How to make a super-cool satellite picture background for your PC, complete with accurate cloud cover and sunlight position!

Today I'm going to show you how to easily create a super cool desktop like this, where an image of the earth (supplied by NASA) updates every 3 hours to accurately reflect the suns position and the weather!

Pretty neat eh? It's cool to watch the suns passage across the earth and have a graphical representation of the global weather situation. All you need are two programs, called SeqDownload and Automatic Wallpaper Changer. There is a program that supposedly does all this in one but I found it somewhat clunky to be honest... however it's called xPlanet (there is a Windows version created by Markus Korner, http://www.mkoe.de/content/view/17/40/). Anyway SeqDownload can be downloaded from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/seqdownload.html and AWC from from http://awc.smurphy.co.uk/. I'll include some screenshots of the relevant settings required, starting with SeqDownload.

This is the main SeqDownload page with your active download on it:

...and the main settings for the download:

Notice that the URL/file name has been set to http://static.die.net/earth/mercator/1600.jpg which is the World Sunlight Map page, kindly created by the good folks at die.net (http://www.die.net/earth/how.html), and that the download folder directory is C:\Users\user\Pictures. You should also set it to download fairly regularly so it's accurate. Make sure to change the "start download from" to "continue until" for a decent interval, and don't forget to change the "Downloaded Filename" to "Save to the same filename every time:" or it won't work. Next you need to set it to display the automatically downloaded file as your background, so start up Automatic Wallpaper Changer (http://awc.smurphy.co.uk/download.htm):

You need to start by clicking "Add file(s)":

Select the 1600.jpg file now being downloaded by Seq. Next set up the preferences:

Notice how it's set to automatically start on Windows log in and without a splash screen. You should also change the time interval for download to something short so it is accurate. Luckily you can also change some very interesting options in the "image effects" section, such as altering the lighting, contrast and gamma as well as changing the sharpness of the image. One quite cool setting indeed is that of the "transparency" option, in this click "Alpha Blended Fade", then select Right to Left, (or Left to Right) and it will darken the relevant side with a black shade making it much easier to see the outline of any icons there.

Pretty nifty eh! Technology in action. You can also set it to download the image showing the spherical earth as it would appear from outer space, again updated for sunlight and weather from http://www.die.net/earth/hemisphere.html, or indeed any other image that regulary updates.