Filed under: Cult of Mac, Mods
TUAW Desktops of the week for 9/10/06
Being that this is the first official TUAW Desktops series roundup post, we couldn't force ourselves to chose just one. You readers have found some pretty creative uses for your desktops, and our new TUAW Desktops Flickr group is shining proof. As a result, we decided that in order to get this party started, we should round up a few desktops from different ends of the spectrum; some busy, some minimal, and some in a class of their own. First up is quite possibly the busiest Dashboard we've ever seen from Flickr user Z6p6tist6, pictured above. We're sure Apple would be proud of the little bit of business mixed with a little bit of play that's happening on this desktop.
Read on for a few more desktops that made this week's roundup, and be sure to submit your own unique take on the desktop to our TUAW Desktops Flickr pool, as we'll round them up in this new series each weekend.
Next is a really interesting way of making a desktop useful from Gabriel Radic. Layered Desktop (a darker version here) is meant to be downloaded and used as an actual desktop wallpaper, and the idea is that the 'real world' desktop resemblance is meant to be used as an organizational tool for any files and folders lying around on your desktop. Gabriel lists some tips with these two images for implementing this clever use of screen space.
Last but by no means least is ghettochild's use of a set of icons at deviantART called Reflections that allows users to essentially swap out all their dock icons for text-based equivalents. This, along with the wallpaper and small iTunes controller via Butler (a tool similar to Quicksilver from Paul Maurer, the original author of Textpander) creates a refreshingly minimal yet functional Mac OS X desktop experience.
And there you have it; our first roundup of your Mac OS X desktops. There are already over 200 more creative, cool and interesting submissions in our Flickr group like the ones we've highlighted here. The final image to the right by Flickr user constantin82 receives a personal thumbs up from me, due to the awesome use of the call sign of the Laughing Man, a character from the Ghost in the Shell TV series airing (at least in the U.S.) on [adult swim].If you'd like to see your unique desktop featured here on TUAW, submit it to the TUAW Desktops Flickr group and we'll round up the best submissions each weekend.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rob Martinez(Sheir) said 11:12PM on 9-10-2006
Rather than register at Flickr I figured I'd just toss a link here. The art is from www.vhm-design.com and I found the skin at InterfaceLIFT.
http://e.1asphost.com/TripleDestiny/Fullscreen_1.png
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Rob Martinez(Sheir) said 11:15PM on 9-10-2006
Ahh, that link doesn't work 50% of the time, so:
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/2961/fullscreen1nl7.png
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Cutter said 11:58PM on 9-10-2006
Rob Martinez, could you provide a link to that killer looking wallpaper? And your desktop and the rest of the theaming looks great.
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Guillermo said 12:55AM on 9-11-2006
Ooh, I love ghettochild's icons. I'm gonna make some of my own right now.
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MrBlank said 1:07AM on 9-11-2006
What's that widget with Calvin and Hobbes?? It's in the first desktop above. I want that.
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Geoff said 1:11AM on 9-11-2006
I want to know where ghettochild got his wallpaper, desktop icons, and got butler's itunes window transparent and if ichat is runnign through butler also. This desktop is AMAZING.
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Rob Martinez(Sheir) said 1:16AM on 9-11-2006
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/23940546/
The artist has other amazing stuff at his website, you should really give it a look.
http://www.vhm-design.com
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Deedas said 2:27AM on 9-11-2006
LOL that's is not the busiest dashboard I've seen by a long shot. My dashboard is crammed with widgets, so much so that you can't really see the actual desktop in the background.
That's also a shocking contrast to my desktop which has nothing but the hdd icon and a folder with RAW files I'm working with atm (when I say nothing I really mean it, no dock or menu bar.)
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Adrian vG said 4:26AM on 9-11-2006
Imagine all that precious RAM wasted on all those widgets! Why not let most of 'em reside in the widget "dock"?
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Lesly said 4:47AM on 9-11-2006
@5: That is 'Say Cheese'
you can find it on www.dashboardwidgets.com
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Eric said 6:59AM on 9-11-2006
Yikes! Who has that much memory for all those widgets? I have only a modest amount on my Dasboard and it sucks up 25-50% of my memory. (hence, I "killall Dock" when I'm done using it...) But still, lookin good- I just wish I could pull it off! (yes I'm stuck in PPC-land still due to lack of funds, I know that's partly why)
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Colin said 11:47AM on 9-11-2006
I'm curious about the Butler/iTunes controller. Is there a way to run that as a standalone, or is there an equivalent for QS? I think it'd be a bit overkill to add Butler to my system for just that, and I'm far too used to QS to want to totally switch, but I do love that mini-controller...
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Sean said 2:31PM on 9-11-2006
I second the request for the comic strip widget from the first screenshot. I was using iComic for a while and got rid of it because the dashboard migration didn't go smoothly. The app is quite buggy. So what is it?
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