Cooliris Competes at the Olympic Trials

1215064356|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/07/02/cooliris-competes-at-the-olympic-trials/

This week, watercooler talk at the Cooliris office has been centered around one thing and one thing only. No, we’re not talking about the imminent July 4th festivities. It’s the Olympic swim trials. Because our own Hongzhe Sun (or “Hong” for short) has been competing for the honor to represent the US in the 100m and 200m backstroke.

Hong, our very own Product Manager, comes to us from Stanford, where he graduated in ‘07. Hong’s amazing drive and determination have been instrumental to shaping new PicLens builds. Hong works tirelessly with our team to take our products in exciting new directions . . . and that’s between his intense swim practices every day!

The competition has been fierce at the Olympic trial swim meets; 6 world records have already been broken. During the 100m backstroke on Monday, Hong finished with his best time of 54.83 seconds, earning him a 9th place finish and a lane in the semifinals. Just a few hours later, he came in 11th in the semifinals at 54.47 seconds - falling just short of the finals but achieving a personal best time for the second time in one day!

Tomorrow, Hong will compete in the 200m backstroke. He’s told us he’s “very optimistic” about the event.

We’re all proud of the amazing spirit Hong has shown in his Olympian efforts both in the water and at Cooliris. We’ll be clustered around the TV rooting for him! Help support Hong by checking out the swim trials for yourself on the USA and NBC networks!

Go get ‘em Hong! You’re our man!

Social Buzz Site Opens the Doors for PicLens Creativity

1214885825|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/06/30/social-buzz-site-opens-the-doors-for-piclens-creativity/

We recently opened a brand new Buzz page where you can check out the latest fan videos, feedback, and media highlights surrounding Cooliris! The Buzz page was the brainchild of Stanford student and Cooliris team member Nidhi Bhat. While communicating with PicLens’s biggest fans, she saw the need for a community “home base.” She envisioned the Buzz page as “a place for our fans to interact with other users and spread the PicLens love.”

The page will feature fans’ PicLens-enabled sites, which use it to showcase everything from art exhibitions to product listings. The Buzz page will also be home to weekly highlighted fan videos and quotes and feedback from avid PicLens users.

“We’ve seen some really creative work with PicLens,” Nidhi said. “We want to encourage that and share it! I’m hoping that the Buzz site will help shape the strong emerging PicLens fan community. Every step of progress we’ve made so far is thanks to the fans – they should have a place to show their hard work too.”

PicLens fans should also continue to check the Buzz page for announcements and contests, where their creative skills will be put to the test – with the chance to get some sweet prizes in return!

Firefox 3 Launches – Better, Faster, Stronger

1213747216|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/06/17/firefox-3-launches-%e2%80%93-better-faster-stronger/

Firefox 3 has just arrived on the scene, offering new features and boasting a browser that is more user-friendly, secure, and customizable than ever before. The Cooliris Team is excited about the launch and is proud to say our ever-poplular addons PicLens (check out our brand new Piclens 1.7!) and Cooliris Previews sail smoothly with the Firefox upgrade.

Firefox is a tremendous success story, growing organically through the combined efforts of a small core Mozilla team and a massive volunteer community. Firefox users are enthusiastic early adopters of new Web technology, excited to both try out and develop new software.

It was this enthusiasm and sense of community that encouraged the Cooliris team to focus much of our efforts on the Firefox browser. Immediately after launching our “PicLens 3D Wall” interface in January, we received thousands of letters of praise, suggestions, and even performance reports from Firefox users and fellow developers. Some even sent us multi-page documents that canvassed every aspect of our interface and their user experience.

This kind of feedback, and the sense that we are part of a growing and evolving community, has been invaluable in advancing PicLens toward its full potential.

Our just launched PicLens 1.7 (read about it here), with new features such as Return to PicLens, Discover, and Shop Amazon, evolved much in thanks to the tremendous feedback we’ve received from fans.

Today, PicLens is one of Firefox’s most downloaded addons, and proudly the personal favorite of Mozilla CEO John Lilly.

