Elegance is here

About a year ago, Stardock formed a new skinning team called Stardock Design. It brought in many of the top skin authors from around the world into a single place as full time skinners. It also provided a budget to be able to contract some of the part-time skinners as well. 

The work is starting to pay off. And this year you will begin seeing a significant increase in free skins coming from Stardock Design.  The idea is to help provide examples and help to other skinners as well as ensure that users have a steady supply of very high quality skins.

The first skin release of the year is Elegance. Designed by Alexandrie, the co-founder of Pixtudio who now works full-time at Stardock in Plymouth Michigan, Elegance is an attempt to provide an alternative to all the glass-style skins you've seen in recent months but one that is clean and...well elegant.  Having used it for awhile, I believe this is one of the best skins of all time. It combines high polish with high usability.

Subtlety is the rule

You can download it here:

[Download Elegance for WindowBlinds 6]

RWN has a great collection of obnoxious quotes made by famous people last year. Here are some examples:

34) "Perhaps the outpouring of sympathy for [the falsely arrested Duke lacrosse players] Reade Seligman, Collin Finnerty and David Evans is just a bit misplaced....As students of Duke University or other elite institutions, these young men will get on with their privileged lives....They are very differently situated in life from, say, the young women of the Rutgers University women's basketball team." -- Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran explains how the men falsely accused of rape got off light compared to the women who were called "nappy headed hos"

33) "I do believe that it's the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics that World Trade Center tower 7 - building 7, which collapsed in on itself - it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved. World Trade Center 7. World Trade [Center] 1 and 2 got hit by planes - 7, miraculously, the first time in history, steel was melted by fire. It is physically impossible." -- Rosie O'Donnell talks Trutherism

32) "And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world." -- Jimmy Carter castigates the British for cooperating with his own country

Check them out here:

http://www.rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/01/the_40_most_obnoxious_quotes_o.php

Over on partner site, Neowin.net, I wrote 10 resolutions for the PC industry.  Below are 10 resolutions for the game industry.

1. Stop with the obnoxious DRM. If people are going to pirate your game, they're going to pirate it. Reward the people who buy your games. Make it more convenient to be a customer than to be a thief.
   
2. Don't release games until they're finished. People will forgive you for moving a date back for quality, they don't forgive you for rushing out an unfinished game.
   
3. Don't forget that not everyone has brand-new hardware. Make sure your games will work on the hardware that people have today.
   
4. Fun trumps graphics. Nintendo is doing well because they remember that games are supposed to be fun. The latest blood spatter particle effect won't beat out a fun game.
   
5. Expansion packs should not be glorified patches. This is like #2. If your game does have bugs, fix them in an update, don't charge for them in the form of an expansion pack.
   
6. Help Jack Thompson find a real hobby.
   
7. Please make a sequel to Planetscape: Torment.
   
8. Make better user manuals.
   
9. We don't need every movie to have a game tie-in.
   
10. Don't make me be on-line to play your game if it's a single player game.

Happy New Year!

Warning: Spoilers below.

The Thalan have the most unique technology tree in the game because they come from the future.  Here are some of their unique technologies:

Hyperion Domination (Evil Only)

Hyperion Domination incorporates a number of various tweaks to ship design that results in a 10% bonus to ship hit points.  Unfortunately, the work to do this is very dangerous. Luckily, the steady supply of slaves abducted across the galaxy to work on these special ship design improvements ensures our ships will remain in peek condition.

Xeno Brain Washing (Evil Only)

Having studied the way the humanoid species of this time period think, we have devised new ways of making more money from their tourism while at the same time greatly increasing a planet's influence in the galaxy.

Weapon Magnifier (Evil Only)

By making use of an unstable energy source, the weapons on our ships now gain a 10% boost to their damage.  The only downside, if it can be called such, is that the lifespan of those on board will be shortened and it causes increasing pain over time to those who work the weapons. However, we have staffed the most dangerous parts of the ship with lowly abductees from other worlds.

