As you may well know, I enjoy desktop customization.  Seemingly every few weeks, I must completely redesign the look, feel, and sometimes functionality of my desktop.

This time, I decided to add bookmarks straight to my desktop.  A few days ago, I posted an article on how to show only the favicons in the Firefox bookmark toolbar, and I thought that it would be neat to add similar bookmarks to the desktop.

Using Stardock’s ObjectDock, I simply created a new dock and placed it the top right corner.  I then used the “Web 2.0″ icon set to add internet shortcuts straight on the desktop!

Web 2.0 Icon Set by FastIcon

Stardock ObjectDock

A while back, I removed the Downloads page from the site, increasingly changing the theme of RyboMedia to resemble a blog. So far, so good. However, I thought I should post links to the old downloads, just in case you didn’t get to try them out.

Candy Wars is a game for the TI-83 Calculator where you must buy and sell candy, avoid teachers, etc.

Candy Wars 1.0

Same idea, though this is for the computer. You should also check out www.candywars.info

Candy Wars 1.3 for Windows

Small Town Dreams is a book I wrote while participating in NaNoWriMo a few years ago.

Small Town Dreams PDF

Panda OS is TI-83 operating system. Version 1.2 displays a menu at start-up, giving you navigation options. 1.3, which has been released in Beta version, runs in the background until a series of keys are pressed. It also uses Bamboo feeds as “plugins” for new features.

Panda OS 1.2

As you well know, I recently got a Samsung BlackJack running Windows Mobile 5.  I have been unbelievably pleased with the phone, though I was a tad disappointed in the lack of themes included.  Last night, I stumbled upon a nifty piece of software called, appropriately enough, HomeScreen Builder.

This program allows you to build your own customized themes for Windows Mobile 5 & 6 smartphones.  It is very easy to use, and only requires you to enable and drag plugins into your desired location, editing colors, size, etc as you go.  You may then add a background to your project and create a .CAB file to install easily on your phone.

Please note, however, that if you are having trouble enabling your theme, HomeScreen Builder often gets confused when you add a background in the .CAB file.  I have found it is easier to create a wallpaper-less theme, install the .CAB file onto your phone, leaving you with a .XML file (this will look something like “ryan.home” when in your \ApplicationData\Home folder).  Then, place a copy of your desired background image in the \ApplicationData\Home folder and edit the .XML file (can be done in Notepad, Notepad++, etc) to say:

<background bgimage=”\Application Data\Home\IMAGE.jpg” bgimage-rotated=”IMAGE.jpg” valign=”top” bgcolor=”#000000″ />

This simply tells the theme that the image you want to use is located in the \Application Data\Home folder.  The phone then takes the colors you selected in the HomeScreen Builder and uses those throughout the phone’s menu screens.

I will be posting some free themes I created shortly.  If you have any requests, this seems to tedious, or if you don’t want to bother with the .XML and .CAB files, send me an email or just comment on this post.

Download – MadBeetle HomeScreen Builder (Free)

When you’re a major company in the computing industry, more specifically software, and you created, let’s say, a product that rhymes with “Lava“, and, oh, I don’t know, a very popular open-source word processor . . . you should probably make sure that the words “online” and “internet” don’t turn up as misspelled.

This is one of the headline stories on Lifehacker today.  I haven’t used it yet, but supposedly you can choose between Firefox, Chrome, and IE for each individual page/tab you open.  This would be a great help to web developers.

Check out the full LH article here.

While I don’t generally condone using bitTorrent clients, for the simple reason that they are mostly used for sharing illegal material, I have really enjoyed µTorrent.

For those who don’t know, torrents allow you to download a file (or “torrent”) from different locations, called either peers or seeders.   Peers are users who have bits and pieces of the file you want to download, while seeders are people who have complete copies.  As you download from the different peers and seeders, you upload pieces that you have downloaded.  Thus, users can download different pieces of the file from each other until everyone has the complete download.

Here are my top 3 P2P filesharing clients:

• µTorrent
• FrostWire
• Cabos

As many of you probably know, OpenOffice 3 came out a few days ago.  The demand was so high that it was temporarily almost impossible to find a decent download link.  In fact, it took me 3 separate tries to finally get the full 150MB download.

Overall, I am impressed.  OpenOffice 2 had a lot of quirks and basic design flaws that disappointed me, so I was using AbiWord on a regular basis.  However, OpenOffice 3 has made dramatic improvements.  As always, this program runs smoothly and generally without problems.  However, it is by no means a “fun” application to run.  It seems almost a simply generic version of Word.

The thing that I immediatly noticed about OO3 was the improvements in design.  In previous versions, I have been unsatisfied with the low-res icon and basic styles that are reminiscent of early 2000 applications.  The logo, however, has been replaced, and while it is still not perfect, it is an improvement.

The menu styles, too, have improved, though the overrall feel is still nothing special.

My other major problem with OO2 was that, whenever I would begin the prompted update, the entire program would crash. This would cause me to temporarily lose my data until I could recover it with Sun’s built-in recovery tool. While this never resulted in me losing any precious data, this is unacceptable in desktop software.

Other than that, I have been very pleased with OpenOffice 3. Other than the widely used Writer, the suite has other “Office-inspired” apps such as Presentation, Database, Spreadsheet, etc. These are quite good as well, though I have spent the majority of time with the Writer.

I just released The Desktop Tool v 1.0 yesterday. TDT is a nifty little application that allows you to run your Pandora stations, a calculator, notepad, and calendar from one little window instead of using up valuable memory and space by keeping browser windows open.

Download – TDT v 1.0.1 Setup EXE File

The Desktop Tool by Ryan Bowen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

I have recently finished Candy Wars for PC.  Basically, you buy and sell candy like you would, say, illegal substances (not that I condone or encourage that behavior).  This is the first official RyboMedia computer program release.  It’s currently at version 1.3 due to some problems and bugs during the initial release.

You can get it here or by clicking on the image below.

I have recently decided that it’s about time to get organized. I’m in college, I have classes that I need to study for, and I have lots of meetings, studies, and tasks that I need to remember.

Seeing that I’m a big geek, I spend a lot of time on the computer. The best way, I figured, to remember stuff, is to put it on my computer.

That’s where Rainlendar comes into play. This is a great little desktop calendar and task organizer. It looks good, it’s not too noticeable, but I always have it right on my desktop.

With this calendar, it’s easy to set up tasks and events that need to be remembered.  All you have to do is double click a day, and a little box will pop up that allows you to enter details, recurrence options, etc.  When you boot up your computer, a little dialog pop up box will appear with the day’s events, and, if you would like, you can keep a list of upcoming events and tasks below the calendar, as shown below.