I first learned that Microsoft had approached a Flickr user to supply some of the standard wallpaper images included with Vista a while ago, but that little nugget of info has re-appeared today on Ars.Technica. I think it’s worth linking to the Flickr photoset from which MS bought two of the images that you can find in every copy of Vista. There’s also a good interview with the lucky (and talented) photographer who’s work will end up of bazillions of PCs world wide, here, which tells the full story.

Coincidentally, backgrounds was something I was wrestling with last night. I’ve just put together a PC for a computer-less friend, and once I’d finished downloading the basics (FireFox, Avast, Picasa etc) I started wondering what image to use as the wallpaper. Not wanting to hide my light under a bushel, I had a look through the mathematically generated set of my 100 most “interesting” pics on Flickr and I couldn’t actually find anything I was happy to use there: they all seemed a bit too…. aggressive. Going back to the Flickr pics MS used, I can see they do all have a very particular “wallpapery” quality to them: calm, despite the
fact there’s lots of highly-saturated colour, and subject matter that
is definitely natural but that still has very other-worldly feel to it. A dreaminess, I think. Anyone else got any other suggestions about what makes a good wallpaper? (No prizes for the first person to say scantily dressed babes…;)

(In the end, for my friend’s PC, I opted for the nice sunny shot above.)