Clutter

A couple of months ago, I downloaded a nice bit of free software (Mac only, I'm afraid) called Clutter:

Clutter Homepage

This lets you put album cover images of your iTunes music onto your desktop. When you click on the image, it opens up that album in iTunes and plays it back. I love having those album covers on my desktop: it puts me back in touch with the CD/digital music as something concrete and physical, rather than just being a list of files. It also provides a visual history of your musical tastes, from which you can't hide. Fortunately, I'm not really interested in being musically trendy or fashionable...I just like what I like, and I've lived long enough to have had different periods/genres of interests. My Clutter-focused desktop indicates the main streams of music I've been listening to via my Mac in recent months -- W a r n i n g :: 164k file download...

My desktop