The blind beta

It's so very strange, trying to come to terms with having a different world view from other people. You get so used to seeing things through your own eyes that it is hard, so disorientingly hard, to try and see it from another viewpoint. It happened to me, today.

For some time, I've been a beta tester for a truly superb piece of software: one of the really clever ones that you know is going to make a difference. I stumbled across it (not in the Internet way!) when surfing, and was so impressed that I wrote a rather gushy email that had some suggestions about how to improve it. Back came an email invite to the beta programme. Since then I've trodden a treadmill where betas are released to the testers, and then made public before I've had a chance to test and do any feedback. Time differences can be cruel, and it seems that I'm in just the wrong location to make it almost impossible to make a meaningful contribution. Which is incredibly frustrating for a determined contributor like myself.

Even worse, I'd forgotten to pass on the recommendation to others. I'd been sitting there, using it, but hadn't told anyone else.

But this afternoon, an opportunity arose to correct this, at least in part, and so I went into full 'entropy reversal mode' and showed some potential users just what a wonderful piece of software they were missing. None of them had heard of it before, and so I did make a difference. It became a good day, and it is about to get better still.

If you've read this far, then I have two choices:

• I can decide not to say what the software in question is, and trust me, there's nothing to question about it because it is very clever, very neat, and not at all because it seems that today's word is 'very', and you may not read this blog again;

• or I can do a big reveal, wax lyrically, and you will be very happy.

I'm going to go for...

...the latter, of course!

I'm still finding it hard to throw off the name by which I first knew it: 'PicLens', but you will find it much more easily if you look for 'Cooliris', or if you follow this link here:


What Cooliris does is turn searching through large numbers of images or videos in a web browser from a slow, tedious chore, into a fast, intuitive and productive experience. In the process, it changes your expectations about how a user interface should work, and you will find it hard to go back to scroll-bars with thumbs, next page/previous page buttons etc. You are about to be spoiled rotten. I'm honestly convinced that this is a glimpse into how the user interfaces of the future will be. It is that good. Just try it and prepare to be amazed.


And, of course, there's a blog to read: http://blog.cooliris.com/

My rating: I give it 5 stars! *****



(The screenshots used here are from the Cooliris Media Kit)