May 23rd, 2007

Digg On Your Desktop

posted by Midwinter

Digg, search, technology |

[digg=http://www.digg.com/software/Digg_For_Your_Desktop]I’ve previously posted a video of the new search interface I’ve been experimenting with. In order to get some feedback on how it works I’ve put together a small application that uses the Digg API to display the popular news stories on your desktop background.

The application will update for the latest stories every two minutes or so and refresh the tiles accordingly. If you mouseover a tile the window will ‘fisheye’ slightly, similar to the OSX dock. Click on the tile to expand it to a readable size and then if you decide you want to go to the story then double click the expanded image to open it in your web browser.

You can close the application by right clicking the little rss icon in your system tray and hitting Exit, or if you encounter problems then close the process newsview.exe in your task manager.

You will need the .NET2 framework to run this and the installer should point you in the right direction if you don’t have it. Failing that then go here to download it manually.

I stress this is a little alpha level experiment, but if you do encounter problems then I’m only too happy to help, just leave me a comment here and I’ll try and fix any bugs you may find. What I’m really looking for though is some feedback on the interface: Is it simple enough? Can you see the result clearly? Would you use a search engine that delivered results in this manner?

To download ‘DiggTop’ click here and enjoy.

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