I like toys. I admit it. When I was 15, I would go to the store to buy a Transformer and claim I was buying it for "my little brother" for a gift.

Here at CES, there are lots of toys such as these cool World War II era toy tanks.

I've only had time to barely scratch the surface of what's at CES.  Stay tuned.

Stardock has been showing off MyColors at CES to several of its key partners.

MyColors combines Stardock's core custmization technologies into a single package.  Rather than people buying the software, they simply purchase a theme and the software is part of the package.

Stardock Design has already begun releasing licensed MyColors themes for the NBA, NHL, NCAA, General Motors, and others.  Many more themes are in development.

Later this month, Stardock plans to release MyColors 2.0 which has been designed to be pre-loaded with new computers. It will also come with Object Desktop 2008 so that ODNT users can make use of MyColors themes (free ones will be included for Object Destop users).

MyColors v2

One of the big trends at this year's show is that people want to customize their gadgets and computers to a level unheard of just a few years ago.

One of the things Stardock has been showing off to partners is MyColors 2.0.  With licensed content from the NBA, NHL, NCAA, GM, with more on the way, the library of MyColors themes is growing quickly. Stardock plans to begin making MyColors generally available later this month.

MyColors Theme Manager

MyColors 2.0 is set to be pre-loaded on several major OEM PCs this year (though we are not yet allowed to announce who).  By the end of next year, over 20 million Windows PCs may ship with MyColors pre-installed allowing users to change their overall Windows theme. Starodck is set to launch the new MyColors next week. The first PCs it will be shipped with are expected to show up this April.

Meanwhile, many different companies are showing off everything from cell phone cases, computer cases, adhesives, clip-ons, and more to allow users to give their gadget its own look. Like MyColors, much of their content is licensed from major brands (NFL in this picture above).

  While the HD-DVD group canceled some of their press events due to the defection of Warner Bros to Blu-Ray, HD-DVD has a pretty significant presence.

There seems to be no shortage of HD-DVDs currently available on the show floor as my blurry picture makes clear.

The CEA announced awhile back that over 30% of American households own an HDTV.  With approximately over 60 million HDTV sets sold, the demand for high-definition video is growing.  Thus far, both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD have sold pretty abysmally. There are a lot of reasons for this such as people wanting to wait until there's a standard format, they don't necessarily see enough of a visual difference to justify the expense. And there's a lot of obnoxious copy protection involved limiting compatibility (play that new Blu-Ray movie DVD in your new Blu-ray DVD drive on your new Dell and you may find they don't always work).

One of the more interesting sights (literally) has been the 120hz 1080p sets. There really seems to be a visual quality difference based on the refresh rate that is independent of the resolution.

One trend that is dear to my heart is the furthering of customization of PCs.  At CES, we're seeing a lot of customized cases.

Various cases seen at CES

Alienware has a very impressive set of cases including the one pictured above. While I personally would probably not personalize my case (my case is under my desk) it is pretty cool to see how far the quality has come and like the idea of PC users being able to customize their PCs far more than previously.

While most attendees pick up badges and badge holders for the show, bloggers were introduced to a somewhat...different experience.  To get their badge holders (i.e. the things you put your badge into) you had to go onto a great journey.  Here you can see bloggers making th etrek away from the show into the dark reaches of South Hall to get the official badge HOLDER for the badges they already have.

That said, bloggers do get to enjoy all the goodies of being the press. 

Last year I spent a lot of time reading up to improve my business skills.  This year, I am prepared to make better use of what I have learned as well as administer some tough love in the process that will, on the surface, violate a lot of the rules of business management.

