Impulse is the greatest thing since sliced bread...yada yada yada.

But how good is it really? Ultimately, only you will be able to decide.  What I'm going to do here is give my personal opinion on how Impulse stands on the eve of its launch.

The Comparisons

Let's just get this out of the way, Impulse is not Steam or Direct2Drive or Xfire or whatever.  It's has a very different design philosophy.  So let me just say this: You would have to pry Steam out of my cold dead hands.  You should judge Impulse as how well it addresses your problems.

First Impressions

So I double click on the Impulse icon.  How fast does it load?  On my ThinkPad T60 it's about 5 seconds but YMMV.  In its phase 2 edition (August) I think we need to make it more multithreaded so that when you launch it, it comes up like a window. I.e. instantly.  But it is pretty snappy (a lot faster for me than the betas were).

My next question would be, how much RAM is this thing using?

On load up, about 15 megabytes which is pretty good given that Internet Explorer uses 84 megabytes! 

The Store

From a digital e-commerce point of view, the million dollar question is, how good is the selection in the Impulse store?  With Steam or Direct2Drive, I can get a gazillion different games.  So what about Impulse? The answer depends on what you're looking for. 

The first week of the Impulse launch will be spent handling the logistics of getting hundreds of gigabytes of games, utilities, and applications up on the servers. So what is available at say 1pm on the day of the launch will be different from what is available at 5pm of the same day with each day adding more and more stuff.

But by Christmas, I suspect it won't be selection that makes one choose one digital store over another but rather the features and services that these things provide.  Impulse, for instance, supports refunds for users having technical issues. That's a pretty big deal IMO. As far as I know, that will be unique to Impulse.

Community Features

So that we're all on the same page, Impulse isn't just a download manager ala Stardock Central.  It is a full blown digital distribution platform.  The platform comes in the form of Impulse Reactor which is a server-side virtual API set for developers.

A developer could, for instance, using the free Impulse Reactor SDK (which will be launched in mid August) type into their game: CVP.SaveGame() and save their game to the player's virtual drive.  Or CVP.LoadPreferences() to get a game's preferences.

The first game to make use of the Common Virtual Platform will be The Political Machine.  Unfortunately, The Political Machine v1.1 wasn't ready by the Impulse launch so we had to hide the "Games" button from the community area for multiplayer match making.  As soon as it's ready, the button will come back and players will be able to find games either there or within The Political Machine itself.  Other games that will be using it include Sins of a Solar Empire, Galactic Civilizations II v2.0, and Demigod.  We are also working with a number of third party developers to begin using this.

Blogging

I am very biased in favor of non-website whenever possible. I just find website stuff slow. 

The blogging and forum behavior on Impulse is pretty fast but I'd like to see it much faster.  As in, instantaneous.

I think in the coming weeks you'll see a lot of improvements to performance across the whole thing as the initial launch was largely about just getting stuff in there.

My Friends

The friends stuff is a pretty big deal for me as both a user and as a gamer.  It's only in its beginning stages really.  Eventually, you'll be able to easily get games going and filter by friends or friends of friends to help improve the multiplayer experience.

When I play on-line, my biggest gripe is the griefing and such I run into.  I'm 36 years old, I just don't have time to waste in a multiplayer game with some 15 year old whose out to "max their ranking".

Features that didn't make to the launch that make me sad

There are 3 big features that had to be put into phase 2 (August) that make me sad. The Impulse side was done but we just didn't have enough time on the game side to make use of them yet.

Those are:

1. Multiplayer Matchmaking.  People could start and join games right from Impulse.
2. Achievements.
3. Game Rankings.

They'll get in there, we just have to update The Political Machine and other games to make use of them so that we can show off what's possible to game developers.

The same is true for NAT negotiation and such.  One of the biggest pains in the butt on the PC is getting ports and firewalls set up right for a game. In Impulse phase 3, the Impulse back end will be set up to act as a kind of back-up for games that use our platform.  So a user could connect to another user without knowing anything about routers and what not.  We're hoping Demigod will be the first game to make use of this.

