The TRON-Inspired Desktop [Featured Desktop]

By Alan Henry Oct 13, 2011 5:00 AM 41,923 19

Flickr user asbrekenridge wanted a desktop that was informative and attractive. After spending some quality time with GeekTool, he put together this desktop that shows the time and date, a calendar, and available system resources at a glance.

If you have a Mac and want to get the same look on your desktop, here's what you'll need:

The TRON Desktop wallpaper from Rasmus NielsenNocturne from Blacktree to turn the menubar blackGeekTool to set up the geeklets for time, date, calendar, running processes, and system resources

Update: It looks like a similar desktop was posted to Mac OS X Tips by user baldrailers who reached out to share his page there, complete with all the geeklets he used to make it happen! Head over to download them there if you don't want to set them up from scratch.

You'll need to match the colors to the ones on the desktop, and while asbrekenridge didn't say which font he used, you can get the same effect with the font of your choice. If you're not familiar with how to set up GeekTool, check out our guide to setting up a great desktop with it. Most of the geeklets used here are also explained in our tutorial.

If you're a Windows or Linux user, you should be able to get the same effect with Rainmeter or Conky (respectively) to recreate the scene in your OS of choice.

Do you have a great, beautifully productive desktop of your own that you'd like to share? Go ahead and post it to the Lifehacker Desktop Show and Tell Flickr Group with a description of how you made it and it may be the next featured desktop.

Desktop | Flickr

You can reach Alan Henry, the author of this post, at alan@lifehacker.com, or better yet, follow him on Twitter or Google+. Related Stories

Tidy Up Your Desktop with These Simple Folder Icons [Organization]

By Adam Dachis Oct 11, 2011 2:00 PM 17,568 11

Windows/Mac/Linux: Keeping a clean desktop can be a little difficult when it's such a convenient dumping ground for your crap. Here's a set of simple icons to prevent you from littering and, instead, keep everything nice and tidy.

I use Dropbox to keep a highly organized, synchronized home folder, which has a place called "The Dump" for dumping files. But sometimes you don't want to sync/upload absolutely everything you do and that's when files start to turn your desktop into a trash heap. To counter that problem, I created some folder icons to help me stay organized. This way there's always a folder to catch files until I can move them somewhere else or act on them. Here's how the system works:

Incoming Media catches all the movie and music files I've downloaded or transferred from other sources but don't intend to keep on my machine. They sit in this folder until they're watched/listened to or sorted.Incoming Photos houses photos copied from an SD card before they get uploaded to Flickr. Sometimes I save the photos in Dropbox as well, but often times they need to be edited first and I'll move them to Dropbox after that's happened. This way there isn't any syncing taking place until the work has been finished.Temporary Notes is where I house text files and clippings that should be deleted once they're dealt with. Despite Simplenote I still somehow manage to collect stray text files.To Be Archived is probably the most important folder, as this is where files go when they need to be saved to an external drive or some other location but do not need to exist indefinitely on my computer. When I see this folder filling up, I know it's time to clear it out.

I also have a For Sale and Development folder, but those aren't as widely applicable as the others. For Sale is where I keep photos of things I'm selling on Craigslist and Development is where I keep code I'm not syncing with other machines.

You can use these icons to create a similar organizational system. If you want to add folders that are more applicable to what you do, a Photoshop template is included in the download (at the end of this post) so you can create whatever you like. Additionally, you'll get copies of the icons as a CandyBar iContainer, Mac folders, and ICO files so you can use them with pretty much anything.

If you create any new icons, please share them in the comments so everyone can use them!

UPDATE: The missing icon problem has been resolved. Sorry about that! Not sure what happened.

Whitebox Icons

You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. Twitter's the best way to contact him, too. Related Stories

Give Your Desktop a Taste of the Fall Season with These Autumn Wallpapers [Wallpaper Wednesday]

We're in the midst of Autumn, so why not let your computer experience some of the bright outdoor colors? Here are some great Fall wallpapers to keep your desktop in season. You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.  Twitter's the best way to contact him, too.