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Natural Desktop 2006

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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   

35,363 views 71 replies
Reply #26 from WinCustomize Forums Top
They're thinking you don't quite understand what Natural Desktop is.

First of all, you're getting the wallpapers that it bundles. You could argue that you could get wallpapers from anywhere, but these are particularly good ones from Digital Blasphemy, who only gives a few away - the rest you have to pay for. Buy Natural Desktop, and you get plenty of them right off the bat.

Secondly, you've got the weather. Over 180 countries to choose from, and literally thousands of weather stations to pick. Want to know what it's like in Hawaii? How about Moscow? You can. Even better, in the US you can specify your location with just a zip code and get the nine closest stations to choose from, and there's both one-day hourly detailed forecasts in most areas, as well as five-day general forecasts in all areas.

Thirdly, you're getting the dynamically-generated animations. And they're darn nice to look at. Seriously. Screenshots do not do them justice.

Then there's the background sound effects, the customizable colours for each season, the links to radar, satellite, and infra-red overhead maps . . . but I digress.

You're not just buying an app to change your settings. You're buying an experience. Plenty of people consider it a very good experience. And for less than the price of a large pizza at Domino's - and even less for OD subscribers - what's to lose?

As for memory, it actively takes about 9.5Mb while running, 12 if the weather panel is open, 6 or less if it's minimised to the side. That's probably not going to break the bank, and it's way, way less than iTunes, while being twice as cool.
Reply #27 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Does anyone else see some oddities when ND is used with the virtual desktops in the OD/CC? When I have 4 VDs set up, anything other than the first desktop only shows the weather background, not the fancy skin around the weather background.

Also, multiple monitor support would be great! Maybe it isn't in demand much now, but as the monitor prices keep dropping and more and more cards have 2 video outs (analog and digital) it'll get more and more popular.
ObjectDock - Access shortcuts and frequently used applications from an animated dock.
Reply #29 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Of course it's not hot - it's cool!
Reply #30 from WinCustomize Forums Top
One more thing that's been bothering me since forever...why oh why when the conditions are "fine" there are still clouds being rendered? It's kind of annoying
Reply #31 from WinCustomize Forums Top
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.


Its not related to DX if I make it "small" i can drag it to my secondary monitor and it works fine, only the "big one" is locked in plase and cannot be moved thus canot be put on the secondary monitor. (BTW if I move the small one it still endsup on the primary monitor whenI make it big)

// MickeM
Reply #32 from WinCustomize Forums Top
No, it is related to DX, because it's not possible to figure out where the available working space of secondary monitors are through DesktopX, only the main one. There's the possibility of making it just free-floating, although I would be somewhat worried about people changing their display settings and finding that they'd lost Natural Desktop (this would again be easier to check if DX had full multi-monitor detection).
Reply #33 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Anyone know where you can report bugs?
(in lack of a forum I'll drop them here)

1, units cannot be changed (still get Farenheit after setting "metric")
2, Crashes on occation (for instance just now when I tried to enter the Sound menu)
3, The "change every X minutes doesn't seem to do anything at all)
4, The "forcast" says "loading" (as Im not in the US and it doesn't support us: *hint* weather.com)
5, The "data" in the today screen can be moved if you drag the "wind-arrow"
6, The background doesn't seem to change throughtout the day (ie. is the same if I just leave everything)
7, If I click the "IR" i endup over australia/japan and last time I checked sweden was nowhere nere there. (its in europe if anyone doesn't know
8, Map only shows a map (but parhaps thats the intent, the itnerface suggests it should show a dor for your location or similar)
9, Sound doesn't seem to work correctly (only get sound after I click the Custom button)
10, If I set everything to "dynamic" I doesn't seem to get any sound? (untill after I have change the options to custom/back in which case I get the same sound as for the custom one)
11, did I say I crashed again, this time I just clicked "custom"
12, Drop-down boxes doesn't show untill you click the window (after having clicked the button for the corresponding option)
13, None of the options (under customized) seem to actually work. but perhaps I have missed how this works.

BTW, My assumption was that this app would;
1, change my wallpaper according to the time of day/year thus change the wallpaper a few times over the cource of the day to reflect what I would find outside the "window". (I had aloso hoped it would have a few so I would see different ones on regular intervalls, but thus far I have only seen 4 different wallpapers.)
2, Play sounds corresponding to wheater and such (ie. when it starts to rain it should do the same). That the sounds would sound "Natural" not be the same 5 second sample looped over and over and over.
3, Show a wheater forcast (similar to all other wheater applets based on wheater.com or similar)

But perhaps I have missed something/missinterpreted something

// MickeM
Reply #34 from WinCustomize Forums Top
MickeM: There has been a problem reported for users that have commas in their numbers rather than decimal points. VBScript is being troublesome and not reading numbers correctly when using this system locale, so longitudes get interpreted as impossible numbers. For example, 19.0 gets turned into 190! The radar then says "OK, well it's not in any of these zones, so the only place it could be is in oceania", and you end up with that, and the other problems that you have mentioned.

We are actively looking at fixing this problem, but want to be sure that we all the cases where this is causing problems before making a release. As a workaround, please try setting Control Panel/Regional and Language Options/Advanced to English (or another language that has dots rather than commas) as this has reportedly helped for others.

