Blog: Natural Desktop, To-Do Lists

One of the projects we're working on right now that's been quite a blast is tentatively called The Natural Desktop.  It's similar in execution to Aquarium Desktop. Aquarium Desktop has done so well that it makes sense to come up with other ideas to let people make their desktop come alive. 

So in Natural Desktop, we're contracted well known composer Mason Fisher to put together natural sounds based on what time of the day it is and current weather conditions. Those of us stuck working in-doors can appreciate having a subtle background sound of morning doves and birds chirping or the occasional cicada in the background. Or if it's raining the gentle sound of rain falling.  The second part of the project, the visual part, is a wallpaper project where we're scouting around for top wallpaper authors to put together good wallpapers of scenery depending on a) the time of day and the season.  So the wallpaper would change over the course of the day based on what time of year it is.  The last part is a dynamic weather widget which blows away any weather object that's been made so far (totally animated at all times, it's really amazing).  We're hoping to get this out by the first week of August but it depends on our success in getting the wallpapers together. 

Speaking of Aquarium Desktop, we are looking at putting out booster packs for it that provide additional fish. We've gotten some new fish rendered and should be ready in the next several weeks to start making those available. They would go right along side the existing fish that make up the Aquarium desktop.

We hope to have a new ObjectDock Plus beta ready to go in the next day or two.  Tons of little glitches have been fixed, most of which I'd never noticed but users reported and got reproduced/fixed. I will try to put together a video of ObjectDock Plus in action.  The screenshots, as others can tell you, don't really tell the story.  I'm using it probably in a very unusual way.  I have a series of ONE tab docks strewn about my screen now.  Think of them as drawers. Docks can be shaped in weird ways.  So I have various drawers on my desktop that I keep various "things" in.

It gave me an idea for an ObjectDock Plugin I'd like to see.  I'd like to see a plugin that when clicked on creates a "To-Do" item. So when I click on it, a little bubble appears and I type in what I have to do. It then creates a new ObjectDock icon with its own distinct icon.  I could then move these items to my "To-Do" drawers.  When I finish that task, I can go to the drawer and drag it off and feel a bit of satisfaction watching that "Puff".  I don't know if ObjectDock supports virtual icons (i.e. items that aren't anchored to something that resides on your hard disk). But if not, that's something I think would be pretty neat.