With the launch this week of DeskScapes 2.0, a lot of people who didn't previously have access to animated wallpapers (i.e. non Ultimate Vista users) might be wondering what the big deal is, and probably want to take the app for a spin themselves before deciding whether or not to spend the $20 on the stand-alone product (hey, it's bundled in with Object Desktop).

To help you out, Island Dog has put together a very detailed breakdown of the free preview version of DeskScapes 2.0, letting you know exactly what comes with it and how it works.  If you're on the fence, or merely curious, give it a read.

For years now, the Help section at WinCustomize has been pretty lacking.  For the last two site revisions it's just been a bulleted list of links to product pages or long outdated tutorials and documentation.  With the number of new users seeking support and assistance growing at an increasing pace, the time has come for a complete redesign of the page.

To that end, I've spend the last few days working on a new Help page that is hopefully a bit more "helpful" than what we currently have.  The focus is on usability, and providing more information to users about what they're looking at.  Product information is being improved, we're linking back more and more to the WinCustomize Wiki etc.

Currently the page is all blocked out and I'm working on filling in all of the links and content.  Here's a small preview of the page.  Ignore the jagged images, they're being redone this afternoon.  And yes, the text is placeholder content just to fill out the page a bit.

If you want to see what the individual product links will bring up, click here for an example.

Huge thanks to nauticalpixel for helping me with the CSS for this page.  This is my first attempt at using CSS and boy did I need a lot of help!

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

TGIF everyone!  Since the end of the week is upon us, it's time once again for Island Dog to round up some of the week's most notable skins.

This week, there's a cursor theme, icon pack, logon, dock background, two wallpapers and a WindowBlinds skin!  Check them out, download a few and let the artists know how much you love their work!

Each month. during/after the Mods' meeting [held in IRC] we get to propose people for advancement....and I get to do the honours.

Congratulations, everyone....

Apprentice

Shelbygt    Link
Brickhead    Link
BigDogBigFeet    Link
Xiandi    Link
CountryYokel    Link

Master Apprentice

2of3    Link
Drill'n Boss    Link
CarGuy1    Link

Journeyman

theAVMAN    Link

We don't often talk about MyColors skins here, or the artists behind them.  We especially don't do a very good job showing off their work and recognizing the outstanding degree of artistry of the skins, icons, wallpapers etc.  This is a real shame considering they're all members of the community.

So today, I'd like to show off some absolutely fantastic icons by none other than PixelPirate himself!  These go to five of our upcoming MyColors Inspired Themes.  I think they stand out as some of the best icons I've seen in ages!

Can you guess which upcoming theme each belongs to?

Like the teaser?  This is just the first of many 

Every month, I ask the moderators here at WinCustomize to pick out their favorite skins from the previous month.  Here are the picks for April 2008.

Trader Harbour AlexMorgan "Clean.  Watch the little men walking on the right side of the house.  Great dream." - WOM	Organic Xiandi "The cursor (and iconpack it's based on) have such wonderful aesthetics.  It captures exactly what I thought it should when I read the title.  I'm looking forward to the upcoming WindowBlind." - Zubaz	Temple Oblivion kittymalone "Another stunning release from the brightest star on the Australian skinning-sky" - Snowman
Tribal Dragon 17 WS RPGFX "A really fun wallpaper that just looks cool, not to mention it recolors well to compliment any desktop theme you can imagine" - HG_Eliminator "It's a style I've always liked, and had attempted many times to do myself when I was making walls.  It's wonderful." - Erk

Some great skins on display from April.  Thanks to all the mods who participated this month and congrats to the selected skinners!

Stardock is excited to announce the release of WindowBlinds 6.1 today.  WindowBlinds is the easiest, and safest way to change the complete look and feel of both Windows Vista and XP by applying one of thousands of visual styles that are available.

These visual styles can change just about every element of the Windows user interface from the Start menu, task bar, title bar, push buttons, scrollbars, and nearly everything else in Windows.

The WindowBlinds 6.1 update is available to current customers as a free update, and users can upgrade either through Stardock Central or the Impulse preview.  The WindowBlinds 6.1 release includes the following updates:

• Several maintenance and performance tweaks.
• Option to force start button to the middle of skins.
• Explorer background feature.

