By Any Other Name
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.
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September 9th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
And guys, I’m really not a hater. I loooove your plugin. I use it all the time, and really enjoy the interface.
Which is why I’m troubled with the name change, and troubled by your addition of too many bells and whistles. The glowy frame around the image? It really has got to go. Don’t make this amazing tool into a toy!
Or, make it more of a tool, give us options:
FX on/off,
Number of rows (and columns, where appropriate,) in the different views,
BG color,
Mappable mouse buttons,
Mouse sensitivity,
There are dozens more.
Maybe make a PicLens Pro? Seriously, I’ve told everyone I know about PicLens, and now they all ask me why the name change? Or, “y’know that awsome image thing you showed me? Now I can’t find it!” I don’t think the ‘cool’ part of the name is helping… Sorry to sound so down, just don’t want to see you guys do any worse than the success you deserve.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Thanks for this explain! First I still had doubts about the name, but now I understand it completely.
Succes with the new cool futeres!
September 10th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Hello. Can CoolIris be viewed on a second display? I have a second bigger monitor attached and would love to view CoolIris on there but it only loads onto my laptop monitor. I’m running firefox 3 on Mac OS X 10.4.11. Thanks.
September 11th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Hi,
we have updated our software tool to use the new Cooliris name, it has been updated but the name change was maybe done in a hurry without all the logo ready for the software editor publishers.
I m very sad because we did some efforts to push the new name and our software which works perfectly to generate Piclens / Cooliris photo gallery hasn’t still be listed.
I contacted you several times by email and I didn’t deserved a reply from your team. that’s not very nice…
here was the news about Piclesn / cooliris : http://www.vso-software.fr
September 15th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Chuckle…. There’s no place welse to leave an observation….
And when I arrived here I realized why and why content is just so slanted…CoolIris is endorsed by the New York Times…
Have you noticed that Political Election content is for the most part ABC News? Ya think it’s a little slanted!
I was only going to pont it out.. but believe it or not.. now there’s even Left Wing Software!
What has this world come to?
September 16th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Interesting observation, Eric, though one has to to admit that interpretation is up to the viewer, I guess. The real story behind our Discover feature is that we simply pick up stuff from sites that syndicate their Media RSS feeds in a format Cooliris can read and that is frequently updated. In this case, it happens to be ABC and Reuters.
October 27th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Greets! Really amazing. Big ups! Tnx! Saw!
October 30th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
cool cool
October 31st, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Great info.Very good article.Bookmarked your blog plz keep it up
December 16th, 2008 at 11:32 am
In Oscommerce sites still have problems. In any oscommerce with Firefox or IE7 and Piclens installed, random change of languages in shop – one time in 2-3 pages.
December 18th, 2008 at 1:58 am
So nice!
December 29th, 2008 at 4:24 am
Did you figure out how to use cooliris on the secondary display? I was trying to give a demo using a beamer but it does not work. On WindowsXP it will open a cooliris 3d window on the main desktop using the same resolution as the secondary monitor but there is no way to move it where I want it. Looks like a bug…