OSXplanet: Live Desktop

When we recently mentioned the release of EarthDesk 4.0 from xeric design, many of the commenters suggested we check out the OSXplanet Project. OSXplanet is a Cocoa port of the Open Source program Xplanet and like EarthDesk puts a "live" picture of the earth on your Desktop. However, like Xplanet, OSXplanet can also display other planets in the solar system (though perforce with not quite as much live data). You can choose from a variety of map projections, see cloud formations, mark cities on the map (and even center the view on one of them), track storms, view earthquakes and volcanoes, and even some satellites (as I write this, the International Space Station seems to be about over Chicago). Surprisingly, it doesn't even require too big of a memory hit (I'm at about 54MB real).

OSXplanet is a free download though its author (who is all of 17 years old) requests donations ($20 suggested).