Imagine a desktop wallpaper that actually 'lives' in real time. That's
exactly what the makers of EarthDesk have attempted, creating a live map of
the globe that shows real time light and cloud conditions. EarthDesk features
three map views (Political, Natural Color and Living Earth Satellite), 11
projections, and 10,000 cities. You have many options that cover how the
Earth is projected onto your desktop, the centering of the map, and how you
want it to refresh. Note that EarthDesk does not install itself as a
standalone application - it simply loads as a preference pane, from where you
can administer it. When you install the EarthDesk in your preference pane,
you're presented with the configuration options. The first thing you need to
do is choose a city to center it on in the Locations tab (your hometown
location in other words). There are 10,000 to go through but fortunately you
can search for them using the search box. The Display tab is the most
interesting as regards setup. In here, you can configure what kind of view
you want to use, how far you want to zoom into the Earth and how close you
want to see the clouds. Note that you can access the preferences at any time
from the menu bar, where you'll see the EarthDesk icon although you'll have
to activate this option in the actual preferences itself. You'll have to
experiment for quite a while to find the view that you like. One thing I
definitely recommend however is zooming into the planet because it's a bit
more interesting than seeing the globe as a whole (at least during the day
anyway). The cloud formations you see are the actual clouds in the sky at any
given moment and their movements update according to the time schedule you've
specified. All things considered, this isn't particularly interesting.
There's a saying 'About as interesting as watching paint dry' - and 'watching
clouds move' could be used in the way. I imagine that EarthDesk is more
interesting at night when darkness falls and you start to cities light up. I
also experienced problems stopping and starting Earth Desk - the second time
I tried to start it, it simply wouldn't. *EarthDesk is an interesting desktop
background for geographers, those keen on keeping an eye on weather movements
in real time, or simply those that want a slightly more original desktop
background.*Download *EarthDesk 5.8.2* in Softonic