(Good and Neutral Techs are also present and are considerably more powerful).

Xeno Colonization

The planets in the galaxy are truly alien to our species. When the colonization fleet entered this space-time, we had overlooked a number of key factors that in hindsight should have been obvious. For one thing, our species has had little experience dealing with the surface of worlds. In our time, in a dying universe, the ability to exist on the surface of planets in an unprotected environment is unthinkable. As a result, none of our equipment is well suited for being used in an untamed environment.

Xeno Colonization begins the process of adapting our equipment and strategies to working on untamed planets. As a result, our population growth will increase by 10%.

Alien Soil Studies

Now that we have begun to colonize planets, we are quickly discovering that we are not adapted to the various kinds of bacteria and fungi that exists on different plants. While we are inoculated against most diseases carried by animals and planets, we did not take into account the kinds of bacteria that exist in the soils. Alien Soil Studies will decrease our sensitivity to the bacteria we come across.  This will improve our population growth rating by 10%.

Stellar Production

The logistical underpinnings of our civilization were based on a premise that does not exist in this space-time. That premise is cheap, nearly unlimited energy. The Apocalypse that originates in this space-time in their near future does not reach our space-time for a considerable amount of time. As a result, we have developed energy sources that are far beyond anything that is present here.

Unfortunately, the Hyperion Matrix we brought with us, the source of our advanced technology, is all based on what would be called "Expert Gravitronics". This is a technology that simply does not exist in any form and would require decades for us to re-invent.  As a result, we have to make use of portable fusion reactors that we buy on the open market or manufacture ourselves.

Stellar Production is the adaptation of our tools for technological and manufacturing production to use fusion reactors as opposed to Gravitronic Reactors. The side-effect is that while our production will be far beyond what anyone else is capable of, the maintenance of our systems will be an order of magnitude greater as well.

Technological Adaptation Level 1

While the other civilizations of this galaxy make use of various means to research new technologies, those means are not consistent with the way we've evolved to research new technologies. That isn't to say we can't use "Research Labs". It is that we simply do not fully grasp how a bunch of individuals can simply come up with new ideas.

Technological Adaptation involves taking our Hyperion Matrix to form a Technology Matrix which makes use of vast amounts of energy to take existing technologies and automatically generate, over time, improvements to them using advanced probability systems to determine the likelihood of acceptable improvement to a given technology.  The down side is that they require immense amounts of energy to operate which requires the relatively inefficient fusion reactors.

As a result, our Technology Matrices will be very productive but very expensive resulting in us probably not being able to make full use of them.

Technological Adaptation Level 2

This is the on-going struggle to improve the efficiency of our Technology Matrices so that we can bring the cost down.

Technological Adaptation Level 3

This is the final level of adaptation to our Technological Matrices that make use of fusion based power systems. They are still very expensive to operate but are superior to most other research systems in the galaxy.

Industrial Adaptation Level 1

Like most of our core technologies, our manufacturing capacity is based on the assumption of the availability of massive amounts of cheap power. Our Industrial Matrices operate by channeling immense amounts of power to replicate a pre-designed item.  The amount of power needed to do this is understood even by relatively primitive civilizations (E = MC^2). Our Industrial Matrices can product a great number of things but the energy requirements mean that they are relatively cost ineffective.

Our Adaptation systems rely on us finding more efficient uses of fusion based power while we try to supplement our power with gravitronic-based energy sources.

Industrial Adaptation Level 2

Through efficient use of power, we have managed to drop the maintenance costs of our Industrial Matrices by a considerable amount.

Industrial Adaptation Level 3

We have improved our energy efficiency about as far as we can get. But the results seem reasonably satisfactory until we can make use of Gravitronic power.

