If you’re interested in computer desktop software, or how metaphors apply in software interfaces, or in “cool” programs that wow your friends … you should check out BumpTop. The bad news is all they have is a slick little demo video, and unless someone hires them to continue working on it, there’s no guarantee this will ever be a product. The good news is that they have a mailing list you can sign up for if you’re interested in beta testing it.

Honestly, I think the icons need some work in this, they’re ridiculously generic in the version he’s showing off in the video (as in: no way to tell one PDF from another PDF), which for me would completely break the program. I would want a faster easier way to “open” the piles without waiting for the pile plugin menu to show up (and I’ve never been a big fan of fisheye menus). That said … the way the drag-select works, and animations for draggins groups of files, and the stacking and pile plugins … are very cool, and just the sort of stuff I’d like to add to the desktop.

DeskOps is my latest home experiment … it’s a desktop application that allows you to view multiple folders as “bands” on the desktop, but it doesn’t force you to go to the desktop to access these bands. You can use it as a desktop, as an app launcher, for quick access to downloaded files, or to project folders that you’re working on … Think of it as a desktop, but with organization and quick hotkey access.

Just to be clear, this is a standalone app, and although it’s based a litte bit on the geoShell look, it’s actually a .NET application which requires the .NET 2 Framework… (more…)

Well, if you’ve been following along on my series of posts about my fantasy GeoShell/Desktop/Task Management development projects, you’ll probably be a bit dissapointed by this screenshot but that can’t be helped.

The bottom line is, I really still want to do all the things I’ve talked about over the last year or two, but I’m still bogged down in real life and not making a whole lot of progress. However, I have whipped together a first-draft of my desktop application …

Have a look at that screenshot, and let me know what you think. Imagine you can have as many of those little semi-transparent windows as you want (ignore Miranda and Rainlendar in the corners). Imagine they gravitate to each other when you move them around, and you can stack them, and they snap-to each others edges. They also collapse to their title bars when you want them to, and if they’re stacked, when you collapse/un-collapse them, they act something like the Outlook sidebar, so they all stay visible. Basically, the intent is that you could leave these on your desktop, and summon one or all of them to the top at the press of a hotkey to launch applications, or just copy files to a work directory.

In the screenshot, the icons come from plugins, so you can have any kinds of items you want … the ones in the screenshot all come from a FolderList plugin, so they represent files/folders and you can drag-and-drop things to/from them (and onto the app shortcuts) at will… but you could easily have a ToDo list, or an RSS feed or something …

I have so many things on my various To-Do lists I shall most likely never dig out. I thought I’d post a snapshot of this list I’ve been keeping in my personal TiddlyWiki pad for GeoShell (feel free to whine if your favorite bug is missing, or to pick up and do any of these and let me know ). I love TiddlyWiki, but I do wish I could be more organized with my To-Do lists (say, keep them on my Palm and keep them synch’d) Actually, I should put this particular list on a tracker in SourceForge for others to work on, but not many people are working on anything GeoShell related lately, and it’s much easier to keep them in my TiddlyWiki…

Things to do for GeoShell:

• Investigate Trac
• Clean up CVS project files for VC++8
• Create working MSBuild solution which works with the free .NET Framework 2 SDK (note dependence on PSDK)
• Merge Unicode sources from fei ling

Installer Problems

• Remove hotkeys for my menus
• Check for hotkeys set to Ctrl+Alt because it’s the same as AltGr which is used in foreign languages.
• Remove all hard-coded paths

Config App

• Follow this thread

Bugs

• ‘‘Hide Taskbar’‘ suddenly fails when I launch Thunderbird
• System Tray fix for Google Talk
• Lets not forget the menus, they’re still broken.

Plugin Ideas

• GeoVol2
  • Ability to select a sound-card and “channel”
  • An option to show the slider parallel to the bar so it can be longer
• GeoWeather
  • Parse the Yahoo site the way the Yahoo! Widget does
• Check out some other widgets for ideas
• Accept geo’s offer of a geo-sparkle plugin harness
• geoMenuRun

Website

• Jhonen says the forum can’t do polls?
• I broke the Remository, we’ve really got to get something for plugins and skins ASAP.
• Plugins section pull data from here

With the recent release of Konfabulator as free software from Yahoo!, users wanting to dress up their desktops with a little eye candy suddenly have more choices. I decided to have a look at the three main freely available projects, with an eye for ease of use and performance (by which I mean how much of my CPU and memory do they use).

