Cooliris brings Web image search to the iPhone

Over the weekend Cooliris, one of my personal favorite Firefox add-ons released a really slick iPhone application that lets users search for images on Google, Flickr, Yahoo, SmugMug and DeviantArt just like they would on their computer browsers. The big difference is that you're simply able to swipe through the results with your finger, or tip your phone from side to side to navigate, which is wonderfully gratifying and natural.

Each search brings in the results in a three-image high wall that goes on nearly forever, and loads in as you continue to scroll to the right. Any photo can be zoomed into, and includes a link to the origin story, which can be opened up without kicking you back out to Safari.

Search Flickr, Google, Yahoo and others for photos on a giant, zoomy wall with Cooliris for iPhone.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Besides the search tool, there's also an explore mode called discover that loads up the latest photos in one of five topics: election 08, news, sports, tech and business. These photos update throughout the day and are selected by where you are, meaning someone using the application in a different country is going to see a completely different list of items.

In future versions I'd like to see support for videos (like its desktop counterpart is capable of), however my most wanted feature is a way to save high quality copies of the images right to the phone. The built-in screenshot tool does a pretty good job until you want to start cropping. For a 1.0 product though, it's off to a great start.

Cooliris for iPhone is free. Embedded after the jump is a quick demo video of how it works.