The Explorer Background feature allows users to change the background of their explorer, along with the background color and opacity.  There are 30 different background textures to choose from, including a "no texture" option that lets you set just the color and transparency of the Explorer background.

WindowBlinds has a free download available for evaluation, and is $19.95 for the full enhanced version.  WindowBlinds is also part of the Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancements.

Link: WindowBlinds

Island Dog is back again with another video walkthrough to help you get the most out of your skinning tools.  This time it's a more in-depth video showing you how to change cursor sets, apply effects, trails and recolor cursors.

If you haven't delved too far into the innards of CursorFX yet, give this video a look.

Yes, I know it's Wednesday and I'm just now posting the poll thread for the week.  And I'm also aware that the poll has in fact been up for a full day already.  There are very good reasons for all of this, I assure you.  With all the announcements and major news going on the last two days, I didn't want the big "VOTE NOW" button to be lost in the chaos.  I also wanted to give people a day or so for the news to sink in.

So by now you've no doubt read about the fantabulous changes we've made to the WinCustomize Subscription (and probably got a chuckle as we joked over the "real" reason for the change). 

The short version is subscribers will now be getting 12 Stardock Design skins per year for free, but the price of the subscription has increased by $10 to pay for it (still a killer deal for the subscriber).

What I'd like to know is how people overall feel about the change.  Like it?  Love it?  Hate it more than anything you've ever encountered in your long and tortured life?  Let us know!

After months of testing, today Stardock is proud to release DeskScapes 2.0!  Now, all Windows Vista users can enjoy animated wallpapers on their PC without having to shell out hundreds of dollars for Windows Vista Ultimate.

DeskScapes 2.0 brings video and dynamic Dreams to all Vista Users.  If you're new to DeskScapes today with 2.0, then you have over 600 Dreams to choose from!  These range from fantastic 3D rendered scenes by community members such as TheMasterBaron, to dynamic Dreams that use virtually no system resources from Stardock Design.  If you haven't given DeskScapes a try and you're on Windows Vista, you've just run out of excuses not to!

DeskScapes 2.0, a component of ObjectDesktop, can also be purchased individually for $19.95.

For years now, a WinCustomize subscription primarily allowed you to browse the site completely ad-free, gave you fully access to the Skin Browser, and every now and then a free skin from Stardock.  In recent months, we've been talking about how to change the site subscription model to make it a better value to users, with the goal obviously to encourage more people to subscribe and support the site. 

So today I'm happy to announce a transformation in the WinCustomize Subscription plan.  With Object Desktop, you get a year of software updates to some great skinning applications, but what about content?  To answer that, from today forward, a WinCustomize subscription will give you access to twelve free Stardock Design skins a year!*

Our first free skin to subscribers comes from one of the most respected and talented skinners in the community: adni18.  Stardust is a killer WindowBlinds skin that gives your desktop a modern & flashy look without being distracting or annoying.  Glassy edges, cool colors and attention to detail make this a skin every WindowBlinds user needs to run.

Subscribers can grab the skin from the Subscriber Resources page (must be logged in).

Pricing

Because we are now offering $60 in free skins a year, the pricing of the WinCustomize Subscription is changing.  Effective immediately, a WinCustomize subscription costs $29.95 per year and you'll renew on a year-to-year basis (i.e. no more 2 year renewals).  You will receive all the old benefits of a WC Subscription, only now for $10 extra you're getting $60 in skins.

Bundles

Don't have a subscription yet period?  Well, we're working on some bundle packs for new users. 

WindowBlinds Extreme

Currently, if you buy WindowBlinds Extreme, you can get WindowBlinds plus a WinCustomize Subscription for $39.95 (a $10 discount on the first year of a WC subscription).

We are working on a similar bundle for Object Desktop.  Expect more info on that when it's ready.

Q&A

Now, I'm sure everyone has questions about what this change means for them.  Let me quickly cover the high points...

