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Yesterday I received an email from 360desktop announcing their long awaited beta release. I fired up my download manager and downloaded the small file.
In case you are wondering what 360desktop is?
More room for everything you like to do
360desktop transforms your desktop into a panoramic workspace - with more space for everything. Slide around your new workspace quickly and easily between all your open applications, windows and widgets - it’ll spin you out.Easily make desktop widgets from your favorite parts of the web
See something that you like online? You can now clip it and put it right on the desktop: any part of any webpage or grab your favorite web widgets, RSS feeds, games, videos - whatever you like - it’s totally up to you!An endless selection of stunning 360-degree wallpaper
Bring your desktop to life, with an endless selection of stunning 360-degree wallpaper. Incredible web enabled 360s, that can be inspiring, entertaining , branded, useful or just plain fun - whatever your interest, work or play.And what’s coming next …
Create your own interactive 360s
Think of the desktop as an “interactive canvas”. Create simple 360s from your favorite images, photos, or online albums such as Flickr, or transform the desktop into a multimedia mash-up, with web content integrated into the photo background.Share your creations and favorite 360s everywhere
Share your favorite 360s and your own creations with your friends. Publish any 360 as a web widget that you can embed within MySpace, Facebook and your other blogs and social networks.
At first, I was very excited as I have been waiting for it for so long but once I tried it, I immediately wanted to uninstall it. Why? I had this impression from initial screenshots on the site that 360desktop would be about getting full 3d control over your desktop in which you could move the desktop in all directions smoothly with some cool effects. but it wasnt the case, all 360desktop does is that it pointlessly scrolls your desktop horizontally, moreover you cant even set your own wallpaper. In beta, we have only 2 wallpapers to choose from which kind of sucks in my opinion.
Verdict:
360desktop has disappointed me. It might be useful for those with small monitors who want more horizontal space but does an average Joe really need horizontal space in this age when widescreen monitors are so common? Plus the inability to customize the desktop with a wallpaper of our choice doesnt make it worth it.
Hi Taimur, Thanks for the feedback - appreciate it. Looks like we weren’t clear enough with a couple of things - we released with just a couple of 360’s to keep it simple, but will have new 360 content every few days until we release the authoring platform and gallery, where you can make and share your own.
An addition to the bigger desktop, the key feature is that a user can now take any web widget, or any part of any web page, and with a couple of clicks turn it into a desktop widget. You then manage these (show/hide/delete) in hte 360 Manager. Thanks again, Cheers Evan CEO-360desktop
installing 360desktop and used it looks a great idea. however after used for a while, the limitation of panoramic wallpapers (4 all together) didn’t meet my taste. tried to use one of my panormic wallpapers and converted it to dot 360 extension caused the 360desktop manager went corrupted. uninstall and reinstall with a fresh 360 apps also encountered the same thing with 360desktop manager. what’s the work around?
noticed when placing widgets on 360desktop, after restart PC the widgets placement is out of order and need to rearrange. that’s bad.
Looking for this kind of application for a long time, i install 360desktop, begin to change wallpaper, add widget and … find many bugs :
- blocking of my laptop after start of the screen saver
- wallpaper blocked, I cannot change
- RSS links are displayed curiously
- I close my laptop, and when open it, it is blocked
So very interesting application, when it will be free of bugs !
I was really excited to find something like 360Desktop, a very simple way to get more desktop space for the basic user. Unfortunately I will probably be uninstalling it. It conflicts with my Anti-virus on boot, so the program will not start when Windows starts. There are only 3 backgrounds I can find, where are they hiding them, and I can’t find where to create my own. I’m very computer savvy, so either they made it so simple I can’t find it, or it’s just not there. I can’t even find the sponsored ones, how will that please the supporters? Also, I tried the widget thing. The implimentation is really cool and works, but the widgets themselves don’t work. Video doesn’t show, web content doesn’t interact correctly, etc. Maybe on the next version?