Basic Gravitronics

Gravitrons are the elementary particle of the universe. The universe exists in 11 dimensions. Some of the civilizations have a basic understanding of what they call "String Theory". In String theory, all matter is produced based on different frequencies of sub-atomic particles called strings.  What they do not yet understand is that these strings all rest on an arbitrary edge of an even more elementary particle called a Gravitron.  While they are correct that vibrating strings create all matter and energy, they do not yet realize that these strings are not arbitrarily positioned. The gravitron is 11-sided -- one for each dimension of the universe and each edge has its own strings.  Beings of a given dimension can only perceive a limited number of these edges (beings in the third dimension can perceive 3 sides but do not realize that all strings they are aware of are directed in one of three predictable angles because they cannot perceive the other 8 angles).

Gravitronics matters because once gravitrons (not to be confused with gravitons) can be harnessed, any conventional power system can be easily enhanced to produce 2^8th more power than it would normally produce.

Basic Gravitronics is about as far as we can get in this space-time because while our scientists on hand know the basics of Gravitronics, our colonization fleet did not bring anyone with an expert level understanding of gravitronics.

All of our key material and energy research rests on our understanding of how the universe actually works. The net benefit is that our ability to research technologies that other civilizations have equivalents of will take less time because they are making use of trial and error in their experiments where-as we are approaching our technological achievements through a more thorough understanding of the universe.

4D Phasing

4D Phasing allows us to increase the output of our fusion reactors by a considerable amount by making use of an additional dimension of energy. As a result, our ship building factories will see a significant boost in production.

Dimensional Exploitation

We have begun to integration our knowledge of 4D Phasing into our weapon systems which will result in those weapons producing additional damage.

Dimensional Weaponry

With the success we've seen with dimensional exploitation, we have focused on producing weapon systems that explicitly take advantage of 4D phasing (as opposed to merely a byproduct of other research). As a result, our weapons have become increasingly powerful.

Near Omnipotence

We have embarked on the path to conquer this galaxy through technological victory. For us, this means to recapture our full technological advantage. It will require immense amounts of scientific research to put together the necessary infrastructure to dominate the galaxy with incredible weapons, but we believe this is the best path to take.

Expert Gravity Channeling

Every interstellar civilization has some form of artificial gravity. Artificial gravity is merely the basic channeling of gravitational forces. Gravity is, after all, simply the indention of mass into space-time. The unified theory of force that all civilizations at this stage have recognizes that energy can be used to shift the gravity that is exhibited by mass in different ways.

However, what no other civilization grasps yet is just how much can be done with gravity provided that enough power is available. Basic Gravitronics allows us to shift the gravitational outline of a ship in ways that enable our ships to move more quickly through hyperspace. As a result, our ships gain a speed bonus.

Hyperion Hull Design

Hyperion Hull Points make use of expert gravity channeling to constantly shift the gravitational center of a ship in such a way that even if the ship takes damage, it remains structurally sound far beyond the damage point where most other ships would be destroyed. While expensive, they will provide our civilization with a significant advantage when so equipped.

Hyperion Starbases

Other civilizations we have observed have a myriad of technologies that enable them to learn how to make the most out of starbases.  Luckily, this is a path our civilization took long ago.  With Basic Gravitronics in hand, we can now produce starbases with significant advantages in all conceivable areas in a single stroke.

Mechanized Warriors

While other civilizations seem to insist on training their citizens to die en masse in battle, we do not have that luxury. There simply are enough of us to spare as canon fodder.  Mechanized warriors are armies of robotic troops that can be controlled from afar. As a result, our troops are immensely powerful per man.

Defense Industries

Like the other civilizations, our weapons are broken up between mass based weapons, missile based weapons, and beam weapons. Unfortunately, all of our weapon designs rely on a manufacturing infrastructure that is simply not present in this space-time. We knew this would be a problem.  The challenge in traveling to this space-time meant that certain sacrifices would have to be made. We are able to skip some of the rudimentary weapon and defense systems that other civilizations apparently must go through, but in the end, we are going to be dealing with the same basic technologies -- except that ours will be of higher quality.

