
Cooliris puts you in a fullscreen 3D workspace, using Flash, and lets you browse sites in a stunning ‘3D wall’, much like the flowing thumbnails in the Apple TV ad. You have to see it to believe it! There’s also a filmstrip view, but I tend to stick to the 3D Wall myself, which is just too spectacular to bother with anything else. Check out their guided tour to see what the fuss is all about.
It also automatically detects when you are on a CoolIris compatible page like, say, Flickr, and puts a little play icon next to the image to immediately jump into fullscreen mode. The experience is nothing short of stunning!
In a bid to promote this plugin, the Cooliris team will be giving all readers of Smoking Apples a stunning discount of 40% off the full price of absolutely free. So, in effect, you are saving almost Rs. 0 just by reading Smoking Apples! Hurry, though, because this offer is valid only, like, forever. Go, grab it already.
