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Screensavers were meant to be protective shields that kicked in when a computer stood idle.
It’s not true anymore because screen technology has hopped ahead.
We don’t actually need them to shield our screens from phosphor burn-ins.
Screensavers today may be as useful as a brick from the Berlin Wall.
The protective use of screensavers has given way to their use as fun tools.
But we like the good.
So let’s not focus on evil cousins like spywares and malwares.
Instead let’s look at ways how to use screensavers not only entertainment tools but also as utilitarian ones.
Screensavers make a fleeting appearance, as long as a computer stands idle.
Let’s see how far the creative side of screensavers is being stretched.
A Temporary Shield To Secure Your Files
Walking away from your desk for some water-cooler chat?
Secure your box with a password protected screensaver.
The password protection applies only if you use a log-on password.
Once you know the How-to on screensavers, creating personalized screensavers is easy.
There is no lack of ideas.
How about a family photo album?
Or a chronological series of your child’s growing up photographs?
One of the best uses I have seen is a screensaver being used to display a child’s artwork.
you might set up photo feeds usingPhoto Feeds for Google Photos Screensaver.
Photo feeds are streams of images from sites that supportphoto feedsand viewable in Google Photos Screensaver.
Loopy is a Flickr based screensaver that displays the newest photos that gets uploaded on Flickr.
you could grab the photos and directly go to their Flickr photostream.
Get Digg-ing
Why not put a screensaver to do the Digg-ing for you?
Digg Labs has five real time Digg tools which can be downloaded as screensavers for both Windows and Mac.
The[NO LONGER WORKS] five toolsare “Arcs, BigSpy, Pics, Stack,andSwarm.
All of them let you visualize real time Digg information on the screensaver.
you’re gonna wanna have an internet connection and Adobe Flash 9 installed to enjoy them.
Twingly is a blog search engine, but it’s the coolTwinglyscreensaver that takes the eyeballs.
Here’s areviewwhich talks about the 24X7 blog feed streaming feature of the screensaver.
you could rotate the globe and see blog postings in different corners of the world.
The 2.09MB download is Windows only.
you might keep the background blank or set it up to display photos from picture albums.
RSSMore cycles through the feeds and displays the feeds in boxes framed against the background.
you could also choose any link and go to the source, directly from the screensaver.
MappedUpdisplays a world map of green dots.
RSS news is tracked and displayed as interchanging red and yellow location dots on the map.
Red dots are for updated feeds while yellow is a bit more passive feed.
By clicking a title, you jump to the author’s website to read the entire article.
RSS Saver is another screensaver with RSS preview and visualization features.
It displays RSS feeds one at a time.
Twitsaveris another cool photo screensaver you could try out that takes in photos from Twitter’s public timeline.
The time delay between each page load can be set by the user.
It is a small 123KB download, but it requires .NET 1.1 or later to run.
It is tested on Windows XP and Vista (only for admin account).
It displays an image of a landscape with the kind of weather you may be having.
Check out a few examples at the links below.
SOHO Screensaverfrom the European Space Agency lets you watch spectacular, almost real-time images of our Sun.
The images come from ESA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
The screensaver comes in Windows and Mac OS X versions.
Screen-o-mania has some great screensavers.
TheCities of the Earth 3D Screensaverfinds popular mention.
The screensaver shows highlighted cities with information about its population and country names.
And it’s possible for you to add your own city.
Check out this simple screensaver which tries to promotehand hygieneusing a screensaver.
And let me end with a brief mention ofNational Geographic Custom Screensaverswhich inspire care for the ecosystem.
It’s available for both Windows and Mac.
Have you put screensavers to out of the ordinary uses lately?
Let us pick up some more ideas.
