by Jason Snell
Downlink 2.0 brings more Earth options to your desktop
Space fan and podcaster Anthony Colangelo has updated his utility, Downlink, to version 2.0. Downlink powers my Mac’s desktop background, providing “live” (updated a few times an hour) satellite imagery of the Earth. My desktop is always the west coast of North America and the eastern Pacific Ocean, so I can always see what weather might be coming my way.
New in this version is support for custom views of the Earth, cropped out of one of three different full-disk images. Not only can you now make your own custom view, but these new image sources don’t have the political lines drawn like the previous image sources do. Now you can choose whether to use source images that draw borders, or ones that show the Earth as it looks from above—clouds and sea and desert and not a straight line to be seen.
Downlink 2.0 is now on the Mac App Store, and it’s free.