I wrote this on my personal page but it's worth talking about here too.

What determines how much money someone should be making? The easy answer is "market forces". But that's really a cop-out because it takes away control from the employee entirely.  People, especially those working in office environments, have significant impact on how much they make.

And it boils down to a relatively simple relationship. How much money the objective you are working on produces.

The higher the number A is, the more you make.  Where A is an objective. Some sort of task or project that generates income.

Of course, it's not normally quite like this. Usually the task involves more than just you.

The more people involved in A, the less you make per completed task. If having more people involved allows you to accomplish more tasks, then that's good. But that's not what happens to most people.  Most people simply cut themselves off from accomplishing more because they artificially pigeon-hole themselves into a specific set of tasks.

In the above example, task A may require some very disparate skills to complete. Skills that Sally and Bill have that you don't. So you "need" them to accomplish task A. The successful entrepreneur is the one who is able to learn lots of new skills in order to accomplish tasks without needing Sally and Bill.

What ultimately limits most successful entrepreneurs is that they don't learn how to manage people because they simply try to do it all themselves. The successful entrepreneur may still be a multi-millionaire so don't be too sorry for him or her. But they'd never hack it as a corporate executive in a Fortune 500 company.  That's because the task list is more like this:

That is, there are lots of tasks that need to get done. So entrepreneur with the ma/pa shop may only have a task or two that they work on in a given year. Having mastered the skills necessary to do the task largely alone, they take home the lion's share of the profits from that task. But the next step is the company which has several, dozens, hundreds, or thousands of tasks to complete.

But before we talk about that, let's review.  How much you make in a professional environment relies on how much the task you are working on is worth and how quickly you can get it done. The value of that task is split amongst the people you needed to accomplish that task.  You can make more by making sure the tasks you work on are valuable and by learning skills necessary to complete those tasks.

Not only must you learn those skills but you must take the initiative to demonstrate to others that you are capable of using those skills effective and efficiently.

But if you sit back and say "I don't know how to do X" where X is a skill necessary to complete a given task that you are part of accomplishing, then that's fine. But it means your value is diminished.

In my experience, what happens is that people who choose not to learn those new skills end up finishing their part of a given task and then move on to working on a different task (or just not working at all) that is worth vastly less than the primary task. 

So do yourself a favor -- learn as many of the skills as possible that are necessary to complete the tasks you are involved in.  Doing so will increase your value and hence how much you make.

In the next part, we'll talk about management.

What determines how much money someone should be making? The easy answer is "market forces". But that's really a cop-out because it takes away control from the employee entirely.  People, especially those working in office environments, have significant impact on how much they make.

And it boils down to a relatively simple relationship. How much money the objective you are working on produces.

The higher the number A is, the more you make.  Where A is an objective. Some sort of task or project that generates income.

Of course, it's not normally quite like this. Usually the task involves more than just you.

The more people involved in A, the less you make per completed task. If having more people involved allows you to accomplish more tasks, then that's good. But that's not what happens to most people.  Most people simply cut themselves off from accomplishing more because they artificially pigeon-hole themselves into a specific set of tasks.

In the above example, task A may require some very disparate skills to complete. Skills that Sally and Bill have that you don't. So you "need" them to accomplish task A. The successful entrepreneur is the one who is able to learn lots of new skills in order to accomplish tasks without needing Sally and Bill.

What ultimately limits most successful entrepreneurs is that they don't learn how to manage people because they simply try to do it all themselves. The successful entrepreneur may still be a multi-millionaire so don't be too sorry for him or her. But they'd never hack it as a corporate executive in a Fortune 500 company.  That's because the task list is more like this:

That is, there are lots of tasks that need to get done. So entrepreneur with the ma/pa shop may only have a task or two that they work on in a given year. Having mastered the skills necessary to do the task largely alone, they take home the lion's share of the profits from that task. But the next step is the company which has several, dozens, hundreds, or thousands of tasks to complete.

But before we talk about that, let's review.  How much you make in a professional environment relies on how much the task you are working on is worth and how quickly you can get it done. The value of that task is split amongst the people you needed to accomplish that task.  You can make more by making sure the tasks you work on are valuable and by learning skills necessary to complete those tasks.

