Facebook’s new public API has brought forth a lot of creative effort from external developers, but there haven’t been many desktop applications released to take advantage of its power.

So I thought, what better way to do something fun with the platform than write a MacOS screen saver?

Friend Photos finds pictures of your facebook friends and turns them into a dynamic slideshow.

It makes use of Quartz Composer in much the same way as the Apple TV’s famed screen saver, passing a data structure full of photos and metadata gleaned from facebook into a QC patch and moving them around for dramatic effect.

Let me know if you have any issues, clever presentation ideas, or what have you.

Update:

I’ve written about the creation of this screen saver, along with the early days of the Facebook API, and Facebook’s own embrace of Quartz Composer over here, if you’re interested.

So awhile back I was thinking, “You know what would be funny? A screen saver that fakes a kernel panic!”

For those of you who might never have seen one, a kernel panic is basically the most shocking crash that you can get on a Mac. It’s Apple’s equivalent to the famed Blue Screen of Death.

What a great way to play a prank on someone, or frighten yourself.

So here is the end result, a harmless screen saver that faithfully emulates the horrifying experience of a kernel panic. It comes complete with a misleading Quartz Composer Preview so that the effect is all the more terrifying.

Update: KPSaver is now 64-bit and compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 and above. Legacy users can download the old version here.

If you enjoy KPSaver, please consider supporting it with a PayPal donation.

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Enjoy KPSaver? You might find our free Mac app Cursorcerer useful, and Say hi to @Doomlaser on Twitter