We're still working out the documentation and sample content on triggers and such.  We hope to have that ready in the next week or so.

Once we do that, we'll update DreamMaker to make it easy to do triggers in your creations.

Dream.WinCustomize.com is here!

And so is Stardock DeskScapes which you need to run the new .DREAM files!

Check out the guided tour below...

Microsoft released Windows Vista with a whole new graphics engine that is 3D accelerated.  Because of that, all kinds of cool visual effects become possible. One obvious thing that became possible for Microsoft to do was to allow users to optionally have animated wallpaper.

Now, like normal (1 frame) wallpaper, animated wallpaper could be pretty obnoxious. But if done right, it would simply take static wallpaper to the next logical step.

So Microsoft developed a new feature for Windows Vista Ultimate Extra called Windows DreamScene.  When it came time to get tools and content, they came to Stardock.  Stardock's graphics design team (Stardock Design) for the animated wallpaper and our desktop enhancement team for the tools.

This is where Stardock DeskScapes comes in.  We developed Stardock DeskScapes to extend Windows DreamScene in certain very important areas:

Feature	Windows DreamScene	Stardock DeskScapes
Plays .MPEG and .WMV content as wallpaper
Plays .DREAM content as wallpaper
Supports Triggers for changing animated wallpaper
Supports Dynamic (non-video) content
Supports author credit in dialog
Is Extensible
Requires	Windows Vista Ultimate	Windows DreamScene
Price	FREE (with Windows Vista Ultimate)	FREE (for users of Windows Vista Ultimate)

To be clear: Stardock DeskScapes extends Windows DreamScene. It isn't a replacement for it. You have to have Windows DreamScene installed first to use Stardock DeskScapes. 

Taking Windows DreamScene one step further -- Stardock DeskScapes

As we developed the animated wallpapers for Microsoft we became very experienced in how to make it so that it was subtle and use less CPU (there video encoding and then there is video encoding).  We also came up with our own wish list of things we felt users would want. For example:

DeskScapes Enhancement #1: Authors getting credit

DeskScapes allows author information to be displayed and that info can be linked to your website.

The first thing about DeskScapes -- there is no program to run. Once it's installed, your regular Windows wallpaper manager in Vista is simply extended to support .DREAM files. You don't have to do anything else.

When you click on a .Dream file, the title and author information comes up.

By contrast, Windows DreamScene on its own, as cool as it is, doesn't display author info. So no one knows who created the cool animated Aurora default in Windows DreamScene (Stardock Design created it incidentally)

DeskScapes Enhancement #2: Dynamic Wallpaper

This image is being rotated on the fly in 3D in total smoothness

World rotates in real-time (which is very slowly actually)

Modern video games generally don't use pre-rendered video anymore. That's because modern video cards have the horse power to do amazing things.  Most reviewers haven't talked much about this but the Windows Vista desktop IS A 3D SURFACE. It simply looks like previous versions of Windows. It's as if they took the Quake 3 engine and made the game look like Windows.  Seriously. 

That means you can do some pretty cool stuff with it...such as dynamic animated wallpapers.

My screenshot here is pretty lame but we've got earth rotating, snow/rain (based on weather -- there's probably a sunny one but we're in Michigan) ones, fish swimming, lava lamps, etc.  All are in various states of development. Obviously, it does take more work to make a good looking dynamic wallpaper but the results can be really cool. As they get finished, we'll be releasing them.

DeskScapes Enhancement #3: Triggers

Based on time of day your wallpaper can change.

Triggers are another way of saying that if a certain condition is met, then do something. Stardock DeskScapes lets .DREAM files have triggers. For instance, IF time is morning, then play wallpaper A, IF Time is afternoon, play wallpaper B and so forth. It's not that huge of a thing but something that wasn't hard to do that we think enriches the experience.

Summary

Probably the key thing that Stardock DeskScapes does is extend Windows DreamScene to support the .DREAM format. You don't need DeskScapes to play video (MPEG or WMV) content as your animated wallpaper. But consider this -- which will be easier to find in a year from now to use as your animated wallpaper? Googling .DREAM or Googling WMV?