1. I already have an existing subscription, do I get these skins too?
   Yes, you'll have access to all skins released while your subscription is active.
2. How often will skins be released?
   We'll release 12 over a calendar year(Jan - Dec).  Sometimes it'll be one a month, sometimes more, and sometimes we may miss a month altogether.
3. It won't be one per month?
   We're not guaranteeing one per month.  Sometimes schedules get hectic and projects get in the way.
4. What if I don't like the skins, can I get a substitute?
   Nope.  Think of this as a book of the month club or something similar.  Sometimes you get a great skin you love, sometimes it's something you wouldn't be caught dead running.  We'll be trying to release skins that appeal to a wide audience, so some months you'll love it, some you won't.
5. No more 2 year renewals?  What if we've recently purchased renewals?
   The change does not affect users who have purchased renewals prior to the change-over.  From this point forward you will not be able to purchase additional 2 year renewal.
6. Why get rid of the 2-year renewal?
   Well, now you're getting essentially $60 in free skins every year for your $30 subscription.  That should be sufficient value and not require a discount for future years.
7. What if I subscribe two years from now, will I get the last two years of subscriber skins?
   No.  Subscriber Skins will become Master Skins a year after they're posted.  At which point you can purchase them at a 20% discount.
8. What is the release schedule for the skins?
   We're going to release skins when they're finished and through QA testing.  I'll post teasers for upcoming skins as they near completion.  But there is no set release schedule
9. So some of these skins will be from MyColors Themes huh?  Will I get a discount on buying the full theme if I already have the skin?
   Yes.  We'll be offering MyColors Theme discounts similar to how we offer discounts to Object Desktop users.  Full details on the discount will be posted when the first MyColors Theme using a WC Skin goes up.

If there are any other questions about the new subscription plan, let me know either in a comment or via PM.

*a year is a calendar year, January 1st to December 31st.  Because this plan is launching in May of 2008, the 2008 skin set may fall short of the 12 target by December

Hard to believe that this UI was done with DesktopX 3.5.

The game is going gold in about a month and there's a lot to do to get it ready.  We've got pre-orders from most of the major retailers so we definitely can't miss the date. That means some all-nighters. Once the changes to the issue editor are done, I can put in the new issues. The changes to the game's political issue format will break the game until new issues are entered. Thus, I have between now and tomorrow morning to write the C++ code to import in the new issues and have the game and AI make use of them as well as enter in the issues for all 50 states. Otherwise, the game will be broken for the whole team tomorrow and we can't afford to lose any time.  But right now, I have to wait until the issue editor is done to even start. So here I am.

DeskScapes

Meanwhile, I'm also looking over tomorrow's release materials for DeskScapes 2.0. Animated wallpaper for all Vista users will be pretty cool. What's special about DeskScapes is it takes advantage of the DWM to lower CPU usage. On my water wallpaper, it uses basically 0% so I leave it running all the time.

Now, that said, .WMV based animated wallpaper can use a lot of CPU. That's because decoding a high-def MPEG 4 video in real time and then stretching it to fit your high resolution display uses a lot of CPU. That would be the same thing if you were playing the video in Media Player. It has nothing to do with DeskScapes or animated wallpaper in general.  The answer is to look for MPEG2 based animated wallpaper if you want video on your desktop OR stick with dynamic animated wallpaper (i.e. where the content is generated as a Direct3D source).

A kinder, gentler website

I don't know if you guys have been noticing but we've been working on updating our various websites. The Stardock.com websites have traditionally looked, well, like crud.  We're mostly a bunch of engineers.  But over the past year, things have changed. One of the benefits of creating Stardock Design is that we now have artists who can do stuff to make our presentation look better.  It's a slow process but check out the Stardock home page and main pages. We even re-did the WindowBlinds page. It'll be interesting to see if it affects sales or not.

Impulse Progresses

Our next-generation digital distribution platform continues to move towards its June 17th launch date. Internally we got chat back in. Here's a look:

This should be available in this week's beta.

Now, a lot of people have noticed how much better Impulse looks than Stardock Central. Once again: Stardock Design. 

So who is involved in Impulse? People you guys probably know already!

• Alexandrie (of Pixtudio fame) did the main UI design.
• Paul Boyer (Mormegil) helped in UI.
• Chaninja (famous msstyler) is working on the dock graphics.
• JMB1984 (of ObjectDock fame) is in charge of the overall project

They are all people we met through skinning over the years. All of them are here in Michigan except Chaninja who's in South Africa.