Temporal Mechanics

Our universe exists in 11 dimensions. There are also a near-infinite number of universes that are connected to each of those 11 dimensions. Destroying a universe is a non-trivial effort.  And yet, somehow, the primitive species of this space time have managed to do just that. Specifically, the species known as humans, in their near-future, manage to create such utter destruction that the resulting ruin feeds upon itself and permeates all of creation throughout every dimension.

The only bright side to this is that this destruction travels at the speed of light. The downside is that the destruction moves at the speed of light through folded space which means it will engulf the universe in far less than the 13 billion of their years that it would otherwise require.

We have thus brought a single strike force through dimension 4 to this particular universe in the hopes of averting this apocalypse. Thus far, the humans do not seem to be the type to unleash the kind of destruction that they apparently destined to do. But they are not what they seem to be either.  The humans in their government, the Terran Alliance, attempt to provide a diplomatic, peaceful coexistent front-end to their activities. They genuinely seem to be interested in living in peace.

And yet, these same peaceful humans are incredibly ruthless when motivated.  For example, we have learned that only 10 years (human years) ago, the humans wiped out a civilization known as the Xendar. The humans fight what they call "total wars" which is in contrast to the skirmishes that other civilizations seem to fight.  That is, humans seem to resist war to a point but once a threshold has been passed, the humans fight to win for all time.

In the current time, the galaxy is beset by an immense war with multiple factions. The most powerful faction is called the Drengin Empire. They are a ruthless, evil civilization whose motivation is control and conquest.  Their brethren, the Korath, are xenophobic and wish to wipe out all non-Drengin life.  The two are struggling for control.  The Korath are quite obviously being manipulated by the remnants of a the malevolent Arnor civilization called "Dread Lords" who lack the numbers to conquer the galaxy through open arms but are potent enough to use pawns to accomplish their ends.

At the same time, the main human fleet has disappeared to where we do not know. But not before leaving Earth protected by an Arnorian shield that nothing can penetrate leaving the Drengin frustrated in their attempts to final victory over the Terran Alliance.  The Terran Alliance still has a handful of task forces in the galaxy who are quite capable of being every bit as brutal as the Drengin when necessary.

And then there are the other civilizations who have chosen sides.  Our concern is with the humans.  Our goal is to build up enough of a force so that when we identify the cause of the ruin, we can act.

The Hyperion Matrix.

Every advanced civilization has played the hypothetical game of what if you could go back in time 1,000 years. What would you bring with you? We have done just that. And what we brought with us is the Hyperion Matrix, the store-house of our knowledge as well as enough equipment to get us on our feet.

We have enough equipment on hand to ensure that our capital world will be virtually unconquerable by anything but the most massive of forces.  The problem, however, is that we completely lack the infrastructure to replicate our equipment as-is.  Our objective is to research technologies that will aid us in making use of our vast technological advantages before external threats overcome us.

Here are 10 things I think Stardock must do in 2008:

#1 Make Object Desktop 2008 vastly more polished and usable to new users and then cater to power users with Object Destop Ultimate.

#2 Get MyColors EVERYWEHERE.

#3 Create BootVista so that people can change their Windows Vista boot screens more easily - and safely.

#4 Make sure CursorFX is bullet proof and ready for wide release.

#5 Continue to improve WindowBlinds this year, especially in the area of font handling (both in letting users change fonts and skin authors being able to control font colors in various areas more explicitly).

#6 Launch JoeUser.com 2008 and use that as the means to greatly enhance WinCustomize.com and other community sites.

#7 Release the major revamp of ObjectDock that has been in development for the past several months.

#8 Get the next-generation replacement to Stardock Central out the door.

#9 Release the next-generation IconPackager such that existing icon packages are useful on Windows Vista.

#10 Get Stardock Design to release a LOT of free content to help demonstrate what is possible and serve as an example to others.

Happy New Years folks and that means it's time for New Years resolutions. We have some suggested resolutions for the PC Industry that will help them...and us!

#1 To the PC Makers: Stop pre-loading shareware. Nothing is more annoying than getting a new PC loaded with "trial versions" of programs. Just stop it.

