Natural Desktop 2006

One of the coolest desktop enhancements on the net has been updated!

Tuesday, August 2, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News

Stardock has released Natural Desktop 2006 v1.5 today.  Natural Desktop is a desktop enhancement program that looks at your current local weather, the time of day, the time of year and then applies a wallpaper, sound track, and animations based on that data.

If you're stuck inside working on a summer day, Natural Desktop is just the cure for that.  Listen to morning doves singing in the morning or cicadas in the afternoon, crickets in the evening. The sound tracks were put together by famed composer, Mason Fischer to sound just like what one would expect if they were outside.  The wallpapers were created by Ryan Bliss, owner of the well known wallpaper site, Digital Blasphemy.  The unique animated weather elements were designed and programmed by Matt Crocket, well known here as "Tiggz".

The program is immensely configurable with users turning on and off various elements of Natural Desktop along with being able to add their own sound tracks, wallpapers, and other parts to the included library of sounds and graphics.  Version 1.5 is a nearly complete rewrite by Laurence Parry who has gone through and implemented a host of optimizations and new features.  Natural Desktop is only $9.95. Proceeds from it help pay for WinCustomize.com and support other unique, cool projects of this kind.

New features & changes include:

  • Fast zip-code lookup that gives the user the option to find multiple local weather stations to choose from.
  • Will display an extended 5-day forecast for most places in the US.
  • Enhanced support for European and other international locales for weather reporting
  • Links to infrared and satellite images now available.
  • Clouds move at a speed based on the local weather conditions (wind speed)
  • Preferences now stored in local directory rather than registry for faster performance.
  • Lots of fixes, tweaks, etc.   

Screenshots:
  

Website:
www.naturaldesktop.com   

71 Reply 18 Referrals
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Island Dog
Reply #1 Tuesday, August 2, 2005 2:46 PM
Great work.


Quarkmachine
Reply #2 Tuesday, August 2, 2005 2:47 PM
Awesome! So since Tiggz is finished helping The Natural Desktop shine... does that mean he's free to finish his much anticipated "Omni" suite??? Come on Tiggz!!! I have all these great widgets and no WB!!

BlueDev
Reply #3 Tuesday, August 2, 2005 5:01 PM
I have been extremely impressed with the updates. Resource use is incredibly low now, from CPU, RAM and even virtual memory. Thanks for the great update.

alphabyte
Reply #4 Tuesday, August 2, 2005 5:03 PM
Great work, indeed! Thank you for the update! Very pleasant to use!

NightTrainthedark
Reply #5 Tuesday, August 2, 2005 5:23 PM
I could use a little help with it here.. https://www.wincustomize.com/Forums.aspx?ForumID=170&AID=82584#630997

GreenReaper
Reply #6 Tuesday, August 2, 2005 5:38 PM
Glad you guys like it.

Night Train: That's not good. Hopefully we can get it sorted out. *goes to have a look*

Action_Jay
Reply #7 Tuesday, August 2, 2005 8:47 PM
aaaaah and I bought it.

GreenReaper
Reply #8 Tuesday, August 2, 2005 8:59 PM
Hope you enjoy it.

BX
Reply #9 Tuesday, August 2, 2005 10:20 PM
exceptional ..... just downloaded and it is goin really smooth ...

aaaaah and I bought it.


You have taken right step ...

Surj
Reply #10 Tuesday, August 2, 2005 10:48 PM
did the last version use the rendered images too, or is that a new thing?

GreenReaper
Reply #11 Tuesday, August 2, 2005 10:53 PM
If you mean the background to the weather globe, they're not exactly rendered, rather procedureally generated on the fly from current weather conditions. But yes, it did, although there have been improvements to the algorithms that result in a more realistic look - specifically, tweaks to the wind algorithm that makes it actually reflect the wind direction and speed, and adjustments to rain that make it less repetitive.

If you mean the wallpapers, yes, they've always been there, and always been rendered.

Sventekoz
Reply #12 Tuesday, August 2, 2005 11:30 PM
What a magic update! Well done! I love the icebergs and pengions wallpaper that came up automatically.

Can I make a suggestion for the next update - would it be possible to put the temperature in the bottom of the weather globe?

Surj
Reply #13 Wednesday, August 3, 2005 12:37 AM
i meant the wallpapers, and thanks for response green.

Sventekoz
Reply #14 Wednesday, August 3, 2005 1:35 AM
My weather globe keeps going offline. Does anyone have any ideas how I can make it stay online?

Mackintosh
Reply #15 Wednesday, August 3, 2005 4:47 AM
My only gripe with it is that the cloud movement is very jerky, it used to be quite smooth at the fastest setting. Other than that, a great improvement.

MickeM
Reply #16 Wednesday, August 3, 2005 4:55 AM
Any chance of getting the corner "gizmo" on my secondary monitor?


// MickeM

Septimus
Reply #17 Wednesday, August 3, 2005 5:32 AM
^^ Second that idea, would look much better ^^

Great update.

Chasbo
Reply #18 Wednesday, August 3, 2005 6:22 AM
Great Update! Can't believe how little resources are used! Everything works perfectly on this machine. Hey Tiggz, could you please fix IP3 now?

JohnLeonard9
Reply #19 Wednesday, August 3, 2005 7:45 AM
Does Natural Desktop hook to the screen saver? I didn't see anything under the "display|screensaver".

GreenReaper
Reply #20 Wednesday, August 3, 2005 8:39 AM
Sventekoz: Hmm. Maybe, although I wouldn't want it to be too obnoxious. Will add that to the possible features list. As for the offline thing, that's odd. Does it do that all the time when it's running, or just when it starts up? What sort of connection are you on? Any firewall that might be blocking ND's access? I think it tries to gain access to microsoft.com's website, so if that won't come up for you it might think that you're not connected, but other than that it should stay online (you can click the lightning bolt to force it to connect).

Mackintosh: Move somewhere where it's less windy, and it won't be! Actually, I guess I could add a "super-fast" option that kept it from jerking even if they were scudding across the sky . . . or perhaps you meant that it only moved once in a while, in which case your problem is the wind is too low?

MickeM: I'm not sure how good DesktopX's support is for secondary monitors, and I'd need to get one at work first, but once I do I'll take a look and see if this is possible, since it seems to be something people want.

JohnLeonard9: No, Natural Desktop is not a screen saver, and should hopefully not affect your choice of screen saver. It is designed to run all the time, as a program.

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