Button Up! Screensaver 1.0

Recently, we’ve taken a look at several kaleidoscope screensavers offered free of charge by Jim Bumgardner. Sparkletts for example lets you interact with the kaleidoscope images by pressing the arrow keys. Escher displays high-contrast black and white images and has engravings by noted artist M.C. Escher.

Then we have the 'Got …?' series which features the following kaleidoscopic screensavers:
Got Fruit? which uses fruits and vegetables to come up with some very nice kaleidoscopic images.
Got Neon? which uses pictures of common neon signs seen in bars and restaurants to come up with top quality kaleidoscopic images.
Got Flowers? which uses pictures of flowers like roses, daisies, orchids and sunflowers to come up with some very colorful kaleidoscopic images.

Now we put the spotlight on yet another Jim Bumgardner-developed kaleidoscopic screensaver, mainly on Button Up! Screensaver. Just like all the other screensavers mentioned above, it is a kaleidoscopic screensaver. The difference is that it doesn’t use images of flowers or fruit, or neon signs. Button Up! is based on photographs of real Victorian glass buttons. “Each button itself is a work of art, and they make wonderful source material for the kaleidoscope,” explained Jim Bumgardner.

I mentioned above that you could interact with the Sparkletts screensaver. You can interact with Button Up! as well – also by pressing the arrow keys. “This newer kaleidoscope uses a more realistic physics-based method for moving the buttons as if they're in an oil-filled object cell. Press the arrow keys to change the mirror system or to rotate the object-cell,” added Jim Bumgardner.

Getting the Button Up! screensaver off the web and onto your computer will only take a moment to complete since the download weighs in at 303KB. Installing it on your Windows-powered computer will take little time as well. Once you’re done downloading and installing the screensaver, you can use it free of charge for as long as you want.

Pros

• Lightweight download
• Installs rapidly
• Beautiful images
• Interact with the screensaver by pressing the arrow keys
• Freeware

Cons

• None that I could think of

About Jim Bumgardner
In the past, senior technical guru Jim Bumgardner has worked for big name companies like Yahoo!, Topspin, Time Warner, Macrovision, and Ogilvy & Mather. He currently works for DigiSynd, Disney’s social media group that brings the trusted Disney presence to audiences in their native online environments. He is Director of Application Development at DigiSynd.

Jim Bumgardner co-authored the O’Reilly book “Flickr Hacks” with Paul Bausch and founded the Flickr Hacks group on Flickr.

Jim’s interests cover a wide area. He is a programmer, data-visualization expert, Flash expert, artist, musician, composer, puzzle constructor, teacher, and software developer. He particularly likes to come up with various software toys which he offers free of charge via the krazydad.com site.

Additional information on Jim Bumgardner is available on the abovementioned krazydad.com site.
Additional information on Button Up! Screensaver is available here.

Button Up! Screensaver has been reviewed by George Norman on 15 Mar 2011. Based on the user interface, features and complexity, Findmysoft has rated Button Up! Screensaver 3 out of 5 stars, naming it Very Good