10 Daily Things

Emerge Desktop is a replacement windows “shell” (the desktop environment normally provided by Windows Explorer) for Windows 2000 and above. In order to replace Windows Explorer as a shell, it provides a system tray (the area that collects the icons collected at the lower right corner in Explorer), called emergeTray. It will also provide access to the users programs (normally accessed with the windows “start” button) via a right-click on the desktop, via emergeCore.

Emerge Desktop is implemented with MinGW which is an OpenSource implementation of the GNU C compiler and utilities. Up to this point, closed source commercial projects have mainly been used (Microsoft Visual C++, Borland Delphi) to develop alternate shells as they use proprietary Microsoft API features. With Microsoft releasing more detailed information about these API calls, the MinGW win32api is now quite complete. Additionally, several web sites on the internet have started to include documentation and code that illustrate how to access and use these functions.

Emerge Desktop has an open API, which allows for applets to be coded with compilers other than MinGW if someone wishes to do so. Is written in C++, primarily developed with MinGW and is licensed as OpenSource (under the GPL). All the source is available in Subversion at Sourceforge. Emerge Desktop can be developed using Code::Blocks, an IDE for MinGW.

From a design point of view, Emerge Desktop applets are capable of being run as both standalone as well as being integrated. In order for Emerge Desktop applets to communicate with each other, emergeCore must be running. Without emergeCore, each applet will run independently (if, for example, you wish to use them in conjunction with another desktop shell).

Download Emerge Desktop >>>

Istanbul is one of the more widely used desktop recording software out there. You can download Istanbul from here. Debian and Fedora users should be able to install it from the repo. Istanbul has a very simple interface (or lack of).

When you first start up Istanbul, you will see a small red button on your desktop panel.

Right click on the button and it will give you options and ways to record you desktop by window you choose or desktop area you select by mouse.

You can stop recording you session by left clicking on the record button, and it will prompt you save the screencast:

By default, Istanbul saves your video in Ogg format.

Read about 4 more screencash software for Linux >>>

BumpTop is a fresh and engaging new way to interact with your computer desktop. You can pile and toss documents like on a real desk. Break free from the rigid and mechanical style of standard point-and-click desktops. Interact by pushing, pulling and piling documents with elegant, self revealing gestures. BumpTop’s stunning interface makes clever use of 3D presentation and smooth physics-based animations for an engaging, vivid user experience.

BumpTop is not publicly available just yet, because it is in private beta at the moment, but you can sign up for the mailing list to be the first to try it.

[BumpTop]

DisplayFusion is a fantastic (and free) new application that can make your dual monitor (or triple monitor or more) life much, much easier! From allowing you to use a different wallpaper on each monitor, to integrating with Flickr for image searching, to providing hotkeys for managing your application windows.

Here are just a few of the things you can do with DisplayFusion:

• Set a different desktop background on each monitor (either a picture or solid colour)
• Set a desktop background that spans all monitors (either a picture or colour)
• Integrated Flickr image search & download
• Drag maximized windows by their title bars to other screens
• Move windows to the next monitor
• Move windows to the next monitor and maximize them
• Move windows to centre of the screen
• Move windows to centre of the screen and size it to 75% of the work area
• Tile windows along the top, bottom, left or right side
• Maximize windows so that they span all monitors

Download DisplayFusion >>>

Check out this concept laptop dock from designer Yong-Seong Kim.

His go-anywhere desktop docking solution calls for a large slot behind the LCD display. This is where you slide your notebook in, allowing you to access all its information from a desktop form factor. The notebook’s screen also becomes your second display, in portrait mode of course. It’s an interesting concept but somehow, this makes as much sense as the Palm Folio.

[VIA] and [VIA]