Not only must you learn those skills but you must take the initiative to demonstrate to others that you are capable of using those skills effective and efficiently.

But if you sit back and say "I don't know how to do X" where X is a skill necessary to complete a given task that you are part of accomplishing, then that's fine. But it means your value is diminished.

In my experience, what happens is that people who choose not to learn those new skills end up finishing their part of a given task and then move on to working on a different task (or just not working at all) that is worth vastly less than the primary task. 

So do yourself a favor -- learn as many of the skills as possible that are necessary to complete the tasks you are involved in.  Doing so will increase your value and hence how much you make.

In the next part, we'll talk about management.

This week Norway banned Apple from selling songs via iTunes Music store in Norway. This was done on the grounds that Apple's DRM "Fairplay" forces users to play the music via iTunes which they feel infringes on the rights of users (though forcing users to not be able to choose to buy songs from iTunes apparently is a newly discovered freedom).

Europe's obsession with media playing technologies developed in the United States (as seen with its millions in fines against Microsoft) seems confined to media player.

No word yet on whether Norway plans to invade neighboring Finland to take out Nokia's diabolical plan of forcing people who want to play n-Gage games to buy a Nokia n-Gage. 

Gillette, maker of razor blades that force users to use Gillette razors declined to comment on whether they were concerned that Norway would target them next.

Years ago, I lived on the forums on WC. Not just WC but on forums all over the place. There was a joke once that if you said my name 3 times on a forum, I would magically appear and havoc would ensue.

So why did I stop?  Too busy? That's some of it. But a bigger reason is that I tend to not always be..the most politically correct guy around.

Or to put it another way, recently I got hooked on a new show after having multiple, independent people tell me I am just like a specific fictional character -- Dr. House on the TV show House. Not that it's a perfect fit (I don't think anyone would say I'm unethical) but I can be pretty cranky.

I'd say I'm more of a cross between Rearden from Atlas Shrugged and House. But it's still the same difference. I'm an evil, blood-thirsty capitalist. I've been an evil, blood-thirsty capitalist from day 1.  When the first skinning sites opened, I was there. 

Here's an article I wrote on the subject:

https://www.wincustomize.com/Articles.aspx?SID=1&AID=136943

Another reason I was gone is that I felt WC2K5 kind of sucked.  The ugly light blue look. The way the site was poorly organized or crashing or just plain slow. I just didn't like it.

And too many of the people hanging out were boring or at least boorish and elitist. I saw people being snide and rude to new users as if applying little bitmaps to your user interface is somehow an intuitive thing. So I stayed away.

I also didn't like how ratings were done. T-man and I argued about this. If you watch House, T-man is like Dr. Wilson (i.e. super nice).  I'm not nice. I don't think most of you should be allowed to rate skins. I originally had it that only other skinners could rate skins. But it got changed so that subscribers could also rate which really bugged me. But once a feature is given, it's hard to take it away.  But with WC2K7, we changed that.  Now ratings are weighted. So non-skinners who have subscriptions can rate but if a skinner votes, it counts for a lot more in determining the overall rating.  If someone hates that, you can start your own thread and complain there. Like I said, if I were total emperor and could turn back time, only skinners would be allowed to rate things at all. If I work hard on a skin, I don't want some random guy giving me a 1 and wrecking my rating.

Getting back to WC2K7...I really like it. If they can get IIS to quit crashing randomly (which is why sometimes it's really really fast and other times you sit there waiting 30 seconds) it'll be totally awesome.  I love the bread-crumbs.  I find it easy to navigate and much easier to write articles.

But we need to do more. We need to start following up on the Stardock failures of 2006. Admitting you have a problem is only the first step after all.

So anyway, my question to you guys is, is WC better off with the main administrator face being the volunteers along with Jafo and Zoomba who are nice? Or do you think it would work out if I started to increase my presence again even though I'm kind of a jerk that should be locked up in a lab coding stuff rather than telling users that I don't want them to ever purchase our software again?  

You can tell me the truth. I'm already in the fetal postiion.

It's been about a week now since the first Master Skins have gone up. And so we've had time to evaluate the results.