#2 To Microsoft: Get Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista out there ASAP and make sure IE 7 doesn't hang anymore for no apparent reason.

#3 To Apple: Get that 3G iPhone out the door sooner rather than later. GPS on it would be nice too.

#4 To the RIAA: Just stop it. I mean, seriously, just stop.

#5 To Jack Thompson: Get a new hobby. Better yet, get a life. In a world in which one can't escape "The Girls Next Door" on TV are video games really a threat?

#6 To Google: Please make a Project Management extension to Google Calendar!

#7 To the BluRay and HD-DVD consortiums, please find a way to work together. You're just slowing down adoption (massively).

#8 To Amazon: Just because you think it might be patentable doesn't mean you should try to patent it.

#9 To Bloggers: This year is the US Presidential Election. Just remember, just because someone doesn't agree with your political opinion doesn't mean they're a bunch of sub-human monsters who eat babies.

#10 To Internet Users: Just remember that there is another person on the other side of that screen. Just because they aren't there to punch you in the nose doesn't mean you should surrender any semblance of civility on-line.

Have a Happy New Year!

(Originally posted at Neowin.net)

Happy New Year!

With 2007 now over, we can take a look back and see what trends in technology are starting to take shape.

We have an article over at JoeUser.com that outlines 5 technology trends that we see emerging from Apple conquering the universe to the Google vs. Microsoft web wars.

Check it out!

1. Apple is conquering the world
2. Google vs. Microsoft Live
3. DRM is losing ground
4. PC Makers need to improve experience
5. The Cloud is starting to take over

Last year was one of the most exciting years in tech I've ever seen. Not only did we see amazing new products come out such as some great new digital cameras from Canon and Nikon, but we also finally started seeing cell phones take usability more seriously, the launch of Windows Vista, cars starting to cater to techies in a big way and a lot more.

But were there any trends that we could see? If you'd asked me last year, I would have predicted that we'd be talking about Blu-Ray or HD-DVD as well as how next-generation consoles were taking over. But it turns out, last year saw some pretty unexpected trends begin to emerge.

Below are the 5 biggest trends we recognized last year as having far-reaching consequences.

Trend #1: Apple is conquering the world

A few years ago, Apple was a spent force. It took them until 2000 just to get a preemptively multitasking operating system on the market. Today, I could be convinced that Apple has a pretty decent shot of doing to Windows what Windows did to OS/2.  Apple has proven something that many companies have forgotten: execution matters. It's not who comes out with the most powerful gadget or even the most innovative product, it's who produces the product that does what it does the best. Pretty simple right? Apparently it's not since Apple is leaps and bounds above everyone else in understanding this concept.

Anyone who has used an iPhone can tell you that the iPhone isn't just a little bit better than other cell phones in terms of usability, it's massively better. The only thing that saved LG, Samsung and the rest last year was that the iPhone was exclusive to AT&T, was on the Edge Network, and didn't include GPS.  Imagine a scenario where the iPhone had 3G and GPS built in and was available from anyone and I think you would have been looking at total domination.

What's worse is that the cell phone makers still don't get it. The LG Voyager (which got a high rating at CNET surprisingly) is still awful compared to the iPhone in terms of usability.

Apple also released a new series of iPods.  The iPods weren't the first music players, but like the iPhone, they were so far superior to what else was out there that they took over. This year, I'd say that the iPod lead actually grew.  It makes one wonder just how clueless their competitors must be.  Spend some time with an iPod Touch and then wonder what the heck Microsoft was thinking with their latest Zune. 

Then you have the release of Leopard. It wasn't a perfectly smooth release but relative to Vista, it was a paradise. When people ask me whether they should get a Mac or a PC, it's getting a lot tougher to recommend the PC these days and I'm starting to wonder why I'm recommending a PC at this point.

