Free Screensavers: 3D, Animated, Aquarium, Matrix, Nature & more

Everyone loves to customize. We customize our homes, cars and even our cubicles at work to make them feel more unique and show our personalities. Did you know you can do the same with your computer?

Does your monitor just go blank when you are away from they keyboard for a few minutes? Today we talk about changing that with popular screen savers. Still have the same boring, blue desktop background since you first installed your computer? We'll talk about desktop backgrounds and wallpaper tomorrow. (You can also add velvet curtains around your monitor or a shag cover for your keyboard, but that type of customization is for a different discussion and a different blog. :)

A screensaver is a computer program originally designed to conserve the image quality of computer monitors by blanking the screen, or filling it with moving images or patterns when the computer was not in use. Today, screensavers are primarily used for entertainment or security purposes.

Screensaver software can also be used as a rudimentary security measure. Many screensavers can be configured to ask users for a password before permitting the user to resume work. So if you leave your computer for a few minutes - especially if its at work or other publicly accessible are - you will need to provide a password to access the computer again.

You can start your search online. There are many excellent free screensavers websites. You can also find many screensavers that you can purchase individually or even on a screensavers CD. Most range from few dollars to about $20 per screensaver. Some of the more popular screensavers include 3D screensavers, Matrix screensaver, animated screensavers, aquarium screensaver, nature scenes, holiday theme screensavers, cartoon characters or your favorite movie themes. There are even programs that will rotate your own digital photos as a screensaver.

Once the screensaver is installed:

1. Right click on an empty part of your desktop and select Properties.
2. Select the "Screen Saver" tab.
3. On the "Screen saver" dropdown box, select the screensaver you want to run.
4. Click the "Preview" button to preview this screensaver.
5. If you like what you see, click "Apply" button, then click "OK" button.
6. Next time your computer is inactive for set amount of minutes, the screensaver you just selected will run.
7. Follow the steps above anytime you want to select a new screensaver.

Now that you know what to do, find something truely unique or beautiful to impress anyone walking by your computer.

CDEarth: Free Digital, Royalty-free, Stock Photos

Professional, royalty-free, digital stock photographs can enhance any project. Whether you are making a Powerpoint presentation, website, personal greeting card, neighborhood newsletter, or sales flyer, make it stand-out with high resolution digital photos. High quality, photography pictures can add color, personality, humor and reinforce a point.

If your website talks about computers for the family, use a photograph of a mother or father working on the computer with their child. If you are making a Powerpoint presentation about the latest quarter's revenue numbers, use a photograph showing closeup of money or a business person smiling. It will certainly summarize and clearly reinforce your point.

Royalty free means you can use free photos in any personal or commercial project. You can find many sites on the Web for royalty free, digital stock photos. In many cases, you will need to pay a one-time fee for the photograph and you will have unlimited rights to use it any way you want and as many times as you want.

Make sure you use high quality, high resolution photographs for projects where the picture will be enlarged or in commercial project where you will sell the item with the photo on it. Some projects like website do not need high pixel quality photos because your visitor's web browser and monitor will like not be able to display the quality. High quality pics will also be large and take a long time for the page to load.

Find photographs for any project including:

• Abstract photos
  
• Airplane photos
  
• Animal & pet photos
  
• Art photos
  
• Bird photos
  
• Business photographs
  
• Fish & aquarium photos
  
• Food photos
  
• Historical photographs
  
• Insect photos
  
• Military photos, Army, Navy, Marines
  
• Nature & landscape photos like national parks
  
• Ocean and beach photos
  
• People photos
  
• Plant, tree & flower photographs
  
• Religious photographs, Christian, Jewish & Muslim
  
• Reptiles photos
  
• Space photos, NASA, Earth, Moon, Planets
  
• Travel photographs
  

Use the free photo editor or desktop publishing software we discussed in previous post to help you incorporate photographs into your creative projects.

CD Earth: Free Clipart from Animated to Valentine Clip art

Pictures speak a thousand words. We've all heard that. But did you know you can often get such pictures and graphics for free. Not only that, but you can use them for free in any project.

Royalty-free clipart is very popular on the web. Royalty free means you can use free clip art (also called freeware clipart) in any project from a personal website or garage sale flyer to a commercial project like greeting card, calender or sales presentation which you can then sell.

Microsoft software like Office comes with many clipart you can use in your documents and presentations. You can also download free clipart or purchase thousands on an inexpensive clipart and graphics cd to add to your collection.

Some of the many types of clipart and graphics available:

Business clipart

Computer clipart

Religious clipart including Christian, Jewish and Muslim clip art

Holiday clipart like Christmas, Valentine, Thanksgiving, New Years and Easter

Wedding clip art

Sports clipart including golf, baseball, basketball and football

Baby clip art

Animated clipart

Food clip art

Website clipart

Cars clip art

Birthday clipart

Animals clip art

Country flags clipart

Flowers clip art

Clipart images are easy to insert into a document, spreadsheet, presentation or any other project you are creating. They add variety to the written words and often can be used to reinforce a point or add humor.

