DesktopEarth Pro
I got some money for Christmas, and naturally my geek-girl thoughts turned to software. I can’t quite recall how I came across it, but I found DesktopEarth Pro, and I was immediately blown away by it. I tried it out for a couple of days, then blew some of my Christmas money on itâmoney well spent, I think. At its most basic level, it’s a very fancy screen saver, which allows you to display an image of the earth, overlaid with updated images of the real cloud pattern, and the pattern of night and day across the globe. You can see my desktop above, with the elevation map, and showing the real cloud cover and circadian period as of about 1700h GMT today. Of course, you really need a more or less full-time broadband connection to make the best use of this application.
The blue disc at the upper right of the screen is an image of the sun at the extreme ultraviolet end of the spectrum, which is updated every day with the live image captured by the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope 171 (EIT 171). I have to confess that I chose this wavelength because it looked cool (literally and metaphorically). The pale disc below that is the moon (which should be fairly obvious even in a small image), and that also gets updated with the current phase of the moon every day. This also means that I can solve my dilemma of whether to display the moon phase or the date on iPulse, which is the final disc on the right, and nothing to do with DesktopEarth.
One side effect is that I’m now reluctant to leave stuff on the desktop as littering most of Asia with files seems a bit disrespectful. It’s quite calming looking at the image periodically over the the day. You can see night come and the city lights start to twinkle in Australasia and Asia, and then watch dawn come to the east coast of the Americas. On the day I installed it, there was a wonderful swirly depression over the UK, which almost made it worth putting up with the wind and torrential rain. It’s pretty and informative, which is exactly what I like.
Whenever I look a the image (which I do frequently, by hitting the ‘Show desktop’ Exposé keystroke), the song “Hello Earth” by Kate Bush1 comes into my mind:
Watching storms Start to form Over America. Can’t do anything. Just watch them swing With the wind Out to sea.
1 If I’m ever lucky enough to get into space, this will be the track I takeâmy ‘Outer Space Disc’ (obviously, you only get to choose one for reasons of weight reduction!)âand play as I look back on the tiny blue Earth, hanging in space.
1
There's a similar but different OS X application called earthbrowser that's pretty spiffy too. My favorite feature of that one (perhaps DesktopEarth has this too?) is the integration of hundreds of webcams all over the earth. Thought that might interest you as well.
by Brian @ 13/01/2004 9:01 pm • Permalink •
2
Iâve added your blog to my bookmarks since new year (or so) and Iâve been checking it every day.
Ehm. Wow. Itâs a very nice site with absolutely interesting content. Alright, enough sweet talk. I have to visit the website of DesktopEarth Pro and see whether I can download a trial!
Cheers,
Adam----- my first thought is blink but it IS cool, i gotta admit...
by stacy @ 13/01/2004 9:02 pm • Permalink •
3
Oops. I didn't realize the MT commenting feature would strip my html. Here's the url for earthbrowser: http://www.earthbrowser.com/
(A bit obvious perhaps, but there you go...)
by Brian @ 13/01/2004 9:02 pm • Permalink •
4
Have they fixed the annoying progress bar dialog boxes that popup every time the application updates the moon, sun, image, etc.? I registered the app, then turned it off after about two weeks because it was gratuitous and pointless, and the tech support were completely useless. I seem to recall that the best advice they gave me for turning off the dialogs completely was,"Click the X like usual."
If they've fixed that, I'll turn it back on and update.
by Art Taylor @ 13/01/2004 11:01 pm • Permalink •
5
Adam: Thanks! They do a fully functional trial (which just has a URL placed in the middle of the image.
stacy: Yep, it is pretty cool.
Brian: That's a nice feature. There are actually several apps like this with the name 'Earth' in there somewhere, and they all have some good features. I think that it was the cloud map and setting the image as the desktop automatically that sold me on this one. EarthBrowser is also twice the price (but seems to have twice the features)
Art Taylor: The progress bar does still pop up, but I can't say that it annoys me that much. I can just close it or put it behind the frontmost window. I actually find it useful to be notified when its downloading new data, as my net connection is a bit slower while it's in progress. As for 'gratuitous and pointless', well - it certainly isn't vital for the running of my Mac, but I enjoy the information it provides, so I don't find it pointless.
by bsag @ 14/01/2004 8:01 am • Permalink •
6
You could use it to remember where on your desktop your files are. "Where did I leave that _____ I was in the middle of? Oh, yes, on Moscow."
by Caitlin @ 14/01/2004 10:01 am • Permalink •
7
I still use xEarth, as we've blethered about before on here. But I'll be having a look at this one too. God, I'm geeky. sigh
by Lyle @ 14/01/2004 10:01 am • Permalink •
8
And of course it's also a handy reminder of what planet you are currently inhabiting, you know - the one that people without imagination refer to as "the real world".
"gratuitous and pointless" - huh!
by ThoughtBadger @ 14/01/2004 2:02 pm • Permalink •
9
Sorry, I reread that comment and I used pronouns a little too liberally. The "gratuitous and pointless" referred to the progress bars, which are just distracting while trying to work. I loved the app, but being reminded every half hour or so that it was there while I was trying to get other things done was not a big bucket of joy.
by Art Taylor @ 14/01/2004 3:01 pm • Permalink •
10
Lyle: Ah, I knew someone had mentioned something like that, but I couldn't find the reference to it (does anyone know how to get Movabletype's search box to include the comments too?) - thanks for reminding me! xEarth has the great advantage of being free (in both the beer and speech senses), but I think that the graphics are nicer on DesktopEarthPro.
Caitlin: Hehe. :-D
by bsag @ 14/01/2004 10:01 pm • Permalink •
11
A Renewed Sense of Wonder One of the points that Thomas Homer-Dixon makes in his book The Ingenuity Gap - and it's a very good point in my mind - is that we in the urbanized world, having lost our connection to the Earth and...
by Counterfactually Speaking @ 15/01/2004 2:01 am • Permalink •
12
Wow, that's an impressive data-rich backdrop for your work! Not quite "hold infinity in the palm of your hand" but perhaps "the world at your fingertips".
You'll laugh at the contrast with my desktop. Which gives me an idea for a weblog post...
by pete @ 15/01/2004 9:01 pm • Permalink •
13
The cloud map is a wonderful feature. That's what orginally caught my attention about the other earth visualizer thingy. But, yes, being able to make it your desktop is very cool. Back when I was staring at Unix machines all day I used to run xEarth as well, so this is a bit like coming full circle, but with more yumminess thrown into the bargain.
by Brian @ 16/01/2004 2:01 am • Permalink •
14
pete: Yes, let's see your desktop! I don't know about a backdrop for my work, but it certainly gives me something to do when I'm pretending to work
Brian: Yumminess is certainly the word!
by bsag @ 17/01/2004 6:01 pm • Permalink •
15
waao! looks really cool. looks more like an ocean under storm
by cam @ 07/04/2008 7:59 pm • Permalink •
Page 1 of 1 pages