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Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why we have decided to supply you with smashing wallpapers over 12 months.

All week, rumours have been flying around the internet that DR had gone out of business. CR can confirm that it is true. On Tuesday this week, the business was closed with nine staff being made redundant. According to its founder, Ian Anderson, the studio became insolvent due to a combination of factors: “We’d lost a couple of clients, didn’t win a couple of pitches, got a tax bill which should have been sorted out and wasn’t and a major client who didn’t pay the money they owed us – in themselves any of those things would have been fine but when they come all at once there’s not much you can do.”

An essay by Suzanne Vega on the creation of her song "Tom's Diner", and how she came to be known as "The Mother of the MP3" as a result. Published on "The New York Times" blog "Measure for Measure" on September 23, 2008, a blog described as follows: " With music now available with a single, offhand click, it's easy to forget that songs are not born whole, polished and ready to play. They are created by artists who draw on some combination of craft, skill and inspiration. The contributors to this blog pull back the curtain on the creative process as they write about their work on songs in the making."

NPR.org, September 26, 2008 - Note: Audio for this album will be available at 12 a.m. Tuesday, Sep. 30. Widely regarded as America's greatest living songwriter, Bob Dylan has written and recorded some of the most influential and acclaimed music of the past century. With countless studio albums, compilations and live discs to his name in his nearly 50-year career, Dylan continues to produce new music that's as vital as his earliest recordings, and still performs more than 100 concerts every year in what's been called the "never-ending tour." For the legions of fans who still can't get enough, Dylan's longtime label (Columbia Records) has been releasing a series of "bootleg" CDs from the singer — a vast collection of rare recordings and outtakes spanning five decades. The series began in 1991 with the first three bootleg volumes, covering the first 30 years of Dylan's career. Now, 17 years later, Columbia is about to release the eighth volume. Tell Tale Signs covers Dylan's past 20 years, a period that produced the albums Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, Modern Times and Oh Mercy. Tell Tale Signs offers a rare glimpse into Dylan's creative process, with alternate takes that show the evolution of his work, as his songs take shape lyrically and musically. Columbia recently gave listeners an early taste of Tell Tale Signs by offering the track "Dreamin' of You" as a free download from Dylan's Web site. You can also hear the song on the latest episode of All Songs Considered. Here, NPR Music will offer a sneak preview of the entire two-disc set as a free stream beginning at 12 a.m. Tuesday, Sep. 30. The album will be officially released in stores and online on Oct. 7.

With the overall economy slumping, the tech industry is taking its fair share of hits. We'll keep updating the chart below as news of company changes comes in. See our complete coverage of how the tech sector is faring here: Tracking the tech downturn.

It’s not a good time to be a print magazine right now. Even a crowdsourced magazine with a stripped-down staff that relies on the contributions of its more talented readers. JPG Magazine and its parent company 8020 Media is shutting down after running out of money and not being able to find any new investors. The seed investment had come from Cnet founder Halsey Minor, who apparently also did not want to put in any more.

Each of the twelve volumes of The Diagnostics of Karma, by S.N. Lazarev, has sold tens of millions of copies in Russian. Only the first volume was ever translated into English. That translation was printed once in St. Petersburg, Russia, in a limited edition of a few thousand copies. There is some mystery about what happened to that print run—shipped to New York at the author’s expense. Copies of the translated book were never available to the general public in the West.

Inspiration for designers who want to give their business cards that extra bit of flair.

Brian Jungen's "Shapeshifter" and "Cetology" made from plastic chairs.

"That we are here today is testimony to the courage of Alstom, because during its worst period it decided not to sacrifice its research and development," Mr Sarkozy said in front of the new train at Alstom's rail test centre in La Rochelle, western France.

Many times we have found ourselves in a restaurant, café, or even a public library without a secure place to hang our jackets or hand bags. We either uncomfortably hang our belongings on a public coat rack, or across the back of our chair for the world to see. With “Chair Wardrobe”, we can confidently place our belongings in a secure location and keep them within reach. The “Chair Wardrobe” is a design concept by Erohina Yulia that allows for the outside of the chair to appear as a normal chair, but the secret is the inside storage or wardrobe for your special items. The design is made of two different colored plastics signifying the double features of the chair. The choice to use different wood or textiles is also available.

Xerox today unveiled the most sweeping changes to its logo and brand in the companyss history. This morning CEO Anne Mulcahy and president Ursula Burns hosted a town hall meeting and live webcast that first revealed the new logo and brand identity to Xerox’s 57,000 global employees.

Yes, Latin Jazz, American Journalists, and the Year of the Rat are all very noteworthy new USPS stamps for 2008, but we're about to hoard these Charles and Ray Eames sets at our local post office. (So sorry in advance if you go to the same post office as us.)

A new ad in Australia highlights the dangers of crossing the road with your MP3 player rumbling your inner ear canal at full volume. And of course, it shows the iPod in a new twist of Apple's original silhouettes campaign, now using the headphones cable as a way to draw the place in which a body lies dead. Ah, nothing like a great morbid image to start up a pre-Macworld Wednesday.

The subject of graffiti often brings out strongly polarized reactions from urban dwellers, who either support it as art or criticize it as vandalism. Brandon Baunach of DesignCrack has developed a project based on an idea of Drew Heffron that has amazingly drawn both fire and criticism from both sides: Graffiti Report Card stickers for rating urban street graffiti.

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They say timing is everything, but some photographs (such as these) become brilliant or hilarious because both the timing and the angle work out just right. Sometimes this means catching people or objects lined up perfectly at the ideal moment. Other times these are staged for maximum effect. Here are 20 examples of photos taken at the exact right angle.

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