Brian Harper (Bagginz) remains in charge of Stardock Central which won't be going away any time soon either and T-man is working on the backend along with Cari-Elf. Bagginz is also working on IconPackager 4 which is incredibly slick as some of you already know.

MyColors

Stardock Design has finally released its first genuine female oriented suite called Princess:

The screenshot doesn't really do justice to it. The weather gadget actually changes (more than just the icon) based on weather conditions. 

Now, I don't like pink. So what I do is load it up in WindowBlinds and hue shift it to a bluer color and change the wallpaper to something less girly.   Now you know why IconPackager 4 includes hue shifting for icons! It has awesome icons but they're pinkish.

If you have Object Desktop, it's only $9.95 for the entire suite.

That's all for now, the issue editor is about to be checked in. Cheers!

This week we get dangerously close to the 30 minute mark as we take on topics such as the latest Master Skin, the demise of the GUI Champs wallpaper event and upcoming changes to the WinCustomize Subscription plan.  Joining us this week on the show is Zubaz, site moderator and long-time community member.  This is without a doubt our best show so far as we get a feel for how to record the show and what's needed to prepare.

Remember, you can subscribe to us via iTunes and receive updates as soon as we publish them.  Download them, sync them up to your iPod and go.

While I know just about everyone who visits this web site primarily uses Windows for one reason or another, I was wondering if folks had any alternative OS preferences.  Just to see what else the community might be running on their PCs. 

The results weren't all that surprising (to me at least).  The single largest block of votes was for Windows-Only, with Linux coming in a very close second.  A few of you use MacOS, and an almost non-existent group are still on old-fashioned UNIX.

Did the results actually surprise anyone?

Wow the weekend flew by fast!  Feels like I spent most of it doing spring cleaning and running errands though.  Can I have another day off please?  Well, despite hoping earnestly for another day on the weekend, it's Monday and here we all are, at work or school (or skipping).  Over the weekend, while we were all out cleaning/playing/not working many folks were still here uploading their skinning masterpieces.  Here are some of my favorites from the weekend:

Software giant Microsoft has walked away from its bid to buy Yahoo, saying the latest asking price of US$53 billion, or $37 per share, is too high.

The decision came after Saturday morning talks between Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer and Yahoo chief executive officer and co-founder Jerry Yang.

"Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer," Ballmer said in a statement late Saturday.

Do you believe the offer was fair? Not Enough? Shouldn't have been offered in the first place?

Who is the winner and who is the loser?

There's so much going on that I have no life. Life at Stardock is changing so rapidly. It was just a couple years ago that Stardock was an $8M company.  This fiscal year ends on June 30th and it's looking like Stardock is going to break the $20M mark. If all goes well, we'll double that again next year once certain big projects get launched this Summer.

The skinning world I know and love continues to evolve. The "power user" market for skinning has pretty much peaked. That is, at this point, most Windows power users know about our stuff and have either decided they want it or don't. Revenue continues to grow but at a much lower rate. The real increases are coming from more casual users. That's one of the big reasons why Object Desktop 2008 was split between the standard edition and the Ultimate Edition. 

Let's talk about Object Desktop Ultimate for a sec.

One of the things that has been really slowing down things with Object Desktop is support. That, in turn, has made us less able to release some of the more cutting edge things sitting in our labs. You wouldn't believe some of the cool desktop enhancements that we have written but put on the shelf over the years because of some limitation in the program that would have caused too much support. I think the last thing we released that fit that description was IconX and we have regretted it ever since.  Whether it be skinnable command line shells, desktop "docks", new explorer views, mouse gesture based programs, or 3D virtual desktops, they're floating around in the lab somewhere. At one point, we had a compositor up and running on Windows XP (Microsoft hired him to work on - wait for it - the compositor in Vista). 

So with Object Desktop Ultimate, we are starting to look at being able to make some cooler stuff that might be termed experimental. That is, it might simply have some limitations with it that a consumer would not accept but power users would understand.  I almost wish we could require some sort of tech test before you could buy Object Desktop Ultimate so that we could eliminate the casual computer users who get lost in ObjectBar.

