MSN screensaver displays news headlines, weather, photos

Filed under: Fun, Utilities, Windows, Microsoft, Freeware

MSN screensaver displays news headlines, weather, photos

by Marc Perton Sep 1st 2005

Remember Pointcast? No? Well, it was a service unveiled in the 90s that provided news, weather and other info via a screensaver. An early entrant into the "push" data field, it was doomed by being too processor and memory intensive to really be useful. But the concept of information being delivered by screensaver lives on, in products like Apple's RSS screensaver, and now in the MSN screensaver, which is available as a free beta download. The screen saver allows you to select from canned feeds, and can also display any RSS feed as a screen saver. You can also use any photos as background graphics. For a beta, this one has a pretty slick look, with feeds appearing in widget-style boxes. Of course, there are plenty of embedded plugs for MSN services, but that's to be expected, right?

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

View more Time Wasters