This is why we, the neighborhood geeks, prefer wallpaper applications, more specifically wallpaper rotator applications.

There are a multitude of wallpaper applications available – most freeware – but almost none as diverse as Wally.

Wally – The Wallpaper Rotator

Wally is one of those ‘wallpaper applications’. It aggregates pictures and wallpapers from a variety of sources and flips through them while you’re working. If you set it up right, you’ll never have to worry about searching for a fresh wallpaper again. You’ll have one – every new day, hour or even minute.

The wallpaper rotator application is open-sourced and available for all operating systems; it won’t matter to Wally if you’re a Mac, PC or Linux fanatic. I’ve also tested it for Windows 7, and it works like a charm.

Wally beautifully integrates in the dock taskbar. By right-clicking the icon, a list of options will enfold. The ones you’ll want to use is Play/Pause (to initiate and terminate the wallpaper rotations) and Next photo (if you don’t like the sight). If you’re really fond of a certain wallpaper you can also save it to your disk or explore the source.

Wallpaper Sources

But the real power of Wally over other wallpaper rotator applications is its incredibly wide variety of image sources. Where others are often targeted at a single wallpaper database or image search engine, Wally supports no less than ten image sites. You can create custom searches, or load several local image directories.

To add one of those online image searches, open the settings window and navigate to the relevant search engine in the sidebar and press Add. You’ll be asked for a little basic information.

Add the words you want to search for. I simply added ‘widescreen wallpaper’ (without the quotation marks), but you can search for cars, Apple iPhone wallpapers, or whatever you want. At the right of the screen, use the drop-down menu to classify your search (it will search all words as a default).

At the bottom you’ll see another drop-down menu. If you don’t want any pornographic material to appear on your desktop, leave it as be. Otherwise – yeah, I think you’ll figure it out.

Additional Settings

Going down the left sidebar, you’ll see another ’settings’ tab. There are some other options you might like to configure. For instance, if you enjoy using Wally, I suggest you enable ‘Play automatically on application start’ and ’start automatically when system starts’. Other interesting options are ‘Choose in random order’ and ‘Only use landscape-oriented photos’. What these settings will do is self-explanatory.

At the top of the screen, you can also configure the rotation frequency – in other words, how often you want the background to be changed – and the background color. Default is set at 2 minutes, but most people will prefer a little more sporadic rotation.

Did you enjoy Wally? Tell us in the comments if you know of any other wallpaper rotator software!

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• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (32)
• Set Up Active Desktop Wallpaper With WallPapa [Windows] (7)
• How to Set A Bing Wallpaper Desktop Slideshow In Windows 7 (39)
• How To Customize Your Linux Desktop With GnomeART-NG (7)
• How to Create Top Quality Computer Desktop Wallpapers (13)

Here are 10 cool innovative Ubuntu linux wallpapers that would appeal to the Ubuntu enthusiasts!

The Dark Ubuntu

Ubuntu Wood Set

Ubuntu Bokeh

Ubuntu Metal

Linux for Robots

I don’t do Windows!

Ubuntu Denim

Ubuntu Poster

The Ubuntu User

Ubuntu vs Windows

Looking for more? Here are a few sources you should check for these kind of wallpapers – DesktopNexus has an awesome collection of Ubuntu Wallpapers. Ubuntu-Art, DeviantArt and Flickr are other sources worthy of a mention.

Having a myriad of favorite wallpapers brings forth another issue – ideally you would want to cycle through them so that you can see them all at one time or another and it also lends that little bit freshness to your desktop. Well changing wallpapers automatically is easy peasy. Try Wallpaper-Tray, its simple and straighforward. You point it to a folder, set the interval after which the wallpaper should be changed and it sets about to its task. If you are looking for something more flashy and feature rich take a look at other wallpaper changers for Linux and choose the one that suits your need.

One great thing about Linux is that you can customize even the slightest of details depending upon how much time you are willing to spend on it. While the result of a custom design would be truly amazing, it requires a fair bit of hacking and time. So you might want to check out how you can browse, download and apply themes right from the Ubuntu desktop. With tons of user contributed wallpapers, themes and icons, you can easily see time flying by when choosing the ultimate look and feel according to your choice.

And when you are done, let us know about it. Which Ubuntu wallpapers, themes, and icon sets are your favorites? We would love to check them out.

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• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (32)
• Set Up Active Desktop Wallpaper With WallPapa [Windows] (7)
• How to Set A Bing Wallpaper Desktop Slideshow In Windows 7 (39)
• How To Customize Your Linux Desktop With GnomeART-NG (7)

In this article, a follow-on from fellow MakeUseOf author Karl’s post, we’ll take a look at some great sites you can visit to download great, high resolution desktop backgrounds for your computer.

DesktopNexus

As seen on the MakeUseOf Directory, DesktopNexus, with a sample of one of their featured hi-res wallpapers below, features all kinds of wallpapers and encourages wallpaper submissions by visitors to their site. Total, their site has almost 80,000 wallpapers in their directory and includes a wide scope of images from categories like technology, entertainment, people, nature, abstract and more.

DesktopNexus also offers a very useful and creative automatic wallpaper-changing tool called “spinwall”, which can also be used to spice up your desktop background with more than just one wallpaper. Visit DesktopNexus here.

VladStudio

VladStudio, also with a sample featured hi-res wallpaper below, offers a great selection of a more abstract set of wallpapers, including two-screen and some tri-screen wallpapers as well. The site has pictures of more abstract things such as computer-generated maps, moons, etc. It also offers a neat feature – zip downloads of batch sets of wallpapers for specific monitor resolutions. Still, Vladstudio’s selection of offered wallpapers is unique and the site is surely worth a visit. Visit Vladstudio here.

DualScreen Wallpaper

While not everyone has two monitors, for the large amount of people who still do, and even those who have three monitors, I thought I’d point out a specific-niche wallpaper site I also came across: DualScreen Wallpaper. This site specializes in wallpapers for all kinds, with a cropped sample below, of dual-screen resolutions including 2560×1024, 1920×1600, 1680×1050 and a few others as well. While many images are nature photos, some are animation stills, nature scenery, cars and planets. Most wallpapers can be downloaded as a whole picture, or just the right or left segment. You can view it in the MakeUseOf directory by clicking here, or visit the site with the link above.

Hubble Space Telescope Wallpapers

Finally, if you’re looking for an out-of-this-world type wallpaper like the one below, the Hubble Space Telescope website is another great site to look as well. One of my favorite wallpaper sites and a favorite for all astronomers, the website for the Hubble Space Telescope has a great listing of fairly high-resolution wallpapers that you can grab, all taken from the actual telescope itself. There are pictures available of planets, other galaxies, nebuli and more. And each picture can also be embedded into other websites through their easy embed code.

MakeUseOf also has some great other wallpaper articles on Patriotic Wallpapers, wallpapers with calendars, and many, many other sites over at the MakeUseOf Directory on wallpapers.

Let us know what your favorite wallpaper sites or individual wallpapers are in the comments and spread the desktop background joy!

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• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (32)
• Take Flickr Straight to your Desktop with Interactive Wallpaper Updates (15)
• Set Up Active Desktop Wallpaper With WallPapa [Windows] (7)
• How to Set A Bing Wallpaper Desktop Slideshow In Windows 7 (39)

Stick is an application that lets you attach tabs to the sides of your screen so that you have a convenient tabbed desktop. The tabs can contain a wide variety of content ranging from contents of a folder to web pages to RSS feeds to Notes to a calendar or calculator.

Let’s have a look.

You can download stick from iWonderDesigns. The application is available as an installer as well as a portable version that you can run off your USB drive. When running for the first time, Stick prompts you start building a tabbed desktop by adding the tabs. Go ahead and create some that you would like. You can create 6 types of tabs:

Notes

• Lets you store notes in rich text format which makes it perfect for things like a To Do list you can access quickly from your tabbed desktop, or any kind of random scribblings you access often.

Navigator

• The navigator tab can be used to create a tab to point to your favorite folder location or any URL of your choice. Excellent for things like Gmail and Google Reader that you like to keep open.

RSS Reader

• I mention Google Reader above, however Stick offers an RSS reader of its own. Complete with auto refresh and previews you can view one or more RSS feeds in an RSS tab. It can also notify you of new items in the feed via a popup.