If it's .DREAM you get all the advantages I mention above plus you know it's designed to be an animated wallpaper. And it costs nothing to create them (use DreamMaker) and nothing for Windows Vista Ultimate users to use them.

We'll be providing additional free content on Dream.WinCustomize.com over the coming weeks, months. Essentially, we created a host of high quality, high definition video content for the Microsoft project and Microsoft chose some to distribute and we kept the rest to distribute.

We hope you have fun with this and that as time goes on, more and more people will come to find that animated wallpapers are pretty nice.  While the concept of them isn't new (lots of people/developers have hacked at it for years), the key thing about Windows DreamScene / Stardock DeskScapes is that you get to have your cake and eat it too. When perfected, you'll have it without any performance or usability drawbacks. It'll be like the static wallpapers of the present except with more frames.

So the steps are...

1. Get Windows Vista Ultimate
2. Download Windows DreamScene
3. Download/Install Stardock DeskScapes
4. Start enjoying .DREAMs!

Have fun!

Our Story So Far...

Last year Microsoft contracted Stardock (and Stardock Design) to work with them on an animated wallpaper feature for Windows Vista Ultimate.  The feature went on to be called Windows DreamScene which plays video content as animated wallpaper.

Our design team created the default computer generated wallpapers that come with Windows DreamScene.  Our development team created a program called Stardock DeskScapes which extends Windows DreamScene to support the new .DREAM format which supports dynamic content (instead of video, generated dynamically) as well as support for triggers and author credit.

WinCustomize.com worked with the Windows Ultimate team to create a community for the uploading and sharing of animated wallpapers in the .DREAM format.

Today, Microsoft made Windows DreamScene Preview available as an Ultimate Extra (you can get it from Windows Update if you have Windows Vista Ultimate).  And Stardock has made Stardock DeskScapes available today too as well as a tool to create .DREAM files.

So to summarize, Dream.WinCustomize.com is up which has some new animated wallpapers available. You will need to download DeskScapes (which is free and requires Windows DreamScene to be installed) to use the animated wallpapers.

 Dream.WinCustomize.Com

 Guided Tour of Stardock DeskScapes

Resident JoeUser communist, Col Gene writes a steady stream of left-wing anti-Bush, anti-Capitalistic articles that are very interesting to read in that they really show the point of view of the very far left in this country and elsewhere.

In a recent article, he discussed how Exon's profits should be taxed at an exceptional rate because of their recent $30+ billion profit (on $300+ billion in revenue).  The article could be boiled down to this: Exxon is greedy and the government should punish them for their greed by taking away their profits.

He also added how "greedy" it is for CEOs to make 50 to 450 times how much the average workers make.

Okay, so who should decide how much people make? The government at the point of a gun? Or owners through the performance of the company made by individual choices of customers?

Some movie star or ball player or CEO making a gazillion dollars doesn't hurt me at all. Why should anyone care how much they make? The money they make isn't taken from someone else. It's made through the voluntary transaction between consumers and producers. Someone wants a product and service, someone else produces product or service and sells it at price X. The free citizen can choose to pay for the product or service or not.

Now, in the case of an Exxon, market forces are severely restrained because you can't just start up an oil company. But it's pretty hard to reasonably charge "Greed" to a company whose profit margin hovers around 10%. In most industries, that's considered unacceptably low.  But no doubt, because of the weak market forces, the CEOs of such companies have to be wary of increasing their margins lest they be regulated even further.

But let's be real, the word "greed" is recklessly thrown around by the economic losers of our society. It's the word used by people who don't produce at those who do produce.  And rather than trying to provide an alternative or choosing a different product/service they would rather that the men with guns (the government) confiscated the wealth generated by producers to give to the non-productive class. 

A free society should always be very wary of having decisions restrained at the point of a gun. Free people can decide for themselves what's best for themselves.

Europe is dying.

It will take awhile. But in the course of a few decades, the Europe that we know and love will be gone.  Even today, the world of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is largely something that can only exist in fiction. Any Greeks reading this? How many brothers and sisters do you have? Any?

Below is a table of the birth-death rate for selected countries from the year that just ended:

If the deathrate is higher than the bith rate, you get the idea.

