Social Honeycomb

PicLens is Enhancing My Photo Viewing Experience

Social media evangelist and friend Bryan Person (formerly known as Bryper) recently turned me on to the Web browser add-on PicLens. I’m generally a fan of toolbars, buttons and widgets that make things flashier and/or easier to use, so I checked it out. As someone who takes a lot of pictures and finds herself turning up in a lot of pictures on the Web, I was curious to see what this app could do. And I agree with earlier reviews–it’s pretty special.

PicLens puts a little “play” button on images you find within certain Web sites, like Google Images, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, etc. When you click the little button, it transports your browser to this alternate universe where photos are much more amazing than they are with the average, everyday browser. Note: if a photo is small (think thumbnail size), the button will take up most of the picture. If you don’t want to PicLens it, make sure you click on the corner or edge of the photo so it doesn’t enable the PicLens app.

So, say you clicked on a friend’s profile photo within Facebook. PicLens now takes you to what they call a “3D Wall” of photos related to the one you clicked–in this case, your friend’s other photos in the album. From there, you can zip around, look at things up close, play a slideshow, search for keywords and generally have a very rich photo viewing experience.

PicLens, developed by Cooliris, works in both Windows and Mac Firefox (my browser of choice), as well as in IE and Safari (even though no one should use those ones). PicLens isn’t wildly useful for anything, but it certainly does make browsing photos a lot flashier. Watch the demo above and give it a whirl if you haven’t tried it yet.

Now excuse me while I go PicLens it up with the 1,336 photos currently filling the BS08 Flickr group.

Apps, Honey, Tech | Comments (3)