Moodstream.gettyimages

Navigation is confusing. Upon trying to sign in, I get "contacting server. Be patient." I wait and wait for more than ten minutes and it just keeps spinning but never successfully signs me in. Changing moods and clicking "refresh stream" results in frozen page. I give up. Obviously not designed well

Come here when you're sad. Or happy, or in need of refreshment, or in fact in any other mood that can be described by moving five sliders up and down. The sliders in question measure happiness, calmness, humor, nostalgia and warmth, each in four degrees, which allows the site to encompass all human emotions in a hundred and... er... well, lots of combinations, anyway. And for each combination, Moodstream displays a selection of moving and still images culled from the vast Getty Images library, with appropriate backing tracks ranging from '20s jazz to New Age, depending on the position of the "nostalgia" slider.

Additionally, you can collect your mood settings into "moodboards" and view all the selections as a list, so that you can open individual clips or images and find out more about them.

For me, a big plus is that the site downloads required content prior to playing it, which means that I can watch video that actually moves and at full screen, rather than having to download an entire stream for viewing later.

To cope with the varying resolutions and quality of images and videos, the screen is presented much like an old TV set with lines. In this way, it's possible to mix old video clips with new images in such a way that the constant changes in quality don't leap out at you and become irritating.

Changes in music and image, though, may be unpredictably inappropriate. A middle-aged lady relaxes with her family photo album, while the band plays the Sailor's Hornpipe. That sort of thing. Don't expect perfect synchronization between audible and visual concepts. But it's not bad.

Other controls allow you to choose the amount of black and white content, and vocals, and you may also decide how long a single image should be on screen.

Once you're happy with your choices, you can refresh the stream and close the controls window, and sit back and relax. Or not, depending on what mood you've chosen. The streams don't last long, because the preloading time has to be short, so you'll be needing to refresh your stream or select a new mood rather more often than you might like. I'd like to see an option for fast connections and patient viewers, to allow more images and music to be downloaded in one hit.

Aside from that, this may not be an entirely original concept, but it's a bit of fun and it works very smoothly as a web page given that it's full-screen Flash. Recommended, if only to mess around with.