Sikuli is a visual technology to search and automate graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images (screenshots) which we've covered not so long ago but which at the time of our post didn't work on Linux (but did work on Windows and Mac OS X).

Sikuli Script automates anything you see on the screen without internal API's support. You can programmatically control a web page, a desktop application running on Windows/Linux/Mac OS X, or even an iphone application running in an emulator.

Sikuli is a really interesting cross-platform (works on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) application which automates tasks using screenshots. That means that you can basically program your computer to perform certain actions using scripts made of screenshots. You can also send certain keyboard keys, enter text and so on. Here is an example of a Sikuli script:

DoThisNow is a Linux (w/ Gnome) application which allows you to run tasks at a certain time, like very 5 minutes, on a week day, on a given date, etc. The tasks include: setting a wallpaper, setting the Pidgin status, taking a screenshot, launch application or file, open URL in browser, display a message, run a shell command or play a sound.

For Windows, there is an application for this called Gijsco’s Last.fm Desktop Generator and you can download it from HERE. Using it is very simple so I won't cover this part.

You must use Wallpaperfm.py, a Python script that generates desktop wallpapers from your last.fm music profile. It runs on Linux but should run just as well on Mac and Windows.

To generate a wallpaper using Wallpaperfm is very simple. All you have to do is open a terminal and paste the following commands:

(more examples: here, here, here)

If you enjoyed the real-time Earth wallpaper, you're going to like this one too: this is also a script (but a more advanced one) which changes automatically changes your wallpaper with a random picture from NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive.

The script automatically downloads the image and sets it as your wallpaper so after running the script, you don't have to do anything else.

For the script to automatically change your wallpaper every time you power-up your computer and boot into Linux, go to System > Administration > Startup Applications, click "Add", in the "Name" field enter whatever you want and in the "Command" field, enter the full path to the downloaded script (link at the end of the post).