At the rate things are going, one could imagine a world in which the Mac is the standard home computing platform, the iPhone is the standard mobile device for doing anything and everything one might realistically want to do, and AppleTV 2 (or whatever the next-gen one is) is how one deals with entertainment content in the home.

If you compete with Apple, you probably are afraid. But you're probably not afraid enough.

Trend #2: Google vs. Windows Live

The battle lines are drawn and right now only the geeks even care about these things. But as time goes on, these two services will start to matter to normal people too.

Here are the battle lines and philosophies:

Google is creating very rich and interesting web services that users can do everything from do spread sheets, blog, share images, etc.  It's all web based.

Windows Live is doing much the same thing except with more emphasis with desktop integration.

At this stage, I would say that Microsoft's philosophy is a bit better -- I don't want to use a website to do spread sheets. And Microsoft's organization is a bit better.  I find navigating the Google goodies to be more difficult.  Live is marginally better. Microsoft would be better off not copying off of Google so much.

But the battle for web-based user experience is something that's going to continue to grow, especially as the "cloud" takes over more (which we'll get to shortly).

vs.

And yet most people don't know this stuff exists. Which is probably a good thing as a lot of this stuff is not ready for prime time. 

Google still dominates in the search. Live Search still needs a lot of work. But the other tools in Live are pretty good. My biggest gripe is that they have their own distinct "look" to them that's kind of like Aero but...not Aero.  I'm sure the people who worked on Aero really appreciate having one of the teams go off in their own direction diluting the branding like that especially since it's only different for the sake of being different.

But there are some very interesting gems coming out of this battle.

For Windows Live they've got:

• Live Messenger is pretty good (though Yahoo's new client blows it away)
• Live Photo Gallery is an extremely nice and easy way to get your stuff onto the web (though they make it remarkably difficult to share these pictures).
• Live Writer is very awesome. Just wish it had more options in formatting.
• Live Search Maps is better in some ways than Google Earth.

On the other hand, Microsoft continues to not bother to make the most of the fact that 95% of the population has Windows on their desktop.  SkyDrive should install a drive in My Computer that works like a regular hard drive except puts its stuff onto sky drive. Maybe I just don't get Sky Drive but it's just not very useful right now.

Live Writer rocks!

For Google, you've got some really cool stuff too:

• Google Desktop Search is still the best in my opinion and Google search is still light years ahead of anyone else.
• Google Calendar is just awesome. Microsoft is starting to move forward on their own Live Calendar but it's just getting started. I'm really surprised Google hasn't created a Microsoft Project competitor. Imagine a Project.Google.com which integrated with Google Calendar to help groups coordinate better. I'm also surprised Microsoft hasn't done so either (Microsoft Project 2007 is still primitive).
• GMail absolutely blows away Hotmail.  I mean seriously, Hotmail doesn't have auto-fill on addresses.  Ironically, Live Mail looks better than Gmail now. And Gmail has incredibly spam filtering.
• Picasa is slightly better than Live Photo Gallery but it's hard to say since Live Photo Gallery's Windows app is nicer but with Picasa I can easily link to what I submit.

There's no doubt that both services are pretty good though. This is one area in which both competitors have sharp people on them.  I just can't quite understand Microsoft. I liked them better when they were bastards. The Microsoft that crushed OS/2 would have leverage the Windows platform a lot more. Live feels like it was written to appease Linux users or something.

Trend #3: DRM is losing ground

Admit it. You thought DRM was something you were going to just have to live with. I know I did.  I detest DRM beyond a minimal threshold (ironically, the DRM in iTunes doesn't bug me, it's largely transparent).  But this was the year where you could start to buy DRM-free music from both iTunes and Amazon.

I've written rants about DRM for years. The basic truth is that companies should be trying to prevent lost sales not end piracy. I don't like pirates. They're parasites. But some of the measures used to try to punish them are akin to using radical chemotherapy to get rid of tape worm. "Sure, you lost your hair and look like you're about to die, but we managed to cut down on the tape worms by 28%!"