In fact, if the deathrate is even close to the birth rate, you have a problem because, obviously, not al births are healthy children. Some will die. Some will have disabilities that preclude them from reproducing.

These numbers are worse than they look for anyone who is a fan of western civilization.  The reason? Because the only reason western Europe's birthrat is even close to the death rate is due to first genration birth of immigrants who are ovewhelmingly Islamic (coming from North Africa or Asia Minor). 

A lot of people, mostly Europeans, don't like talking about the I-word (Islam). It's a touchy subject and so they try to pretend Islam is a race rather than a religio-ideology and treat those of us who are concerned with it as racists or bigots or what have you. But Islam is a different culture, whether you like it as a culture or not is subject for a different discussion.  But when a native culture isn't reproducing itself and a foreign culture is, then in a human-life span or two, the foreign culture is the native one for better or worse.

But what is the cause of this?  Why have Europeans in particular given up on having children?

My opinion is that it is entitlements. Consider this: Why have children? What is the incentive other than biological urge, to have children?

Or more to the point, what is the incentive to have more than one child? Maybe you have a girl and want a boy so you have 2?

In the time before cradle to grave entitlements, people had children for a very specific reason: Because they needed them.  They needed them to work the farms. They needed them to help out in the household. They needed them to take care of them when they became old and infirm.

But now? What do we need kids for? Mother government will provide for us. The more urbanized, the lower the population growth. All those government services are so convenient. It takes a village right?  And when you get old, you don't need children anymore. No, the government will pay for your medicine, house you if necessary, and provide money to allow you to live pretty well.

But who am I to judge? I'm an only child. And in fact, I'm not trying to judge. I really don't consider one path to be morally superior to the other. So don't shoot the messenger.

Unless the birth rate of European countries changes course, and there's no reason to think it will, the native population of Europe will be decimated and it will only be a matter of how much immigration they are able to bring in that determines how well their country fairs economically. Of course, thena gain, it won't be their country anymore will it?

I like Gov Granholm. She's the kind of politican that few states are lucky to have -- honest, friendly, reasonable. I also think she's intelligent.

But it is, IMO, her intelligence that had led her economic policies to disaster. Simply put, when she doesn't know something, she relies on her intelligence to function as a form of intuition. And for whatever reason, she just has some sort of block when it comes to business.

In her 2007 state of the state speech, she advocates raising taxes to help make Michigan more competitive.

"The tax changes I will prpose are simple, fair, and progressive."

Which is a recipe for disaster. Words like fairness and progressive send up red flags.

If I have $100 to invest and I have 100 companies to invest it in, should I be "fair" and invest equally in all 100 companies?  Should I be progressive and give it to the poorer companies?  Or should I base my investment based on merit and capability?

Granholm's administration has be not-quite hostile to business as much as not understanding the role of business in the success or failure of a state.

To be "simple" about it, business is everything.  Busineses are the ones who employ people and people (and businesses) pay the taxes. Without those businesses, everything else collapses.

Politicians tend to get stuck on things like "better education for our children". That's nice. But the skills necessary to function in our society are remarkably cheap to acquire.  They do not require spending $10,000 per student per year. 

I don't know what the exact amount is necessary to adequately educate a child only that $10,000 per student is far too high.  You get into diminishing returns pretty quickly.  My sons attend public school. And of the 180 days they are in attendance, they lose a solid 10 on various "parties". They lose another 3 or 4 to "field trips" that have no educational value (I should know, I have gone with them on some).  Their curriculum is full of fluffy nonsense that does nothing to help them acquire basic math and reading skills.  The teachers have assistants who have assistants.  At a certain point, money is just a metric used by politicans and Michigan has far exceeded that metric.

Here are the two basic problems with Jennifer Granholm's political philosophy:

1. She doesn't understand the role of business in a state's prosperity
2. She thinks education has a significant role in making a state successful

Both are incorrect.  When I hire people (or as politicians call it -- when I "create" jobs) if I can't find someone locally, I bring someone from out of state. About half the people at our office are from outside Michigan. 