Loved in the gaming world, despised in the tech world

It's ironic that in the gaming world, Stardock is very popular. Whenever a new announcement is posted on the various game related websites, positive comments pour in.  By contrast, when one of our skinning programs is released, which tend to cost less than half as much as the games, we get tarred and feathered on the net - even on our own sites.

WinCustomize subscriptions about to get sweeter

The budget has been approved to start giving away quite a bit of content to WinCustomize subscribers. None of this 2 suites per year stuff but rather a fairly steady trickle of content. The stand-alone subscription price is gonna end up like $29.95 but there will be bundles with our various programs at a steep discount for WC subscriptions.

So basically what I think you'll start to see are skins and icon packages released onto WinCustomize first, then turned into MyColors themes. Not every MyColors theme will show up on WC but quite a few of them will. At first they'll be in their own section but eventually they'll be like Master skins in the gallery except called Subscriber skins that are free for download to subscribers. After a year, the subscriber skin will turn into a Master skin (to reward long-time subscribers).

Today is Island Dog day.  After putting together his monthly Dream montage he went though the gallery in search of the greatest skins posted over the last seven or so days.  As always, he digs up some really cool stuff that you might not have noticed otherwise.

With April now over, Island Dog pulled together some of the best dreams of the month and cut them up into a video montage for your viewing pleasure.  There's a great selection this month to check out so hit the link below to watch the video.

My favorite is probably Sunny Beach by Alex Morgan.

What happens when you take the skinning talent of one of our Master Skinners and combine it with one of the most active members of the community?  Chances are it's a skin of exceptional quality that's built to meet the needs and interests of users rather than just the skinner themself.

Today, we have a prime example of that: Crystalline by SK Originals.

Built with constant input and direction from Bebi Bulma, Crystalline combines SK's skinning talent and Bebi's creativity, style and drive for usability.  The end result is one of the best skins uploaded to WinCustomize in recent memory.

Crystalline uses both WindowBlinds 6 and Vista-Only features, and a selection of substyles for both Vista and XP users.  It also comes with a wallpaper pack.

And don't worry if purple isn't your color, this skin recolors extremely well!

Grab a copy now for just $4.95 (and remember, there's a 20% discount for WinCustomize Subscribers)

I can't believe it's already May!  2008 has been flying buy and now we're getting close to the half-way point.  So much to do and so little time!

To kick May off, Snowman has picked up the torch and started this months Desktop Screenshots thread.  So far there are only 5 shots posted, but it's only a few hours into the month so I guess I can forgive it.

Head on over now and post your desktop shot for May.  It's always a lot of fun to see what people are running on their PCs every month.

The year is 1999, IconPackager brings simple icon switching to Windows and the world erupts in joyous cheers!  Well, maybe not.  But artists did set to work on creating new custom icon sets to save everyone from the horror of the default windows icons.

Here are just a handful of the very first IconPackager sets uploaded to WinCustomize.

Wow the previews were tiny back then.

Zubaz revives his "Ask a Master" series from last year for a great interview with SK Originals, one of our most talented community skinners and takes the time to answer nearly a dozen questions about skinning, his creative process, why he skins etc.

Check out the full interview.

Today, Stardock is pleased to announced the release of KeepSafe 2.0.  KeepSafe is the ultimate real-time data protection technology that is as simple as set-and-forget it.  It's designed to work in the background and be as seamless as possible. 

Anyone who has ever lost that all important document due to a drive crash, corrupt save, overwritten, etc., then users will appreciate what KeepSafe can do. This new version of KeepSafe features several new features:

• Improved User Interface to make more user friendly and intuitive.
• Secondary backup location can be an external hard drive or USB drive.
• Configure KeepSafe to save to local storage temporarily, and copy to secondary drive when connected.  Very useful for when working mobile.
• New statistics view to show file counts and disk space usage.

KeepSafe is available as a stand-alone application, or part of the ThinkDesk suite of utilities. A free download is available for evaluation, and the registered version is $29.95.

Link: KeepSafe

If you're a forum junkie, I'm sure you've already seen the updates we made today to the Stardock forums.  But in case you haven't, or in case you're not sure exactly how all the new bits work, there's a quick tour through of the new features and how to use them.

Click on through to check out the new features!