EarthDesk

Seeing the cycle of day and night sweeping over the Earth is a beautiful thing. EarthDesk is an animated wallpaper that shows the world map with realistic display of lit and dark areas.

The app replaces your static wallpaper with the Earth map, complete with city illumination and near real-time cloud coverage. The program can easily be configured through a tiled-based interface.

Thus, EarthDesk can run at system startup, automatically launching when you log into your account. If you quit the app, it can restore the original desktop picture.

The app also comes with over 10,000 cities from all over the world that you can use to center the map. These can be selected by ticking a simple checkbox. You can then center the map after one of the selected cities, rather than the Greenwich Meridian or any other option.

EarthDesk can also display near-real-time satellite images of cloud formations all over the world. The program updates the high-resolution cloud pictures every three hours, while the low-res clouds are downloaded every six hours.

You can fiddle with the clouds’ intensity, contrast and update frequency. Other map rendering options are also available. You can choose an image type (Living Earth Satellite, Natural Color, Political and Shaded Relief), as well as a type of shading (Real Moonlight, Full Moonlight, Variable Moonlight, No Moonlight or Daylight only).

EarthDesk is a nice program that can keep you entertained, since it’s always changing. Inexperienced users should have no problems installing and customizing this app, thanks to the intuitive layout.