CoolIris is a browser plugin for firefox that enhances the experience of image searching on the web.  Its a cinematic, 3-dimensional wall that you can scroll through endlessly in full screen.

The most useful thing about CoolIris is the image search.  When you do a search on Google images that yields a lot of results, you have to keep clicking “next” over and over, and it gets annoying.  CoolIris stitches all of the pages together into one infinite wall of images, and makes browsing through an image search much more pleasant, and way better looking.  You can use it to search Google Images, Flickr, Photobucket, or Picasa to name just a few.  It loads images quickly and runs smoothly.

CoolIris also uses RSS to display images from syndicated sites.  Most blogger.com sites work in CoolIris, and its an interesting way to browse a blog’s archives visually only by its published images.  The plugin supports video sites like YouTube and hulu too, and online shopping sites like Amazon.  I hope to make NineCents compatible with CoolIris in the near future.

They also make an iPhone app, available for free in the app store.  You just tilt the phone to scroll across the wall.  Unfortunately, the app doesn’t run as smoothly as its desktop counterpart, even over a wifi connection.

CoolIris is available at their website, www.cooliris.com.

I never really cared how the UI on my Windows XP machine looked before.  As long as it got the job done, I was happy.  But one day I finally decided that I wanted it to look cool.  So I put on my decorating hat and found some good looking, but useful items to spiff up the ol’ desktop.  All of this was done for free, and most of it was done without hogging up too many resources.

Also, I should get this out of the way now:  SUP DAWG, I HERD YOU LIKE TO CRASH SO WE INSTALLED WINDOWS ON YOUR WINDSHIELD SO YOU CAN BSOD WHILE YOU DRIVE.  Okay, here’s the sources on all the stuff under the hood:  Continue reading this post…

Up until now, I’ve been stuck in the past when it comes to AIM clients.  I’ve been using Aim 5.9 for years now, and I’ve tried replacing it with everything from Trillian to Pidgin to Miranda, but none of them ever delivered what I was looking for.  Then along came digsby.  I’ve only been using it for a day now, but I think I’ve found the one.  Not only does it combine several IM services, it also lets you check your e-mail, facebook, and twitter all in one desktop package.  On top of that, its still in development but it already has most of the features I look for in an IM client.  Its got chat logging, tabbed windows, multiple accounts in one buddy list, and its ad-free except for during installation.

One of the best things about Digsby is that it emphasizes personalization.  The program and chat formats are skinnable, and you can turn on/off most of the buttons and move around the elements of your buddy list to suit your needs.  I have my chat lines skinned to look exactly like the red and blue of AIM that I’m used to. 

You can see all of Digsby’s feautures here and screen shots here.  And yes, digsby is completely free.