TaskBar

• Displays a list of all items you have opened, similar to the Windows Taskbar

A Calendar and Calculator

It can take some time to think out a perfect tab setup for your desktop. You can of course add as many of them as you want to begin with and then narrow down or refine your choices to get the perfect setup. I have a To Do tab, some other random note tabs, a Gmail tab, a Twitter Tab, another for a quick Google search, and some that point to local folders that I access often.

You can simply move the tabs around to stick to any edge of the screen. You have to move the tabs one by one to wherever you want them to be which is a pain. It would be nice to have the ability to move all the tabs as a group.

Stick offers you a dedicated Tab Manager that you can use to create and delete tabs. In addition, the Tab Manager lets you change the properties of any tab. Properties include options like always on top, autohide, autoshow, keyboard shortcuts to toggle visibility of any tab, transparency and themes.

You can store a set of options for the tabbed desktop as a template and thus change the options of all tabs together in a snap. This comes in handy when you would be working full screen or want to get rid of all the distraction for whatever reasons.

Stick is loaded with options and lets you tweak almost every aspect of the tabs to your liking. It is a great alternative way to display information which I prefer over gadgets and sidebars that keep staring at your face.

Do you have other creative desktop setups or favorite applications you use for similar purposes?  Please mention them in the comments!

If you missed the link above , here is the link to Stick

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• Become Swift in Handling Multiple Open Windows (2)
• Windows System Tools at your Fingertips with FastKake (13)
• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)
• Use the Places Utility to Customize Locations in Open File Dialogue Box [Windows] (19)

But please don’t dig out your Christmas decorations. Not yet! Wait for December.

In the meantime however, you can preserve this light and happy feeling of spring and summer and carry it into the dark season.

How about decorating your desktop with a beautiful refreshing wallpaper, for example with images of fresh, green grass. It’s a prime delight!

1. Blueish Grass

The source for this first image is fotocommunity, a website for photographers. As a result the images are not available in typical screen resolutions. However, they are of stunning beauty and high quality. That’s why I use many of these photos, although they don’t really fit my screen resolution.

More excellent grass photos that make beautiful wallpaper from this website: wild grass, grass blades, mixed grass.

Available resolutions: 1000 x 704

2. Darkness Over Grass

One of my favorite wallpapers. Ragged grass under a cloudy sky.

Available resolutions: 1280 x 960

3. Grass field

View of a grass field in late spring.

Available resolutions: 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1280 x 1024, 1600 x 1200

4. Lemon Grass

Be different. This highly stylish wallpaper shows lemon grass in straight glass and decoratively spread over a white surface.

Available resolutions: 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864, 1280 x 960, 1280 x 1024, 1440 x 900, 1600 x 1200

5. Perk

A beautiful textured desktop wallpaper with different shades of blue and green.

Available resolutions: 1280 x 800, 1440 x 900, 1680 x 1050

6. Fantasy Grass

Cute fantasy grass wallpaper from Vladstudio with tiny spiders diving from one blade of grass to another.

Available resolutions: 800 x 480, 800 x 600, 1024 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864, 1280 x 1024, 1600 x 1200

Higher resolutions, high quality, widescreen, dual or triple, and iPhone wallpapers are available only for registered users of Vladstudio.

7. Raindrops on grass

Water a grass are a wonderful combination, as seen in this wallpaper. Raindrops collected on a thick blade of grass.

Available resolutions: 1024 x 768, 1600 x 1200, 1920 x 1200

8. Turf

This is a beautiful night shot of turf from the side.

Available resolutions: any

If you’re looking for more stylish wallpapers, browse for more at Desktop Nexus. They have an ingenious feature that sets them apart from most other wallpaper providers: the screen resolution and aspect ratio are determined automatically. Just click the > Enlarge Wallpaper button and wait until your wallpaper is downloaded. Awesome!

9. Liriope Dual

With a dual monitor setup it’s difficult to find suitable wallpapers. Here is one of a few wallpapers that will spread across two monitors.

Available resolutions left: 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864, 1280 x 800, 1280 x 1024, 1440 x 900, 1600 x 1200, 1680 x 1050, 1920 x 1200, 2560 x 1600

Available resolutions right: 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864, 1280 x 800, 1280 x 1024, 1440 x 900, 1600 x 1200, 1680 x 1050, 1920 x 1200, 2560 x 1600

10. Leopard Grass

A dark, artistic wallpaper with wild grass blades covered with raindrops.

Available resolutions: 1280 x 800, 1440 x 900, 1680 x 1050

Did this list hold something for you? We sure hope so.

Otherwise, there are many more sources for beautiful wallpapers and we have previously shared them with you. Karl found the Best Sites to Download Very High Resolution Wallpapers, Ryan covered 7 Websites for Free Patriotic Wallpaper Themes, and I summarized The Best Resources to Pimp Your Wallpaper.

What is your favorite desktop wallpaper?

Photo credits: saeedzadeh

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (32)
• The Best Resources to Pimp Your Wallpaper (75)
• Take Flickr Straight to your Desktop with Interactive Wallpaper Updates (15)

Manually

Its is always nice to know how things work behind the scenes, what better way to do so then try them out yourself. To change the logon screen manually follow these steps:

1. Fire up registry editor (Win Key + R and then type regedit, hit enter)
2. Browse to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background , double click on key named OEMBackground and change its value to 1 (If you cannot find the path or the key go ahead and create it, remember OEMBackground is a Dword)



3. You just enabled the OEM Background functionality. Now browse to the folder %windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds within Windows explorer. %windir% refers to your Windows install directory C:\Windows in most systems. Again the folder path may not exist already, so you can go ahead and create required folders (info and backgrounds are generally not present)



4. Now put in any JPG file with size less than 256 kb in this folder and rename it to backgroundDefault.jpg. This file will be stretched to fit the screen, so you would want it to match the resolution of your screen so that image doesn’t look bad. You can something like smush.it or Photoshop’s Save as/Save for Web feature to reduce image size.

Using Tools

Check out Logon Changer from Tweaks.com, that lets you choose a image file to use as your logon background. That all what you do, just choose an image and Logon Changer will take care of everything else including the file size limit. It also makes it super easy to revert back to the default Logon Screen.

Windows 7 Logon Screen Rotator – takes the logon screen customization one step further by allowing you to select a set of images. It will then randomly use one of these images as the logon screen.

There you have it. Using any of the above method you can easily change Windows 7 logon screen to any wallpaper of your choice or that witty one liner graphic you created yourself or perhaps even one of your photos as long as they meet the requirements. Let us know your experience of using these methods and we would love to see what you have as your logon screen. Mention them in comments!

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• Your Easy Guide to Windows 7 Themes (16)
• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)
• Tweak Windows XP/Vista/7 to Your Taste with XdN Tweaker (10)
• The Best Resources to Pimp Your Wallpaper (75)
• How to Set A Bing Wallpaper Desktop Slideshow In Windows 7 (39)

One way to download Bing wallpaper images is by using Bing Downloader. You can also check out how to switch wallpapers automatically on all Windows platforms, or with our collection of wallpaper changer apps for Linux. But if you are using Windows 7, you don’t need a separate third-party application.

Long Zheng of I Started Something started the Bing Image Archive, where images shown by Bing to worldwide users are archived for your viewing (and downloading) pleasure. I asked him to get its RSS feed to work with Windows 7 desktop slideshows, and he was happy to oblige. So thanks to Long, we can now get a Bing powered desktop slideshow in Windows 7 in 4 easy steps.

Step 1: Create Theme File

Copy this text in Notepad or any text editor:

[[Theme]
DisplayName=Bing

[Slideshow]
Interval=1800000
Shuffle=1
RssFeed=http://feeds.feedburner.com/bingimages

[Control Panel\Desktop]
TileWallpaper=0
WallpaperStyle=0
Pattern=

[Control Panel\Cursors]
AppStarting=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_working.ani
Arrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_arrow.cur
Crosshair=
Hand=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_link.cur
Help=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_helpsel.cur
IBeam=
No=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_unavail.cur
NWPen=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_pen.cur
SizeAll=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_move.cur
SizeNESW=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nesw.cur
SizeNS=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ns.cur
SizeNWSE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nwse.cur
SizeWE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ew.cur
UpArrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_up.cur
Wait=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_busy.ani
DefaultValue=Windows Aero
Link=

[VisualStyles]
Path=%SystemRoot%\resources\themes\Aero\Aero.msstyles
ColorStyle=NormalColor
Size=NormalSize
ColorizationColor=0X6B74B8FC
Transparency=1

[MasterThemeSelector]
MTSM=DABJDKT

Step 2: Save Theme File

Save the file as “Bing.theme” on your desktop. Make sure you do not name it Bing.theme.txt accidentally.

