The homepage does not contain information about the criteria that are applied by the Twitter screensaver. The screensaver will display an image once it gets turned on. The major part of the screen is reserved for the image while a smaller strip on the bottom is reserved for the name of the Twitter user and the message send by that user.

Images are rotated every 30 seconds automatically. This basically means that a new image and message are displayed every 30 seconds while the Twitter screensaver is running. The screensaver requires an Internet connection to pull the data from Twitter.

The major drawback of Twitsaver is that it does not offer customizations. It is not possible to change the frequency or specify certain Twitter users that should be used exclusively.

The Wikiquote Screensaver makes use of yet another Wikipedia site but gives the user more control over what is actually displayed when the screensaver activates. Wikiquotes provides access to a large collection of quotations in several languages.

The screensaver makes use of an interface that can be used to add quotes to the screensaver. At least one quote has to be added before the screensaver starts working at all. This is done by searching for a name or term. A list of matches will then be displayed. By default all are selected to be added to the screensaver’s rotation.

The quotes that have been selected have to be saved in the end. Once that is done they will be displayed when the screensaver becomes active.

The screensaver requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 to function. The pack can be downloaded from Microsoft.

What’s your favorite quote? Let me know..

Still I do come frequently upon screensavers that stick out, that are to cool to ignore. The Dropclock screensaver is one of those which does become apparent when you take a look at the size of it. Dropclock has a size of 136 Megabytes ! Now that’s a huge screensaver.

It’s available for Windows XP, Windows Vista with .net framework 1.1 and MAC OSX 10.33 – 10.5. The screensaver is free to try but actually costs $15 which can be paid using Paypal. I’m not sure if the free version is limited because there is no information on the website about it.

I was not able to discover any limitations so far. There are not options available though.

They have a big thread running at the moment discussing small, cool and lightweight screensavers and Flurry was mentioned in that thread among others. Flurry is only 57K in size, probably the smallest screensaver ever. Windows users simply double-click the .src file and setup Flurry by pressing the settings button.

Flurry is also available for Mac here and I suppose it offers the same features as the Windows version. I will still stick with my initial stance and turn of the monitor automatically if I have been idle for more than 10 minutes, everyone else who is using screensavers should definitely try Flurry. Take a look at the screenshot below to get an impression about Flurry:

When the screensaver is installed on your system all computers currently displaying the screensaver combine their power to create morphing abstract animations known as “sheep”.

Anyone watching one of these computers may vote for their favorite animations using the keyboard. The more popular sheep live longer and reproduce according to a genetic algorithm with mutation and cross-over. Hence the flock evolves to please its global audience.

[tags]screensaver, free, electric sheep, freeware, cool[/tags]