So below are some New Years resolutions I've made for business:

1. I'm going to administer less and be more hands on to discipline ourselves on how we get things done. Not that I'm going to be some sort of nasty bastard (or more than I already am) but I'm going to take a much firmer hand on what is being worked on throughout the company.
2. We're going to focus less on consensus and more on stream-lining the process so that we don't end up with too many chefs in the kitchen.
3. I'm going to work harder to make people goal oriented.  Self-esteem comes from genuine achievement. My job isn't to make people feel good about themselves. My job is to ensure people achieve so that they make themselves feel good about themselves. That means telling people what they are doing wrong that is interfering with their objectives.
4. I'm going to kill a lot of darlings. That is, we have a lot of very awesome ideas. But we can't pursue them all.  We're going to focus on the things we do best and other things will have to be pushed aside.
5. I am going to push people a lot harder to do their best.  People will always feel better about themselves in the end if they believe they are excellent. But I saw a lot of dithering on a lot of things that kept us from getting as much done as possible.
6. We're going to raise expectations on what can be accomplished in a given time frame.  We work at one of the coolest places in the world. That's why our voluntary turn-over is basically zero.  The way to keep it that way is for people to not feel like they're having to carry the load of others.  Compassion for compassion sake is poisonous in business because it leads people to spend 90% of the 10% who produce almost nothing rather than remaining 90% of the people who are doing a good job and could really benefit from having more direction and face time.
7. I'm going to listen more but be more forceful in the final analysis.  We are raised to be polite and to believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But not at work they're not. Not on the company's dime.  I am going to listen to feedback and suggestions but will make the final call and enforce that.  I feel at this stage that my track record makes it clear that I know what I'm doing and that my way of doing things not only works tactically but strategically as well. Put another way, my way of doing things may not be gentle but the people who work directly with me tend to have the highest morale and best results because they know I'm not gentle and thus praise actually means something and they feel good because they know they're excellent.

I think all my New Years Resolutions revolve around a single truth: People feel good about themselves mainly from what comes from within. And at work, the best way to achieve that is through success. Therefore, my job has to be to help lead people to being personally successful at what they do. To help them achieve.

A friend of mine quipped that I used to be like Palpatine but in the past year or two, I've gone soft and spent too much time trying to be a delegating business executive.  The one part of the company I've remained  "emperor" over was the games side of things (i.e. the game that just won Expansion Pack of the Year from GameSpy and is up for strategy game of the year from numerous other websites and magazines).  The part of the company with no voluntary turn over in years, super high morale, massively high productivity, etc.  This year, I'm going to bring that to the rest of the company. It's going to be a tough few months I suspect.

We're getting ready to head to Las Vegas for CES 2008. There's going to be a number of big announcements this next week in the technology industry.

We'll be live blogging at www.vistablogging.com as well as on www.neowin.net and www.wincustomize.com.

If there's any areas in particular you want us to check out, let us know!

The good news is that Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor Beta 4 has arrived on schedule. If you've pre-ordered the expansion pack, you get download the latest version now. It adds the Thalan Empire and Altarian Resistance.

The bad news, if you can call it that, is that we've decided to substantially push back the release date -- all the way to the end of March. 

However, we ARE going to continue forward with our original release schedule of this month for getting out what will be called a "preview".  My beef is that as the AI developer, there's just so much cool new stuff to make use of and as beta testers (and we ourselves) have discovered, this expansion pack has turned out a LOT better than even we had expected.

So while delaying the game may set back my plans at getting a jewel-encrusted segway, I think given the way the expansion pack is going, we have a real opportunity to release something that will be remembered long into the future. 

What we'll do with that extra time is continue to flesh out the unique civilizations and beef up the computer players to be increasingly more interesting and unique per player. A big thing I'd like to do is to use the time to have the computer players also play uniquely on top of having unique technologies (that includes the minor races btw).

We are going to keep the "beta" open so that anyone who pre-orders can automatically download the latest version and by the end of this month, it should be pretty close to "release" condition in terms of stability and base content.

You can see what's in beta 4 here.  There won't be a beta next week as many of us are going to be at CES. But the following week we'll have another beta which will add in the new winning condition and the first new serious AI updates. 

After many moons of effort, the efforts of Stardock Design are starting (and I emphasize starting) to be seen publicly.

The first free new skin from Stardock Design for WindowBlinds this year is called Elegance.

Designed by Alexandrie, Elegance shows her eye for detail and subtlety in a world that seems increasingly dominated by "glass".

Learn more about it:

• View Article
• Download Elegance