Give Firefox 3 a try now and make sure you’re making the most of your Web experience. Mozilla’s community has been a great help in evolving PicLens, and newest version of Firefox gives all of us – as both users and developers – a lot more to play with. Way to go, Mozilla!

Next Generation Web: The New PicLens 1.7

1213383627|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/06/13/next-generation-web-the-new-piclens-17/

We are thrilled to announce today’s launch of PicLens Version 1.7 with three exciting additions:

Discover

MSNBC, ESPN, movie trailers . . . Now the latest news in sports, entertainment, and current events is all just one click away. Look for the “Discover” button in the top left corner of the PicLens screen, and click on it for a list of media channels. Select any category, and a collection of the latest relevant images and videos will be at your fingertips. This information is refreshed as often as every 15 minutes, so feel free to revisit it as often as you like. Is there a channel that you would like to see? Just e-mail us back at feedback@cooliris.com and we’ll look into it.

Shop Amazon

Call it virtual window shopping. The power of PicLens has been put to work with Amazon.com. Just type your query into the PicLens search box, and choose a Amazon product category in the pull-down menu to refine your search. Voila! Now you can browse products visually. Zooming in on an image will give you details and price information. Click on the globe icon in the information bar, and you will be taken to the product webpage on Amazon, where you can find additional summaries and reviews and even make your purchase.

Return to PicLens

We heard you! Now you can minimize PicLens to a corner of your screen and come back later right where you left off, with one click. Want to jump to the corresponding webpage of an image or video and then toggle right back into PicLens? Click!

We can’t wait to hear your feedback on these exciting new features.

–The Cooliris Team

Everything’s A-Okay: Supporting Firefox v3 RC1

1211767241|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/05/25/everythings-a-okay-supporting-firefox-v3-rc1/

When Firefox’s version 3 Release Candidate (RC1) came out last week, users found that some Firefox extensions – including PicLens – stopped working properly.

Well, we’ve got good news! Our team has been pulling some late nights to get it working again, and voila! We’ve just relaunched PicLens v. 1.6.4 on our website so that it now fully jives with Firefox v3 RC1.

Note that our newest release will work only on Firefox v3.0 RC1 and beyond, and is not backwards compatible with Firefox 3b5 or other earlier Firefox 3.0 versions. Firefox v3.0 RC1 is close to the finished Firefox 3 product, which promises to be amazing. If you haven’t tried it yet, you can get it here.

Let’s fire it up and get back to enjoying online photos and videos on the “3D Wall!”

Fans Build New Ways to Implement PicLens on Your Website

1211407031|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/05/21/fans-build-new-ways-to-implement-piclens-on-your-website/

Jan Pavelka and Kristof De Jaeger both saw PicLens and immediately thought the same thing: this was something that should be on every website. So they each set about creating quick and effective ways for website developers to enable PicLens on their pages. Their plugins for the powerful open source content management systems Joomla! and Drupal allow users of both platforms to easily integrate PicLens support.

Jan and Kristoff’s modules join a growing number of ways for developers to incorporate PicLens support. PicLens Publisher and PicLens Plugin for WordPress can both be found here, along with our Webmaster’s Guide, and the Freewebs publishing platform is another easy way of building PicLens galleries into your site.

As a website enthusiast, Jan Pavelka wanted an easy way to create picture galleries in Joomla! 1.5, but couldn’t find anything that met his needs. So he went about creating Phoca Gallery, which allowed him and other Joomla! developers to build and manage image galleries.

Not long after Phoca Gallery launched, a user approached Jan and “asked me if Phoca Gallery supported PicLens. He gave me the link and immediately I saw its potential and created PicLens support. Now in addition to the initial Phoca Gallery options, users can employ the PicLens slideshow to get everything at once – the detail view, slideshow, 3D wall, et cetera.” Jan encourages website developers to check out Joomla! and Phoca Gallery for sharing their own media content. For more information about Phoca Gallery, check out the user manual.