Step 3: Activate Bing Theme

Double-click the file to set it as your visual theme. In the Subscribe to RSS Feed? prompt, click Download Attachments.

That’s it! You should now see the Bing theme selected in the My Themes section.

Step 4: Customize Slideshow Settings

You can customize the slideshow settings in the Desktop Background link at the bottom.

You can choose these settings as you like. In resolutions higher than 800×600, the images look better if they are centered. Since the feed contains multiple images from around the world every day, set the slideshow to change pictures every few hours to see all the images.

Make Sure It Works

Depending upon the speed of your internet connection and other variables, it might take time for Windows to download the images. You might need to do these steps if you’ve not used Internet Explorer in Windows 7 too much. In any case, it is a good idea to double-check that the feed is set up correctly.

Start Internet Explorer, go to Tools->Explorer Bars->Feeds or press Ctrl-Shift-J. If you have activated the Bing theme, you should see the Feed URL already added. Click on the feed, so that Internet Explorer loads the feed page on the right.

If you see the following message:

Click Turn on automatic feed updates. Click Yes in the prompt dialog, so that you don’t need to run Internet Explorer to get your Bing wallpapers.

Now you should see images downloaded from the feed. If you wish, you can view the feed properties by clicking the link on the right.

Remember that the Automatically download attached files box should be checked. You can click View Files to see the downloaded images.

Finally, sometimes the theme does not change images even though they are downloaded. Simply right-click on the desktop, select Next desktop background. A logout/login also forces a refresh of the theme.

More Cool Wallpaper Feeds

For the RSS powered desktop slideshow to work in Windows 7, the RSS feed needs to have images in an enclosure item. Thus, for example, Deviant Art feeds did not work at the time of this writing. But you can enjoy Flickr feeds! Simply replace RSSFeed= with the URL of your choice and set DisplayName= with whatever you like in the theme file you created in Notepad. You can set your own favorite feed in Flickr, or here are a few you might want to check out:

• Flickr Wallpapers 1024×768: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=40961104@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200
• Flickr Wallpapers 1200×800: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=78305319@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200
• Flickr Wallpapers 1680×1050: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=594506@N20&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

Do you enjoy your new wallpapers? Let us know in the comments!

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• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (32)
• Set Up Active Desktop Wallpaper With WallPapa [Windows] (7)
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Dressing up our screens with quality custom wallpapers gets the oohs, aahs and the stares. Memories come in pixels and custom wallpapers are just a cool simple way to put it on the screen. Perhaps you need not look any further than your last vacation trip or the captured moments spent frolicking with your kids for some wallpaper design inspiration. You can even put some motivational quotes or a GTD list on a dark background.

Creating custom desktop wallpapers for your computer is actually a breeze. Though, a better than basic familiarity with an imaging program like Photoshop, Paint.net or GIMP really helps. Stripped to the basics, it’s a 1-2-3 process.

Step 1: Find your screen resolution

The size of the image needs to match the size of the desktop so that the image does not stretch or tile across. Finding this figure (the screen resolution) is dead easy.

• Right-click on any blank area on your desktop and select Properties from the context menu.
• Click the Settings tab on the Display Properties box. Note the screen resolution in pixels.

Step 2: Get Your Image

A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed – Ansel Adams.

If you have such an image in your pictures folder then you have your wallpaper. But why only a snapshot? It could be a stock photo, a collage, a funky gradient or some text on a background. But there are always these rules of thumb to consider.

• For the crystal clear look, use high quality, high resolution photos. For best results, shoot images with resolutions more than that of the monitor (or use stock photos with the same or greater resolution).
• Avoid pictures with image artifacts and blurs. Artifacts are the uneven patches of color here and there in images.



• Look at the placement of your icons on the desktop. If they are on the left of the screen, look for photos which have an even colored background on the left. The idea is to not lose your icons in a flurry of background colors.

Step 3: Match image proportions to screen resolution

• Fire up the image editor. We need to use resize the image to match the screen resolution. Usually, the commands we need to resize an image can be found under the Image menu. For instance –
• In Photoshop: Image – Image Size
• In GIMP: Image – Scale Image (use the chain icon)
• In Paint.net: Image – Resize – check Maintain Aspect Ratio
• In IrfanView: Image – Resize/Resample – check Preserve Aspect Ratio
  
• Image editors generally have a setting called – Constrain Proportions or Preserve Aspect Ratio. This keeps the width and height proportional as we change sizes. Not using this setting results in a distorted image as one dimension changes without a mirror change in the other. ‘Squished’ is the word designers’ use.



• Even with Constrain Proportions checked, resizing may not give us the exact match for our target resolution. We can get by with a close match – a difference of 10-20 pixels.
• If the size doesn’t come close, then we are left with the alternative of cropping the image gradually so that we come close to the required resolution. Cropping may mar the scene, then we can, as another option, resize it and drop it onto a similar colored background. Though it usually takes something away from the look.

Finishing Touches

With the work on the image complete, all we need to do is save it. Generally, a 1024×768 wallpaper is around 100kb – 150kb in size. Images with rich colors will be heftier in size.

If you plan to upload or email it, then it’s better to keep file sizes small. But wallpapers are all about ‘rich’ quality so when saving it as a JPEG file, remember that it’s a lossy format i.e. compression takes away some quality from the file. Experiment with the compression settings till you have a balance of quality and size. Save it with a quality setting that’s about 80% of the original.

A good practice to follow is to save the master file as a PNG lossless format. This can be reused and converted to take advantage of JPEG’s smaller sizes.

The final step – Right-click on the desktop – select Properties from the context menu – go the Desktop tab – Browse and open the image you made – position the image (Center, Tile or Stretch) -  click on OK and you have your desktop décor.

Making your own desktop wallpaper for your computer is as easy as browsing for an image and setting it from Desktop Properties or it can be as intricate as a work of art. This basic how-to is just a start. A web search will return a multitude of tutorials on how to make the fanciest of wallpapers. Most of them will make you go wow. But to reach that summit calls for some dedicated hours spent with your favorite image program.

Do you make your own wallpapers or do you take them off the web? If you do make them, what other quality tips can we put to use? Share your craft with us in the comments.

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• How To Customize Your Linux Desktop With GnomeART-NG (7)
• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (32)
• Set Up Active Desktop Wallpaper With WallPapa [Windows] (7)
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No longer do you have to be content with a user interface having overly sized buttons and the weirdest of fonts. These days there are a wealth of themes, icons, login screens and wallpapers available for your Linux system on sites like gnomelook, kdelook, Gnome Art and the likes.

You can visit these sites, look for what seems pleasing, download it and then copy the files to the appropriate directory to install. There is an application that streamlines all of these steps, its called GnomeArt-NG. GnomeArt-NG is a tool for the Gnome Desktop Environment that makes it easier for you to browse and apply themes, icons and wallpapers.

Deb packages are available for Debian/Ubuntu. Other distro users can browse the download page for a suitable download.

When you run it for the first time GnomeArt-NG needs to download thumbnail previews so go ahead, click apply and let it do its thing. Once the download has finished you will be able to browse through various elements, choose the one you like and apply. You are done already!

GnomeArt-NG lets you browse backgrounds categorised into gnome, nature, abstract and others. You can choose different window decorations, icons, gdm greeters and splash screens all right from within the window.

Click on a theme, icon pack or background and you will see additional information about it in the right hand pane. In addition to the creator and basic description GnomeArt-NG also displays the download count and rating for the currently selected element.

You can even customize the download settings letting GnomeArt-NG know how often you want it to look for new themes and where to store the thumbnails and meta data on your hard disk. If you happen to be using a proxy you can also specify it here within the network setting. You can also run “First Time Download Assistant” again if you happen to experience any problems with the thumbnail previews.

GnomeArt-NG makes it super easy to customize your Gnome Desktop. If you are new to Linux and don’t know how to install themes and icon packs you will love it. If you are an experienced user you would still like streamlining of the whole customization process, but nothing ever stops you from digging deep and editing configuration files to get everything set up perfectly the way you want to in case you feel the need to do so.

How do you install themes, icons and window decorations? What do you think of GnomeArt-NG?

