Download webcam images directly to your desktop

If you get bored of the same old desktop wallpapers, then why not use a series of webcams from around the world to spice up your desktop a little bit?

That’s exactly what Desktop Carousel does in an easy-to-use application, albeit one that’s a little temperamental at times. Desktop Carousel retrieves photos from webcams around the World and makes them your desktop background. The images can be rotated anytime from every 5 minutes to every day, hence the name). The webcams range from anywhere from Rome to Florida, and feature mainly major landmarks in each area.

However, there are a couple of problems with Desktop Carousel. Firstly, the images take ages to download – sometimes not at all. Secondly, I’m skeptical as to how genuine the various webcams are. Those in the USA appear to be possibly more real than those in the rest of the world but it’s doubtful that all of them are real webcam images. Note that some of the nighttime images are virtually useless and don’t make particularly attractive desktop backgrounds anyway. You can, however, instruct Desktop Carousel to use a specific website to download images from if you go to “Preferences” and then check ‘Download’ and enter a URL.

Desktop Carousel is an interesting concept but it needs to speed up the downloading of images and it’s debatable how genuine the webcams are.

Optimised for Leopard.Option to convert pictures to ‘Blue tone’, ‘Grey tone’ or ‘Sepia tone’.Remote picture lists.’Save’ and ‘Mail’ the current desktop picture.Applescript support.

Changes

• Optimised for Leopard.Option to convert pictures to ‘Blue tone’, ‘Grey tone’ or ‘Sepia tone’.Remote picture lists.’Save’ and ‘Mail’ the current desktop picture.Applescript support.