Exciting news today for all members of the extended Cooliris community: we have designed and launched a website specifically for members of our community.

Check it out: www.cooliris.com/community

.
Why introduce this website, you ask? The idea came about as a result of requests from many of our community members. They were so excited about Cooliris and wanted to share it with others, but they needed help. So we thought, why not leverage the creativity of existing community members?

Visitors of cooliris.com/community can also sign up for the community email list. Being a part of this list gives exclusive access to new Cooliris products as well as invitations to meet-ups at the Cooliris office in Palo Alto. The list is a way to have an actual dialogue with members of the Cooliris team, as well as other members of the Cooliris community. Have suggestions? Let us know!

In addition, we thought it would be fun to highlight the amazing things that our community has already done. So, we introduced two sections on the site called Featured Enthusiast and Featured Site. In these sections we profile Cooliris community members and websites that have done great things to help promote the Cooliris brand and products. Each month we will feature a new enthusiast and a new website; you can submit nominations at any time to feedback@cooliris.com.

So, we encourage everyone to visit this new site and share it with anyone who is or would like to be a part of the Cooliris community. Thank you all for your wonderful support, we are excited for all of the great things to come from our community!

UPDATE 5PM: We’ve officially released Coolpreviews v.3.1.0521 to Mozilla.This fixes the Pac Man bug.

It may take a couple of hours for the Mozilla servers to display the new version on the Mozilla addon page. You can also grab the fix at http://www.coolpreviews.com.

So What Happened?
The bug came about through today’s Google’s homepage, which automatically starts a Pac Man game after 5 seconds. We had an old line of code from an experimental build that would load up the Google homepage in the background. We have now removed that code. Previously, Google did not have any music on their page. So, obviously, today’s debut Google’s mighty ghosts of Pac-Man really gobbled us up!

Again, we apologize for the craziest bug we’ve ever experienced! Super thanks to all our users for hanging in there!

———————–

UPDATE 12 noon : Found the fix – get the new build at www.coolpreviews.com! Another update with the story behind the bug coming soon.

———————–

Hearing Pac-Man music when you load up Firefox with CoolPreviews enabled?

There definitely is something weird going on and we’re fixing this bug (which has to do with CoolPreviews, not the Cooliris plugin) right now.

Google launched a homepage today which features an interactive PacMan game, with music, sirens, etc. If CoolPreviews is enabled, the music plays even if you don’t have Google opened in your browser tab.

You can turn off the music by either (1) shutting off the volume on your computer system, or (2) temporarily disable CoolPreviews from Firefox Tools > Addons > Extensions > CoolPreviews.

We should have a fix or a new download available later today on our website www.coolpreviews.com, so please stay tuned!

We apologize for this inconvenience. This has GOT to be the weirdest bug we’ve ever seen.

Take a look at the different ways websites are using the embeddable Cooliris Wall to enhance their site! Here are some of the new ones:

Photo.net – a premium photo site with about 4 million unique users per month!
Taylor Nation – A Taylor Swift affiliate website.
TouchNote and their gallery page – Awesome greeting card site!
Gainward.com – A gaming site that is using Cooliris to display their products.
Elaph.com – A popular Middle Eastern news site.
HipHollywood.com – An African American entertainment news site.
AutoScout – A Dutch website all about cars.

Try Cooliris Express out for yourselves and send us creative ways that you are using Cooliris on your websites!

With the upcoming launch of Cooliris’ Community website, we are introducing a series of posts called ‘Featured Cooliris Enthusiast’. In these posts, we will be profiling active members of the Cooliris Community. It’s a small token of appreciation for all of the hard work these community members put into spreading Cooliris around the world.

Cooliris is proud to honor Alan Levine as the inaugural ‘Featured Cooliris Enthusiast’. Alan runs http://cogdogblog.com and has done several posts over the years promoting and sharing Cooliris with his blog audience. These include 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story (With Cooliris!) as well as Shining Up Cooliris for Ed-Media. In addition, Alan has also used Cooliris as a presentation tool at a handful of education and Web 2.0 conferences.

