Now, we had some odd neighbors across the hall who were heavy into smoking just about anything they could get their hands on. Inevitably, during their weekend gatherings, at least one of the “stoners” would catch sight of the swirling patterns on my desktop,  and he would stumble his way across the hall to get a closer look.

By the end of the evening, my roomate and I would end up with two or three doped-up college students mesmerized by the hallucinogenic screensaver, and saying “woah…” over and over.  It would have been annoying if it wasn’t so funny.

Putting Hallucinogenic Desktop Themes & Screensavers To Good Use

Here at MakeUseOf, we’ve covered a wide variety of screensaver topics, such as Varun’s article on how to Use Videos As A Screensaver or Wallpaper, or Saikat’s article on 5 Ways To Make Your Own Screensaver.  However, hypnotic and trance-inducing screensavers have always fascinated me.

Now, I’m not suggesting that readers experiment with hallucinogenic drugs in order to get the full experience of these screensavers, but I am pointing out that these patterns and moving images have the ability to take a hold of your mind in an almost hypnotic way.  But what are these images really doing to your mind, and why should you install them on your computer?  The answer is simple – mental foreplay.

V. S. Ramachandran, a neuroscientist at the University of California, and author of A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness. wrote that the human mind, when faced with patterns or images that aren’t recognizable, has a tendency to immediately get to work on grouping colors and shapes based on those patterns that it can recognize. When a person looks at a “camouflaged” image, the brain works extra hard to decipher at least parts of the strange image, and when elements are recognized, the brain has multiple “aha!” moments which Ramachandran describes as “visual foreplay before the final climax of object recognition.”

The following free hallucinogenic desktop themes and screensavers are a few of the best on the Internet, and they are sure to provide you with many hours of mental foreplay (just make sure the wife doesn’t catch you).

1. Drempels – A Screensaver and Desktop Theme in One

Drempels is one of the most popular mesmerizing screensavers available. Like many other “trippy” screensavers, Drempels brings you colorful, swirling patterns that morph your screen into a kaleidescope. However, what makes this application so popular is that you don’t have to be in screensaver mode for it to hypnotize your senses.

Drempels can actually be configured to run as your Windows desktop image, so that instead of some boring static picture of your dog, you can enjoy a constantly moving desktop image. It certainly takes some getting used to, but once you do you’ll never go back to a static desktop again. And the cool thing is that setup is from one basic screen, not a series of complicated tabs and menus.

Currently Drempels is only offered for Windows, and keep in mind that you’ll need DirectX 5.0 installed.

2. Really Slick Screensavers – A Collection of Mind-Bending Imagery

Really Slick Screensavers is a set of amazing free 3D OpenGL screensavers that feature some of the most eccentric, hallucinogenic morphing images. Installation is just a matter of downloading the .scr files and placing them in your screensaver directory. I have three favorites from this collection of eleven.

Solar winds launches a series of streaming beaded lasers across the length of your desktop. I guarantee that if you spend even five minutes staring at the imagery created by this screensaver, you’re going to get yourself hyptnotized.

Euphoria is really hard to describe, but it’s amazing to watch. In this screensaver, ghostly streaks of color blend and mold, almost like strips of paint from a paint brush that can never seem to settle on a spot on the screen where it’s willing to stay put, or remain the same color. These dancing phantom colors will soothe your troubled mind and calm your nerves.

Helios is easily my favorite “really slick” screensaver of all of them. It might be my personal fascination with science and quantum physics, but these objects that morph, form and reform on the screen remind me of the ever-changing processes of cellular biology and the evolutionary process of nature. The imagery in this screensaver is one of the most striking of any I’ve seen, and I keep this screensaver at the very top of my list both at work and at home.

3. Znow Desktop – Use Hallucinations to Relieve Eye Tension

Finally, the last hallucinogenic screensaver on the list is actually one that’s been around for years.  Znow from Deskex is a screensaver with a long list of effects that it can perform on your entire desktop, even while you are busy using applications. Znow will overlay special effects over all windows and applications. The effects include snow, rain, fire fall, northern lights, hallucinations and more. The effect is selected from a drop-down list when you first launch the application.

Each of the effects is surreal, especially if you forget that you’ve configured “hallucinations” to start taking effect on a timer. Suddenly, while you’re in the middle of writing a paper or surfing the web, little “happy bubbles” start attacking your screen and eating up each of the windows and all of your work.