The three main applications under review are all free: Kapsules, dotWidget, and the newly freed Konfabulator. I’ll also mention Phatbits of which I received an “old” preview build. Of course, now that I’ve done all this comparison work, I guess I’ll have to make a commitment to review these results when Kapsules releases their much anticipated version 1, and when Phatbits goes public. (more…)

If you’re tired of the same old icons and menus in Windows, or if your desktop still looks like a PlaySchool learning tool … it’s time for a change. Yes, you could buy the new StyleXP 3.0 or WindowBlinds 4.10 and then spend hours with IconPackager trying to get your desktop just the way you like it …

Or you could try an all-in-one makeover that’s as simple as running an installer. BricoPacks are gorgeous makeovers that include every aspect of your Windows XP computer, from desktop icons and start menu, to login screen, control panel icons, Window borders and even File-Copy dialogs and wizards like the Internet Connection or Printer wizards. Nothing to worry about, they just give you a whole set of new graphics. You can uninstall them simply, and still use Windows Update and everything else… Check out the screenshots and grab one you like. Also, check out the GeoShell discussion of BricoPacks for a link to more packs and screenshots.

So, I’ve just remembered that I have a personal website I ought to be updating too, along with all the other things I’m working on. Just to give you an update:

• My daughter just keeps getting cuter, and spending more time awake …
• School is killer this quarter: I’m taking Computer Graphics 1 and Programming Language Concepts and both of them are fairly heavy in programming.
• I’ve been falling slowly behind on my work at work which means I’m going to have to buckle down and catch up fast, because the end of the year and all deadlines are rapidly approaching. Otherwise, I’m going to be putting in overtime, and that’s deffinitely not a good thing™.
• My church has decided to revive our web project, redesign our whole website, and start moving into the digital era! We’re going to start with putting our sermon audio online each week, I’ll let you know how that goes as we make some progress. We’re also hoping to get an eCommerce site going to ease ticket sales for the many concerts we’ve been hosting over the last year or so (right now it’s aweful, as tickets are basically being printed and passed out to several stores in the area, and we have to actively manage making sure they stay evenly distributed even when sales really pick up in one place … We’re looking at Mambo for the back-end of the main site, so all of this will give me an excuse to play with some interesting stuff!
• GeoShell 4.12 looks like a simple update of the current bits with a refreshed installer, but I hate installers, and this one is going to take some work. Several of the guys in my Comp Sci courses have shown interest in GeoShell, and in helping with development, we’ll see where that leads []
• WinShellEx is really taking shape, and looks to be the biggest update in GeoShell 5, apart from the work we still have to do on the config tool.

All of this leads me to conclude that the next few months are going to be very busy, and perhaps even a little insane. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to find any time at all to do programming that’s for neither school or work, so extra-curricular stuff like GeoShell … is going to be taking a back burner. Of course, I can always find time to post here, especially if I make my posts related to school or work projects [] ...

Well, we shall see … maybe I’ll use my mad scripting skills to automate posting []

Someone asked on the GeoShell Forums for someone to give them a “productivity” reason to use GeoShell … and it made me think about what’s missing from my favorite shell, and what I want to do in the future…

My typical answer to: “Why should I use GeoShell?” is this: (more…)

From one of GeoShell’s long time hanger’s-on and some-time developers comes Kapsules, a program similar in concept to the Macintosh Konfabulator.

“Widgets” can be scripted for it to flexibly create mini-programs on your desktop. These widgets can then be used to do whatever you like, and can be easily configured by the user. You can write widgets in any ActiveScripting language you have installed, including the default VBScript, and JScript, as well as Python, Ruby…

Some examples of widgets that have already been created are: a Weather checker, a VWM, a System Info display, and more! Check it out!

• Kapsules
• ScreenShots
• Download Kapsules

Oh, one last thing you should know: this is a .NET application, and requires the Framework to be installed. []

I’m always on the lookout for ways to make it easier for the non-hackers among us to do the fun stuff the geeks do with ResHacker … so here’s one I just found:

Login Image Modifier ( was lim.gussoh.com ) works on Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP Professional/Home … and it’s freeware. It lets you easily change the image that is displayed in the login dialog (which of course, you only see in XP if you’re not using the fancy login screen) and the security screen you see when you press ALT+CTRL+DEL!

The cool thing about it is that you can replace it simple, you just get the LIM program and run it, then select three appropriately sized bitmaps and press “Save To Dll” for each one, “Update System” ... and the next time you reboot, it’s a done deal.

Of course, if you prefer the fancy login screen (it’s no shame, I do too) you probably already have the Logon UI Boot Randomizer from UserXP which lets you change not only your logon screen, but your boot up screen too. Maybe someone with more artistic talent than I would even like to put together a suite of skins for these various parts of our system based on the new GeoShell Logo artwork that I used as the basis for the screenshot you see here. []

Edit Oct 25 2005]: For those who’ve been weeping because they couldn’t find a copy of this app anymore… I dug around and found… a mirror? it’s new homepage? a place where you can download it http://www.sohtell.se/lim/ (they even have my GeoShell skin in the gallery, so it must just be a mirror).