Web Simple

Data presentation and processing is quickly becoming the mainstay of your desktop computer.

As soon as Blackberry made e-mail easier to process in your hand, the stock of a desktop tower started to decline. Today mobile devices and their applications have made causal web browsing easier in your hand than on your desk.

However, there are some browser-based applications that can really punch-up the entertainment and business value of your clunky laptop/desktop. Cooliris is one such app that makes your CPU tower cool again.

Compatible with Firefox, Safari, IE, and Chrome, Cooliris is a web-page preview and picture display applet for your web browser. The picture service of Cooliris aggregates pictures in an easy-to-flip through interface called the “3D Wall”. Pictures and videos are ordered and scattered across your screen so that you can see all (or most of) the pictures/videos at once. Then just by pushing the arrow keys on your keyboard left or right, your screen comes alive with a rush of images flying by like a railway express train.

The pictures can originate from a simple Google search in the “Images” category, a set of images on a social networking site (like Facebook), or pull from the images saved on your hard drive.

The web page preview feature of Cooliris allows users to see connected web pages without navigating to the web address. If a user “hovers” her/his cursor over a hyperlink, a small blue box with a magnifying glass appears. A user need only move their mouse arrow onto this blue box and a fully functional preview of the attached web page appears in an embedded window. This feature is particularly helpful if you are a heavy wiki user and just want to see other pages at a glance.

For business users, this presentation technique can be used for graphical data or a set of PowerPoint charts that you want to show in a different way. This is sometimes a “one trick pony”, but can have a dramatic effect in the boardroom. Casual users will find the picture feature fun and a helpful way to see voluminous Facebook picture albums.

You can download Cooliris here. Enjoy!

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