The software creators tout this as a feature that allows you to give your eyes a rest. In my opinion the effect is surprisingly unnatural, but in a way it forces you to take a step back and remember that you’ve been sitting at your computer for a full three hours straight…time for a break!

These are only a small sampling of the thousands of hallucinogenic desktop themes and screensavers that are available throughout the Internet. Do you have a favorite that you’ve used before? Share yours in the comments section below.

• 5 Screensavers for Mac OS X and Windows (6)
• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (15)
• Utilizing Windows Search 4.0 (Part 1) (10)
• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)
• Two Great ‘n Simple Nerdy Office Pranks to Play On Friends! (27)

And that takes us to the download pages of the many screensaver sites out there. The one problem? They aren’t too personal or one never knows which one could be a malware pushing host.

To have the best of both worlds, why not make some of our own? Here are some ways to make your own screensaver without all the coding mumbo jumbo.

The Easiest Way To Make A Screensaver

It’s right there in Win XP and Vista!

Win XP

1. Arrange your desired screensaver photos in a folder of your choice (or use the default My Pictures folder).
2. Right click anywhere on the desktop to access the Display Properties applet. Select the Screen Saver tab and then drill down to Screen saver – My Pictures Slideshow – Settings.
3. Configure the settings according to the options given and your first self made screen saver is ready to roll.

Vista

Vista makes it even easier to organize your photos through the Windows Photo Gallery feature. Within it are the tools to turn your pictures into a screensaver.

1. Click on File – Screensaver – Settings.
2. Choose Screen Saver list, and then select Photos.
3. The Settings for the screensaver allows you to further customize the screensaver -

• You can show only pictures with a particular tag : Type the tag in the With this tag box that is associated with the pictures.
• Display only pictures with a particular rating : Click a star rating on the With this rating or higher list.
• Apply a slide show theme to your screen saver : Select one from the Use this theme list.
• Play your pictures and videos in random order : Check the Shuffle contents box.

The PowerPoint Way

We all get those high impact motivational PowerPoint attachments in our inbox sometime or the other. We can turn these into engaging screensavers quite easily with the help of PowerPoint 2007. I have one which shuffles around motivational quotes whenever my computer goes inactive.

1. Open the presentation that will become your screensaver in PowerPoint 2007.
2. Click on Office Button – Save As – Other Formats to open the Save As window.

   

3. Through the Save As window, select an empty folder or create a new one to hold the PowerPoint images.
4. Enter any file name you want. In the Save As Type dropdown scroll down to select any of the image formats (GIF, JPG, TIFF, PNG, BMP). Click Save.



5. PowerPoint gives an option to save every slide or the current slide only as an image. Select one to click OK in the next dialog box to finish this part of the process.

   

6. The screensaver can then be activated using the Display Properties – Screensaver tab as mentioned earlier.

Note: This method though fails to retain any animations, transitions and embedded rich media present in the original PowerPoint slide.

The Picasa Way

Picasa is one of the best free photo management apps out there and it has a nifty feature which allows you to set screensaver properties.

1. Open Picasa and click on the Tools menu.
2. Select Configure Screensaver. The system’s Display Properties applet appears with the Screen Saver tab active.

   

3. The Settings button takes us into the configurable part of Google Photos Screensavers. Set the photo transition styles (collage, wipe, fade, pan and zoom etc.) from a dropdown, the photo duration (between 0 to 24 seconds) with the slider and photo captions with the checkbox.

   

4. Google Photos Screensaver gives us many sources – Picasa collection, online Google Web album, public photo sites with photo feeds and specific folders to choose from. The Configure button for each source allow for individual settings.
5. Click OK to save your changes.

The Flickr Way

You can get photo feeds from Flickr using Google Photos Screensaver. Another option is to use an open source tool called Flickr.NET Screensaver. This small application gets photos from Flickr and displays them as a screensaver. It enables you to select a wide range of photos, including your own, your contacts, and your favorites or from a group or global tag.

You can also get photos that are locked as private through an authentication which checks your permission to view a private Flickr album. The download is small at 423 KB and all it requires is .Net Framework 2.0 to install and run.

1. The application can be run from the Display Properties applet. Choose Flickr in the dropdown list of the applet and to configure the Settings.
2. Choose from the three – Per User, Per Group or Everyone, to source your photos. A few sub-options help to narrow down your choices.

