Traditionally, people would decorate the walls of their home. Now, they have a new wall to make a statement with — that on their computers.
Desktop wallpapers available on the Internet were quite the rage early on. Today, desktops are becoming increasingly personal and so are the pictures pasted/posted on them.
Some, such as actors Balaji and Jiiva, have the pictures of their baby. “I have noticed that in tinseltown, people generally have photographs of family or of the film they are working on currently,” says Balaji, a cricket enthusiast who recently changed his wallpaper on the birth of his daughter.
In the corporate world, though, things are different. Business is not usually mixed with pleasure. “Our company has a strict policy on such things. Our desktops have schedulers, to-do lists etc against the company logo background,” says an administrative officer of a leading software company.
MD at Postlor, an ad agency, Charles Aloysius has posters designed for his company every week, which he puts up on his computer.
There are exceptions like Saleem Yusuff, CEO of Cogent HRO, who has a mix of both work and personal life on his desktop. “I have a collage of my wife’s pictures and staff photos. It’s good to look at after a long day,” he says.
College students have the pick of the lot, thanks to their knowledge of computers and the world wide web.
So while the boys have devised ways to save over a thousand pictures of hot supermodels and cars and have it keep changing on the desktop every four minutes, the girls go in for ‘cute’ images and personal photographs. Prince is a typical college-goer whose desktop reflects his taste in music.
“I usually have Linkin Park and Michael Jackson on my desktop,” says the bio-tech student. Things are different in B-school. “Our desktops are very cluttered and impersonal,” says Swetha, a student at ISB, Hyderabad.
“It is packed with postits, to-do lists, reminders and presentations,” she adds. And usually, the background is the Windows default! “In families, the desktop backgrounds keep changing,” complains Usha Ganesh, a teacher.
“When I save Lord Ganesha as the background, my son immediately changes it to a cartoon image,” she says with a sigh. The desktop reflects your personality is what Kiruba Shankar, CEO, Business Blogging feels.
“You sit in front of your computer for long hours and you don’t want a default wallpaper to stare at you,” he says.
And with desktops come the funky applications. While some have the death clock (a clock that predicts when you are going to die and keeps track of the countdown), others prefer less morbid things like desktop pets.
You even have to take care of these pets and feed them virtual food, else they die.
And that’s one death you wouldn’t want on your hands...desktop. So what’s on your desktop? Death or dish!