actually it’s really flickr and picasa and google and facebook (no, i still hate facebook) that i heart even more these days. piclens is an addon to your browser of choice, be it windows or mac/i.e. or firefox or safari, that shows pictures in a wickedly cool way. it takes the pictures and displays them in a 3d effect that makes them look like a wall of artwork.

here’s what happens, you are surfing flickr you move your mouse over a photo and you click the piclens icon that appears. next the window fades out and you are immersed in a 3d world of photos. you can view more photos by moving your mouse side to side and zoom in on photos easily.

the beauty of piclens is the simplicity. while it’s pretty to look at and use, the greatest feature is never stated: you don’t have to click through and have pages load. what do i mean? well when you are surfing flickr, for example, when you get to the bottom of the page you have to keep hitting the ‘next’ button to go to the next page. not so with piclens. it fetches and loads the photos in the background so it’s seamless. you just keep moving the slider down and it keeps loading the pictures. you can double-click to zoom in on a photo and when you found the one you like just click the arrow in the upper-left corner and go right to the photo’s page. easy as that.

piclens is free and fun to use. it supports major websites like flickr, picasa, photobucket, google images, facebook, and myspace to name a few. it’s free of spyware and other crap, so you are safe. grab your copy from their website. you will be glad you did.

here’s what it looks like to use piclens.