   

3. The Options tab is where you can play around with most of the screensaver display and duration settings. For instance, the three Drawing Methods (Plain, Postcard, and Moving) control how the photos will be rendered on the screen.

   

   With 3 Billion plus images to choose from, that’s a lot of stock for your screensaver.

   The Flash Way

   If you want rich and animated content for your screensaver then Flash is the way to go. And InstantStorm fits the job. This free Windows only software helps you to create Flash based screensavers as executable files.

   

   The user just has to choose the SWF file, configure the options and compile it into an executable file for installation as a screensaver. An integrated settings dialog designer allows you to customize the content of the screensaver’s settings dialog which is accessed through the Settings button in system display properties. Screensaver preview and settings dialog preview allows you to check out your work before you compile it into an executable.

   InstantStorm is compatible with Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista.

   Even though I am among those who believe that the best screensaver is to power off the monitor, I have never resented a self created and personal screensaver for myself.

   Are you among those who like to put a personal touch on your screens through a self made screensaver? What’s your favored method to make your own screensavers? Let us know.

• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)
• 8 Apps Which Will Definitely Spice Up Your Desktop [Mac Only] (11)
• 5 Screensavers for Mac OS X and Windows (6)
• 5 Little Mac Apps That Flickr Will Thank You For (14)
• 5 Desktop Enhancements you Should Definitely Try (29)

Today we’re focusing on two simple nerdy pranks.

We’ll start by laying out two basic rules – to ensure some special effects.

The first one, never do half work, which applies for both of us. Work on the details, the finishing touch is often as important as the basics.

Secondly, don’t plan the prank if you can’t follow through (with a little Dr. Horrible nostalgia), is for the most part a you-rule and pretty self-explanatory. Let the prank play itself out.

The Blue Screen of Death

The Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) is one of the most infamous Microsoft characteristics, and one of the biggest pro-Mac arguments (although the blame lies most often with third-party software).

It’s the horror of every Windows user, a screen that appears when the kernel, or a driver running in kernel mode, encounters an error from which it cannot recover – or, simply said, when your system completely crashes.

Ironically, Microsoft themselves have released a BSOD screensaver – pun definitely intended.

For the casual prankster

The casual prankster can install this screensaver on a friend’s or colleague’s system, and watch the sweet panic emerge.

• Download it here
• Open the file for a preview
• To install, use right-mouse and press install. You can now configure it in the screensaver menu of your system.

The screensaver differentiates between several authentic looking BSOD’s (amongst other things, based on the used system), and even simulates a system reboot. It’s perfect for scaring the hell out of friends or foes alike!

To make ‘em squeal

Oh, so you’re a sadistic one, are you? Good, then we can take this to the next level. There are several ways to make the prank better, and I’m sure you can think of some.

Here’s something to make them really squeal (dude, did he sleep with your girlfriend or what?)

• Download the screen saver and hide it somewhere safe.
• Create a shortcut to the file, it doesn’t matter where you put it.
• Download and install Clavier+

With Clavier+, you can connect the Ctrl + S keyboard shortcut with the shortcut file. You need to use the shortcut file to be able to launch the screensaver.

So basically, whenever your friend or colleague tries saving one of his documents, a BSOD pops up. I speak from personal experience when I say that this is one of the worst things imaginable for your everyday workaholic; your life flashes past before your eyes, you flicker between rage and empty sadness.

Be sure to accompany the prank; not only to enjoy your subject’s reaction, but you might want to stop him from rebooting his computer.

The Broken Screen

Another great scare-prank is to wreck one’s stuff. Of course, not really damaging it, that kind of takes the joke away.

No, the trick is to make them think their stuff is wrecked, so you can all get a big laugh out of it when it proves one of your pranks.

slworking2 and the_alxndr have both uploaded one hell of a great wallpaper on Flickr. What’s so great about it is that it shows your computer monitor as though it got hit – hard.

You can download them respectively here and here.

For the casual prankster

Pick your favourite, and use it as the default wallpaper. Next, right-click on your taskbar, go to properties, and auto-hide the taskbar.

Also right-click on your desktop, and deselect the ‘Show Desktop Items’ option in View.

Now close or minimize all open windows, go hide somewhere safe and enjoy the show!

To spice it up

If you want to do it right, make it look right. Throw some stuff on the ground and tilt the monitor. Also, disconnect his keyboard and mouse if you want to play the prank for a little longer.