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• How to Create Top Quality Computer Desktop Wallpapers (13)
• 3 Free Icon Changer Programs to Customize Your Folders (8)
• Your Easy Guide to Windows 7 Themes (16)
• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (32)

If you have downloaded a bunch of them, now would be a great time to try out Wallpapa.

And try out Wallpapa is what I did. I downloaded the small installer from here: http://www.phoeniixz.net/software.html. Then, I installed it. Once it was installed, I saw this screen:

At the top, you’ll find folder list where you can add or remove folders. When you click the “Add or remove” button you will see a file browser that will let you choose the folders on your computer which contain backgrounds. You can also use a mapped drive to point to server files.

After adding a folder, you can browse through the containing image files in the bottom portion of the program’s window.

Simply by scrolling down and selecting a background image, you can make it your desktop background afer hitting the “Set as Wallpaper” button. Next, we will look at how the program can shuffle through your images in the selected folder.

Hit the Shuffle button and Wallpapa will do its thing, randomly select and change your background image! Very cool, especially for someone like me who has a million pictures of my beautiful daughter. Next up, we will look at the Find feature. You can type in a query and hit enter or click on the magnifying glass. This will narrow down your search in your selected folders.

You can see it in action here:

And of course, what is an application if we don’t check out the Preferences! By hitting the Preferences button, you can toggle the Preferences sidebar which is shown by default on the right-hand side of the program.

The choices are simple enough. You may choose how often to swap backgrounds and how to display your images: Cover, Tile, Stretch or Scale. You can also set how it deals with small images and the default background color behind items.

This is a nifty application to set up active desktop wallpaper and that needs to stay running for it to work and uses very little memory. Give it a shot and let us know how you like it!

Also, check out other popular posts to pimp out your desktop:

Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows]
8 Apps Which Will Definitely Spice Up Your Desktop [Mac Only]
5 Wallpaper Changer Apps For Linux
The Best Resources to Pimp Your Wallpaper

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• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (32)
• How to Set A Bing Wallpaper Desktop Slideshow In Windows 7 (39)
• How To Customize Your Linux Desktop With GnomeART-NG (7)
• How to Create Top Quality Computer Desktop Wallpapers (13)

There is something for everyone and we would love to see what you are using as a desktop background on your machine. So, upload those pics to your favorite picture sharing site and link us in the comments! Without further ado, here is my list.

DeviantArt

My favorite site by far, for the longest time is DeviantArt. They have a wide range of wallpapers available to you. All the individual images I have picked have links directly under them to their download pages, so enjoy!

The DeviantArt website is easy to navigate and does not require registration to download!

http://love1008.deviantart.com/

http://vadroli.deviantart.com/

InterfaceLIFT

My second favorite  site is InterFaceLift.com which is mostly free (they have some paid wallpapers) but the ones I checked out were all free!

From here, you can choose your resolution and then download the image. They have every resolution you can think of. They even have options for your mobile!

Glaciar Vale House

Neidong Water-Fall

Smashing Magazine

And last but certainly not least, is Smashing Magazine which also has great icon sets and Wordpress themes among many other things. But they do have some nifty high res wallpapers. Check em’ out:

I took the following images from this page

Predictable Victory

Dog Days Calendar Desktop

And the following wallpapers came from this URL

Umbrella Sky

Eifel Tower

Here is one more I found in my searches:

This one came from Wallpaper Pimper here

So, I hope that has inspired you to go change your wallpaper! And don’t forget we would love to see or hear about what you have as your desktop background… In the comments, kiddies!

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• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (32)
• The Best Resources to Pimp Your Wallpaper (75)
• Take Flickr Straight to your Desktop with Interactive Wallpaper Updates (15)

Whenever I’ve searched for wallpaper themes, I’m always shocked at how inundated the Internet has become with poorly made, amateur websites covered with Google Adsense ads and cheesy content. This seems especially prevalent within the category of wallpapers. So, at the risk of coming across as a bit ethnocentric, I would like to offer you geeky U.S. patriots a list of high-quality free patriotic wallpaper themes that they can use this year as part of their Fourth of July celebration.

American Greetings Offers Free Patriotic Wallpaper Themes

Apparently American Greetings isn’t just all about selling greeting cards. For those who travel to their web page , American Greetings offers a small collection of free wallpapers. One of those wallpaper categories is “military & patriotic wallpapers,” which include some pretty impressive images.

Free images here include things like fireworks on a backdrop of the American flag, the words “Courage and Compassion” on a backdrop of the Statue of Liberty, and a pretty cool “Support our Troops” wallpaper featuring an Army helicopter and other military imagery.

FunUtilities.com – But You Have to Download Crawler?

One of my favorite collections of free wallpaper is FunUtilities.com . When you search for “patriotic,” you’ll uncover a huge assortment of stunning backgrounds for your desktop. But when you click on “Download,” there’s one drawback. The site forces you to download and install the Crawler toolbar before you’re allowed to download free wallpapers from the site. Now, for a lot of people this isn’t a big deal, but for a lot of people, being forced down download and install anything isn’t very cool.

However, the five pages of amazing artwork sure is tempting enough to go ahead and install crawler just to download a few of these. They are easily some of the best patriotic wallpapers you’ll find on the Internet.

This Nation – Cheesy or Not?

This Nation is one website where I really like the free wallpapers one minute, and then I can’t stand them the next. The biggest problem is that I can’t decide whether they’re cheesy, or just extremely emotional and inspiring. Some of them work very well, but other ones look like one of those Sunday morning gospel shows where the clear biblical text scrolls across the backdrop of some inspiring nature scene.

However, this site does deserve mention because some of the text-on-image wallpapers do look pretty good. You’ll find four pages of them to choose from at this site, and they’re all free for personal use.

Visual Xtreme – For Patriotic Gamers

Reviewing the patriotic category of wallpapers over at Visual Xtreme , it’s pretty obvious what demographic these images target. Each of the pictures look like something straight out of a modern video game, mostly all computer generated graphics of the American flag integrated with an Eagle, military hardware, or in the case of one very popular background, the Twin Towers.

At Visual Xtreme there’s only one page of Patriotic offerings (currently page 4), but those eight are impressive enough (and free enough) to add to the list.

DesktopWallpaperFree – on The Edge of Cheesy

Okay, I really had to debate whether or not to include DesktopWallpaperFree . When I first visited the site, I almost immediately clicked “back” to return to Google search and continue on. The first thing that got my attention was the extra-wide Google Adsense banner across the top.  With my finger hovering over the mouse button, ready to click “back,” I paused and peeked a little closer at the offerings on this site, and in a few moments decided that the site deserves mention.

Why? It’s because much of the images offered are actually pretty impressive, and some of them I wouldn’t mind having on my own desktop. Yes, the site is plastered with a conglomeration of ads from all over the place, but visiting this site will provide you access to four full pages of some pretty cool pictures.

Thumbplay – Cellphones Need Wallpapers Too

Thumbplay is a pretty cool website that offers free cell phone images for a backdrop. When you search for patriotic wallpapers at this site, what you get back is decidedly strong on the military side, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some of these are actually pretty cool, especially the ones with military fighters, or with a motto like “Army Sister,” or “My Dad Wears Combat Boots.” 

There are offerings for the various branches including Special Forces, Coast Guard, the Air Force and others.

Wallpaper Dave – Travel Photography

Wallpaper Dave is sort of one of those sites that you hate to like, but you’ll end up appreciating his photographs. Yes, the site could use some professional help, but Dave takes some unique photos that actually work pretty well as a desktop theme.

The imagery from the various American historic sites from around the country are pretty cool. I haven’t found many photos of these sites that look like they were just developed from a family trip. That’s not a dig toward Dave, it’s a positive quality of these wallpapers – the people who see them on your computer will immediately ask you when you went on vacation. And the clarity of the photos is also impressive at this resolution (800 x 600).

Regardless where you pull your patriotic backgrounds from this 4th of July, take my advice – avoid doing a blanket search on Google for them. You’ll get blasted with a long list of horrible websites. Hopefully the list above will give you a pretty good head start.

Share your own links to your favorite patriotic background image sites, including those for other countries, in the comments section below.

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• Unique & Easy Last Minute Easter Goodies (4)
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With just a little time and a printer you can create a truly special Easter that should be a big hit with the kids.

Personalized letter from the Easter Bunny

Just provide a few simple pieces of information, such as the kids name, gender, and hometown and you are on your way to creating a personalized letter from the Easter bunny himself. You can choose between a short and simple version, a longer version, baby’s first Easter, religious theme, or going to school.

