Cooliris is both a browser plug-in and, more recently, an iPhone application that lets you visually browse news and images around the web. Think of it a bit like a highly visual StumbleUpon. We took a look at the new iPhone version of the service; follow the continued link for our impressions.

After installing the app one of the first things you see in the interface is what Cooliris calls the "3D wall," a collection of thumbnail images you can of course browse and scroll with the flick of a finger. What's cool is you can also tilt the iPhone to scroll through the photos faster or slower based on the angle of tilt. You also see two options at the top left, Discover and Search.

Discover

The Discover function of the app is much like a visual feed reader. You can select a topic from the menu bar to see results in your area of interest and scroll through the 3D wall until you see something you like. Touching an individual thumbnail brings that image into focus with the headline and short blurb from the story it came from.

Touching the story text opens a mini web browser to view the contents of the story. Here is the one place we found a bit lacking in this app — some of the stories didn't seem to load properly and would just display a thin line on a white background. If there were a way to set a preference to open stories in mobile Safari instead, it would greatly add to the usefulness of this app.

Mini-browser: good

Mini-browser: not so good...

A nice feature here is the ability to quickly and easily email and item to a friend (or to yourself, which is both a convenient way to remind yourself to "read this later" and a workaround for the built-in browser problem mentioned above). Just touch the friendly mail icon and you're taken to a mail interface with a pre-populated body copy that includes the article link.

 

You can also make the article headline and blurb disappear if you just want to view the picture at full size; just tap the image to hide it. You'll see a small circle with an "i" in it for information; just tap the icon to bring back the article info.

 

 

Search

Tap the Cooliris logo at the upper left to return to the main display and head over to the Search area. Here you can search for images from a number of supported sites including Google, Flickr, Yahoo, SmugMug, and DeviantArt. Tapping one of the site names brings up a search text input field where you type in your search string, bringing up the usual batch of search results displayed on the 3D wall. Scroll through the results and find something that looks interesting just as with Discover, and similarly tapping an individual thumbnail brings that picture into focus and displays information about where it came from. Tapping the URL information again loads up the mini web browser, and you have the easy "mail this" feature available here as well.

Verdict

Cooliris is a cool and unique way to browse the web from your iPhone. It won't replace your feed reader, it's not designed to be a search replacement, but it falls into the category of "serendipity" apps that give you new ways of finding information online that might be useful or interesting to you on the go (the browser plug-in is pretty fun too). Plus, at the whopping cost of "free," it's hard for infovores like me to pass up.

Obsessable verdict: Recommended!