Adding a final touch

Depending on your personality and acting skill, you can experience the prank up close. If people who know you would think this even remotely possible, stay in the room until he arrives, with a blunt object (like a bat or a hard ball) in your hands, and an oh-shit look on your face; don’t say anything, just give him a wide-eyed stare and slightly parted lips as if you want to say something but don’t know what.

Do you know any other pranks? Of course you do! Don’t be shy, and share them in the comments.

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Well there is a tool from Microsoft that allows you to use videos as a screensaver. Its called Microsoft Video Screensaver.

The download requires you to verify the genuineness of your copy of Windows. Once that is done, the installation is simple and a breeze. You can then access “Video Screensaver” from the “Display Properties” box and then hopping over to the “Screen Saver” tab.

Select “Video Screensaver” from the drop down list and click on “Settings” to choose the video you would like to play. You can choose to play the included default video giving you a view of countries all over the world (kind of lame to be frank) or you can choose your own videos.

Just put all the videos you would like to play in a separate folder if you don’t already have one and point the settings dialog to it. That’s it. You now have a video screensaver waiting for your computer to get idle! I tried the tool with wmv and avi files and it seemed to work flawlessly with both of them.

With that out of the way, now what if you want to get Windows Vista Dreamscene functionality (animated or video wallpapers) ? For similar functionality you can try DreamsceneXP. Dreamscene XP gives you 7 dreamscenes in a variety of resolutions. Follow the following steps to get it running :

1. Download the dreamscene of your choice.
2. Extract to any location, Open up display properties and browse to the extracted location and click on index.htm.



3. Click “apply” and presto you have an animated background!

While Dreamscene limits you to 7 choices, you can use another option (actually more of a hack) to play any of your videos as the desktop background. You can use VLC media player to play a video file in the background as wallpaper.

1. Choose the video you want to play as background, or optionally create a playlist if you want to play more than one.
2. Once up and running, right click within the player and check wallpaper.
3. If you don’t get the wallpaper option go to Settings > Preferences > Video > Output Modules > Direct X and check “Enable Wallpaper Mode”



4. Also you might want to enable repeating playlist by default so that the background doesn’t turn black after the video finishes running. For this go to Settings > Preferences > Playlist and check “Repeat All”.

There you have it – a video as your desktop background. If the taskbar button bothers you and you want to get rid of it, try something like Trayconizer. Since VLC supports a multitude of formats you can use virtually any file as the background.

Whn it comes to using videos as wallpapers, you may try the previously mentioned methods of using any of your screensavers as the desktop background.

Do you know of any other application that offers a similar functionality? Or have you used the desktop background or screensavers creatively in other ways? Let us know in comments

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Wallpaper Managers

Why would you want to stare at the same old wallpaper all the time when you have the option to rotate fresh, new beautiful images from respectable repositories? Here are four applications which will do the job.

Pic-a-POD

Pic-a-POD downloads and saves the picture of the day from National Geographic, Astronomy, Earth Science and Wikipedia and you can have it automatically set your desktop’s wallpaper to rotate randomly between the pictures. Besides using only the current day picture, you can go back in time to download any picture of the day and save it. I’d recommend using Pic-a-POD if you really enjoy pictures of nature, space and science. They’re not very artsy but still beautiful and way better than the infamous Mac clown fish wallpaper.

Pic-a-POD can be used on both Mac OS X and Windows.

Vladstudio Companion

Vladstudio is among one of the many great repositories for desktop wallpapers. Their artwork is eerily gorgeous and you can’t help but go “wow!”. Like Pic-a-POD, it can also be set to randomly change the wallpaper after a certain interval or you could manually change it yourself.

Vladstudio Companion is available for Mac OS X and Windows.

Desktoptopia

Another great repository for beautiful wallpapers is Desktoptopia and hey, what do you know? They have a background manager too. Desktoptopia makes it very easy to get bewitching wallpapers on your screen. It works very similarly to Vladstudio Companion. Just turn it on and by default, it is set to automatically change your wallpaper every 5 minutes to an invigorating new background.

The wallpapers from Desktoptopia are of a different genre and feels very somewhat disparate from the ones which Vladstudio provides. Depending on your taste, you’ll need to choose between Desktoptopia and Vladstudio Companion. Or you could switch between the both of them.

Desktoptopia is available for Mac OS X but they’ve got a beta version for Windows as well.