DRM exists because non-technical executives think that putting draconian copy protection on their content will magically improve sales because it is complicated enough to keep them from pirating it.  The reality is, most people will buy something if they want it and its convenient.  If you make stealing even slightly more inconvenient than buying it, then you'll get the people who would have bought your products in the first place.  The pirates will still steal it but they weren't going to buy it in the first place.

This year it seems that increasing sales versus stopping all piracy finally began to click.  Most people are basically honest and if I download a song from iTunes or Amazon, I'm not going to deliberately share it with the world. Some will, but they would have done so anyway through other means.

Trend #4: PC Makers need to provide a better experience to compete

The Dells, HPs, Gateways, Toshibas and others of the world are probably (hopefully) looking at Apple and realizing that what happened with the iPhone in the cell phone market could very well begin to happen in the PC market.

Here's a question to ask yourself: If the iPhone had been available from every carrier, even with its limitations on 3G and GPS, what % of the market do you think it would have today?  Greater than say 5%?  If you said yes, that is the thing that PC makers need to be very concerned about because the PC experience right now is awful.

2007 was the year that the term "Craplets" started to become mainstream.  It was also the year Windows Vista was released which was supposed to improve the Windows experience.  And yet, Windows Vista shows that Microsoft still doesn't quite "get it".  Let me give you an example that tells the whole story: The Windows Sidebar, which is on by default, does not allow users to drag and drop short-cuts to it. You can only add "gadgets" of which there are no useful ones really out there.  When your default content includes a clock, you know that you're scraping for justification.

For the most part, Windows Vista does deliver a much better experience compared to XP. It was just released a bit too soon.

At the risk of saying "I told you so!" I wrote this article in August of 2006 "Microsoft: Push Vista Back!" in which I wrote:

What will happen if they ship Windows Vista if it comes out in 1Q2007? I predict it will be a disaster. Driver compatibility, rough edges in software working, weird and unpolished UI design, etc.  The acronymn UAC will come to haunt Microsoft and they will rue the day they didn't wait just a few more months to get driver compatibility together.

Microsoft isn't really the problem, it's the PC OEMs focus on bundling weird stuff that's poorly implemented.  PC makers do this because they generate money on what they preload.  But if they don't want to lose their lunch to Apple, they should make it a requirement that anything they include has to add value to the customer and improve the customer experience.  That means NO MORE SHAREWARE bundles or time out bundles or whatever.

PC makers also need to start looking to providing more-value add to their customers in terms of the experience. If Microsoft isn't able or willing to fill in some usability gap, then the PC maker should do so. 

Consider this: Remember the PCs that shipped with Windows XP in 2006? What were they like? Would you say they had a good experience?  Imagine if you were in charge, how would you have changed things? I bet a lot.  Of course, Apple is hoping the PC makers just continue to pre-load shareware and craplets and call it a day.

Trend #5: The Cloud is starting to take over

Most people still use their PCs as an independent machine that uses its Internet connection for web and email. But 2007 was the year that the cloud paradigm began to make its presence felt.

Basically the cloud is where our individual PC is no longer that important. Instead, our data and tool choices are important.  Google and Microsoft see this future pretty clearly which is why they're battling out. You could say they are battling it out for their share of the cloud.

But the trend is just starting. For the cloud to take over these 5 pieces have to be filled:

1. Your data will have to be accessible anywhere that has a network connection. This is why Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and countless others are battling for.
2. Your private data (the data you don't feel comfortable putting on public servers) has to be seamlessly available to you anywhere too. Nobody has provided a solution to this yet. The big guys seem to think that most people will be willing to put their key files on computers they don't have direct access to which I don't think will happen any time soon.
3. Your computing environment needs to be supremely portable. This is what U3 is doing.  Your apps and tools are put on a USB drive, you plug it in and you can then do on any computer what you would normally do on your home computer without having to install anything to a remote computer.
4. Distributed computing needs to come into existence. That is, the more hardware you have rights on, the more your computing capability should scale. No one has bothered to do this for the masses yet. 
5. PC virtualization needs to become mainstream.  Virtual PC and VMWare are both getting startling close to nailing this.  One can imagine a future in which your USB key using U3 tech simply carries around your virtual PC with it.  We just need USB keys with say 16 gig capacities which should happen in the next year or two.