Getting Updates

So right now, there's a tab called "Updates" that shows up if there are updates to ones programs.  I'd like to see an option put in asap that simply has Impulse download these updates automatically.

My other request is that when downloading updates, I want to see my actual bandwidth speed. I realize this is cosmetic but somewhere, techies should be able to get some idea of how fast their connections are.

Getting to my stuff

Impulse lets users add new categories to  their applications and move things around via the dock (we'll talk about that more soon).

If there's an update, an exclamation point shows up next to it.

What's not in the launch version are forums for every application or a chat channel. Eventually everything will get its own forum and chat channel.

Registering your stuff

Users can associate various programs with their account.  Right now, the only commercial programs that you can associate with your account are Stardock ones and programs you bought from Impulse. But the next step is to let you be able to associate any program with your account regardless of where you purchased it.

This way, when are setting up a new machine, you can just let Impulse download and install all your stuff (freeware, shareware, games, whatever).

Preferences

Clicking on the orb in the top left opens up additional options.  You can set up where things install on a per category basis:

The Dock

Impulse is designed to customizeable.  The initial launch doesn't have the skinning selection features in. That's coming "real soon now(TM)". But you can add and edit your own categories:

 
Extending Impulse

When you press the minimize to dock, Impulse launches the dock:

Impulse Dock

The dock displays the same content as the Impulse client. By default, it is set to auto-hide so it will hide to the taskbar edge with the user able to bring it up by moving their mouse to the bottom edge of the screen.

The dock is pretty powerful and yet light weight.

We plan to release later on an Impulse Tray applet that users can optionally use to stay in touch with friends, posts, updates, etc.  It will not be part of Impulse itself as it will be designed to be as tiny as possible. 

So what's next?

I think most people will find Impulse pretty compelling. Initially, its game content is not on par with Steam or Direct2Drive but that should change over time.  Obviously on the non-game software side, it enjoys a tremendous advantage. 

Impulse itself is pretty snappy but I found the forums and blog services be a bit on the slow side. This will be something Stardock will need to improve.

Download speeds of new programs, by contrast are fast. Faster than anything I've ever used anywhere.

The customization features, while decent, could be a lot better. I.e. I'd like to be able to select from a list of skins.  Stardock's the leader in this area so it's something that it will be adding and supporting through its skinning site, WinCustomize.com.

It will be important that Impulse show off the features of Impulse Reactor as quickly as possible.  Getting the Multiplayer matchmaking in should be up by the end of the month.  Achievements, rankings, etc. are all going to be crucial as well.

I'd like to be able to filter out programs that are available but not installed. I'm an extreme case since I have a ton of things linked to my account but still.

I think people will be pleasantly surprised at how fast and memory efficient the overall program is.  Given how pretty it is, on might expect it to be slow and a memory hog but even in its first release, it's really snappy.

Impulse is the greatest thing since sliced bread...yada yada yada.

But how good is it really? Ultimately, only you will be able to decide.  What I'm going to do here is give my personal opinion on how Impulse stands on the eve of its launch.

The Comparisons

Let's just get this out of the way, Impulse is not Steam or Direct2Drive or Xfire or whatever.  It's has a very different design philosophy.  So let me just say this: You would have to pry Steam out of my cold dead hands.  You should judge Impulse as how well it addresses your problems.

First Impressions

So I double click on the Impulse icon.  How fast does it load?  On my ThinkPad T60 it's about 5 seconds but YMMV.  In its phase 2 edition (August) I think we need to make it more multithreaded so that when you launch it, it comes up like a window. I.e. instantly.  But it is pretty snappy (a lot faster for me than the betas were).

My next question would be, how much RAM is this thing using?

On load up, about 15 megabytes which is pretty good given that Internet Explorer uses 84 megabytes! 

The Store

From a digital e-commerce point of view, the million dollar question is, how good is the selection in the Impulse store?  With Steam or Direct2Drive, I can get a gazillion different games.  So what about Impulse? The answer depends on what you're looking for. 

