The title for this tip is the tagline of the open source application, Rainmeter. This application is capable of monitoring just about any system information you might want to view in just about any format.

There is plenty of documentation available which details how to customize the data you want to monitor as well as how you want to see it. You can also extend functionality to, for example, dynamically change your desktop background or have your to do list displayed on your desktop.

This program offers some pretty powerful stuff (just google “rainmeter” and look at the results) and well worth looking into if you like to streamline your desktop.