Customizable Easter Certificates

With one of several customizable templates, you can quickly create a special certificate to honor your little Easter egg hunter(s). The website also provides printable Easter bookmarks, cards, teacher worksheets, and sticker sheets.

Bunny Feet

Print and cut out pairs of bunny feet and place them around your house on Easter. You could even use them to make a trail to the kids Easter basket.

Easter Wallpaper

This web site includes over a dozen really cute Easter wallpapers in a wide variety of sizes. The site also includes Easter screensavers and a printable maze.

Coloring Pages

Select from one of several printable color page images. Bind them all together and make a special Easter coloring book.

Know of any other great quick and creative Easter ideas? Let us know about them.

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• Wordle – Become Addicted To RSS Feeds The Fun Way (13)
• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)
• Two Great ‘n Simple Nerdy Office Pranks to Play On Friends! (26)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (32)

Soon after the early search days of AltaVista, Infoseek and Yahoo, Google took over. Google would not only find those same pages during the internet conception, but would essentially answer any question you want as well. Today, we still have all of that, but with Maps, News, Videos, and of course images.

Ginipic is an depth image search tool of not only your own entire image collection, but almost all of the major image hosting/sharing sites as well. This includes DeviantArt, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Google, Fotolio, Photobucket, and several others. The tool runs locally on your Windows PC and includes a very easy to use navigation tool.

First and foremost, the biggest and most important piece of Ginipic is the search portion. Having the ability to comb several image hosting sites in the matter of a few seconds makes life very easy when you’re searching for that next great photograph or graphic. The screenshot below gives you a better idea of how exactly the search works.

After finding something you’ve been searching for, you simply click on any particular image to quickly preview it before you accept your selection. From the preview window, you can share it on all of the major social networking sites, e-mail, save it, favorite it or set it as your desktop background.

The preview window is also where the drag-n-drop feature comes into play. From Ginipic you can simply select your picture from the window and drag it into any compatible image application.

Ginipic includes both a large sidebar window to search and preview, or a full screen mode. It includes windows wrapping so it never gets in the way, and when you’re done using it, you can have it continuously running in your system tray.

Ginipic is one of the first of its kind and works really well at what it’s main purpose is – meta image searching. Its incredibly fast search of not only your PC but essentially all of the web as well makes it a one of a kind of application that can come in handy in many situations for work or home.

What do you think? Do you have any similar desktop or web based image search engines that you use?im How do you see utilizing an application like Ginipic?

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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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• 4 Cool Fake Viruses to Make Your Friends Freak Out (16)
• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)
• 8 Apps Which Will Definitely Spice Up Your Desktop [Mac Only] (11)
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• 20+ Prank Phone Numbers To Hand To A Bad Date (10)

So in the spirit of giving (aren’t we always?), I’d like to share some ideas to spruce our beloved Macs. And hey, if some people can leave their Christmas lights on until New Year, then I guess you shouldn’t feel guilty if you want to leave some of these applications/decorations up and running slightly longer.

Oh, Let It Snow!

In a previous article, I introduced Snowflakes. It brought snowflakes to your Mac’s desktop to remind you of this specific holiday season. This time around, I have another application to introduce – Snowplane.

Snowplane’s rendering of snow is quite different from Snowflake’s. It only displays small snow(balls) and falls very much slower comparatively. Amazingly, the snow is interactive – you can make them move around if an application window bumps into them! If you’re worried about overworking your precious Mac, don’t. Snowplane uses very little resources.

Deck The Halls With Boughs of Holly

Well, you can’t exactly deck your Mac with holly but you can have a Christmas tree in it. An amazingly simple application called TreeTopLights will place a Christmas tree right on your desktop with blinking lights and decoration. And like Xmas Lights (which I have covered before) it can surround the edges of your screen with customizable holiday lights.

15 Great Christmas Wallpapers

I’ve scoured and worn out my resources to present 15 wallpapers to decorate your Mac with this holiday season, which in my opinion are some of the best. Here they are in no particular order:

Where Snowflakes Are Born – Vladstudio

Christmas Train – Vladstudio

Santa Flying 1 – Vladstudio

Waiting For The Miracle – Vladstudio

Sparks – Vladstudio

Snow Man Snow Child – Vladstudio

Christmas Lighthouse – Ron Philips

Merry Christmas – MarioVale

Merry Christmas – dimant

Christmas Blur II – Idle Type

The Timberland Santa – kevindooley

La boule de Noël / Christmas Ball – meantux

Boule de Noël / Christmas Ball – meantux

Xmas – O2sources

Blue Christmas – Digital Blasphemy

Don We Now Our Gay Apparel, fa la la

The gay apparel is not for us, nope – it’s for our icons. Just for Christmas, why don’t you change your hard disk icon on your desktop into something a little more joyful. While you’re at it, don’t just stop there. Go ahead and change your favourite folders’ icons as well. Check out these 6 icon sets from InterfaceLift.com and see if any tugs on your festive heart strings.

I hope you’ll enjoy this Christmas with your loved ones and may your festive mood be enhanced by these little tweaks to your Mac. Happy Holidays, dear MakeUseOf readers!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (32)
• The Best Resources to Pimp Your Wallpaper (75)
• Take Flickr Straight to your Desktop with Interactive Wallpaper Updates (15)

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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In the meantime, here are a few possibilities how you can get the Windows 7 look and feel onto your desktop today. This is primarily targeted at those of you who are skipping Vista.

Wallpapers

This is the most simple way to get a refreshing look onto your desktop. Just get a wallpaper. The most beautiful ones can be found on deviantART, such as The Windows Se7en Pack 1 and Pack 2 .

Seven Calculator (XP, Vista)

This tool is not fully completed and it doesn’t have the same functionalities as the Windows 7 calculator. But it looks just like it and the standard mode (basic functions) works fine. It requires .Net framework and it’s open source, so if you know Visual Basic, you can go ahead and edit it.

Vista users are in luck, a much better calculator is available for them, look here.

AeroSnap (XP)

In Windows 7, windows are going to behave differently compared to what you are used to from XP. AeroSnap simulates this Windows 7 behavior. When you drag a window to the left or right border of your desktop, it will snap to that side and take over 50% of the screen width and 100% from bottom to top. When you drag the window to the top of the screen it will maximize. Dragging the window away from the respective edge will restore its previous size. Keep in mind that it only works when the mouse hits the screen border while dragging the window. Below is a video to better demonstrate how it looks like.

Vienna Transformation Pack (XP)

This is not as comfortable to install as some other transformation packs. Rather you install each module separately. The advantage is that you can select just the parts you like. Fortunately, the installation guide is very detailed, so even inexperienced users will not hit the wall.

The Vienna Transformation Pack comes with a selection of four bootskins, a logon screen, icons, a menu bar styler (seen in the top left), cursors, sounds, wallpapers, a visual style or theme, and either the Vienna navigator or the Vienna toolbar (pictured below), which essentially both have the same functions. With the navigator you can move around the items individually, while with the toolbar they are all locked down on their spot.

That concludes the selection. Let me mention that there are several more transformation packs and themes available that claim to look like Windows 7. In reality they all look terribly like Vista and the ones I tried seem a little buggy on top of that.

If you’re interested in the latest Windows 7 developments, check out the Windows 7 News blog.

What feature are you most looking forward to in Windows 7?

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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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• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)
• 5 Little Mac Apps That Flickr Will Thank You For (14)
• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
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If you have a good collection of wallpapers and want to see them in action on your desktop, here are 5 wallpaper changers that you can use in your Linux machine. Most, if not all, of them are meant for the GNOME and KDE desktop.

Webilder

Webilder is one of the best wallpaper changers for Linux. Not only does it change your wallpaper at regular intervals but it can also download images directly from Flickr and WebShots (requires a paid account) and add them to your collection.

When downloading from Flickr, you can configure it to download photos that match the tags you specified, or just to download the most interesting photo of the day.

If you run out of tags idea, you can also check out the Webilder channel to see what others are downloading and add their tags to your Webilder.

In addition, Webilder also comes with a simple photo browser where you can preview the image in full screen and decide if you want to use it as the wallpaper.

Wallpapoz

I like Wallpapoz the best, for the simple reason that it allows me to specify a different set of wallpapers for each workspace. When I change workspace, the wallpaper also changes accordingly. With this feature, you can configure each workspace to display a different ‘mood’ of wallpaper.