Kristof De Jaeger first used Drupal three years ago for a small project, but it has since become the only CMS he uses for his work: “The great power of Drupal is that it’s very easily extensible with dozens of contributed modules which all use the core Drupal API. It makes life for developers very easy. The fact that it’s free and has such a great community behind it cuts down on your developing time.”

So why did Kristof become interested in building a PicLens module for Drupal? “I first saw PicLens during DrupalCon Boston, in March 2008. During the closing session, they showed pictures of the convention on a big screen using the PicLens Firefox plugin. One month later, I saw it again at work and immediately fell in love with it, because it is so damn cool! I came home that evening and put together my first Drupal PicLens module code on cvs a few hours later.”

Seeing the MediaRSS feed employed by PicLens excited Kristoff. “One thing I would really like to see is that MediaRSS feeds become supported in the Drupal Core. I’m going to follow the Drupal 7 development cycle closely and continue to review, test, and write more core and contributing patches.”

Kristoff’s PicLens module is supported in Drupal 5 and 6, and also comes with its own MediaRSS API, so that if someone is writing their own Drupal module, they can use the PicLens module’s functions to generate an independent MediaRSS feed. He’s used it to design the galleries on his own site – you can see an example here – and encourages everyone to try it out!

Flying the Flag

1210609245|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/05/12/flying-the-flag/

Sometimes you’re visiting a site for the first time and you’re wondering if it’s PicLens-enabled. Now, with our newest version 1.6.4 for Firefox, you can tell right away.

The addition of a toolbar icon featuring our characteristic 3D Wall to the upper right hand corner of your browser not only allows you to launch PicLens directly, but lights up blue if the website you’re on is PicLens-enabled.

With this new flagging system you can easily tell when it’s a good time to fire up PicLens, and you don’t have to hover over an image to do so!

We’ve also added the PicLens icon to YouTube, making it much easier to browse your favorite videos in style!

PicLens 1.6.3 Now on Mozilla

1209780031|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/05/02/piclens-with-youtube-search-now-on-mozilla/

MENLO PARK, CA, May 2, 2008 - A little over two weeks ago, we launched on our site the first public release of PicLens 1.6.3 with 3D search for YouTube videos. In usual form, we got user feedback, made some tweaks, and just now put our latest and greatest on the Mozilla download site. Pick your flavor and grab your copy of PicLens there from our website now!

Oh, yeah, did I say our latest release is available for both Firefox 2.0 and 3.0 (and, of course, Internet Explorer, too)? You bet!

PicLens Launches 3D Search for YouTube

1208296877|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/04/15/piclens-supports-3d-search-for-youtube/

MENLO PARK, CA, April 15, 2008 - You thought the 3D wall was cool when it was filled with high-quality but (through no fault of their own) static images? What if you could browse videos seamlessly with that same interface? Oh, you can.

Our new PicLens v.1.6.3 release features YouTube video search. Check out our demo video below and see for yourself!

Once you’ve got PicLens open, simply browse YouTube using the search bar at the upper-right. Or if you’re using Firefox and happen to be visiting YouTube, click the PicLens button in your browser toolbar to be transported to an unending wall of your favorite videos.

The new release brings some other great improvements along for the ride. You can now see metadata – image title labels of Flickr photo captions, for instance – while flying through images and videos in PicLens. We know context is important, and we want to provide you with as much as we can without cluttering your interface.

We’ve also integrated a new UI, which further streamlines navigation with a more obvious Jump to Page button and an improved full-screen mode. Prior to this release, you couldn’t zoom an image to more than twice its size. We now offer true full-screen zoom for both images and video alike.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over and download the new Piclens v1.6.3 update.

Grab your popcorn kids. The previews are over, and it’s time for the main feature.

PicLens 1.6.3 is available for Firefox 2.0, Firefox 3b5, and Internet Explorer on Windows Vista, XP, and Mac OSX, and can be downloaded for free right here on our website at www.piclens.com.

PicLens Breaks 100 on YouTube!

1208188855|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/04/14/piclens-breaks-100-on-youtube/

Fans are so smitten with PicLens that the YouTube videos keep streaming in. From demos to reviews, and even just music video galleries compiled by users who want an awesome new way to share their albums, the number of PicLens videos has shot well past 100.

