Aug 5, 2009

How to: get Bing's daily photo as a Windows 7 wallpaper

No matter what you think of Bing as a search engine, you have to admit that the daily homepage photos are pretty cool. They range from amazing nature photos to holiday sensitive events. Those images now have a new use, being wallpapers for your Windows 7 PC. One of Windows 7's lesser know features is the ability to download new wallpapers via a RSS feed.

Thanks to the efforts of Long Zeng from www.istartedsomething.com & makeuseof.com you can now do just that.



By using the code below, you can create a live daily updating bing theme.

To create the theme, 1st copy and paste the code below in notepad and save it as "Bing.theme"

[[Theme]
DisplayName=Bing
[Slideshow]
Interval=1800000
Shuffle=1
RssFeed=http://feeds.feedburner.com/bingimages
[Control Panel\Desktop]
TileWallpaper=0
WallpaperStyle=0
Pattern=
[Control Panel\Cursors]
AppStarting=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_working.ani
Arrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_arrow.cur
Crosshair=
Hand=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_link.cur
Help=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_helpsel.cur
IBeam=
No=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_unavail.cur
NWPen=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_pen.cur
SizeAll=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_move.cur
SizeNESW=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nesw.cur
SizeNS=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ns.cur
SizeNWSE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nwse.cur
SizeWE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ew.cur
UpArrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_up.cur
Wait=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_busy.ani
DefaultValue=Windows Aero
Link=
[VisualStyles]
Path=%SystemRoot%\resources\themes\Aero\Aero.msstyles
ColorStyle=NormalColor
Size=NormalSize
ColorizationColor=0X6B74B8FC
Transparency=1
[MasterThemeSelector]
MTSM=DABJDKT


After you save it, just double click on the theme. file and make sure you select "download attachments" in the pop-up window.

That's it, your bing theme should be good to go. To make sure the photos look their best, select the "Fit" option in the desktop background settings.

Enjoy!



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