For those of you joining us in progress we've started something new here called the How-To Geek Bounty Program, where we sponsor software projects based on ideas suggested by the readers.

The second bounty so far was sponsored by Scott, who was looking for a replacement for the Active Desktop feature that is missing from Vista.

Once again, Andreas Verhoeven was up to the task, and created Ave's DesktopSites, which will let you put images of websites on your desktop, configurable to where you want them, and they will update on a schedule.

You could use this for displaying headlines on your desktop:

Or you could use it the way Scott does, which is to display dynamically updating weather maps as his desktop wallpaper. Now that's some heavy duty usage there!

If you have any issues with this application, you can leave a post on the forum. There is also a known issue with dual monitors.

If you've got an idea for a new application or to fix something annoying in Windows Vista, you should put a thread on the bounty program forum... we'll be picking the next project to sponsor soon.

 

Download AveDesktopSites [mirror] from Ave's Vista Stuff [source]