Giovanni Antico discovered the power of PicLens when navigating his Flickr albums. Giovanni writes, “I was so excited to see my photos as if they were in a boundless gallery that I recorded a video of such experience. PicLens gave me a whole new way to browse images, combining spectacular navigation with ease of use.” The album video he created is a staff favorite. Check it out!

Cool, huh? Did seeing that just spark your creative side? There are a lot of neat themes for a Piclens video. Maybe you’d like a new way to commemorate your family vacation. Maybe you’ve been wanting to make a music video on YouTube for a while but just haven’t found the right medium. Or maybe you’ve got an artist’s eye and can use our 3D wall to form a moving pointillist piece out of hundreds of disparate tiny images! (Or maybe, just maybe, I watched Ferris Bueller recently and have Seurat on the noggin.) Whatever you want to share with us, put it up on YouTube and drop us a line about it, and you may just end up on our blog!

Microsoft Features PicLens on IE Add-Ons

1205251233|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/03/11/microsoft-features-piclens-on-ie-add-ons/

PRESS RELEASE

REDMOND, WA, March 11, 2008. Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace has selected PicLens as this week’s featured download on its IE Add-Ons webpage.

Window’s Market Place is Microsoft’s primary portal for over 5,000 downloads from over 2,000 companies. Add-ons selected by Microsoft are carefully screened by Microsoft and rated by users to ensure they meet the quality standards demanded by users.

The feature placement of PicLens on Windows Marketplace starts today and will run for one week. Thereafter, PicLens can be downloaded from the product detail page of IE Add-Ons or our own website at www.piclens.com.

New York Times Cites PicLens as New Immersive Approach

1205079345|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/03/09/new-york-times-cites-piclens-as-new-immersive-approach/

Hitting the newspaper stands today is an article in the New York Times that describes our popular PicLens product as an example of new generation technology for Web navigation. You can grab a copy of the article “Coming Soon: Nothing Between You and Your Machine” in the Business Section of the paper or at nytimes.com, which released the online version yesterday.

Journalist John Markoff cites Nintendo Wii, the Apple iPhone, and PicLens as technologies that bring computer screens to life in new, immersive ways. Markoff goes on to highlight PicLens and its unique immersive features.

Austin Shoemaker, our very own chief technology officer at Cooliris, Inc., is quoted in the article.

The New York Times is the largest 7-day paper in the United States, with home delivery in over 340 markets and a net audience of 22 million for its print and online publications. The publisher joins other media leaders, such as CNET, Macworld, and the BBC, who see PicLens at the forefront of emerging technologies that transform the Web experience.

PicLens Enabled for 20+ Million Websites

1204840281|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/03/06/piclens-lite-enabled-for-20-million-websites/

PRESS RELEASE

MENLO PARK, CA, March 6, 2008 – Cooliris, Inc. (www.cooliris.com), maker of the popular 3D photo viewer PicLens, has just teamed up with free website provider Freewebs (www.freewebs.com) to make the PicLens experience available to all Freewebs users and visitors. Freewebs has had over 20 million websites created by members using its intuitive, user-friendly tools, to date.

As part of a larger initiative launched last week to enhance their online photo sharing product, Freewebs has added support for the PicLens browser extension, and present PicLens Lite (www.piclens.com/lite) as the default slideshow option on its webpage creation platform.

“At Freewebs we are constantly looking to improve our user experience,” said Haroon Mokhtarzada, Co-Founder and CEO of Freewebs. “We have seen a huge increase in the use of digital photography on our sites over the years and are excited about the opportunity to enable our members a new state-of-the-art way to display photos on their sites. PicLens and PicLens Lite offer beautiful and unique viewing experiences that we know it will be hugely popular with our millions of members.”

PicLens Lite gives those creating websites on Freewebs the power to create immersive, full-screen slideshows on their sites. Site visitors simply click a customizable “start slideshow” button to view photos on the site as a sleek slideshow presentation, complete with user controls. From there, users can play or pause the slideshow, or better yet dive into a full-screen cinematic experience that goes beyond the confines of the browser window.