DeskLickr

I wrote about DeskLickr in my article about Flickr applications. Head on over there if you haven’t read it yet. Basically, DeskLickr will pull images from Flickr and sets them as your wallpaper. These pictures are selected by the tags, interestingness and groups which you will have to set to retrieve the pictures you prefer, rather than any random photo of someone’s family dog.

DeskLickr is only available for Mac OS X

Hide Your Desktop Icons

Assuming that you’ve changed your wallpaper to a picturesque background, you’d probably want to enjoy it. How are you suppose to do that if your desktop is cluttered with icons? Some say, a cluttered desktop drastically reduces productivity and concentration.

Camouflage is by far the best application I’ve found which hides everything from the desktop, leaving only the wallpaper for your admiration. Unlike other icon-hiding applications like Desktopple or Desktop Curtain, Camouflage is not affected by Exposé. So, pressing F11 does not reveal your true desktop. With Camouflage and your icons out of the way, you can now thoroughly enjoy the wallpapers from Desktoptopia or Vladstudio.

Camouflage runs on Mac OS X only.

Run A Screen Saver As Your Desktop Background

This is purely eye-candy. Setting a screen saver to run as your desktop background will definitely get you and the people around you excited because we’re so used to static wallpapers. A dynamic wallpaper will surely lift a couple of eyebrows. Be aware this is quite graphic-intensive and will require a relatively powerful Mac. Running this on my MacBook 2.4GHz didn’t affect it much performance-wise, although the core temperature did go up a degree or two. With that said, this can still be quite a lot of fun.

There are 3 applications here which will do the job: Screeni, MagicDesktopSwitch and Wallsaver. All of them are equally good but I prefer Wallsaver because it can be set to launch on startup and run automatically. Both Screeni and MagicDesktopSwitch are better only if you want to set the screen saver as the desktop background periodically.

If you want a couple of screen savers to start off, this Matrix screen saver is always a hit; and this old school flip-flop clock and Lego screen savers you might want to take a look at.

Special Treat

I wasn’t going to include this in at first because it isn’t actually an application but I thought that it would also help to “spice” up your regular desktop. DevMode widget turns on Development mode on your Dashboard to allow you to place widgets directly on your desktop! It’s actually possible to do this in Terminal with a specific command but this widget makes it possible for everyone to have their favourite widgets easily accessible on the desktop.

All you need to do is add the widget to Dashboard, and click on it once to turn Development mode on. Click and hold on any widget you want then press F12 (or the Dashboard button on newer keyboards) to close Dashboard and viola! You now have the widget out of Dashboard. You can repeat the process for any widget you want.

If you want to get rid of any widgets which you’ve shifted onto the desktop, press the Option key while hovering your cursor over the widget, you’ll see a ‘close’ icon appear. Click on that and the widget will suck itself right off your desktop.

How would you spice up your desktop? Enjoyed any of the suggestions in this article? Tell us what you’d use to turn a boring desktop into something you’d be pleased to gawk at.

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As for the search, Twingly claims to offer spam free search. It manages to do so by showing results from a blog that has link from ‘high quality sites/blogs’. In addition to this, it boasts of the following features:

• Social search. The users can enhance the search results by voting on posts they like. Bloggers enhance the search results by linking to posts they like
• Subscribe to search results by RSS and alerts via email
• Language functionality: Translation of search results and filtering based on language
• Twingly widget platform. Parts of Twingly.com can be incorporated into blogs
• Hot Right Now. Overview on hot topics in the blogosphere
• User directed development through a tech plan open for voting.

As for my experience? The interface is great (far better than the cluttered Technorati interface), search results seem fine (not anything striking) but that’s may be because their search is more Europe centric. A search for "techcrazy" gave my blog as the first result in Google Web Search and Google Blog Search and gave one of my MakeUseOf article as the first result in Twingly.

However this ain’t all the cool part yet. The real cool stuff is a "screensaver". So what’s so cool about the screensaver? Well according to the site:

“Twingly screensaver is visualizing the global blog activity in real time. Forget RSS readers where you see only what you’re interested in. With Twingly screensaver you get a 24/7 stream of all (viewer discretion advised) blog activity, straight to your screen.