I'm sorry this is affecting you - we obviously need to open a european branch!
Reply #35 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Humm, since Im a developer (and M$ has (had, havent actually tried in ages) the same problems with their MIDL compiler) im running on US locale:

Number: 123,456,789.00
Currency: $123,456,789.00
Short Time: 8:43:52 PM
Short Date: 8/4/2005
Date: Thursday, August 04, 2005

But perhaps something else is affecting this (know for instance that IE has teir own options for this) ?

Anyways, thanx for the quick reply and hope you manage to iron out the bugs then

// MickeM
Reply #36 from WinCustomize Forums Top
You're running in US locale, but do you have the "non-unicode applications" option set to Swedish? That appears to be the thing that really affects it.

The current problem I'm working on is due to the dates of daylight savings time, which is the really critical one - if it can't find out the time, it doesn't correctly process the rest, and so you don't get the weather updated. The worse thing is, to fix it, I have to actually use US date format (rather than (8 March, I have to use 03/08, because March doesn't exist in Sweden, but it always accept US dates). Crazy!

I have the buttons showing on the map now, too. Things are looking up, now the problem can be duplicated.

(note: I've not duplicated any actual crashes - if these still occur after the next update, please report them with any details you can collect)
Reply #37 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hmm. Maybe, although I wouldn't want it to be too obnoxious.


I completely agree - perhaps just a small, even semi-transluscent, temp readout in the bottom of the display. The current option takes up quite a bit of real-estate.

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?


Yep - all the time. I've given it complete access to the 'net in my firewall, and it works just fine with the proxy authentication. That is, it asks for the password and remembers it during the day.
Reply #38 from WinCustomize Forums Top
This thing would really be revolutionary if it gradually changed the desktop, like the sun slowly moving from east to west, stars moving, trees blowing, etc. That would be very, very cool. I know I'd pay some duckies for that.
Reply #39 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It would be. Unfortunately we're not quite at the point where that's entirely feasible, although some parts certainly are.
Reply #40 from WinCustomize Forums Top
That would be amazing Rich. But don't discount just how cool the little window in the corner is. Screenshots don't do it justice. The sun and moon both gradually move across the sky according to the sunrise/set of your specific location, clouds gently or swiftly go by, based on your own area's weather. Stars flicker in the night sky, rain washes down, lightning flashes, snow flakes gently cascade down. . .

It really is a cool thing.
Reply #41 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I think the snowflakes could be improved, personally. Maybe for a winter edition.
Reply #42 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I think the snowflakes could be improved, personally.


It has been quite a few months since I have seen them .
Reply #43 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Great update! Thanks for fixing the persistant bug where ND and ATI All-In-Wonder TV would not play nice together. Since this is fixed, ND now has a regular spot on my desktop!!!
Reply #44 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It is? Excellent! I think a lot of the improvement is due to the use of DX 3 - it really is a lot tighter than previous versions.

For those of you who have had severe problems due to not being English - my apologies, and a fix is in the pipeline.
Reply #45 from WinCustomize Forums Top
4, The "forcast" says "loading" (as Im not in the US and it doesn't support us: *hint* weather.com)


Once again it sucks to be in Europe, doesn't it? I feel your pain, brother (*cough* Warsaw, Poland *cough*)
Reply #46 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Ironically I was in Europe when writing most of the new version of Natural Desktop - the country which currently has the EU Presidency, no less.
Reply #47 from WinCustomize Forums Top
This thing would really be revolutionary if it gradually changed the desktop, like the sun slowly moving from east to west, stars moving, trees blowing, etc. That would be very, very cool. I know I'd pay some duckies for that.


Aladdin Systems (now Allume Systems) had a product called Sundial (PC and Mac) that did what you describe. For a while my team was stuck deep inside a building and we ran it to get a sense of time passing.

Abandonware I guess. Sigh

A review: Link
Reply #48 from WinCustomize Forums Top
If you've had problems with things just not working (european users, particularly), please try the most recent beta build.
Reply #49 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Works like a charm for me (notice that I dont have a .se version of windows at home, only at work so I cannot try it "fully" till I get back from my vacation in a few weeeks)
But I had the same problems at home on a .us windows running "Swedish non-unicode locale" (and now that works fine, so it seems to work alot better.
I havent had any crashes and also the "customized" options are "snappier" (faster) so something has been "fixed" there.

I also figured out why none of the "options" "did anything".
I thought I could set the current "simulated" weather with them, but I figured out I can only set the resulting "image" and such. Is there a way to set the simlutaed weather (or could you add that)?
I mean somwtimes I want to have a winter night, when it is actually summer. And I will defenetly be wanting the opposit during winter...

Also the dual-monitor thingy isn't fixed either but you probably know that. It is actually slightly "worse" as I can no longer drag the mini-small widget to my secondary monitor.


Thanx for a nice update

// MickeM
Reply #50 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well, dunno what you did, but it doesn't work here at all. Just sits in the corner frozen and eats up resources. Moreover, I can't kill it even with the task manager, have to reboot to get rid of the bastard.