Some things are done for the sole purpose of the WOW factor. And sometimes software comes along which just has so much eye candy in it that it blows your mind. Well, CoolIris is one of those pieces of software. It installs as a browser plug-in and wholly crap is it cool.

CoolIris transforms your web browser into a full-screen, 3D experience which lets you surf through online photos and videos. By adding social components to it, it also lets you discover new media. You can send to friends. You can discover new media through the use of channels. And, yes, it has some shopping functions built in.

I installed this thing to Firefox. It isn’t small, mind you. It was a 4.4 MB plug-in for Firefox which, no doubt, will increase the already large memory footprint of Firefox on my system. But, behold this screenshot:

I ran a quick Flickr search for “barcamptampa” (a local tech conference I just attended) and it quickly searched Flickr and gave me the results in a 3D wall. Being that it is a browser plug-in, that means that websites can enable themselves to be compatible with CoolIris. For example, I can go to Youtube.com in my browser and I will see the CoolIris icon in my browser turn to color.

If I press that link, I will get a 3D view of Youtube so that I can surf videos via the CoolIris interface. If I am on a site which is not enabled for this, the icon will grey out. However, the good news is that anybody can now enable their own site to be CoolIris compatible.

The software seems quite smooth and slick. Videos play right within the CoolIris interface with no delay. I did notice, though, that the CoolIris interface, when displayed, seems to take over the entire monitor almost as a layer. Even if another program is on that screen, it cannot appear on top of CoolIris. This means I have to Escape out of CoolIris and return to the normal browser for me to access anything else on the same monitor.

The business model of CoolIris seems to lie on the Shopping features. You can use the 3D Wall to surf through product images and, of course, go to buy one of those items if you choose. This is all well and good, though, because this means you can use this for free.

Install it and give it a try. It works with Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. I’m sure you’ll have some fun with it.