Cooliris has been growing by leaps and bounds lately – not only in the range of features we offer, but also as a company. At this time last year, we were a small team, with only six employees. Now the Cooliris family has grown to over twenty members, with fantastic additions to both our MTFTs (More Than Full-Timers) and our merry band of interns.

And as with any growing family, sometimes the old digs just aren’t up to the task of housing the whole gang. Our small office in Menlo Park necessitated some Tetris-level contortions in order to squeeze everyone into the workspace. Personal space and personal possessions were definitely unattainable luxuries. Macbook power cords attained Six Degrees of Separation from their original owners, and Musical Chairs was heightened to a no-holds-barred competition, as there were at least 8 interns working on the floor at any given time.

Obviously, Something Had To Give. Compress that many people into that small a space, and the result looks like Brownian motion or the inside of a pinball machine. It’s real busy. So we went hunting for a new scene.

Lo and behold, we found the Promised Land.

Right on El Camino Real near downtown Palo Alto, we picked the most airy and expansive space possible. We’re also directly across the street from Stanford University, which many of our interns call home. The ground floor has a series of long desks around which most of our teams are situated, allowing for continuous roundtable discussion, fostering a great sense of cooperation and creativity. The new conference room is big enough to hold our entire team. The ceilings are lofty, as the second floor features a mezzanine level where our engineers work. Their workstations are set up all around the perimeter, facing the windows, so that they all have the feel of the “corner office with a view.”

The second floor is also equipped with all the necessities – kitchen, washer/dryer, bathroom with a shower – everything that’s needed to make it through an especially intense product launch. The two decks are perfect for sunbathing and brainstorming – in fact, we hold most of our interviews out on the deck, where potential engineers can tackle tough CS questions on the whiteboard while still working on that California tan.

The loft is a bit of a rec room at the moment, with a couch for decompressing, but it has also been an excellent vantage point for leading water balloon attacks on unsuspecting co-workers intent on having lunch. However, surprising them is a bit harder than you might expect – the office goes through around 600 caffeinated beverages a week!

We’re really enjoying our new home – the layout is amazing for generating communal creative energy, and it’s doing a wonderful job of accommodating our fast-growing team. In the coming months, the new office is sure to be home to a lot more new faces – and it’s a great place to welcome them to!

Sometimes, the best ideas come from the best wishes. We heard from professional web developers, everyday photo album enthusiasts, and everyone in-between, “I wish there was a way that everyone could surf my media using the Cooliris wall, directly on my webpage.”

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Cooliris for Your Site.

Your website visitors no longer have to fire up Cooliris in order to browse your media with the 3D Wall. Now you can embed the wall directly into your website as a Flash application. While those with Cooliris can launch your gallery full-screen from the embedded Wall, those without it can still get a taste of the experience!

Setting up Cooliris for Your Site couldn’t be easier. Once you have a media RSS feed containing your content, just paste it into our ready-made embed code. Add a crossdomain.xml file to your website, and you’re good to go! You’ll find everything you need, as well as step by step instructions and examples here: http://developer.cooliris.com/embed

We know a lot of folks do their websurfing at places like work or the library, where it’s hard to load third party software. So now there’s a quick way to ensure that everyone can enjoy your site’s media the way it was meant to be seen: in streaming 3-Dimensional splendor with the Cooliris Wall.

Here are samples from three developers who embedded the Cooliris Wall on to their sites. Feel free to post your own in by commenting on this blog post!

www.geograph.org.uk

www.lybrary.com

www.strollerweb.co.uk

www.imedstudios.com

As you may have noticed, PicLens has got a brand new name: Cooliris. It’s become our self-titled album. Meanwhile, our other add-on, Cooliris Previews, has been shortened to CoolPreviews. Since you may be curious why, we thought we’d give you the scoop.

Why the name change?

The short answer is that “PicLens” simply evolved beyond its original name and vision. As a company, we’re going through an exciting period of growth and development, and as our flagship product, “PicLens” has been at the forefront of that growth. With this expanding scope, it became clear that a name change was in order.

You see, “PicLens” has always connoted a very specific application: something that allows you to closely view pictures. As many of our long-time followers may reminisce, our very first beta was released in October 2006 (wow, almost two years ago!) and offered only a full-screen slideshow mode for viewing pictures one at a time.

But PicLens has grown, as has our company and vision. With the introduction of our “3D Wall” interface this past January came not only the ability to view but also navigate 1000s of images instantly along an endlessly expansive, scrollable wall. Add search functionality and video support, the product had evolved beyond being a just picture viewer into to a “new immersive approach to Web navigation,” as the New York Times aptly puts it.

Today, the product is beginning to help people discover more from the Web. You now have, for example, the ability to channel-surf the Internet’s hottest news and media through our Discover feature. More recently we introduced Sharing, so you can share everything you find on the 3D Wall with your friends.

In the months to come, you will witness a number of product innovations that surpass your wildest imaginations.

Why Cooliris?

After doing some name ideation and weighing our options, it came to make sense for the product brand to adopt our company name “Cooliris.”

Cooliris captures the essence of the user experience we envision: a way to experience the Internet and content in a new, more vibrant manner, one that is truly interactive, connected, and immersive.

What’s in a name? “Cooliris” is rich in its implications. The “cool”, exhilarating atmosphere evoked by a night ride in the open air on your bike or convertible, or by diving into the ocean in the early morning hours, is the same kind of rush that users can imagine while flying through 1000s of photos, videos, and web content on the infinite 3D Wall. Similarly, “iris” brings with it a wealth of associations: the colored part of the eye that controls vision aperture, the flower that blooms in early spring, and, in Greek mythology, the divine messenger personifying rainbows, the path between earth and the heavens above.

What’s Next?

The word’s spreading amongst all of our groups on Facebook, Flickr, and MySpace, and amongst our many supporters. We now humbly to turn to you, our loyal users, to help us further share the new name and pass on the good word for Cooliris.

Our team is really excited about our the new additions we’re building for Cooliris, and we can’t wait to a whole new Cooliris experience with you in the coming months.

With the Democratic National Convention just coming to a close last week and the Republican National Convention underway this week, Cooliris has launched our new Discover channel, US Election 2008, to cover the action!

Now you can scan the latest media surrounding the presidential race, and expand to full-length articles that offer you up-to-date coverage of the campaigns. (Just select an image or video from the 3D Wall and then click the globe icon on the detail bar that appears, and you’ll toggle right to the relevant webpage. When you’re done, click the “Return to Cooliris” button to toggle back to the 3D Wall.)

We’re in the midst of arguably one of the most charged political seasons in recent US history. The country’s financial status, the energy crisis, international relations and the war in Iraq, taxes, healthcare, employment – a myriad number of important issues urgently need attention and strong leadership. Voters have a lot of concerns to address as they prepare for the November election.

So make sure you’re getting all the information you need to make an informed decision on which candidate can help realize your vision of a better America. This election season, stay on top of the current events and campaign developments with the US Election 2008 channel on Cooliris!