Animated Desktop Screenmates Performance
Is a monthly linkup hosted by and, where bloggers write about something from their past – it could be an item, a place, an event – anything that evokes a trip down memory lane. Timeless Thoughts is held on the first Saturday of the month, and runs for two weeks. Tara Timeless Thoughts this month!
Listening to Linkin Park always reminds me of when I was in the eighth grade, heavily obsessed with the rap metal band that my then-boyfriend was a fan of. It was a time I grew my music taste significantly, and I would blast somewhat rebellious, underground music from the speakers in my room almost every weeknight.
Jul 25, 2007. Desktop alerts: audio, dialogues, animated Communicators deliver highly relevant messaging ScreenMates bring characters to life Desktop. Due to the unique properties of the computer desktop few different toy types turn into surprising plenty desktop animations. There are not only classic desk toys but also various semi-transparent animated love hearts, fire flames, perpetuum mobiles, screenmates, abstractions and other unusual arrangements.
At the time, I had a PC with the biggest screen you could get at the time (21 inches). My desktop was not complete without a Linkin Park wallpaper, desktop icons neatly arranged, a silver Windows XP theme, and a slightly-out-of-place screenmate. Maybe even more than one. But what is a screen mate?
Screenmates were small computer applications, only a few kilobytes in file size, that placed a small, animated character on your computer screen. Some were cats, some were dogs, many were Sanrio characters. You could interact with the screenmate by clicking on it. Usually it was moving around your desktop slowly enough so you could click it, but there was sometimes an option to speed it up. Sometimes the deskmate would make a cute face or jump or do some kind of action when you clicked it, satistified that you acknowledged it. Some, like a white cat named Neko, followed your mouse around slowly. One of my favourites was a cute orange cat called Favour Cat, that would sometimes just sit, sometimes it would crawl around and swish its tail, and sometimes it would claw and slide down the screen with its back to me.
Two other variations on the cat were Silver Cat (though technically blue) and FaFa Cat. The screenmates were really cute. They brightened up your computer, and made it feel like you had a little pet walking around on your screen. There were many variations of a cat screenmate, and there was also a notorious bouncing sheep. I think the cars were very common. Sometimes you could open many instances of a screenmate and have them litter your screen.
This person totally has the right idea. I remember opening the screenmate application every time I started up my computer, but over time, I forgot about it. It rarely became a distraction. I don’t think screenmates were compatible with Macs, since they were usually.exe files, but I wouldn’t mind having a play with one again! I’ve actually found a blog that links to a (including Silver Cat and FaFa Cat) so you can go ahead and download them if you’re on a Windows system.:D If you want to download my favourite Favour Cat, you can visit. Have you ever heard of screenmates or deskmates?
Leave a Comment. I think I’ve seen those before, but I never used them on my own computer.
They’re really cute! I did used to download really rubbish wallpapers for my desktop though. Now I just stick to the preset one, because anything else is a bit too distracting.
Especially some of the ones I used to download when I first started blogging. Ugh, so horrible. It’s so weird that decorating your desktop used to be so important. I can’t imagine spending my time doing that now – I have far too much I need to do. I definitely miss being a teenager and having that amount of free time though. I think I used to blog every day back then.
Ambushed on the way, your mobile access, offline cloud and print maps, or load new with an 18-karat gold pistol.
I can barely manage once a week now! I love those “throwback” songs that remind us of ourselves back in the day.
Oh man, I remembered those Windows XP days! It was pretty awesome XD.
I remembered seeing screenmates on a lot of computers! I didn’t know that there were kitty ones:3. For some reason, this reminded me of websites back in the mid-2000’s where people customized their cursors to be some fancy pixel pointer. The cats are so cute!!!!