The first workspace may display those ‘Get back to work’ kinds of wallpaper that constantly remind you to finish up your work. The second workspace may be made up of relaxing, soothing wallpaper where you can listen to your music with peace. The trick is, when you are bored with your work, simply switch the workspace and change your mood instantly.

I am not sure if this works for you, but it is definitely working for me.

The current version of this app is 0.4.1 and works well in most Linux distros with GNOME desktop. This will also be the last stable version as the developer has decided to quit the development.

Drapes

Drapes is a simple wallpaper changer that sit quietly in the notification area and changes your wallpaper every once in a while. A good thing about Drapes is that you can specify a folder for it to monitor. When you add a new wallpaper into the folder, Drapes will pick it up and add it to its database.

Generally, this is a simple wallpaper changer that performs what it’s supposed to do – change wallpapers at regular intervals. If you just want a set it once and leave it kind of wallpaper-changing app, then this is most suitable for you.

If you are using Ubuntu, Drapes is included in the repository and you can easily install via the Synaptic Package Manager. If that is too troublesome for you, click here to install it.

Wallpaper-Tray

Wallpaper-Tray is another simple wallpaper changer that does only the basic stuff. You specify the location of your wallpapers, set the time interval and you are good to go. No surprises.

There is one interesting feature though – Wallpaper Search tool. You type in some text in the search bar and it will search your filesystem and display all the images with file names similar to your search term. You can then select from the results the image that you want to set as the wallpaper.

Wallpaper-Tray is also available in the Ubuntu repository.

Wallpaper Changer Screenlet

If you have already installed Screenlets in your system, you can also use the Wallpaper Changer Screenlet to change your wallpaper at regular intervals. Same as Webilder, it allows you to download the interesting picture of the day from Flickr. It can also retrieve images from art.gnome.org and Google Images.

There is no installation required for this app. You just need to download the tar file and extract it to the Screenlets folder (usually located in /home/username/.Screenlets). You can then activate the app via the Screenlets main menu.

While this app works fine as a wallpaper changer, its interface is rather unpolished and can be hard to manage at times. I would advise you to use this app only if you have already installed Screenlets.

Did I miss out any wallpaper changer app for Linux? Do let me know and I will add it to the list.

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• Wordle – Become Addicted To RSS Feeds The Fun Way (13)
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The disadvantage of all of these techniques is that you will have to actually remove the icons from your desktop. If that is not to your liking, here is a tool that is completely different. It lets you keep your icons where they are, yet it will take some strain off of your eyes.

Iconoid is a lightweight tool for Windows (tested on XP) that can hide all of your desktop icons and bring them back once you click onto the desktop – and it can do even more than that.

Iconoid comes with a ton of options and all of them are thoroughly explained on the Iconoid Help site. On the website you can go through every tab of the Iconoid menu and look at the various options, simply by dragging your mouse over the image representing the menu. Best of all, each possible setting is explained in a separate field on the right hand side. This is amazingly well done!

Iconoid plants an icon in the taskbar. Left-clicking the icon opens the above mentioned main menu. A right-click launches a regular small menu that is shown below.

Not only can Iconoid hide your icons and let them re-appear when you click on a random spot on your desktop, it can also save the arrangement of your icons and restore them, should something, e.g. a different screen resolution, mess them all up.

A fun feature is the Icon Dance which might be enough to freak out some people. Icons will randomly move across the desktop until the selection “Do the Icon Dance” in the taskbar menu is unchecked. Be careful though, the Icon Dance will mess up the position of your icons, so better save them first.

The small menu gives quick access to features that can be tweaked in the main menu.

For hiding the icons you can choose between ’show always’, ‘as needed’ or ‘hide always’. I have selected to always hide my icons, so they will only appear when I deliberately click onto my desktop. They will hide again after 10 seconds, but you can choose any time between 1 up to 60 seconds.

When you choose to show icons as needed, you can let them reappear when the mouse rests on the desktop from 0 – 60 seconds and have them disappear again after the mouse has left the desktop for a certain time.

Another very cool feature to be toggled in the main menu is the “Hide all windows” option.

I set it to “Hot Corner”, clicked the top right button and selected “Lock Workstation” as the action from the drop-down menu. That means as soon as I move my mouse to the top right corner of my screen, my computer will act as if I had clicked [Windows] + [L].

Alternatively, you can hide all open windows or start the screen saver. It works flawlessly.

These were just some of the many great features the program has to offer. Taken together this is one of the coolest tools I’ve had on my desk for weeks, if not months. It’s small and it simply works. In other words, I highly recommend Iconoid. How do you like it?

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• How To Customize Your Linux Desktop With GnomeART-NG (7)
• Give your Desktop a Fresh Look with MyColors (6)
• Your Computer, Your World – How to Keep Out the Mindless (51)
• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)

Wordle is a unique web application that lets you specify a RSS feed or a specific block of text. Wordle then uses that information to create a word cloud. Don’t know what a word cloud is?

The Wikipedia definition is:

A tag cloud or word cloud (or weighted list in visual design) is a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, used typically to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag.

I am sure you have see them before. These clouds are usually on blogs, they show that sites tags, allowing you to click on them and see that specific topic.

Here is a quick one I generated from askTheAdmin.com’s feed.

No big deal, pretty ordinary right? Now here is where Wordle comes in. I put the same AskTheAdmin.com feed into Wordle and it generated this:

I know, I know… You are saying to yourself

“Sure it looks cool but how the hell am I going to get addicted to that?”

Maybe if all Wordle could do was RSS feeds it wouldn’t be so cool in my book (Yeah it would!) but here is where we can make it fun for anyone. First you should ask yourself “what do I like?”. Do you like music? So then lets throw some song lyrics in there. Let’s use everyone’s Rick-Rolling favorite jam… Never going to give you up by the legendary Rick Astley.

Not doing it for ya? How about a little Sir-Mix-A-Lot and baby got back?

Are you feeling it now? There are lots of customizable options like color, font and my personal favorite Randomize. Now how could I do a MakeUseOf article without including the Make Use Of wordle?

I couldn’t! So here it is:

The possibilities are endless! But beware before you know it hours will be gone and you will find yourself inputting stuff from the strangest places. You can find any song lyrics by Googling the song name + lyrics, you can find the text from many books online on Google as well and of course Wordle takes any URL and will search for its RSS or Atom feed. Bigger feeds take longer to process and the outcome is always pretty fricking sweet!

Want to do something artsy fartsy?

Print out your Wordle and you have an instant collage! Make one for that special geek in your life. You know she will treasure it. (As long as the subject is something that she digs and you don’t pick say a Midget Tossing Website!)

(By) Karl L. Gechlik is a superhero of the IT industry who wears many hats and changes in telephone booths. Karl mostly uses his powers for good and the occasional hysterical prank. Get your geek on & follow his geeky antics at askTheAdmin.com today.

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It struck me as a great idea, but the simplicity of the thing got me thinking that a) I could have done this myself with Photoshop and a little trial and error and b) I could have made something a lot nicer. So I did and you can too even if you have an older device and don’t feel like shelling out the $10 for the 2.0 software update.

Here’s how:

Open a blank 320×480 image in your favourite image editor (Photoshop, MSPaint, Pixelmator, Gimp, etc.) Add a background of your choice. I chose one from Social Wallpapering and played with it a little to get it just the way I wanted it.

Starting about 120 pixels down, type your message. Include contact details like phone number and email address and a reward amount, if you’d like to offer one and any other message you’d like. Don’t go below the 370 pixel mark.

Save your image as a .jpg and sync it to your iPod Touch/iPhone.

Now, on your iPhone/iPod Touch tap Settings, then General and then Wallpaper. Find and tap on the image you just created and then tap Set Wallpaper.

That’s it. Now whenever you’re on the Slide to Unlock screen (and your device is not connected to the computer) your If Found message will be shown, increasing your chances it’ll be returned in case you leave it in a coffee shop or on the bus.

Unfortunately, you can’t take a screenshot of the Slide to Unlock screen, so here’s the next best thing.

(By) Jason Mayoff is a radio newscaster, tech geek and the Make Use Of Podcast Editor. If you’re ever in Montreal, Canada you can hear him on CJAD 800. You can also find Jason at Podcasters4Hire.com and pleasantnights.com, where he talks about keeping an organized and clutter-free home.

