Released onto the store last Wednesday, Cooliris for iPhone condenses a fairly popular browser plug-in, into a mobile application featuring multi-touch controls. With various options to search highly popular sites, and the ability to search by current location using GPS, Cooliris (cooliris.com) may become the only decent way to browse a large amount of photos on your iPhone or iPod touch …
So what is CoolIris? Sounds cool right? – Well it is, it’s actually a fully-interactive wall which you can manipulate. Lets first start with the basic options. CoolIris [App Store] supports image search for the following sites:
- Flickr
- Yahoo!
- SmugMug
- DeviantArt
Panning across the wall is just a swipe away. Swiping your finger either left or right will pan the wall a screen’s breath. Alternatively, CoolIris has accelerometer-based action too. Tilt left, and you’ll pan left. Pan right? – tilt right.
How does this differ from its current Desktop counterpart?
CoolIris for iPhone doesn’t differ too much from it’s Desktop sister, but it does have it’s differences. One being that it lacks support for video search and playback. Surprisingly, YouTube didn’t seem to make the cut — possibly because of Apple’s “no duplicated functionality” policy — but thankfully it’s possible for it to be added in a future update to the app.
Ok, but, What can I actually do with these images?
In short, not a lot. In my eyes, CoolIris developed the application solely as a slick viewing window, which (as a bonus), is searchable. Once you’ve found a photo you like the look of, tapping it will first extrude it from the wall, and tapping it again will bring it up into full-screen view.
From there, tapping the information button (‘i’) toggles information about that photo on and off, and to go to the web page where that photo features, simply tap the blue link in the description. CoolIris will launch it’s own browser, and try and render the page requested. If for any reason it can’t find the page your looking for, it gives you an option to switch out to Safari, from CoolIris, which is pretty nice.
Also, see that mailbox icon? – Tap it, and CoolIris will compose an e-mail within Mail.app with the current link for the photo your viewing. Send it your family, friends, whoever …
Want to go back to the main wall? – Tap and tap again. Oh, I forgot to mention, you can also zoom in and out on the wall by taking advantage of the usual touch and pinch technique!
Search by Location!
What I think is pretty ‘Cool’ about CoolIris is that you can now, with iPhone 3G, search using your current GPS location. Search for photos near and around you, with one tap.
Note: ‘Location Services’ must be turned on in iPhone OS ‘Settings’ in order to take advantage of this feature.
Visuals
Finally, all the way through the user interface, CoolIris follows the iPhone’s design perfectly. Photos, with reflections, scrollable by accelerometer and all of this, in front of a black backdrop. Come on, its got Apple written all over it! (You only have to look at the old AppleTV marketing) It’s slick scrolling animations and smooth magnification just rounds this application off.
Despite it’s small amount of short-comings, we can’t really complain as … well … It’s Free!
Ok, so it’s not going to replace the way we search Google just yet, but it’s a start at least.
Get it Here: CoolIris
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