DesktopEarth

Hey map junkies; here’s some eye candy for your computer. DesktopEarth gives your desktop high-resolution images, that update as the sun moves to show daylight and nighttime on the Earth. It even uses a new images each month to reflect (no pun intended) changes in snow cover and vegetation. The imagery comes from NASA’s Blue Marble Next and Earth’s City Lights.

Now for the caveats — it’s a hard-drive hog, using 110 MB when installed (34 MB to download) and it only works on Windows operating systems that support Active Desktop. I was concerned that it would bog down my computer, which has had its problems lately, but I’m seeing no ill effects. And it even motivated me to clean my desktop, an amazing and rare occurrence.

Via VerySpatial