Adding photos to your screensaver and desktop.

I like having web access to my favorite pictures from vacations etc, and the same access to friends photo feeds.  But I never look at them.  So I wanted to find a way to integrate them into my computing a little more (life of a grad student = constance computer use) I’m sure there are several ways to do this and feel free to comment if you have a better suggestion.

I downloaded Wallpaper Juggler to rotate my desktop wallpaper. You can customize how often it will change the picture, and it appears to lack annoying flashy transitions, just changes the picture (I like that).  It will also pseudo-intelligently download new images from WallpaperStock; by intelligent I mean it will get the correct size for your monitor; by pseudo- I mean if you delete an already downloaded image, it will re-download it the next time you tell it to connect.  You can add your own directories to the rotation (obviously) but so far I think they have to be images on your local machine.  I don’t see a way to add photostreams from Flickr or PicassaWeb yet, but I’m sure that can’t be to difficult to do since I also started using Google Photos Screensaver to bring personalized photos to my screensaver.  GPS lets you add photos from your local hard drive, Picasa, Flickr, and any other RSS photofeeds you want. This lets you stay up on your friends photoalbums without having to log in to Facebook (which I also like).

web searching … back to basics… finally

Google has started a new search engine called searchmash that they are using to test new concepts. Personally, one of the best features of searchmash is the absence of advertisements. That’s right, no ads. Employing a clean, simple interface, there’s also no sign of Google unless you view the privacy policy or terms of service statement. The engine appears to run using Google’s search algorithm, though I haven’t seen any verification of this — even Google seems to be keeping quiet about what the site can do except to say that it’s being used to test user interfaces etc… The features of the engine can be found here. My favorite ability of the site is a box on the right of the screen that lets you quickly change your search results from web to wikipedia, blogs, images, and videos that play on the search results page. So far I’ve been very impressed with the site.

To make searchmash your default search engine from the firefox address bar just open “about:config” and search for the “keyword.url” variable. Change this value to:

http://www.searchmash.com/search/

now when you type something into the address bar you will be taken to searchmash’s results for that phrase. You can do this with any search engine or search box on the web, because Firefox is awesome!