Search for a cool desktop

I’ve been working on a new desktop background. I wanted something similar to those Geocron clocks that show you the time anywhere in the world and whether it was daytime or nighttime. I started browsing around the internet to see what I could find.I came across something pretty cool, called XPlanet. It allows you to display the earth from any viewpoint and time. If you cause it to update, you can actually get a realistic idea of what is going on around the earth. I could change the projection to mimic the Geocron clocks if I wanted, but the default projection (the “Blue Marble” view if you follow NASA much) was really neat.

XPlanet is pretty cool but everything is driven by command line or config files, which slowed me down at first because of the learning curve. Some folks working around XPlanet have developed a front end for it called XPlanetControl (developed and maintained by Mario Franzbonenkamp) which shortens the setup time immensely and gets you going pretty quickly.

So, to start,

• Xplanet can be found at: http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/
• XplanetControl can be found at: http://www.xplanetcontrol.de/

What I really like about this is that it is a real-time representation of the earth, including the day-night terminator; the current weather and clouds; storms, if any; earthquakes in the past 20 minutes or so; and even active volcanoes. You can download some basic satellites even, like the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. Being a space groupie, I like that. More on the downloads later.