patndoris.com

I had never really been one to change my desktop wallpaper often. Generally, when I did, it was something obscure (and it usually lived on my desktop for ages at a time). But recently, I saw the NatGeo Wallpaper Downloader and decided to give it a spin. While it’s probably not possible to grab every single wallpaper from the site lock, stock and barrel - this simple application lets you download more than 1000 of the best wallpapers from the National Geographic website with ease.

This is a one shot deal - if you want to grab more of them later (…say for the upcoming year) you’ll have to run it again and filter to the new group you want.  You don’t have any real control over which photos it downloads beyond the year and pixels (on some years).  For the OCD among us, you may find that if you have specific preferences for wallpaper pictures, browsing the site directly and downloading them individually is more to your liking. With the downloader, you won’t know what images you get until you’ve done the download. Truth be told, there are some amazing images in there - but there are some I’m thinking I may prune out as time goes on. There are stunning photos of everything from lightening to hippos…people to space…meh - you get the idea…wide variety of images.

I will warn you the images are good quality and this is not a fast download.  Plan on allowing some background running time for it to complete.  If you are on metered internet usage it might not be your best option. Or, maybe you want to do just a year by year selection when you know you have enough download usage left. While you are alerted to some measure of progress (I believe year by year) as it churns meticulously through it’s task, I’m afraid the overall progress information is limited and somewhat frustrating.  I also don’t like images taking up my entire desktop, so I then resized all of them (batch operation with Photoshop - I’m not quite OCD enough to do them one by one) so they could be centered nicely on my Windows 7 desktop without interfering with my highly symmetrical and OCD arranged desktop icons.

Windows 7 ships with a nice desktop slideshow built in. I can’t remember in Vista (memory loss happens in old age you know), but I know you could do a screensaver slideshow (OK so I saw that in a Google search, I really didn’t actually remember it) and I suspect the desktop one may be there as well. XP however does not have the desktop slideshow built in.  For that you’ll need the XP Only  Microsoft Power Toy - Wallpaper Changer.  It’s a free download from Microsoft. It’s reasonably self explanatory - but Worldstart.com does have a nice write up on it (which includes a download link as well.)

I had quite a few Windows 7 wallpapers I’ve downloaded, as well as a few miscellaneous ones here and there. I’ve put them all into one nice big overstuffed folder (95 MB of background images and counting) and now watch my photos randomly change every 10 minutes or so. I don’t use a screensaver, so the desktop wallpaper is perfect for me.  The NatGeo Downloader was a useful app that did just what it said it would. It’s now provided me with some very nice images upon which to cast my gaze when I’m trying to think up things to blog about.  I do still suggest taking a gander at the National Geographic website when you have time. I just think it’s an amazing sight overall. Of course, I’ve always been a fan of National Geographic so I guess I’m not entirely impartial - but it’s a family friendly site full of useful info and nice pictures - so there!