How to set RSS feeds as your desktop

Filed under: Design, Developer, Fun, Windows, Productivity, Web services

How to set RSS feeds as your desktop

by Chris Gilmer Jul 6th 2007

Want the top news you're interested in without opening up a browser. Well there is a way to do it in just six steps!

Toshibi over at Instructables, (a place where you can share with others what you make, and teach them how to make it) has figured out how to turn his desktop into a constantly updating RSS bulletin board. Steps include:

Creating an HTML document with all the appropriate rows and columns
META tag refresh tag to have the page refresh every 10 minutes
Create HTML feeds with FEED2JS
Save file on computer
Set the HTML page as a LIVE web desktop (correct me if I'm wrong but this feature might only work in XP)

There you have it, all the fresh content you could ever want. Thankfully, Toshihi also proves the full source files to anyone that wants to hack around with it and easily built their own.

Tags: desktop, feeds, html, instructables, live desktop, LiveDesktop, rss, toshibi, wallpaper, xp

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Sam said 8:31PM on 7-06-2007

Theres active desktop in win2k for web content

Peter said 9:33PM on 7-06-2007

I just don't see the point. The moment I need to get any work done, it covers my desktop. Who spends that much time staring at their windowless desktop?

Colin said 11:27PM on 7-06-2007

@Peter:
I think it depends whether you spend any time looking at your desktop. This is one of those niche things that could potentially be useful. RSS readers save us from having to open up each individual site to check for new news; this saves me from having to open up my reader. If I have five minutes free, I can hit the "Show Desktop" button, scan the headlines, and decide if there's anything I want to read.

anotherhandle said 4:31AM on 7-07-2007

you can do the same thing (and more) with Samurize

http:adminviet.net said 7:14AM on 7-07-2007

http://adminviet.net just don't see the point. The moment I need to get any work done, it covers my desktop. Who spends that much time staring at their windowless desktop

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