Impulse will have a bunch of big name AAA software applications from third parties on it on the first day.  On the games side it won't be quite as competitive on day 1 but within a year it should have equal third-party support as anything else.  The first 30 or so days will see a lot of new games added and then the publishers taking a "wait and see" position will likely start putting their titles on there.

But by Christmas, I suspect it won't be selection that makes one choose one digital store over another but rather the features and services that these things provide.  Impulse, for instance, supports refunds for users having technical issues. That's a pretty big deal IMO. As far as I know, that will be unique to Impulse.

Community Features

So that we're all on the same page, Impulse isn't just a download manager ala Stardock Central.  It is a full blown digital distribution platform.  The platform comes in the form of Impulse Reactor which is a server-side virtual API set for developers.

A developer could, for instance, using the free Impulse Reactor SDK (which will be launched in mid August) type into their game: CVP.SaveGame() and save their game to the player's virtual drive.  Or CVP.LoadPreferences() to get a game's preferences.

The first game to make use of the Common Virtual Platform will be The Political Machine.  Unfortunately, The Political Machine v1.1 wasn't ready by the Impulse launch so we had to hide the "Games" button from the community area for multiplayer match making.  As soon as it's ready, the button will come back and players will be able to find games either there or within The Political Machine itself.  Other games that will be using it include Sins of a Solar Empire, Galactic Civilizations II v2.0, and Demigod.  We are also working with a number of third party developers to begin using this.

Blogging

I am very biased in favor of non-website whenever possible. I just find website stuff slow. 

The blogging and forum behavior on Impulse is pretty fast but I'd like to see it much faster.  As in, instantaneous.

I think in the coming weeks you'll see a lot of improvements to performance across the whole thing as the initial launch was largely about just getting stuff in there.

My Friends

The friends stuff is a pretty big deal for me as both a user and as a gamer.  It's only in its beginning stages really.  Eventually, you'll be able to easily get games going and filter by friends or friends of friends to help improve the multiplayer experience.

When I play on-line, my biggest gripe is the griefing and such I run into.  I'm 36 years old, I just don't have time to waste in a multiplayer game with some 15 year old whose out to "max their ranking".

Features that didn't make to the launch that make me sad

There are 3 big features that had to be put into phase 2 (August) that make me sad. The Impulse side was done but we just didn't have enough time on the game side to make use of them yet.

Those are:

1. Multiplayer Matchmaking.  People could start and join games right from Impulse.
2. Achievements.
3. Game Rankings.

They'll get in there, we just have to update The Political Machine and other games to make use of them so that we can show off what's possible to game developers.

The same is true for NAT negotiation and such.  One of the biggest pains in the butt on the PC is getting ports and firewalls set up right for a game. In Impulse phase 3, the Impulse back end will be set up to act as a kind of back-up for games that use our platform.  So a user could connect to another user without knowing anything about routers and what not.  We're hoping Demigod will be the first game to make use of this.

Getting Updates

So right now, there's a tab called "Updates" that shows up if there are updates to ones programs.  I'd like to see an option put in asap that simply has Impulse download these updates automatically.

My other request is that when downloading updates, I want to see my actual bandwidth speed. I realize this is cosmetic but somewhere, techies should be able to get some idea of how fast their connections are.

Getting to my stuff

Impulse lets users add new categories to  their applications and move things around via the dock (we'll talk about that more soon).

If there's an update, an exclamation point shows up next to it.

What's not in the launch version are forums for every application or a chat channel. Eventually everything will get its own forum and chat channel.

Registering your stuff

Users can associate various programs with their account.  Right now, the only commercial programs that you can associate with your account are Stardock ones and programs you bought from Impulse. But the next step is to let you be able to associate any program with your account regardless of where you purchased it.

This way, when are setting up a new machine, you can just let Impulse download and install all your stuff (freeware, shareware, games, whatever).

Preferences

Clicking on the orb in the top left opens up additional options.  You can set up where things install on a per category basis:

The Dock

Impulse is designed to customizeable.  The initial launch doesn't have the skinning selection features in. That's coming "real soon now(TM)". But you can add and edit your own categories:

 
Extending Impulse

When you press the minimize to dock, Impulse launches the dock:

Impulse Dock

The dock displays the same content as the Impulse client. By default, it is set to auto-hide so it will hide to the taskbar edge with the user able to bring it up by moving their mouse to the bottom edge of the screen.

