Blue Planet

Hello followers,

I am back. Had a terrible weekend, not just the earthquake in Japan, also my football team lost and I had no more beer Saturday night. Anyway, things have to go on and so here I  go and present you a nice little tool which i found at the Mac App Store and I think its amazing, you should really check it out:


My new Mac App Blue Planet is now available on the Mac App Store for just $0.99. Blue Planet is a small utility that replaces your desktop picture with a beautiful dynamic map of the Earth. As the day progresses and the sun illuminates different portions of the Earth, the map changes in real-time so you always see where it is day and where night.
Screenshot of Blue Planet on Mac OS X
You can choose from four gorgeous day images of the Earth, and the night view is even more beautiful in my opinion. The map can be centered on your current location or set to follow the sun. Visit the Blue Planet website for more screenshots and a comprehensive list of features.
If you decide to buy Blue Planet, I’d be very interested in your feedback.

How does it work?
Internally, the map consists of three CALayer objects. The daylight image is the bottommost layer. Above it lies the image of the Earth at night. The area that is currently illuminated by the sun is stored in a CGPathRef. I then create a CAShapeLayer with this path and use the shape layer to mask the night image layer, thereby revealing the day image layer underneath. A Core Image blur filter provides the soft transition from between day and night.
I arrange two of these layer stacks side by side so that I can move from any point on the equator to anywhere else with a smooth animation.
The path that represents the sun-illuminated area of the Earth is recalculated roughly every minute or so. This means that the CPU utilization of Blue Planet is effectively zero.

The website of the developer is here: http://blueplanetapp.com/

So go and check it out, it's really cool to see that you are all sleeping while here is sunny daylight!

37 comments:

Anonymous said...

This would be so awesome to be have only if I had a mac :'(

Erika said...

Sucks about your weekend, man. I hope things pick up this week =]

Alphabeta said...

Sorry to hear you had a crappy weekend.
Hopefully this week things will pick up.

Anonymous said...

looks great, thanks for sharing and it´s good you´re back.

Unknown said...

nice app

Devon Davidson said...

Huh, I'd actually consider getting this...

T. Banacek said...

I don't have a mac so...

Chris said...

Nice app, but kinda expensive (trollface)

Stef Pelgrims said...

oh looks nice!

rinns said...

PC masterrace over here.
Badluck about your weekend bro, shit sucks man.

Malkavian said...

Dont own a mac, looks like a nice app, forget about the weekend im sure this one will be awesome or awesomer!!!

D22 Zone said...

Loving the blog man! Like the layout very much!

Meghan Moran said...

cool I had a desktop like this once.

Kyle Shankin said...

Definitely a cool app. And the whole Japanese tsunami is terrible, but you ran out of beer too!? That is a rough weekend, sorry guy. I've been cutting down on what I eat and drink so I didn't get to have as much beer this weekend as I wanted either...

Jay said...

interesting, i saw a similar app for PC a few years back, if i'm not mistaken. :)

Aaron M. Gipson said...

I believe that there's something similar for Windows too, but the name escapes me right now. This would be me as a novelty, but it would eat up too much CPU for my comfort.

Trelin said...

Cool app. My first concern would be the unnecessary resource hogging, but I also usually buy cheap laptops so maybe thats just my problem.

Unknown said...

Hmm sounds pretty interesting

Matt Neumann said...

Welcome back! Tough to open the fridge and have no beer!

Grafted said...

Sorry about your weekend

skinned sheep said...

how does anything work?

Merlyy said...

The layout is awesome =)

Anonymous said...

That looks awesome!

Unknown said...

thats pretty cool.. feel bad for the japanese too

tak47 said...

I think your desktop background is amazing

Spike said...

really sweet man

Random Fan said...

Beautiful.

Anonymous said...

Wow, your football team lost AND you had no beer. I totally feel for you man.

Bassislv said...

i'll need a virtual machine to try it

Tyrone said...

i've got to admit, that looks badass!

AdPlusCommunications said...

Is there a windows equivalent? Very cool application!

Merlyy said...

Thanks, looks awesome )=

soulvask said...

good idea, and good looking on a mac !

Igneel21 said...

dont worry, everyone had a bad weekend

CandleintheDark said...

I don't have a mac but this is definitely a cool idea. I do kind of hate how Apple is moving the app idea to the desktop world. It is dumbing down computers.

duffboi said...

that's a really neat idea, especially for a desktop image.

Niko said...

WOW! this is so awesome! Sadly I got Windows XP...
I wish they make one for all Computers!

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