Alan’s Q&A is below. If you would like to nominate someone to be a Featured Cooliris Enthusiast, please email feedback@cooliris.com.

Q: When did you first hear about Cooliris?

A: I first came across it as the PicLens plugin back in October 2006, when it worked only in the Safari web browser (blog) and then again in January 2008, when the Firefox plugin was released and I saw how it could be used to make a slideshow of any Flickr page (blog).

It was February 2009 when the big light bulb went off; I was eager to find a new way to create a presentation that was focused on web content. I had known I could assemble a series of images in a Flickr set and view them via Cooliris, but being forced to use the date order method of Flickr seemed awkward. In looking at the developer tips on the Cooliris site, I discovered the explanation of how to generate the content of a show via a MediaRSS file format. With just a little tinkering I found I could do exactly what I wanted- utilize the 3D wall display of Cooliris for my presentations. But what I really liked was the ability to link an image with a URL – many of my presentations are about the web, and Cooliris provided the means to display my slides, and smoothly jump out to a URL and return to the slides. And I found I could also mix in video content.

I wrote this up as a blog post “Tricking Out Cooliris as a Presentation Tool” which continues to be one of the top read posts on my blog.

Q: What was your reaction when you used Cooliris for the first time?

A: It was the visual sensation of the full screen 3D wall that really caught my eye; it took a viewing experience out of the confining box of a web browser, and made it a beautiful interface, yet still capable of viewing web media.

Q: In what ways have you shared Cooliris with your community?

A: I’ve published several blog posts over the years and presented with it several times at education and web 2.0 conferences, including:

• -The More Things Change… The more things change (Scottsdale Community College, February 2009)
• -Say/Blog It in Pictures (Northern Voice Conference, Vancouver, February 2009)
• -50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story (EdMedia, Honolulu June 2009)
• -Amazing Stories of Openness (Open Education Conference, Vancouver, August 2009)

Q: What are others’ reactions when you show them Cooliris?

A: Anytime I have used it in my presentations, people ask me how I made it, or “What kind of PowerPoint is THAT?”  Most people in my audiences seem to not have seen anything like it.

Q: What is your favorite feature in Cooliris?

A: I’d have to say that since my use is pretty limited to making it a platform for arranging my own content, it is that ability there, to define a Cooliris collection of media by my own RSS file. I do also like it as a way to view Flickr or YouTube search results, because it does not require me to keep clicking “next” links to load more content.

Q: Do you have any advice for community members looking for ways to share Cooliris with their own communities?

A: Not much beyond don’t be scared to dive in and touch some code!

**NOTE: This is the first of a series of posts featuring websites that have implemented the Cooliris embeddable wall. These posts will also be featured on an upcoming Cooliris Community website.**

Stanford’s ecorner website (http://ecorner.stanford.edu) is a fantastic resource for both students and community members. It’s no secret that Stanford has access to some of the most prominent figures in Silicon Valley, as well as the technology sector in general. In its Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL) seminars, the Stanford Technology Ventures Program hosts these prominent figures with informative and entertaining “expert panels”.

The value to students and community members comes not only from the opportunity to attend these seminars, but also from the archives of these videos for online viewing. With weekly seminars over the last several years, ETL has compiled plenty of video content to display.

Normally, viewing archives is not a very pleasant experience. That’s where Cooliris comes in. On the main page of the site, Stanford ecorner is using Cooliris embed wall technology to display all available videos in a visually-appealing, interactive wall.

Cooliris embedded on http://ecorner.stanford.edu

The ease of navigation and sleek 3D interface make Cooliris the perfect way for students and community members alike to become immersed in these talks as if they were in the same auditorium, even while viewing these videos online. Since the site utilizes a dynamic Media RSS feed, when new videos are uploaded to the site they automatically show up in the Cooliris embed wall viewer.

Cooliris is very happy to be working with technological innovators like Stanford and the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders program. We look forward to more exciting partnerships in the future!