Tech Blog

[#1]

Lately I've been trying to keep my windows desktop icon and clutter free. In my case, this has meant that I've been saving less to my desktop (my default save-to location) and more to working directories. And, since a cluttered desktop reflects a cluttered mind, I like to think of this as a bit of personal mental-floss.

But I'm not perfect and do keep files on my desktop, sometimes, too many. This is where the first app comes in.

Fences - keeping your icons corralled
It's a free Windowns application that lets you tweak your icon layout beyond the default Microsoft-imposed locations. To quote the source:

Fences is a one-of-a-kind program, allowing you to draw labeled shaded areas on your desktop, which become movable & resizable containers for your desktop icons. These groups can help bring organization and consistency to your computer's desktop, solving the "constant mess" problem that has plagued the desktop since its inception.

I have a multi monitor setup, so Fences lets me tweak things on both monitors. The red line in the above image is the border between the two - the grey boxes are the areas enclosed by the fences.

Custom desktop wallpaper & backgrounds
Also in the previous image, you may have noticed that I've got two desktop backgrounds, both photos I've taken and have in a public set on flickr. John's Background Switcher (yes, that's its name) is the nifty tool responsible for grabbing and displaying those images. A few of the features include:

• Individual pictures on your computer.
• Folders containing pictures on your computer such as ‘My Pictures’.
• Flickr photo sharing – selecting pictures by person, tags, sets or just plain random. You never know what you’re going to get next!
• Facebook – your friends photos on your desktop!
• Any Media RSS feed – choose pictures from sites like DeviantArt , Photobucket , LOLCats and Zooomr amongst many others!
• Phanfare web albums – keep up to date with your friends and family.
• smugmug photo galleries – yours, your friends, anybody’s!
• Picasa Web Albums – choose from specific albums or any search text.
• Webshots – if you’re a Webshots user, you can choose from your photos.
• Google Image Search – get pictures from anywhere across the internet.
• Bing Image Search – not a Google fanboy? Then Bing is for you!
• Yahoo! image search – the internet is your oyster!

Of course, the app. also supports multiple monitor setups and timed image switching, or it'd be useless for me. Bonus points for embedding a 3 month calendar in user-definable positions on the desktop. It really is a powertool.

Great desktop images, courtesy of National Geographic
The NatGeo Wallpaper Downloader is a neat little utility that lets you grab the National Geographic desktop wallpapers automagically (rather than download them individually).

What's cool is that you can then store them in a local directory, point John's Background Switcher at that directory, and your desktop will never be dull again!


Again, these are apps to help you make your Windows desktop a bit 'nicer'. But these aren't the only ones out there...is there something  you use to visually improve your computing experience? Let me know in the comments.

[#2]

Funny you should mention multiple monitors. I've been using a program called UltraMon for a while -- it allows for multiple wallpapers on multiple monitors, but more importantly, it creates a second taskbar for your other monitor, so every app on every monitor shows up on its own taskbar. It's very convenient, and keeps the clutter down below to a minimum.

[#3]

Thanks for finding and sharing these awesome applications. I'm especially excited about John's Background Switcher. Great stuff Brad!

Find even more Windows apps at http://www.facebook.com/windowscanada

Andy

Windows Canada

[#4]

@Tanarus: I tried Ultramon for a while..it's an awesome app. Especially appreciated the multi-mon taskbar. But I think I lost it when I upgraded to Win 7. Will have to check it out again

@Andy_W: Always happy to share. BG Switcher is kinda cool.