Cooliris introduces easier browsing with “previews” and “stacks”

June 28, 2007 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |

cooliris.jpgSilicon Valley start-up Cooliris has released an improved version of a feature that lets you preview pages being linked to.

The idea behind it is to save you from having to click through.

There were drawbacks to Cooliris’ initial version, released last year: First, the preview pop-ups were too small. This time, they are much larger and you can do more with them.

This is good for power surfers: Clicking through can be a waste of time, because if it’s a page you don’t want, you have to click the back arrow to get back to where you were, or close the window when you’re done.

The company says nearly two million people downloaded the original browser plug-in, even if it didn’t get much buzz. Keep in mind, this is a concept still in trial: Browster, a venture-backed company that offered something similar, recently folded. Meanwhile, Snap came along and offered a feature that did very well. Snap doesn’t require you to download anything. Rather, Web site owners integrate it into their site, and it provides an automatic pop up for readers. It has become extremely popular.

Snap’s popularity is somewhat perplexing, however. Readers don’t see much in its tiny pop-up images. We ascribe its widespread adoption to the “eye-candy” effect: It livens up a site, offering no practical use. Like cuff-links on a shirt, or ties.

See the image below of a side-by-side comparison of Cooliris’ preview and Snap’s.

cooliris-comparsion.jpg

Once Cooliris’ previews are open (you simply mouse over a blue icon next to a link), you can share it with friends. You rightclick, select “share” and Cooliris lets you email it.

It offers other features. With image thumbnails, you mouse over an image, and it pops up.

More significantly, Cooliris lets you stack away the previews on the right side of your screen for later reading. You do this by right-clicking and selecting “add to stacks” See image below. This is useful for researchers like ourselves, who do lots of surfing and don’t always want to drill down immediately by clicking. Having a place to put pages temporarily also gives you time to decide how to bookmark pages. Cooliris plans to introduce more management features for the stacks, such as letting you share them too.

The Firefox version of the plug-in is more advanced than the Safari and IE versions.

cooliris-stacks.jpg

Finally, you can change settings for things like the preview’s window size, where on your screen the preview opens, and for locking previews open even when you mouse away.

Cooliris is the Palo Alto company that released the PicLens feature for full-screen image viewing, something we first wrote about two weeks ago. It has no venture backing.

Chief exec Soujanya Bhumkar said that, like PicLens, the goal is to maximize distribution of Previews/Stacks, before trying to make money.

The video below provides a demo (this is Flash, so RSS readers will have to go the VentureBeat site to see this)

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  • RC
    Matt,

    I don't think power surfers really use the arrows as a right click on a page gets the back/forward command. Also I doubt any power surfer would click a link but would open it under a new tab to view later. I typically open several links of interest in separate tabs and then then view them sequentially.

    You really might want to check on how these 'power surfers' really use the browser.
  • Sure, that's fair.

    However, clicking on link to open it under a new tab is still a click. The preview lets you dispense of it immediately if its no good..instead of having to click again and having to close it(as a tab requires)

    Cooliris does require a change in behavior, though and the differences are small enough that it may not push people to switch. Afterall, the mousing process takes a second to do too.
  • Needs IE7 support!!!!
  • Thanks, Matt for writing about Cooliris Previews and our new stack feature in our Firefox version. Much appreciated!

    Interesting note is that many "power surfers", including myself, use Cooliris Previews not just as "previewer" per se, but also a "secondary browser window" for reading or skimming the web. For example, one can lock the preview pane to the right side of the browser window, and then speed through blogs, Google results, or news search results by simply mousing over the links that are on the left side of the browser window. With a broadband connection, one also can turn on "prefetching" so that subsequent links preview even faster.

    Yes, we do need to make an IE7 version. We hope to do so once we've optimized the FF version. As you know. we're also plugging hard at our PicLens product also, which you also kindly blogged about a couple of weeks ago.

    Thanks, again.

    Kind regards,
    Alec & The Cooliris Team
  • Matt,

    I appreciate the mention of Snap Shots in comparison to Cooliris. I wanted to point out some of the more 'interactive' aspects of the Snap Shot product available to end users right now. The small 'preview' you mentioned is only the tip of the iceberg.

    Snap Shots enhance the link experience and are much more useful to end users, not only in gaining more information on a site being linked to but delivering rich media content as well. We currently have upwards of 2MM sites and publishers using the product and deliver more than 14MM Snap Shots to end users each day.

    I wanted to take a moment to review some of the most notable enhancements to the Snap Shots product that may contribute to your readers awareness of what our product is capable of...

    • Snap Shots performance is superior and provides users with instant gratification compared to Cooliris. Our product utilizes a huge DB of web site images (over 400MM and growing) and data as opposed to Cooliris which loads HTML pages in real time and depends on the web sites availability, responsiveness and a users connection speed.

    • The smaller Snap Shot size is our default and can be increased via our magnifying glass interface toggle or via the options menu.

    • Snap Shots can automatically change its content inline to match the linked content – the iPod wikipedia entry is very different than the iPod product page which is very different than the AAPL stock chart, and the Snap Shot for each link and type of content is the essence of the page or file being linked to.

    • VideoShots, AudioShots & PhotoShots allows users to stream rich media content while still browsing the site they are on. It saves time and creates a more qualified browsing experience.

    • RSS Shots enable any blog with a recognized RSS Feed to toggle between an image preview or the actual RSS Feed of the linked blog.

    All in all our product adds rich visual context to any and all outbound hyperlinks. This leads to greater visitor satisfaction and a satisfied visitor is more likely to come back again and again.

    I look forward to any feedback you and/or your readers may provide to assist in improvements to the Snap Shots product.

    Thanks again for your consideration and thoughts.

    Jason Fields
    Product Evangelist, Emerging Technology
    www.Snap.com
  • MonsterEd
    You guys should all mention the great plugin from Girafa.com, which was probably the pioneer in this field, and has to my opinion the best solution of all three
  • Snap shots is great.
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