Review: PicLens

[Craig Walters]

i've been using PicLens for a week or so now and really like it. piclens is a browser add-on. it works with many of the popular browsers. it's a two part piece, really. one part is installed in your browser and allows you to view, in a special manner, web sites that have also embedded the code.

so, what's this special manner? it's a wall, a wall of pictures. they call it a 3d wall. it's a 3d wall of thumbnails. click on any of the thumbs and it brings forth (zooms in) any of the thumbs. it's a pretty slick way of seeing a LOT of images in a hurry.

oh, and here's the address: http://www.piclens.com/ .

this is a freebie so far, at least to us, the end user.

if you look around on their web site, you'll see that google, yahoo, photobucket, flikr and others are already using this. this makes something like an image search on google extremely easy and fast.

oh, and it also works on videos! go to youtube with this thing added onto your browser and you can have a wall of videos showing. click on any of them and it will run the video. pretty slick.

it does have some caveats. i find that sometimes the sound will not work (if the video had sound with it). you'll get a clicking noise but no sound. just re-load and it will usually work. some videos dont seem to load all the time from youtube, but then, some videos dont load anyways just using your regular browser. sometimes, a ton of thumbnails on a given web page will not show the little blur arrow that signifies that piclens is being used on that page. i think it's just taking a long time to load everything, but not sure.

but, regardless of the caveats, i find this a VERY handy way to do an image search on google or yahoo and some of the others.

and, did i mention it's free?

[byRo]

Re: PicLens

Sure is pretty
Haven't got the hang of it yet.
If you're in PicLens you can't use FireFox until you close it, right?

Rô

[Craig Walters]

Re: PicLens

hi Ro,

i dont use firefox, but, in i.e. there is a full close you can do and a temp close. the temp close is a little blue icon thing in the middle bottom of piclens. i forget the shape but it's something like a spiraling horn shape. click on that and piclens goes semi-dormant with a click bar on the lower right to open it back up again and when you do the temp close, you are taken to the web page of the image you had clicked while in piclens.

the full close is done by hitting the normal x in the upper right and i think there's another way, too. it's pretty much navigated like you'd navigate any browser or other windows app. all the same sorts of things apply.

and to directly answer your question, no, you cant. piclens is strictly for image and video viewing. it bypasses the browser while viewing but utilizes its ability to find, cache, view.

the best place to test it is on google. look up anything in an image search. then you'll notice that in the thumbs on google there'll be a blue arrow in the lower left corner of all of the thumbs. click on that to activate piclens and it will display ALL of the images google found for your search criteria.... ALL OF THEM WILL BE DISPLAYED ON THE PICLENS WALL. so, if your search found 20, 000 images, they'd all be available for viewing in the piclens wall. the same is true for videos. and, it also handles any sound attached to the image or video.

now, youtube works a bit differently. you wont see every video on youtube when you open piclens there. you'll only see what's in that page's list of videos. just those will be in the wall. other web sites using piclens handle things in their own manner. google and yahoo are the best way to test it, though.

also, if you wish to do unfiltered, uncensored image searches, you'll need to handle that with that particular web sites filter/censor system. piclens just utilizes whatever your settings are for that web site. this is a good thing to know for those that do use censored/filtered settings, since you dont want something like piclens bypassing your filters/censors.

also, since i've been using it for a week or two now, there has been one upgrade done. this means someone is actively supporting and upgrading and monitoring usage. this is good to know and i believe there will be more upgrades in the future, since there are still some bugs.

also, one of the reasons i was interested in this software was the idea of adding/embedding piclens into my own gallery so that others could view it using piclens and 'the wall'. i thought this would be a very handy way for folks to view a gallery with hundreds of images. and, they do give you the codes necessary to do that. they are somewhere on their web site.

and, as i recall, there is also a fairly easy feedback method to let the developers know of any bugs or wish-list items.

so, my best recommendation i can give is, i use the thing. that's it. i use it. i like it and i use it