Every once in a while a Firefox add-on catches me off-guard and becomes quite the handy tool. This particular one, though, simply knocked me over the head, picked me back up, and shoved me down Photo Browsing Easy Street.

PicLens by Cooliris instantly transforms web photo albums into a “full-screen, 3d wall experience.” Dragging, clicking and zooming through the interface is as smooth as butter, and photos load in at speeds that still baffle me. There is also integration with all the major photo sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, and many more. As impressive as all this is, what really makes this add-on worth its weight in gold is the fact that you can simply open PicLens at any time and perform a Google image search. No more tedious pagination. No more time-consuming page reloads. Google images simply appear out of thin air as you drag your mouse. Genius! And something I now can’t live without.