The dock is pretty powerful and yet light weight.

We plan to release later on an Impulse Tray applet that users can optionally use to stay in touch with friends, posts, updates, etc.  It will not be part of Impulse itself as it will be designed to be as tiny as possible. 

So what's next?

I think most people will find Impulse pretty compelling. Initially, its game content is not on par with Steam or Direct2Drive but that should change over time.  Obviously on the non-game software side, it enjoys a tremendous advantage. 

Impulse itself is pretty snappy but I found the forums and blog services be a bit on the slow side. This will be something Stardock will need to improve.

Download speeds of new programs, by contrast are fast. Faster than anything I've ever used anywhere.

The customization features, while decent, could be a lot better. I.e. I'd like to be able to select from a list of skins.  Stardock's the leader in this area so it's something that it will be adding and supporting through its skinning site, WinCustomize.com.

It will be important that Impulse show off the features of Impulse Reactor as quickly as possible.  Getting the Multiplayer matchmaking in should be up by the end of the month.  Achievements, rankings, etc. are all going to be crucial as well.

I'd like to be able to filter out programs that are available but not installed. I'm an extreme case since I have a ton of things linked to my account but still.

I think people will be pleasantly surprised at how fast and memory efficient the overall program is.  Given how pretty it is, on might expect it to be slow and a memory hog but even in its first release, it's really snappy.

For two years now, Stardock has been developing a next generation digital distribution platform.  Called Impulse, it is far more than a program that lets users purchase software and update. It is designed to open the door for developers and publishers to add new features to their programs and easily distribute them as well as providing an integrated community experience and let a player's various games all work together.

Check out the Impulse preview to get a better idea of what Impulse will be doing. 

Later this week, Impulse will be released to the general public.  Stay tuned!

View: Impulse Preview

For the past 2 years, Stardock has been working on a brand new digital distribution platform.  The idea was to create something that was compelling on its own, allowed users to purchase, download, and update any type of software, and provide developers and users a way to add new functionality to their programs.

This week, the fruits of this effort will be released: Impulse. 

View: Preview

Screenshots: Latest internal screenshots

Impulse doesn't care where you got the programs, you can keep them side by side.

Minimizing Impulse to the Impulse dock I can quickly access all my stuff.

Impulse's community features are extremely advanced. Friends lists (which work back and forth with games), blogs, tracking, user ranking, etc.

My Friends list. Also coming soon: Facebook integration.

Live chat features about your favorite games, apps, or whatever else.

Impulse is a digital distribution platform. But its store also supports sending users a boxed version too (for participating publishers).

Rather than sit in the system tray, users can minimize Impulse to the dock.

Users can add new tabs, change new tabs which show up on the dock as well.

The Impulse dock can be organized how the user wishes, new groups and short cuts added.

Users can add short-cuts into the folders (categories) or add them to the root of the dock directly.

The Next Generation Digital Platform

Creating a digital platform for both PC games and applications

“Impulse is the most user friendly and versatile platform we've used to date, and it’s clear that there's nothing else quite like it.” -- Bartosz Kijanka, vice president of engineering at Gas Powered Games (developers of Dungeon Siege, Supreme Commander, and Demigod).

A Quick Primer on Stardock

Stardock is the developer of Impulse, a next-generation digital platform for Windows. However, for people to take the Impulse platform seriously, it’s important to relay some of the history of Stardock.

Below are three key points about Stardock:

1) Stardock has been delivering digital distribution networks for a decade. The first PC game to be released both via digital distribution and at retail simultaneously was Galactic Civilizations in 2003.

2) Stardock is the “go-to” company for creating solutions that integrate into Windows as if they were a native part of the OS. For example, if you’ve recently bought a Dell computer, it probably came with Stardock’s software pre-loaded. Similarly, Stardock was the company tapped by Microsoft to deliver the default animated desktop wallpaper and user solutions for Windows Vista. Other customers include Gateway, Alienware, HP, and many others.

