Dave Winer has just released a new application: FlickrFan.

FlickrFan downloads high resolution pictures that your friends post to Flickr. If you want, it also downloads high quality pictures from some sources, such as AP wire photos. And you can add more sources. Once the photos are on your Mac's hard disk, you can set up your computer screen saver and display them with cool transitions.

Dave's original idea is to use this application on a Mac Mini connected to a HD TV. I have seen the setup in Dave's living room, and it is very cool. I have been testing the application for a while, even if I don't have a HDTV or a Mac Mini, I just run it on my MacBook Pro and use it to feed my screen saver.

I must say that it's beautiful, it almost makes my computer more interesting when I'm not using it. It's hard to explain why it's such a captivating experience. There's the quality of the pictures: with modern digital cameras quality tends to be pretty good, some of my friends on Flickr are really great photographers and stuff coming from professional photographers on international news network is truly amazing.

And then there's a "Zeitgeist effect". The pictures are not just some random images, it's a curious mix of recent images from my friends and from the news. Mixing an image from Pakistan with what my buddy received for  Christmas makes this sequence of pictures "my world".

Just go and download it, let it run for a while and then enjoy the show. It will make you happy :-).