Viewers of PicLens Lite on Freewebs will have the option to enhance their cinematic experience by installing the free, full-versioned PicLens plugin on their browser. Available at www.piclens.com, the popular PicLens plugin sports many additional features, including the “PicLens Wall”, a stunning and magical 3D world where users can effortlessly drag, click, and zoom around thousands of images in a full-screen environment.

With PicLens’ innovative technology and Freewebs’ versatile publishing platform, creating and enjoying websites with rich media will never be the same again.

* * *
About Cooliris
Cooliris, Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in Menlo Park, CA. Founded in January 2006 with a simple mantra “Think beyond the browser,” Cooliris creates products that make discovering and enjoying the Web more exciting, efficient, and personal. Cooliris, Inc. has had over 5 million downloads of its core products PicLens and Cooliris Previews.

About Freewebs.com
Freewebs offers the web’s leading entry-level personal publishing platform, dedicated to ensuring everyone in the world can create a quality multimedia website. To date, Freewebs members have created more than 20 million comprehensive websites including blogs, photos, videos, music, e-commerce and more. Founded in 2001, Freewebs is privately held and based in Silver Spring, MD.

PicLens Is Finalist in CNET Awards

1203976213|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/02/25/piclens-is-finalist-in-cnet-awards/

Have you voted yet? We just found out that PicLens, our ever-popular online 3D viewer, has been selected as a finalist in the 2008 Webware 100 Awards by the editors of CNET Webware.com. PicLens enthusiasts can cast their vote for PicLens by visiting the CNET Webware website.

Voting for this year’s awards will run until March 31. Winners will be announced on April 21, the day before the opening of Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, a CNET co-sponsored event.

This year, users of CNET Webware.com nominated over 5,000 eligible entries, from which the editors honed down to a shortlist of the top 300. “For the most part we think we found the most important webware products,” says Rafe Needleman, an editor for CNET, who helped pick PicLens as a finalist in the browsing category.

We want to give special thanks to our users worldwide and to CNET for so enthusiastically embracing PicLens. We know we could not have made it this far without your support!

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please take 10 seconds to vote!

31 Days at Cooliris

1203909664|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover - http://blog.cooliris.com/2008/02/24/31-days-at-cooliris/

The past 31 days has been an exhilarating time for the Cooliris Team. Here’s a rundown of some of the happenings:

• We unveiled PicLens 1.6 for Firefox and Internet Explorer, our revolutionary online image viewer that lets you effortlessly drag, search, zoom, and zip around thousands of images in a magical full-screen 3D environment

• We got to hang out with Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who dropped by Cooliris to check out PicLens 1.6 and the “3D Wall” — no kidding, check out the photo below!
  

• We optimized PicLens Lite, which allows webmasters to enable full-screen slideshow on their own websites and WordPress blogs.

• We responded to nearly 3,000+ emails from euphoric users hailing the new “3D Wall” of PicLens. Users described the PicLens experiences as “exquisite”, “stunning”, and even “religious”

• We got featured on 70+ YouTube videos by fans of PicLens

• We launched Cooliris Previews 2.6, featuring a basic slideshow viewer for Google Images and Yahoo Images.

• We danced the night away at our first mega Bhangra party, featuring Rishi (one of our very own team members) and the Stanford University Bhangra Dance Team
  

• We received tasty reviews from CNET, Wired, Downloadsquad, ReadWriteWeb, and hundreds of other blogs and news sources

• We welcomed a handful of new team members: Meg, Krishna, Alex, Jess, Rick, Ryan, Jason, Sarah, Nidhi, Truebe, Paul, Xandra, Noah, Jonah, Rishi, Rohan, Evan, Juan, and two Chris’s.

• We drank lots of coffee and got about 4.9 hours of sleep per night

• We launched this blog!

Needless to say, we’ve all been working tirelessly, but loving it! It’s a great time to be at Cooliris.