3) Stardock is one of the top PC game publishers and developers. Its latest PC game, Sins of a Solar Empire, was in the top 10 best selling games at retail for several months – despite most of its revenue coming through digital sales.

Introduction

It’s hard to believe that only a few years ago there were those who didn’t think people would embrace the idea of purchasing and downloading software digitally. Yet, embrace they have, and today few doubt that digital distribution is the future. Even more than that, few doubt that digital platforms are the future. Google, Microsoft, and others are working ceaselessly to create their own digital platforms that users and developers can make use of.

Stardock has become well known in the last couple of years thanks in-part to its popular PC games, such as Galactic Civilizations II and Sins of a Solar Empire. However, the company is also well known for its common sense approach to copy protection – its retail games have none and yet still sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

On June 17th, Stardock will introduce a next-generation digital platform called Impulse.

What is Impulse?

Impulse is the solution to a basic problem on the PC: The fragmentation of the market has made developing, buying, and supporting software increasingly difficult; Impulse addresses these issues and more.

Here is a sample of the issues Impulse is designed to solve:

1) A user gets a new PC or re-builds an existing one. Today, that user is forced to dig through CDs and serial numbers to reload their games, utilities, applications, and other programs. With Impulse, the user types in their UserID and Password, and all the titles associated with it (even if they didn’t buy the title via Impulse) are automatically downloaded and installed.

2) A user buys a new game and wants to play it online against others. Getting multiplayer working on the PC is a pain; even if a user does get it to work, it can be difficult to find a game. Even after setting up a game, there’s no universal way of tracking scores, rankings, and achievements. Impulse resolves all these issues and more.

3) The PC market has consolidated so much that it is very difficult for a new developer to get their program or game out there. Impulse will soon provide a utility called MyImpulse that will allow developers to submit their program or game to Impulse, name a price, agree to a standardized, automated agreement and then be able to try it out via Impulse (only on their account). Once approved, their title is available.

Impulse is a platform first and has been designed to be useful to the user even if they never purchase anything from Impulse. It is designed to be useful to developers even if the user didn’t buy their game from Impulse and doesn’t have Impulse installed.

5 Reasons Why Impulse Matters

1) It has the content. Impulse will have many of the major PC game publishers signed on by its launch, as well as several major PC software publishers. Many other publishers are slated to sign on after the Impulse launch as well.

2) Impulse adheres to Stardock’s well known stance against obnoxious copy protection. Impulse is designed to work seamlessly whether connected to the Internet or not.

3) Impulse doesn’t minimize to a system tray icon, instead, users can minimize it to a dock similar to what is in Stardock’s ObjectDock. In other words, it’s useful even for those who haven’t purchased anything on Impulse.

4) Impulse delivers a virtual PC platform called Impulse Reactor. This platform provides APIs that allow developers to easily make use of Impulse’s considerable back-end capabilities such as virtual storage, multiplayer matchmaking, multi-game multiplayer game finder, friends lists, virtual saved games, virtual storage, player achievements, device driver updating and more.

5) MyImpulse - a special publishing application - will enable third-party developers to submit their games or software for sale on Impulse. Developers will be able to name a price and other details of their product, then submit it to Stardock for approval. With this nearly automated process, it will lower the barrier to entry for new third-party developers to sell their software.

Of course, those are just some major points, here’s several others:

· Impulse supports localized currencies. Are you in Australia, Germany, or Russia? Would you like to buy programs in your native currency? Impulse can do it.

· Per Territory distribution. Are you a publisher who only has the rights to distribute a game in Italy but want to be able to sell your game to only people living in Italy? No problem, Impulse can do it and go one step further by only showing those customers living in the authorized territories your products.

· Impulse supports custom Impulse stores for different Impulse distributors. Are you a retailer or PC OEM who has their own specific agreements on selling certain games and applications at different (better) pricing? Impulse has you covered here as well.

