deviantART crafter giannisgx89 offers up an unofficial Vista (SP1) theme that puts Windows 7's basic look and feel on your desktop in a lightweight, non-intrusive way. Take a closer look below.

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If you liked the look of previously mentioned digital photo application Poladroid—which adds a retro flair to regular digital photos—but your Windows life prevented you from using the Mac-only app, you're in luck. Poladroid has made an alpha version of Poladroid for Windows available for download. Sure the idea of Polaroid-ing digital photos is a bit absurd, but considering that Polaroid no longer makes actual Polaroids, it's nice to keep a little nostalgia alive. Thanks Moysauce!

A lone flame against a dark backdrop makes a great scene, but, on most automatic cameras, a washed-out or drab picture. Digital Photography School has sound advice on capturing fire in a frame. For instance, if you're practicing or shooting with a candle flame, don't focus on the flame itself, but on the end of the wick:

The flame itself will not be in super-clear focus as it is producing the light while being a three dimensional object, meaning the intensity and points to focus on it will be varied. If your camera has spot metering, use it and take a reading off the flame itself. This may produce a fairly dark image, so experiment with overexposing a little by slowing down the shutter speed.

Many of the principles of shooting fireworks apply, but DPS' post goes into detail about getting tricky/nifty shots, like the fire trail pictured above. Drop links to your own successful flame shots in the comments below. Photo by Gaetan Lee.

If you're a big fan of the templates at D*I*Y Planner, and we certainly are, you'll be thrilled to know they have released a cross-platform program for generating your own templates. The application, at least the Windows version I tested, is stand alone and portable. It is currently limited to generating month/week/day appointment templates but will have other D*I*Y Planner templates like notes and such included in future releases. Automatic scaling to various US and international paper sizes is included, as well as the ability to tweak a host of smaller things like line weight. Completed templates are exported as a PDF file. Dynamic Templates is open source and cross-platform.

Macworld's Dan Frakes shows off his favourite screensavers for Mac OS X in this video clip and many (but not all) are free, including AlphaBabySaver, Big Time Screen Saver, Econ, and Euphoria. Hit the Macworld site to get the full list of recommended 'savers. Personally I'm a huge fan of the built-in Word of the Day 'saver on my Mac. Do you use screensavers any more? Which is your favourite? Let us know in the comments.

Windows only: MoboPhoto is a portable photo suite. The stand alone 1.6MB executable has a basic photo editor, gallery builder, and a batch tool for mass resizing and renaming. The basic editor is fairly limited in comparison to standard desktop editing suites, but that can be expected in such a tiny portable application. It is sufficient for basic fixes like red eye editing but you won't be doing any fancy touch up work beyond the basics. The gallery builder allows you to generate basic HTML image galleries with thumbnails, again nothing extremely fancy but perfectly serviceable. If you need a more robust and portable image editor, check out GIMP Portable. MoboPhoto is freeware, Windows only.

If you need a logo but you're lacking the design chops to whip one up, score a free one at LogoInstant. LogoInstant is a design service that cranks out a new logo every day. The logos are completely free for both personal and commercial use and come in a layered Adobe Photoshop source file so you can edit the name or make more advanced changes.

Windows only: Greenshot is a lightweight, open source, and portable screen-capture tool. The executable and supporting .dll files weigh in at 464KB, making Greenshot a rather lightweight tool and well suited for a flash-drive toolkit. You can generate screen captures by a variety of methods including using the print-screen button as a hot key and activating the main menu from the system tray where you can capture by region, freehand cropping, etc. Greenshot can be set to send your crops directly to a printer, open for editing, or to be saved. The file naming convention is userspecifiedword_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS, typical for screen-capture tools and entirely practical. Once you have captured an image you can add text and shapes such as arrows to draw attention or a bright red box to isolate. One curiously lacking feature is the ability to crop after the initial capture. You can use the freehand-capture tool to carefully grab the area you want when getting the initial capture, but once you are in the actual editing stage there appears to be no method to crop. For another excellent, free, and portable screen-capture tool check out FastStone Capture. Greenshot is open source, Windows only.Thanks Ryan!

If Santa left a new digital camera under your tree this year, our gadget-crazed sister blog Gizmodo offers several great tips for getting the most from your new digital camera. The tips range from extremely simple to some more advanced advice, but every tip is worth its salt, especially if your photography know-how is limited to: 1) Point and 2) Shoot. If you're a seasoned snapper, share your best tips for digicam beginners in the comments.

Reader Tom0630 has decked the hall that is his Windows Vista desktop with a merry Mac-like look. Here's the rundown of what he's got going on:

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