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Innovative clock screensavers

In the past, the role of a screensaver was very important. It was invented to prevent screen-burning. Very old CRT monitors were susceptible to having areas of the screen ruined by displaying non-moving text and graphics continuously for long periods of time. The screensaver’s job was to either blank the screen or fill it with moving images or patterns when the computer was idle.

Nowadays, screensavers are used for entertainment. Modern monitors don’t suffer from screen burn and so we don’t have a real use for them anymore.

Many people also use their screensavers to tell them the time. However, the default screensaver-clock isn’t very appealing at all to look at (at least in Windows).

Terribly ugly isn’t it? Luckily, there’s quite a few innovative clock ideas you can choose from (prepare to scroll…)

Word Clock

Word Clock is one of those gems that you had no idea existed, but when you find it, wish you had found it years earlier.

This screensaver’s design is an absolute masterpiece. Every second, the clock updates. For example in the picture above, the highlighted “fifty-seven” will go back to grey and the “fifty-eight” next to it will highlight itself in red.

Another intriguing option offered by Word Clock is the rotary version. It has a similar feel as an old analog clock.

Everything about the screensaver is customisable – from the typeface to the colours, the size and position to text-transformations (uppercase, lowercase), making it three times as useful.

Fliqlo

This is a much simpler design than Word Clock, however it is still a very nice and simple design. It is also extremely light on system resources.

As for customisation, there isn’t much. The good news, however, is that it’s integrated into the screensaver itself. When the screensaver’s playing, hit the up/down arrows to change zoom or the left/right arrows to toggle between 12 or 24-hour clocks.

  • Download Fliqlo (available for Windows and Mac OS X – choose the left-most cassette)

PolarClock

PolarClock takes a very unique approach and presents its information in a beautiful set of coloured concentric bars. The bars change colour depending on the position they’re in.

Be warned, however, that this isn’t light on system resources. My relatively lightweight system (1.8GHz, 2GB RAM, Mobile Intel Graphics) struggled to cope with PolarClock.

Further reading

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Take a look at http://www.clockness.com
A lot of such staff.

Simon SC said...

Anonymous:
"Take a look at http://www.clockness.com
A lot of such stuff."

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Some are really cool, and I love the Mariner design. However I'm not too sure I'd be prepared to pay to get them.

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