Bringing talented people from outside of Michigan isn't a "bug" IMO, it's a feature. Politicians should be glad when businesses recruit talented people from out of state.  Obviously you want a hard working, educated local work force. But once you have that, goodies like free tuition and such are counter productive. They do nothing for your state other than encourage moochers to move in. Is that the goal?

If Ms. Granhom really wants to make Michigan successful here are a few things I'd recommend:

1. Lower taxes, especially on businesses.
2. Eliminate thing likes Single Business Tax now (The itself SBT was finally removed in a referendum)
3. Keep on top of the roads. It's humiliating to bring someone in where the roads are a total joke (they're getting better though - thank you!)

That's pretty much it.  She should also use the tight budget as an excuse to cut educational spending. The problem with schools (whether it be suburban or inner city) is not a lack of money but a lack of self-reliance and accountability. Throwing money at public schools when they can't even fire incompetent teachers is wasteful.

Making it easy for every child in Michigan to go to college sure is nice. And as they move off to Texas or Arizona or South Carolina to get a job, I'm sure they'll be faintly appreciative (though not likely) of Ms. Granholm's commitment to education.

The mantra politicans need to remember is that businesses create jobs.  What's good for them is good for your state.

If you have a JoeUser blog you can mirror your blog on WinCustomize.com right now.

To do this follow these instructions:

1) Go to www.wincustomize.com

2) Sign in with the same UserID and PW you have on JU

3) On the right you'll have a "Create personal page". Click on it and follow instructions

4) You will now have a personal page that has the same content as your JoeUser blog. 

When you go to your personal page, there are blue tabs that let you go through various options for it.

Example: http://frogboy.wincustomize.com

Articles:

http://frogboy.wincustomize.com/articles.aspx

Visually, a future JU would look nothing like what you're seeing. But feature, speed, reliability wise, it'll be very similar.  You'll be able to put up pictures and customize the site visually how you'd like and a host of other things.

You'll have immense amounts of data to look at if you want, a friends list, a diary, etc.

Example of some of the stats from Frogboy:

http://frogboy.wincustomize.com/stats.aspx

Activity:

http://frogboy.wincustomize.com/activity.aspx

Here's my photo gallery:

http://frogboy.wincustomize.com/photos.aspx

JoeUser will be able to piggy back on this kind of technology in the coming months. The main change you'll see will be in speed and reliability.  JU's speed has increased substantially since the bad old days but it is still a frankenstein monster of code underneath that is flakey and unreliabile.

I often find myself writing JU articles from WC because it's such a smoother experience. They show up here the same way.

One thing to be very aware of:

Windows DreamScene uses video for its content. That is fine.  But not all formats are created equal.

.WMV files were designed for being as small as possible while maintaining quality. They use a LOT more CPU power as a result.

.MPEG are somewhat larger in file size but use a fraction of the CPU that WMV uses.

Hence whey MPEG2 was the standard for DVD players years ago - the CPU requirements were much less.  MPEG 4 (which WMV is a derivative of I believe) is superior in all ways other than CPU requirements which do matter for people using them as animated wallpaper.

The .DREAM format supports animated wallpaper made up of either MPEG 2 or WMV or dynamic content (generated on the fly).  Dynamic content will tend to use the least since there's no decoding.

Stardock is getting close to releasing the public beta of DesktopX 3.5.  DesktopX is a program that enables users to build their own desktops through objects.

Users can export entire desktops (as .desktop files) or export parts of their desktop as mini-applications called widgets. 

What sets DesktopX apart from other technologies is the inherent power of the underlying APIs. You can, literally, create anything with DesktopX. It supports ActiveX controls, VB Script, JavaScript, animation, sound effects, The Windows Performance Monitoring APIs and tons of other features that have helped make it quite successful in corporate environments.

With DesktopX 3.5, users will have the added option of exporting widgets as Windows Sidebar gadgets.  By default, the only way to make Windows Sidebar gadgets is to mess around with DHTML -- Sidebar gadgets essentially web pages created into a specific form factor.  DesktopX 3.5 will allow users who create Sidebar gadgets that are significantly more powerful with a lot less effort.

DesktopX is part of Stardock's Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancement programs.

Screenshot: A user-created desktop.

Screenshot: A user created widget.