As you can see it lets you view the happenings of the blogosphere in real time. The screensaver displays a globe and stories from around the world keep scrolling on the left hand side of the screen in real time (well.. almost) with a line connecting the title of the story, to the location of its origin. And all this while the globe keeps spinning. Anyways why am I using words? Have a look (A picture is worth thousand words, what is a video worth? Anyone?) :

So as you must have noticed, you can actually click on a ’scrolling by’ story that you like and a short summary of the story will appear on the right hand site of the screen.

You can press "i" to enter the interactive mode which allows you to rotate and zoom on the globe somewhat like Google Earth. You can spin to location of you choice and see what stories are coming out from ‘that part of the world’.

Overall the screensaver is great, the milisecond clock and the ever updating story count, the rotating globe, the scrolling stories give it a great sci-fi / advanced look.

Have you tried twingly? what are your thoughts? And how do you like the screensaver?

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1001

1001 is a desktop client for Flickr. It’s been around for quite some time. Basically, it allows you to browse through your own Flickr photostream, as well as view the most recent photos from any user. You can create any number of ’streams’ — by groups, tags or interestingness. When you create a stream according to a tag and new photos are found, you will notified by a little unobtrusive pop-up displaying the images. That feature is pretty neat when you’re anticipating new photos to be added to your friend’s photostream, you won’t need to spam the ‘Refresh’ button endlessly now.

Besides that, 1001 is a batch uploader for Flickr, giving you the regular options such as adding to sets, tagging and setting privacy levels to your photos. 1001 also works very well with ecto, a blogging application for Mac, and it makes it even easier to add photos to your blog with a click of a button.

You will notice that 1001 also has the option of setting images as your desktop background. I found this feature to be quite half-hearted. It does the job but it doesn’t set the image properly as “Stretch to fit” or centered. There is no option to control this, so be advised.

DeskLickr

Tina once wrote an article about a Windows application which changes the background to Flickr images. I found a Mac application which does about the same thing. DeskLickr is a pretty small program that sits quietly on the menu bar. Depending on the interval (which you set yourself), it switches your desktop background to any Flickr image. You have the option to choose from your own photostream, the DeskLickr flickr group, by interestingness, groups, by tags, or your favourites. But these images appear at random, so you can’t really select the photos you want. However, if you come across a photo which you don’t like, you can choose not to have it set as your background again by clicking on “Never show this desktop again” in the DeskLickr menu bar icon.

DeskLickr is a “fun” application to show off to your friends, if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s nothing more than a fancy background switcher. But somehow, we’re still attracted to these sorta things, aren’t we?

ShuffleSaver

As DeskLickr is for desktop backgrounds, ShuffleSaver is for, you guessed it — your screen saver.

Just like all the aforementioned applications, ShuffleSaver provides you with the option of selecting the source of your Flickr images: be it your own photostream, by interestingness or just the newest images added to Flickr…..you know the drill by now. When activated, photos from the criteria you chose will appear as your screen saver. During this time, you may press the right and left arrows to navigate through the photos and press ’s’ to save the ones you like, hence the name of this application.

FlickrBooth

Another “fun” application, or plugin actually. This is definitely for those of you who frequently use Mac’s built-in camera application Photo Booth to take random images. FlickrBooth integrates itself into Photo Booth and now you can just as easily add the photos to your photostream as you snapped them.

FlickrBooth lets you choose whether you want the photo to be uploaded automatically or prompted to add extra info, tags and titles. Plus since Photo Booth allows you to record videos, FlickrBooth can also automatically upload those videos to YouTube!

Photo Grabbr

Have you ever browsed through a friend’s photostream and wanted almost every photo he/she had in a set? I have. It’s a misery to click each photo, then choosing the size I want and saving the image, repeated EVERY time for a different photo. This is where Photo Grabbr steps in. This nifty application searches photos by user name and group ID and displays the results in sets for your to download. If no sets are found, then you are given the option of downloading all the images from that user/group.

You can even select the resolution of the photos you want, and “Original” is one of them. Of course, this resolution is only available if it is allowed by the owner.

Mark wrote about FlickrDown, a Windows program that does about the same thing, except it’s for Windows.

Honorable mention

At this point, it is worth mentioning two more applications that does Flickr proud. Flickr Uploadr, which is a stand-alone uploader client for Flickr and is available for both Mac and Windows. And Visigami, a pretty interesting application, a desktop browser for Flickr, Picasa and Google Images; and it’s also a screen saver program akin to ShuffleSaver.

So there you go. Five simple little applications that could just bring a smile to your face the next time you use Flickr. It’s not just photo-sharing if it is this much fun.