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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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• Take Flickr Straight to your Desktop with Interactive Wallpaper Updates (15)
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John’s Background Switcher is different from all previously mentioned applications, because not only can it load images from a predefined folder on your machine, it can also load them from online sources such as Flickr, Picasa and Yahoo. Let’s take a look at how to set it up to work with Flickr.

Click Flickr in the Current mode menu on the left. Within “General Options” you can select how often your wallpaper shall change and how it will spread across multiple monitors.

The interesting part is “Photo Sets”. You can add as many sets as you like. In my example above I added two and to the left you see what the “Add / Edit” window looks like.

The photos can be chosen by everybody, a group pool, a specific person, your own Flickr photos or from a specific time frame, such as the past 7 days.

Further down you can set even more details, such as choosing images from the top 50, and if you fancy specific items, make the program choose from photos that match custom tags or a search text.

In “Photo Options” you define how the wallpapers will be scaled and arranged on your desktop. The coolest option in my opinion is the “Create a snapshot scrapbook” as depicted in the screenshot below. The program did that all by itself, I totally adore it!

And we’re not done, yet. Of course you can use all sources, meaning you can set up single pictures, folders, Flickr, phanfare, SmugMug, Picasa, and Yahoo. However, you can not use them simultaneously. Background Switcher will only run the mode you last looked at. Thus, if you want to switch from Flickr to say Picasa, you have to open the program settings and click on Picasa in Current mode.

When you look at the bottom left of the main window, you’ll see a button called “More Settings”. This is where you can really take control over what the software will do to your desktop. If you want to give your system a break on startup, define a time frame until the wallpaper is switched for the first time. In the Switching tab, programs can be added that will make Background Switcher pause while they’re running. Also, a custom command can be run after switching. I’m not sure what this could be good for, but an interesting feature nevertheless. “Import / Export” allows you to easily transfer Background Switcher program settings from one computer to another.

To manually change the wallpaper you can double click the tray icon anytime. The blue arrows will turn green while Background Switcher updates its images. Finally, right-clicking on the tray icon launches a small menu with several options, like returning to the previous background, clear the background or pause the program.

Overall, this must be the best free wallpaper switcher using online image sources out there. In fact, it’s the only free one I have ever seen. You have to keep in mind though, that for example creating a snapshot scrapbook will have some impact on your bandwidth while the program is downloading the images. Within processes, Background Switcher eats up around 41K, which is around twice as much as Explorer and half of what Thunderbird requires (on my system). So, it’s not easy on your system resources, but aren’t most cool tools?

What do you think? As always we welcome all feedback!

(By) This post was written by one of our regular authors, Tina from Recommended.

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Stardock’s MyColors is surprisingly quick and easy to handle. The download took a while, but the installation itself was super fast. It made me wonder how well the program was going to perform. I was surprised to find that applying the included Diamond theme went just as rapid.

The new look is very pleasing. I love the the taskbar and start menu style. The Diamond theme also comes with a fresh wallpaper and new icons. There are no apparent compatibility issues, not even having FlyakiteOS installed gave me any trouble. The switch from the FlyakiteOS Tiger theme to MyColors’ Diamond was smooth and thorough. Going back to the default Windows XP Desktop is easy as pie. However, in order to restore my previous custom look, I had to go into Display Settings and load the Tiger theme under Appearance.

Most themes revolve around sports teams and brands, hence the name. The program is freely available for Windows XP and Vista (32-bit). Unfortunately, there are only two free themes, all others must be paid for. Quest, the second free theme, comes with a calendar and clock widget, and the icons are very nice. The paid themes come with many more gadgets such as a media player.

MyColors doesn’t make any permanent changes to your system. It’s very simple, not allowing for many changes, but also not requiring users to be tech-savvy at all. In other words, it’s safe to use, but potentially boring. You could call it conservative. And so I recommend trying this tool only if you like one of the free themes, they are pretty cool.

What do you think? Would you pay for any of the MyColors themes?

(By) This post was written by one of our regular authors, Tina from Recommended.

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(1) Skyler’s Desktop

The menu you see is Rocketdock, which has been covered and mentioned several times on Make Use Of. It’s a great tool if you quickly want to access your most used programs.

Skyler keeps a Temp folder on his desktop as a quick way to hide unwanted clutter and sort through it later. He got rid of the recycle bin using Tweak UI. In the sidebar he’s housing Google Desktop for the calendar and the to-do list.

Skyler uses Foobar because it’s lightweight, customizable, and it has an option to minimize to the tray which is really useful when working on a lot of things that take up the taskbar.

In order to be able to quickly hide his browser he uses the Firefox addons MinimizeToTray and Minimize To Tray Enhancer.

Skyler sums up…

My desktop probably isn’t all that special, but I like it and find it more useful than the default windows setup.

And I think that’s what matters and what makes every desktop special. After all it’s yours!

Oh, and Skyler says Daft Punk rules!

(2) Rob Williams’ Desktop

The Quicklaunch bar holds a couple of work-specific applications. Rob likes FuzzyClock in the system tray and has added a calendar to easily spot the date.

Rob sums up…

Clean. Simple.

And I agree.

Get to know Rob Williams.

(3) Rob’s Desktop

In addition to Rocketdock, Rob is using Enso , a free tool that lets you open programs by holding down the Caps Lock and typing a command such as “open blog” or “open browser”. It’s a smart way to access programs without so much as the touch of a button and typing a quick command. You no longer have to move a hand away from the keyboard to control the mouse or scroll through menus.

My summary…

Very stylish and simple desktop, nice wallpaper and thanks a lot for pointing me to Enso!

Rob writes The Like Minds Blog.

Aibek’s Desktop

Well, actually there are 4, we got one from Aibek as well. Since he isn’t not really a reader he is featured last.

In his own words:

I like it clean and simple. I keep about 15 programs on the Quick Launch. I also use invisible folder for keeping stuff that needs to be done asap. As about wallpaper you can download it from here. I tend to change it every couple of months or so. One of my favorite wallpaper sources is socwall.

Thanks to everyone else who submitted their desktop screenshots, you guys are great!

(By) This post was written by one of our regular authors, Tina from Recommended.

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• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (14)
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There are at least a million sites that offer superb free wallpapers and I bet no matter how many I put in my list, you will find a few dozen equally awesome ones and list them in the comments. Please go ahead and do just that, we don’t want to miss out!

So here they are, my personal favourites…

Top 10 Wallpaper Resources:

(1) Social Wallpapering

Web 2.0 is ubiquitous and thus we have here an interactive community that engages in classifying, ranking, and distributing high resolution images for use as wallpapers. For a start you can pick a rough format – standard, widescreen, dual monitor, all or random. On the following page the filter can be fine-tuned to sort by most or least recent, highest or lowest rated, most or least popular items or by random. Overall you’ll find some of the hottest wallpapers on the web on this site. To rate an item click the green upturned arrow if you like it or the red downturned arrow if you don’t like it. Currently no sign-up is required.

(2) Foto Community

This is one of the largest archives for high quality photography with thousands of images and almost all of them qualify as wallpapers. You can browse by these categories: subjects, special, people, nude, nature, digi-art, youth, world, contest or gallery. The gallery contains the best photos as determined by user votes. To leave comments or vote, you need to register (free), however pictures can be downloaded without being a member (for private use only). Being a member, you can upload your own photos and see how others rate them.

The wallpaper visible in the screenshot of my desktop was Bluedrops from this amazing site.

(3) Wallpapr

Yet another web 2.0-ish site. This time a wallpaper search engine. Straight forward, simple, little you can tweak but therefore extremely easy to handle. Enter a search term, pick how many wallpapers you want to see – 20, 40 or 100 and then go.

(4) Wallpapers @ Customize.org

The most prominent feature of this site is the color-based search. Just pick a color from the random wallpaper color picker and all matching images will be listed. Alternatively the site offers search popular tags (or tag cloud).

(5) deviantART

Oldie but goldie. I’m sure most everyone here has visited deviantART before. It’s THE archive for all sorts of images – 50 million and counting and thus it’s nearly impossible not to find something you like. Best of all is the easy to use Categories menu. Browse through the large tree of sub-categories and quickly go back if you decide to view all sub-categories.

(6) N.Design Studio

This site does not have a huge selection, however they offer nothing but incredibly innovative and cool cartoonish wallpapers. Glitz and style for your desktop guaranteed!