· Impulse can be distributed by anyone. Do you have a website, blog, magazine or a retail store? Impulse can be custom branded and distributed by you with the distributor getting 15% of the gross revenue of all purchases made by a user who created their Impulse account from your distributed client. Put Impulse up on your website and when someone downloads it and creates an account, that user is forever affiliated with you. Hence, three years from now, when the user buys Unreal Tournament or Supreme Commander 2 or Office package X, you get 15% paid to you on that purchase.

· Impulse supports refunds. Buy a game or application and it doesn’t work on your system? Thanks to Impulse’s SSD (Secure Software Delivery) technology, Stardock can refund users and simply remove the item from their account (after the user uninstalls it, which sends a message to the server that it is gone). Impulse takes the risk out of digital distribution.

A Guided Tour of Impulse

Impulse is still in beta and many of the features are not available in the preview. This tour is designed to give users an idea of what will be available on June 17^th.

The Impulse Dock

Everyone wants to be a platform, it’s the new buzzword. However, there needs to be something basic that makes one thing a platform and another thing not a platform. For us, it’s simple: If a user wouldn’t use it unless they purchased a program from it, then it’s not a digital platform.

“Impulse will succeed not because it forces users to use it but because users will want to use it.” –Brad Wardell, President & CEO, Stardock Corp.

Impulse has been designed such that even if a user never buys anything from the Impulse store, they would still want to use it. The first element of the “want to use it” mantra is the Impulse dock. Rather than minimizing to yet another system tray item, users can minimize it to be a dock on the desktop. From this dock, users can add as many programs and folders as they would like. When an Impulse supported program is updated, it gets flagged on the dock. Items on the dock also show up in Impulse as well – any program can be added to Impulse itself as well as the dock. Coming from Stardock, it’s not surprising that it’s all skinnable and integrates seamlessly into Windows.

Your Stuff

Load up Impulse and once logged on, you can download or update any of the programs associated with your account.

Figure 1: Your stuff

You don’t have to necessarily have purchased the program from the Impulse store to update and download it. If it’s a Stardock program, it doesn’t matter where you bought it. You could have purchased Galactic Civilizations I back in 2003 in Germany and still use Impulse to download the full complete latest/greatest version.

Stardock is also working with publishers to support this for their titles, so that no matter where you bought your game or application, you’ll be able to download and update it on Impulse – for free.

The Store

The Impulse Store makes purchasing and downloading games, utilities, applications, anti-virus, etc. a snap. The goal of the store is to make the purchasing experience look and feel as much like a native part of Windows as possible (this is still a work in progress).

The Impulse store is being designed such that users can quickly find out whether a given program is worth their while by visiting the title’s forums, going to the chat channel for it, reading comments on it, etc.

Figure 2: Picking a favorite publisher is extremely easy. The store interface in Impulse is unlike anything seen before. Clean and simple.

The Community

In the “good old days” there was Usenet, which provided a standardized way for people to find out about virtually any topic. In a web-centric world, there is no longer a standardized way to find out about a given program or genre. Impulse aims to solve this issue.

Figure 3: Impulse supports built in blogging, discussion groups on virtually any topic, chat, and more.

The Impulse Community is both incredibly powerful and easy to use. Any Impulse user can set up a blog and add their friends who have Impulse accounts. (Again, the manta “You don’t have to buy anything to find Impulse useful” – anyone can create an Impulse account.)

If users want, Impulse lets you see what discussions your friends are participating on, what games they’ve recently played, what blogs they’ve recently written, and much more. In addition, Impulse allows users to find multiplayer games to join in, chat about virtually topic live, update video drivers, and much more.

“When a new title is released, it can be difficult to find people to play in multiplayer,” said Craig Fraser, Ironclad Games. “With Impulse, reaching critical mass will be much easier as players can browse through all their games at once. As an added bonus it will display games started by people who didn't buy the game from Impulse so it's not a partial list.”

Impulse Reactor: A virtual platform for users and developers

Impulse Reactor is the underlying platform that Impulse makes use of. What makes Impulse Reactor so important (and differentiates it) is that its functionality comes from the Impulse server farm and not from the client. Impulse is a thin client designed to be fast, memory efficient, and easy to use. The real magic of Impulse takes place on the Impulse Reactor.

