MCLEAN, VA – There's got to be a better way to visually find media on the web. That's the mantra at Cooliris, a California start-up, that offers a small browser download to search for media visually, instead of just a list of links.

On Monday, Cooliris opened to the general public, with pictures and video searches presented with results on a video "wall," just like you see at Best Buy. Instead, it uses the photos or videos from your hard drive, or a collection of clips from the Web. I've been playing with the plug-in, and it's fun and addictive.

To move things along, you put your mouse over the media to find the little Cooliris icon, and that opens the video wall. To go forward, you grab the middle button in the Cooliris browser. The plug-in works with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari, but not Google Chrome.

Additionally, the plug-in, for now, only works with "approved" sites, which includes YouTube, Flickr, Google, Yahoo, Hulu, Blinkx, Amazon, Picasa Web Albums and deviantART.

Cooliris says that in a world where 13 hours of new video is added to YouTube every minute, and Facebook gets more than 850 million photos monthly, a new interface is needed to help folks find what they're looking for.

The company announced a $15 million round of funding from investors Monday, including Kleiner Perkins and DAG Ventures.

Copyright 2009 USA Today. All rights reserved. From http://www.usatoday.com. By Jefferson Graham.
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