Visual browsing of webpages and media is an increasingly attractive prospect for Internet users. Names like Viewzi, Searchme come to mind, as do inventions like Tag Galaxy and even MSNBC’s Spectra RSS news reader. This weekend, one market player, PicLens, developed by Cooliris, is stepping forward with some advancements and additions to its engine.
PicLens version 1.7, now available for Mozilla Firefox editions 2.0 and 3.0 (Release Candidate), on both Windows and Mac, as well as Microsoft Internet Explorer, offers users the option to browse not only video clips and images from YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook (as well as images discovered through Google Image search and other services), but also view material from MSNBC, ESPN, and movie trailers. Users can also browse for products on Amazon through a process akin to, in the words of Cooliris, “window shopping.” PicLens now presents a search box and a pull-down menu of categories to filter through the online retail warehouse and find products one might be interested in.
This release of PicLens is certainly an advance over the last in terms of features, with both premium media and shopping rolled into a browser add-on that has shown itself to be one of the best of its kind. If the previous edition didn’t offer you enough options in its 3D-like viewing environment, 1.7 is no doubt a more substantive push by its creator.