(7) Pixelgirl Presents

This girl is all over the web to find the best and present it to you. Wallpapers can be browsed by category, resolution or featured artist, although there are many more artists represented than those listed as featured. Pixelgirl also presents some iPhone wallpapers.

(8) Desktography

The site describes itself as an exhibition, a showcase of nature themed desktop wallpapers created by designers worldwide. Currently, three exhibitions (years) with 10, 25 and 40 images respectively were released. A small but exclusive collection. Deskography uses a flash-based interface and wallpapers are downloaded as zip files containing all available resolutions. I’m impressed with both the site design and the picture quality.



(9) Veer

All wallpapers are the works of a single designer. Subsequently they are sorted by year. Since last year no less than eight different resolutions starting from as small as 320 x 480 (iPhone) and up to 1920 x 1200 pixel are available for every single new design. To download images an account needs to be registered with the site.

(10) Vladstudio

Currently over 450 unique wallpapers were made for this project by Russian digital artist Vlad Gerasimov. So take some time to dig through this wonderful archive. Images are available in low and high quality from 800 x 600 up to 1600 x 1200 pixel, as well as widescreen up to 2560 x 1600 pixel or dual-monitor up to 1680 x 1050 pixel. Thus virtually every screen will find a matching wallpaper. Additionally files can be downloaded for mobile phones, sent as e-card, bought as poster, and some are available to go with wallpaper clock software. Lower-quality images are free while quality-lossless and signature-free images cost from $8.99 for three months up to $29.99 for lifetime.

After browsing through all of these sites you will likely come back with at least a few dozen wallpapers you like. What to do? Download all your favorite wallpapers into a single folder and use a tool to change your wallpaper automatically!

Top 3 Wallpaper Switching Tools

(1) Wallpaper Changer – This is the tool with the most features. It gives you total control over your wallpapers.



Features:

• search & add all jpg, bmp, png and gif files to wallpaper list
• rearrange items in any way you like
• manage multiple wallpaper lists
• apply selected item from the list
• auto change desktop wallpaper after time, on startup, daily, never
• change login wallpaper
• resize wallpaper, only if deformation exceeds given percentage
• auto tile wallpaper, if smaller than given fraction
• auto-check screen resolution on startup or before changing
• auto-determine best background and icon color
• customize desktop icons

(2) ScrollWall – A plain simple alternative to Wallpaper Changer. Less options, less confusion, less possibilities to mess up and the tool I am using.



Features:

• add images from various locations
• supports gif, jpg, bmp and png files
• define stretch, center or tile for each wallpaper separately
• change wallpaper after time or on every startup
• apply selected image by double-clicking it
• manually switch wallpaper by left-clicking tray icon

(3) Wallpaper Juggler – This is Linda’s recommendation. An intermediate of the first two tools.



Features:

• add wallpapers by folder or file from various locations
• supports jpg, bmp, gif, png and wmf files
• change wallpaper after time (15 minutes to 24 hours) or never
• stretch to fit desktop
• instantly set selected image as wallpaper

And this concludes the wallpaper special. In the coming posts I will cover more tools to enhance your desktop experience, so stay tuned!

In the meantime I would still like to see what your desktop looks like. Where did you find your wallpaper(s) and which tool(s) do you use on your desktop? Post a comment or mail me a screenshot. The coolest desktops will be featured on MUO.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)
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iPhone StartPages

The idea behind the iPhone startpage is to bring all essential applications on one iPhone-friendly page. These apps can be anything, ranging from news sites to To-Do lists, Office apps, IM clients, VoIP services, Calculators, and more. All iPhone friendly and easy-to-navigate through.

*Leaflets – features in-built search tools (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Wikpedia, … ), Feedreader, Flickr, del.icio.us, App list (directory of iPhone apps), and more.

*AppMarks – iPhone-friendly, well-categorized directory of iPhone applications. (Categories include: Cooking, Financial, Games, Email & Chat, etc.)

*More Similar StartPages: iPhoneAppr | MockDock | iPhoneAppsManager | Mojits | Gridgets

iPhone App Collections

In case the above mentioned startpages don’t include the application you’re looking for than check out one of the following sources. These are standard directory-like websites so don’t try accessing them from your iPhone.

* iPhoneApplicationList | iPhoneWidgetList | iPhoneTopSites

Couple of cool iPhone Tools

* iFuntastic – simple tool that lets you add/remove ringtones, change carrier logos, and rearrange the home screen icons. Currently only runs on Intel Mac’s.

* iPhoneDrive (Mac) – lets you use iPhone as portable hard drive, ensuring that you always have important info/software with you. To get started check out our massive list of free portable apps. (Note: iPhone drive isn’t a freeware, costs $9.95)

iPhone WallPapers, iCons and Ringtones

• Gizmodo’s – iPhone Wallpaper Collection
• ThemeMyPhone – more wallpapers
• iPhone Candy – and some more wallpapers
• iPhone Ringtones – collection of original iPhone ringtones.
• Apple’s – iPhone icon collection (by Apple)
• iPhoneDesktops – and wallpapers again.

Fun Stuff

• iPhone Musical [go2web2.blogspot.com]
• What the iPhone Could’ve Been [techeblog.com]
• Will iPhone blend [willitblend.com] – check it out below.

(6) iPhone HowTo’s

HowTo: Create iPhone ringtones from iTunes previews [tuaw.com]
HowTo: Add custom ringtones/system-sounds to iPhone (intel Mac only) [hacktheiphone.com]
HowTo: Send MMS messages on iPhone [hacktech.wordpress.com]
HowTo: Replicate iPhone Buttons the ‘-webkit’ way [launchpadhq.com]
HowTo: 17 powerful bookmarklets for your iPhone. [lifeclever.com]
HowTo: Turn your Windows Mobile phone into an iPhone [lifehacker.com]
HowTo: Emulate iPhone’s features on your everyday handset [techcrunch.com]
HowTo: Activate iPhone Without AT&T [nanocr.eu]
HowTo: Set up your iPhone as a prepaid account [tuaw.com]
HowTo: Use the IPhone with a Business or Prepaid Account [reghardware.co.uk]
HowTo: Port ‘ineligible’ mobile numbers to AT&T and iPhone [appleinsider.com]
HowTo: Make iPhone work with old Cingular SIM (intel Mac only) [hacktheiphone.com]

iPhone Reviews

in-depth reviews:

• iPhone review [Engadget]
• No BS iPhone review [Gizmodo]
• iPhone in depth: the Ars review [ArsTechnica]

guided video tours:

• iPhoneGuided Tour [Apple.com]
• iPhone interface complete walkthrough [Engadget]
• iPhone keyboard walkthrough [Apple.com]

things you should know before buying iPhone:

• A list of iPhone dissapointments [HowardForums.com]
• 10 Things that “absolutely suck” about the iPhone [MacRumors.com]
• 10 Things you should know before you buy an iPhone [Gizmodo]
• 10 Reasons why you shouldn’t buy an iPhone [extremetech.com]
• What the iPhone Doesn’t Have [gizmodo.com]

comparative reviews (iPhone vs…):

• iPhone vs Treo, BlackBerry, N95, Ocean, LG Prada [wirelessinfo.com]
• iPhone vs Samsung BlackJack, BlackBerry 8800 and Treo 700P [WSJ]
• Apple iPhone vs Nokia N95 [cnet.com.au]
• Engadget iSwitchers [Engadget Mobile]
• Apple iPhone vs Nokia N95 and Samsung BlackJack [mgopinath.blogspot.com]

stress tests: (bunch of tests to check how the device handles abuse)

• The Original iPhone Stress Tests [PC World]
• Stress testing the iPhone [macrumors.com]

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• Quick Tip: Create an If Found screen for your iPhone/iPod Touch (1)
• How To Create Your Own Unique iPhone Ringtones Using Garageband [Mac Only] (6)
• How To Create a Ringtone For The iPhone In iTunes (7)
• Create Custom iPhone Ringtones with iRinger [Windows] (3)
• 10 Websites For Free Mobile Phone Ringtones & Other Mobile Downloads (55)

Source 1: Wallpapr – wallpaper search engine (built on top of Flickr.)
possible search terms: graffiti, technology, abstract…

Source 2: ATI Radeon, NVidia wallpapers and nvidia gelato
Here you’ll find around 50 high quality kick-ass wallpapers

Source 3: BestGameWallpapers – animated wallpapers from 100s of popular video games

Technorati Tags: wallpapers, cool typing, video games, wallpapr

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