![Daytime Earth [small]](http://fairuz.isi.edu/blog/wp-content/earth-small.png)
Saw a link to the xplanet app recently, and been thinking “wouldn’t it be cool if I could set a real-time picture of the earth as my desktop background?”
Turns out people have already done this.
(note: this only has directions for Linux/Mac. As a hack for windows, you can add set up Active Desktop to fetch one of the pictures from here every hour or so (this article on tweakxp shows how to set up active desktop nicely… now you only need to schedule the hourly grab) )
(and for more really neat maps out there that work with xplanet (or on their own): this is a great resource)