I caught the closing minutes of Attack of the Show on G4tv, when the acting host, Chris Hardwick, mentioned a plug-in for the FireFox web browser. It’s called CoolIris, and is an image oriented browsing tool. In other word, images trigger the links to the underlying story, products, or videos. Going to the site, I discover that it works in the Windows and Mac environments with Safari, FireFox and Explorer (v7.0 and v8.0). Clicking on the 'Download Now' button causes the website to check your browser and automatically load the appropriate plug-in for your browser. A quick restart then activating the plug-in, brings up the plug-in’s opening screen. What is striking is the way you interact with two rows of what appear to be floating image tabs laid out as the user’s guide to CoolIris. In the upper left corner is the access menu to the actual browser of CoolIris. When you open this menu your choices drop down and you can peruse the content of the Web. Granted the designers have set up the plug-in to pick the images, but this maybe something that the user can control can adjust to taste. I haven’t had a chance to explore the tailoring aspect of this plug-in. Also, there is advertizing, in this case Nikon has a contest /ad grid inserted on the less active pages. Not a big factor now, but this could give you a clue into “the shape of things to come.”
Anyway, I’ll be returning to this plug-in periodically, just to see what’s happening with it
One other thing that I forgot to mention and haven’t checked out fully, there is a login button. I don’t know what you would be subscribing to with this function. I didn’t notice any mention of a trial period, so I’ll have to check that out later.
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