Natural Desktop 2006

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

http://www.naturaldesktop.com
from JoeUser Forums

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   

35,362 views 71 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Great work.
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
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!!
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
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.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Great work, indeed! Thank you for the update! Very pleasant to use!
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I could use a little help with it here.. https://www.wincustomize.com/Forums.aspx?ForumID=170&AID=82584#630997
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Glad you guys like it.

Night Train: That's not good. Hopefully we can get it sorted out. *goes to have a look*
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hope you enjoy it.
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
exceptional ..... just downloaded and it is goin really smooth ...

aaaaah and I bought it.


You have taken right step ...
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
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.
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
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?
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
My weather globe keeps going offline. Does anyone have any ideas how I can make it stay online?
Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top
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.
Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Any chance of getting the corner "gizmo" on my secondary monitor?


// MickeM
Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top
^^ Second that idea, would look much better ^^

Great update.
Reply #18 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Great Update! Can't believe how little resources are used! Everything works perfectly on this machine. Hey Tiggz, could you please fix IP3 now?
Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Does Natural Desktop hook to the screen saver? I didn't see anything under the "display|screensaver".
Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top
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.
Reply #21 from WinCustomize Forums Top
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.


Please, please, please, please, please..........
Reply #23 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Please, please, please, please, please..........

+1

Reply #24 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I've talked with Alberto, and it will probably require addition of features to DesktopX. so this is not going to be an immediate update, but it will probably be possible at some point in the future.
Reply #25 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I don't need an app to do this. talk about something I don't need!

I can change my own stuff without shelling out and blowing my money on an app to change my settings for me.

what is stardock thinking?!

and how much ram is this gonna take up! imagine running this on windows vista! talk about pushing it!