I was watching this weekend on my DVR and during the "Around the net" section, after showing a live web site tool, they minimized the browser quickly before the director has changed the camera. This allowed a 1 second glimpse of the desktop of that machine and I paused it to find some interesting things.

The obvious thing that I noticed was that the computer was running (surprise!) Microsoft Windows. This was assumed.  The interesting part to me, is the sort of thing that I spoke about in my "Electronic Deduction" article.  There were a lot of little icons and clues on the desktop that are listed below.

 * Ugly AOTS logo wallpaper (tiled) 

 * Safari browser icon (which had just been released earlier that week)

 * Last.fm icon/shortcut (someone is listening to some music in the studio)

 * Yahoo messenger icon (along with some other yahoo icon so someone has a yahoo account!) 

There were also a couple of unidentifiable icons.  Maybe someone else recognized the description or saw it better than I did. 

 * Some camera icon (It did not look like webshots or picassa, but it could have been an internet shortcut to flickr or something also)

 * A default DOS application icon.  Something that seemed very out of place. There was a name under it, but I could not make it out.

 * A folder.  This one also had a description that was unreadable.

 *  An icon with a red letter "S" on it with a white background.  This was certainly an application of some kind, but again, I did not recognize it.

So what does all this mean?  I guess it means that I watch things to damn closely, but I just always find it interesting to look really closely at everything.  I was expecting that a live system in a studio for a live show would be pristine and only have the bare minimum installed to avoid the potential for crashing while live or to prevent embarrassing things from happening on the air.  I guess that they use this machien for whatever they want.

I did not get a screen capture of it before I deleted it, but if someone out there has it, please send it to me and I will post it here.