Impulse Reactor could be described as a series of API (programming calls) that developers can use in their software. The calls do not know or care whether the user has Impulse installed or not, it only requires that the user have an Impulse account (which is free) so that the user can be identified.

To use them, a developer only needs to download the Impulse Reactor SDK (which is free). The SDK will be available in late August.

Impulse Reactor is the result of the combined efforts of Stardock, Gas Powered Games, and Ironclad Games.

Here are some of the features of Impulse Reactor:

· Common Virtual Platform (CVP). Developers can add a series of calls to their games that make it much easier to implement multiplayer and easier for players to find multiplayer games. For example, one line of code - CVP.FindMatch() - can query the Impulse Reactor for a game that matches the included parameters, return the game info and launch the game. A few other calls include:

o CVP.Join() (joining a multiplayer game). CMP supports NAT negotiation so that opening ports and messing around with configuring your router will soon be a thing of the past.

o CVP.AddAchievement() adds an achievement to a player’s account.

o CVP.FindFriend() finds a particular friend to play with.

· Common Virtual Drive (CVD). Developers will be able to write data out to a virtual hard drive on the net. From here, developers can do everything from saving games, providing virtual keyboard and preference saving, to saving files. The virtual drives won’t be very large (10 megabytes per application) but more than large enough for supporting crucial data for applications and even saving data files.

Example: CVP.SaveFile() or CVP.LoadFile().

· Common Community Network (CCN). Developers will be able to write applications that can query information from the Impulse community infrastructure. Hence, help files, user support, or anything else that a developer can imagine wanting from their application can be obtained and integrated into their program.

To repeat the mantra: You are not forced to install Impulse to benefit from this.

“Our architecture is very open. We’re not interested in trying to force people to use Impulse. The reality is, these are things that should be part of the OS but because of the overzealous DOJ, Microsoft has been prevented from doing this kind of thing.” –Brad Wardel, President & CEO of Stardock.

In addition, this has been designed to be extremely easy for developers to implement.

Impulse: The Technology

Impulse is a Microsoft .NET based technology from the client to the server infrastructure. This helps ensure future compatibility and increases performance as .NET gets more and more integrated into Windows.

The Future…

Impulse is being launched in three phases:

Phase 1: The initial launch on June 17^th to coincide with the release of The Political Machine 2008 (www.politicalmachine.com) will have the features described in the guided tour. It will have several major and minor PC game publishers and developers on-board for the launch along with several major and minor PC software developers.

Phase 2: In late August, the second phase of Impulse will be released along with the SDK for the Impulse Reactor. Additional major publishers and developers will be announced and released, along with Achievement and Game Rankings functionality. A large number of unannounced features will be announced as well.

Phase 3: Early in February 2009, Phase 3 will launch with Demigod. Yet more titles will be available and MyImpulse will be officially launched (beta will be publicly available for months before hand). More info to come on this as we get closer.

Conclusions

Most PC users can agree that the Windows experience needs to be improved. It’s too hard to manage purchases, too difficult to set up games and applications, and too much work to get a decent gaming experience. It’s also too labor intensive to setup a new PC.

Impulse is the result of a decade of experience in building digital networks for PC users. It takes Stardock’s knowledge in both digital distribution and its enterprise development background to create a universal, virtual digital platform for the Windows PC.

“Stardock has been breaking ground in online distribution and online user community space for a very long time, and Impulse is a clear reflection of that expertise.”-- Bartosz Kijanka, vice president of engineering at Gas Powered Games.

So here I am sitting in the airport. Luckily, I have a net connection.

I've been using wireless cards on my laptops when traveling for years.  I currently use a Verizon 3G card for my laptop.

I have to say, it's come a long way.  Now, I use the 3G card instead of 802.11g when I'm on the road or even a dedicated line at a hotel - even if the place is offering it for free simply because the speed of 3G has gotten so good. 

The Verizon performance at this point is as good if not better than the typical T1 speeds I get when traveling.