CDEarth: Cool Fonts from Graffiti to Old English

Times New Roman, Arial, or Courier? Decisions, decisions, decisions.

If you've ever writen a Word document, these have probably been your choices of fonts. If you really wanted to get creative, maybe you'd throw in some bold or italics with an occasional underline to make your point. Heavy stuff.

For most projects such as business letters, a simple, professional, easy-to-read font is actually the best. But did you know you there are thousands of fonts you can choose from to make your more creative writings stand out?

You can download free fonts or purchase an inexpensive fonts cd with 1001 fonts. You can install them on your computer and have them available in Microsoft Word or Powerpoint presentations and in the desktop publishing or graphics editor we discussed yesterday.

You can find specialized fonts for a particular project like a wedding font for your wedding invitations or holiday fonts for your next holiday newsletter. Creative fonts are perfect for your scrapbook captions or even for your garage sale flyer to make it really sizzle.

Many different types of fonts to choose from including:

• Calligraphy fonts
  
• Gothic fonts
  
• Grafitti fonts
  
• Fancy fonts
  
• Dingbats or symbols
  
• Script fonts
  
• Handriting fonts
  
• Old English fonts
  
• Chinese and Japanese fonts
  
• True Type fonts
  
• Mac fonts
  
• Retro fonts
  
• Cursive fonts
  
• Western fonts
  

The only limitation is your own imagination.

CD Earth: Photo Editor and Desktop Publishing Software

Lets talk about photos and images. Everyone loves to take digital photographs. Most of us are lucky if we can get them from the camera to our computer where they sit collecting digital dust.

What if you could edit photos by removing the red-eyes or cropping out some guy walking through your photo? What if you could get really creative by adding a fancy border around your picture, splice two or more photos together, insert some funny text at bottom or even add a graphic into the photo?

Then you could create a slideshow with your new photos and the music you created yesterday using the Music Editor or add the new photos into your home video with the Video Editor. OK, we're getting ahead of ourselves. ;-)

The main thing to know is you can find great photo, graphics and image editors that let you do all these things and more. Some of the products like Adobe Photoshop and Corel Paint Shop Pro can from $250 to $600. The good news: there are excellent inexpensive and ever free graphics and photo editing software that can do everything you need.

Now that you have your photos and images, what do you do with them? Just remember that if you plan to print something, design it first with desktop publishing software.

Easy to use publishing software lets you create everything from a neighborhood newsletter to publishing a small newspaper. Use it to create business stationary and brochures, greeting cards, posters, and anything else your imagination dictates.

Some of the many things you can create with desktop publishing software:

• Newsletters
• Scrapbooks
• Greeting cards
• Photo albums
• Personal or business stationary
• Business brochures
• Business cards
• Print advertisements
• Logos
• Drawings
• Posters
• CD covers
• Publish small newspaper or magazine

There are several great retail packages such as Adobe PageMaker, QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign but they cost up to $500 per license. There are also many excellent low price or even free desktop publishing software available that give you almost all the features without breaking the bank.

As always, don't be intimidated. It's not as hard as you think. Just have fun with it. You'll be amazed what you can create with that computer of yours.

CDEarth: express your creative side

Like most of us, you probably use your computer to send emails to friends and family and surf the web to research your vacation, buy a book at Amazon or get a great deal on eBay.

What about using your computer to get in touch with your creative side?

Think you can be the next Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese? Well even if you don't plan to be featured in the next film festival, you can still use a Video Editor software to become your family's director. Most home movie editing software lets you easily edit and add special affects to your home movies. So you can call the shots just like the pros. Then you can view your personal memories on DVD or your computer.

How about adding some sounds and music to that home movie or even create your own CD singing your favorite tunes? You can use a Music Editor software to create and edit music and sound recordings by editing sounds, mixing tracks, and applying professional sound-effects. Most home music editing software will let you mix and match till you get the sound you like.

Have you ever wondered how they make the cool 3D animation in movies, cartoons and video games? You can actually do it too with Animation software on your home computer. The easy-to-use tools let you create beautiful animations with a touch of a button. Most of these software products let you add objects and backgrounds, make the characters move, add sounds and then record and play it all back like a professional.

It's a lot of fun, easier then you think and a great way to impress your family and friends.

Welcome to CD Earth Blog!

We're so excited to welcome you to our new blog. We want to bring interesting computer and software news you can use everyday in your home and business life.

You will not find technical mumble-jumble on this blog. Most of us here at CD Earth don't understand it anyway. :-) We will talk about real things you can do with your computer like putting together a family scrapbook, teaching your child to read or do math, finding some great dinner recipes, create a simple customer or inventory list for your business, make a home movie, and of course play some games.

CDEarth aims to bring our customers some of the world's best, award-winning software that they can enjoy -- and afford. You can choose a free software CD from our software catalog including Office Suite, Family software, Clipart, Fonts, Computer Games, PC Security, Children's Educational software, Bible Study, Genealogy, Screensavers & Desktop Backgrounds, Food Recipes, Music Editor, Video Editor, 3D Animation Studio and much more.