But with items #1 and #3 starting to mature, the power users are already starting to jump into the cloud.

So there you go. The 5 most significant technology trends we saw for last year.  What they will mean for 2008 remains to be seen. But if the past is any predictor, and it's not, 2008 will be a wild ride.

Twilight of the Arnor raises the stakes.  I really don't like the concept of nerfing. If someone is too powerful, then I tend to like to correct this by making everyone else subsequently more powerful.

Those of you who have played the beta so far can attest that if the civilizations from Twilight were to go up against the same civs from Dread Lords that the Twilight civs would utterly destroy the Dark Avatar civs.

But what we're working on right now is just going to be so much fun in this next beta as we begin to get into serious balancing.

I am starting to think that we may not make the date we want. I really want to have adequate time to work over the AI.  I've learned a lot of new tricks and strategies over the last few months and it's going to take quite a bit of coding to incorporate these ideas into the game.

I will give you one spoiler: The base speed for ships is now 2 instead of 1. I did this so that some civilizations (notably the Arceans) could have a negative speed ability (so they move at the same speed as below).

I also wanted to move things along a little bit to support the Immense sized galaxies.

Also, when you're playing these betas, you absolutely, positively must let us know if you run into any out of memory issues.  In fact, if you really want to help us, play the game in a window and keep the task manager open (ctrl-shift-esc) and look at the galciv process.  If it grows beyond 1.5 gigs then we have a BIG problem and you should look to sending us your saved game so that we can profile it.  The whole 2 gigabyte limit on process memory is going to be a big deal in PC gaming.  As someone who desperately wants to play games in which there might be 10,000 ships and 10,000 planets, it annoys me to have to deal with these kinds of limitations. 

Anyway though, there's just so much cool stuff in this expansion pack to play with. We're having a really fun time with it.  I'm working on the Thalans tonight (yea, New Year's Eve but I'm partied out ). 

The Thalans are the most interesting civilization in the game. If you get Twilight, you absolutely must spend some quality time with the Thalans (especially since they're going to be a major factor in GalCiv III someday).  They have significant unique tech trees that depend on your choice of good, neutral or evil (i.e. xeno ethics is really important with them).  It also means that a lot of their techs won't show up by default on the tech tree until after you pick a ethical path.

Incidentally, be sure to read a lot of the back story on the Altarians which are slipped into the tech descriptions.  There's preview info on our fantasy strategy game that's in development in there. (I am dying to talk about the fantasy strategy game, it has, and I kid you not, the most advanced 3D engine for strategy games that has ever been developed. Smooth transition from a whole world down to an individual leaf. And while it uses lots of DirectX 10 goodies, we're doing a lot of special coding so that it looks amazing on DirectX 9 and the whole game brings new meaning to the concept of modding -- the modding engine is PART of the game and we are using it to build the game ourselves and we use it to submit content into the master database which the game then uses -- and so will players who want to come up with really cool stuff).  The fantasy strategy game is really the kind of thing that strategy gamers usually don't see because only an insane indie game company would make a turn based strategy game like this -- i.e. the kind of technology and budget usually only seen in high end RPGs or first person shooters but instead used to cater specifically to strategy gamers. You'll see what I mean when the time gets closer.

Anyway, good times ahead. I think Twilight of the Arnor is the work I'm most proud of since getting into game development.  I just hope people enjoy all the next text and subtle tweaks.  12 unique civilizations to play with mean 12 different cultures to explore.

Windows Live Writer is a pain because it tries to do its own custom skinning. The Live team really should adhere to the standard Windows UI conventions IMO.

It just bugs me that the Live apps, which are pretty good, should have their own wacky look that is different from the rest of Windows.