The Shinjuku Streets Desktop

Flickr user I am Triet combined a gorgeous tilt-shift photo of a rainy street in Shinjuku with a few simple Windows tweaks to create a desktop that’s clean, elegant and still open enough that you can get plenty of work done without having to move windows around to see information on the desktop.

If you want to get the same look with your Windows 7 desktop, here’s what you’ll need:

• The wallpaper from Artescritorio.com
• RocketDock for the application dock at the bottom of the screen (I am Triet doesn’t remember which icon pack he used, but the Lucid Icon Set looks similar, although it’s in black and white — more icon packs are available here)
• Rainmeter, a system monitor and customisation utility for Windows
• The MagazineLike theme pack for Rainmeter
• The Feena Casual font

This setup is pretty simple, and the Rainmeter widgets all sit together neatly in one part of the desktop. Still, if you need a little help with the setup, we have an excellent tutorial on setting up Rainmeter that can help.

If you have a Mac or are running Linux, you can approximate some of the same effects using GeekTool or Conky, respectively.

Screen shot 2011-11-05 at 7.42.11 PM [Flickr]