Get ready for some spicy stuff.  I think one of the reasons people like Stardock is that we operate a lot like how many people who have thought of running their own business would run their business.  Simply put, we're candid. We don't have any venture capital powering the company. We operate because of people like you guys who buy our products, subscribe to our sites, etc. send us money and we then take that money and create stuff you want. That makes us totally independent. We don't have corporate masters. You guys are our masters. So you don't get any of that patronizing politically correct crap that you see from so many "larger" companies (even though Stardock itself is a multi-million dollar corporation now all from many thousands of individual purchases each year).

My rant of the day is that apparently the Konfabulator for Windows beta comes out next week. How do I know this? It was on freakin Slashdot. It was on News.com. And it was on dozens of other sites. Wow. Konfabulator for Windows. Must be doing something earth shattering? Friends, I have Konfabulator on my Macintosh. It's a great Mac program. I think its developer is a very talented guy. But to be perfectly honest, it's not even competitive with Kapsules let alone something like DesktopX.

But given the coverage Konfabulator always gets, you'd think it was some sort of miracle program. Sure, it costs more than DesktopX, does a lot less than DesktopX, has fewer users than DesktopX, is harder to create stuff for, has less content, but it's special because it came from a Mac and everyone knows that people who use Macs are...you know...a better breed of human than us yokals who use PeeCees. 

Not that Konfabulator content is bad. Why this past week a cool weather widget came out for it. And an RSS reader.  And a terror alert status. In other words, the same kinds of things that have been avaiable on DesktopX, Kapsules, Samurize, and countless other programs for a long time. But Konfabulator gets credit for being somehow unique even though it was preceded by DesktopX by 3 years.

Probably the most insulting part was that Konfabulator big coverage came from CNET which has acted like it was somehow unique even as DesktopX on CNET has been on its top 10 most popular desktop enhancement downloads category for the past 203 consecutive weeks.  That's about 4 years straight (Konfabulator was released on the Mac in 2003 to keep things in perspective).

I'm going to start showing my son (who's 7) how to make widgets for DesktopX. I think he'd have a good time and it'll teach him some valuable skills such as how to use a graphics package, how to do some basic programming, and best of all, you he'd get some immediate gratification. When I was his age I was playing around with basic programming on my dad's Apple II. Those were the days.

Meanwhile, I must find Tiggz and snuff him out.  In the advocacy competition he's beating me. ME. How is this happening? Now I know how a Kerry voter must be feeling right now. How is Tiggz able to get more people to WinCustomize them myself? Personally I'm blaming it on the voter machines in Ohio. The new WinCustomize tracks the # of people you bring to the site from links you create on other sites.  Obviously he's cheating. That's the only explanation.  But this week he has brought 1,157 people to WinCustomize.com from links he's made to his personal page and his skins from other sites.

Meanwhile, Steven Grenier has taken the lead in the WindowBlinds most popular skin contest. His WindowMax2 skin has passed up many other skins to be the current leadrer demonstrating that it's not how quick you get your skin up but how much people like it.

This Tuesday DesktopX v2.2 will be released so hopefully people will be able to finally compare Konfabulator to DesktopX head to head. I'm looking forward to that. Finally and apples and apples comparison between the two.

Meanwhile, the Utopia Icons are doing really well. It's always good to see long time community skinners like Paul Boyer do well. He did this on his own folks, I know he spent many many weekends working on Utopia to make sure it was really good.

So next week things will definitely be getting interesting. New builds of a bunch of programs coming out and lots of news. And WinCustomize v4 will be available to more people. Stay tuned!