The Download Blog

Photo and video enhancer Cooliris (download) has launched an updated version of its browser add-on that brings new features including support for viewing local media, file specific metadata, and a Facebook photo viewer that shows user name tags. It's also available--for the first time, to Linux users.

A few weeks ago I met with Shashi Seth, Cooliris' chief revenue officer, and Austin Shoemaker who is the company's CTO to talk about the release, which they say has addressed some of the top requests from their users. The biggest being the capability to view local photos and videos from their computer's hard drive inside of Cooliris' 3D media wall, which users on all three platforms can now do.

This basically turns your browser into an ad-hoc media center, something Shoemaker says has been created to be a unified experience across multiple platforms. For instance, if you're on a Mac, it links up with iPhoto, and if you're on a PC, it organizes your "my pictures" folder by album. Either way, you see your stuff without telling the service where to go to find it.

But what about Web content you ask? It's also been given a boost--literally. The new version has a visual effects engine that take better advantage of users' graphics hardware. For Mac users the tool is using OpenGL, and on Windows it's Direct 3D. Seth says it runs lean enough that most hardware from the last five years or so should have no problems with it. In my brief testing I ran it on a 3- year-old PC with barely a hiccup, however it's noticeably smoother on my other machine with a beefier graphics card.

Additionally, the tool now displays a much broader selection of metadata from selected sites. When viewing photos from Picasa Web Albums and Google Image search, or videos from YouTube, it now shows things like view count, user ratings, exposure, aperture, and resolution. This unfortunately… Read more

I can't think of a worse place to look for editorial than YouTube comments. Historically, they've been so bad that YouTube was forced to create a comment playback feature so users could hear what they had typed before sharing it with the rest of the world.

That hasn't stopped two Firefox developers from coming up with OpinionCloud. This small Firefox add-on will give a video's comments a quick once-over and show you which words are most often used, and the general user sentiment based on a percentage of keywords that are either positive or negative. Clicking … Read more

Internet Explorer 8 has a new feature that lets you get a lot done just by highlighting words on a Web page. Here's how to take advantage.

Highlight any text on a Web page by holding down the left mouse button and dragging your cursor over the words. You'll see a blue box with an arrow. Click on that and you'll get a list of options.

If, for instance, you're highlighting an address, you can choose to map it on Google Maps, pinpointing the location. It can also do regular Web … Read more

For a few years now, video playback has been a blistering-hot topic in the mobile industry--both as a roadblock and as an achievement. We can easily count Google's update to its straightforward YouTube for Mobile application (Windows Mobile|Nokia Series 60) as a step forward.

Sure, we have our complaints, but overall the free YouTube application makes searching and browsing for select or top-rated videos a dauntless task. Your biggest hurdle will be with your data connection if you're in a fuzzy zone. We've also got some practical advice you should heed before you begin streaming like … Read more

For the past two years, several independent Mac software developers have teamed up to put together a bundle of award-winning Mac apps at a vastly reduced price--with 25 percent of the purchase price donated to the charity of your choice (chosen from a list). The whole thing takes place at a very well-designed site called MacHeist.com and over the past two years, thousands of Mac users have snapped up the limited time offer--it's really a great deal! The fun part about the MacHeist offer is the developers of MacHeist make it into a kind of scavenger hunt. They … Read more

Continuing to stake out a different approach to torrents, the latest version of Vuze integrates an auto-conversion feature for both portable screens and your television. Available for Windows and Mac, Vuze 4.2 offers a device drag-and-drop feature that automatically converts a video torrent from its native format to an appropriate one for iTunes, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, and then pushes it to your device.

Still in beta, the new Devices tab on the left nav will ask you to install a transcoder and a plug-in. Devices then detects iTunes or any of the devices when they're connected … Read more

As expected, iTunes customers (Windows|Mac) can now buy and rent films in high definition, Apple said Thursday.

Customers can buy hit titles for $19.99 and rentals will cost $4.99. Rentals will be available a month after a film is released on DVD. Prior to this offer, high-def films were only available for rental.

The high-def quality movies are compatible with Macs and PCs. But iPhones and iPods can still only play films in standard definition, the company said. Each high-def film comes with a standard-def copy to play on Apple's handhelds.

"Customers have made HD … Read more

Correction: Muziic creator David Nelson's age was mistakely listed as 14. David is 15 years old. Apologies, David.

Most of us are likely very familiar with YouTube, the online video hosting and sharing service that lets anyone upload videos for a global audience. The site hosts a wide range of video content--from major motion-picture trailers to that guy down the street who films his own puppet shows.

Among YouTube's massive catalog lies a myriad of music videos, live musical performances, and other audio recordings that have been captured on video or converted to the Flash video format. You … Read more

If you don't feel like spending more than $300 on the Kindle 2, Amazon's free Kindle ebook application for the iPhone and iPod Touch may be a much more affordable, if imperfect, solution.

We compared the Kindle 2 and the Kindle application for the iPhone/iPod Touch, and came to the conclusion that the Kindle iPhone application is great for reading short passages, but the Kindle 2 is better for longer reading.

Also, you can't get subscriptions on the iPhone version and you can't buy books from within the application. Still, $359 is a lot to … Read more