New Pictures Added to Windows 7 Bing RSS Theme
Last Updated on Thursday, 26 January 2012 10:03 Written by Alan Thursday, 26 January 2012 10:03
Microsoft introduced RSS themes to Windows 7 a while back with the Bing RSS Theme, which brings the stunning photography that graces the Bing homepage right to your computer with an ever-updating supply of new pictures. With the power of RSS (real simple syndication) the theme updates in the background without the user having to do anything.
This week Microsoft has added six new pictures to the Bing RSS Theme. This latest addition includes basslet fish & lettuce coral, Martinique, Marrakech, a Polar Bear in the Beaufort Sea, Reine, Lofoten Islands, and St Bathan’s in Central Otago. The photos are all up to the usual high standards we have come to expect from the Bing background image of the day.
The theme, according to Microsoft will send “you two new photos from Bing every week, updated automatically through an RSS feed.” This week, however, the team was apparently feeling generous. You can get the theme from the Windows 7 Personalization Gallery and view the six new photos in this blog post from Microsoft’s Rob Margel.
Power Your Desktop Theme with RSS
Last Updated on Saturday, 14 May 2011 08:48 Written by Alan Monday, 16 May 2011 08:00
If you are someone who regularly changes your desktop wallpaper – or even Windows 7 theme, which is a series of rotating wallpapers – then you will benefit by running the new Microsoft tool which allows your PC to subscribe to an RSS feed of wallpaper. Known as the Bing Dynamic RSS theme, it allows wallpaper to constantly update with the latest official pictures from Bing. According to Microsoft, they will be adding two new images per week, and thee are already about 50 images in the feed.
Once you have download Bing Dynamic RSS Theme you can begin the setup. When you first apply an RSS theme to your desktop, you’ll be asked if you want to subscribe to the RSS feed, and you do need to click “Download attachments” to get it working properly.
It will take a minute or so, after you click “download attachments” for your new desktop wallpapers to appear – they have to download, so it depends on your connection speed. Once installed, your wallpaper will rotate the same way it does when you are using one of the Windows 7 themes, but new images will be added to the rotation om a regular basis.
The Bing Dynamic RSS Theme was released as a three month trial a while back and it’d great to see that it is back full-time now. Eventually it may become the sole distribution method for official Windows wallpapers. Probably not though, at least not without some tweaking to allow for user picture preferences. After all, not everyone like wildlife photos, or landscape photos, or…
Get Your News In One Place With Google Reader
Last Updated on Monday, 23 August 2010 09:16 Written by Alan Tuesday, 24 August 2010 08:00
Some you reading this are doing so in your RSS Reader (or Feed Reader as they are also known), but I suspect, from what I have been hearing, that you are in the minority.
But, for me, RSS Readers are not dying. I use mine more than ever. What better way to get to a lot of news with a minimum amount of typing and clicking around?
What I have been using is Google Reader. There’s nothing to download because, like most Google services, it’s a web app. It’s right there whenever you go to Google so it’s easy to get to. And almost every news site on the web has an RSS feed. And, I am not just talking about headline news sites like CNN, but sports news, tech news, and science news, to name just a few things.
Google Reader has two columns. The left contains your feeds (web sites) and the right contains the headlines and articles. Also, in the left column, you can drag and drop sites into folders that you have created to separate news feeds, such as sports and science. At the top of the left column is an Add Subscription button and at the bottom is a Manage Subscriptions link. When you click the manage link you will get a screen that allows you to add folders, move feeds around to different folders and delete feeds.
If you find your self visiting certain sites on a regular basis this will make things much simpler by placing all of those sites in one, easy-to-use location.