(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time med student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationship, studies and his future. He also manages a Mac news site, Macnifying.

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Status Screen Saver is a screensaver that allows you to view how many unread emails you have in your inbox within the Mail application, view how many unread feeds you have in NetNewsWire and view your number of unread tweets from Twitterific. Status Screen Saver will also soon support Google Notifier and the RSS reader Vienna.

Wallsaver 2.2.2 If you’ve just recently bought a brand new Mac then the chances are you have a lot of memory that isn’t being put to use so why not set your wallpaper as a screensaver to jazz up your desktop a little. You need to be running Mac OS X 10.4 or later and have a Quartz Extreme-capable graphics card with at least 32 MB of memory for this cool little goodie to work. You can activate Wallsaver whenever you like or restore your default wallpaper without any hassle.

EarthDesk is much like Wallsaver but the wallpaper is set to an image of the earth which shows which countries are in daytime, nighttime and all in realtime. Hurricanes, cloud cover and typhoons are also shown with information on 10,000 cities throughout the world. If you have multiple displays, the image of the earth will be carried over all of them to keep a constituent look and feel. You can also set this to run as just a screensaver for when you’re away from your computer. EarthDesk runs on both Mac OS X 10.4+ and Windows 2000, XP and Vista. I’ve only used the Mac version of EarthDesk and it installs within a preference pane.

Rainy Day 2 is a nice screensaver that make clouds appear at the top of your screen and rain fall down onto your desktop. You can control the amount of rain, cloud type, lightning and rain contrast. When the screensaver has been left running for a few seconds the windows that you have open will appear to be smudged which is a nice effect that I like. When you download the program and extract the zip file there is an installer package in it. Follow the installation then once you have finished, you will find the screensaver under System Preferences -> Desktop & Screensaver. This screensaver only works with Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5).

Phantom Butterflies is a screensaver for Mac OS X 10.4+ and Windows XP that has butterflies flying around your screen. You have the option to make the butterflies glow which I think is a really nice touch and you can also change the colour of what you want the butterflies to be as well as the amount of butterflies that there are on the screen.

Finally, I want to tell you about a couple of cool tools we covered earlier. If you want to use your motion screensaver as a wallpaper? Check out Animated Desktop, using this utility you can emulate the functionality of Vista Ultimate DreamScene (video screensaver) both on Windows XP and Vista Home edition. There is also a cool website called InstaSaver, this one lets you make your custom screensavers using the images from your PC.

If I’ve missed a screensaver which you think should of made the list then please post it in the comments!

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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Animated Desktop

Want to use your motion screensaver as a wallpaper? Using Animated Desktop you can emulate the functionality of Vista Ultimate DreamScene (video screensaver) both on Windows XP and Vista Home edition. If you’re planning on getting it, I highly recommend to use it together with the previously mentioned Rocketdock.

Volumouse

Another cool program you should definitely check out. Volumouse provides you with a quick way to control the volume on your system by using your mouse wheel. It lets you define a set of events when the wheel will be used for changing volume, i.e. when the Alt key is hold down, when the mouse cursor is over the taskbar, etc. It doesn’t interfere with exisitng mouse functionalities.

CursorFX

This little app lets you choose between incredibly cool looking Windows mouse cursor themes. You can either select one of the default themes or easily create your own cursors. It integrates into the standard Mouse interface of Windows and is easy to turn on and off as you need. Works both on XP and Windows Vista.

KeyLemon (Win XP Only)

This program automatically locks/unlocks your computer by looking at your face. It is light on system resources and takes seconds to configure. It’s not something that will make your computer a lot more secure but works quite well if you want to impress women

Real Desktop (XP / Vista)

You have probably heard about Bumtop – application that transforms your desktop to a 3D play ground. It makes your icons look and act like real objects that you can touch and move as on a real desk. The only problem with it: it’s been in closed alpha for ages. However, there is another program that delivers pretty much the same interface and you can get it right now. This program is called Real Desktop and it even comes with a free version. Although a freeware version offers no styling options it is still enough to get a feel of it. Check out my sreenshot and a video demo that I found on Youtube.

Real Desktop video demo

Bonus: Another simple and memory-friendly 3D desktop freeware is Matodate. This one can reduce all active Windows to 3D mode. I personally didn’t like it, but looking at the article comments, seems like it has some fans too.

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