The results: They're definitely here to stay.  They've done significantly better than we had anticipated.  Or put another way, a skinner could potentially make a full-time living simply making Master skins.

I won't give away the sales figures for other authors but the results for the ones we've put up, which haven't done as well as what Treetog or Adni have done, have ranged from a couple hundred dollars to $500 or so in the first week. And those are dwarfed by what Adni has achieved.

I don't expect Master skins to become more than 1% of the total skins on WinCustomize.com. Or put another way, we'll tighten the moderation restrictions to ensure that they don't become too common because we don't want to give the impression of the site being about paying for skins.

Some people have loudly objected to the selling of skins.  I can't say I understand that. Labor is labor. If it's software, it's okay but if someone makes a skin it has to be free? That doesn't make sense to me.

But the benefits are significant: WinCustomize.com will continue to exist as a result.  The Master skins were WC's last chance.  The # of subscribers we were getting per month was not remotely close enough to justify the expense of the site. deviantART has been interested in providing a whole sub-section for Stardock's skinning stuff (people who think Stardock needs WinCustomize really need a reality check).  So it has been, at times, tempting to close WC and turn it over to deviantART.

A handful of dedicated community members have subscribed. But a site that gets over 3 million unique visitors per month but couldn't manage to get more than a few hundred of them to subscribe just wasn't cutting it.  So the Master skinners along with those who are purchasing their works are not just helping the skinners themselves but they are helping WinCustomize continue to exist.

There are also a lot of journeymen who, next month, we'll begin looking at nominating to become masters. All Masters will be expected to continue to support the community (we don't want Masters come to see us as just a store, we're supposed to be a community, if it ever became purely about the money then again, Stardock would take the most obvious economically justified course -- team up with our friends at deviantART to host the skinning content while we focused our resources on software only).

So the good news is that Master Skinning is doing very well.  One final note, the download count on Master skins is actually meaningless because people who buy them download them from store link, not from WC (we'll have to find a way to display something else other than download count which right now only counts those who re-download the skin after the fact).

Thank you for your support and we hope you are enjoying the new WC!

The skinning community is fairly unique in that it brings together a very wide range of people into something that is pretty specific.

Why change your computer from the default look and feel? The computer is a tool or a source of amusement. The way you get to your tools or games is irrelevant right?

And yet, here we are. Hanging out on a site that brings together millions of people from around the world. So why do we do it?

So tell us, who are you? What do you want? Why do you do it?

For me:

My name is Brad Wardell. I got into skinning because I spend a lot of time in front of the computer doing "work".

I started out as a game developer and foudn that it bugged me that other people should tell me how I would get my work done.  So I endeavored to find ways to change the way my computer worked to suit my own tastes.  Over time, I teamed up with like minded people who were developers.

And so now much of my professional career is creating stuff for like-minded people.  I live in Michigan with my wife and 2 small sons and baby daughter. 

A lot of people use Stardock Central for updating files. But it's also really good for getting around the forums -- especially in recent versions.

With Stardock Central I can quickly zip through all the forums to see what's going on. If you haven't tried it, give it a shot.

On January 30th, Windows Vista officially becomes generally available.  So what's the verdict? Is it worth looking into? Stardock's Mike Crassweller (Zoomba) takes an in-depth look at Windows Vista in a 5-part series that looks at nearly every aspect of the OS.

Microsoft is banking on Windows Vista being a compelling upgrade. With Windows XP having been out for over 5 years, the pressure is on to deliver a worthy successor. Has Microsoft succeeded? Read on and find out everything you wanted to know.

• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 2: UI Changes & Additions
• Part 3: Controls, Apps, and Games
• Part 4: For the PowerUser
• Part 5: The Verdict

Let's find out who's actively hanging out in the forums.

It's 7:40pm EST on Jan 24, 2007. If you read this, comment here. Let's find out how many active participants there are here. Then we can do a measurement at other times in the future.

Vista is just about here and you might wonder what we can and can't customize and how it's going to be done.

If you have Windows Vista (or XP for that matter) you should make sure you have Object Desktop.  I'm biased for Object Desktop becuase I work at Stardock. But as a practical matter, if you want to customize Vista, you'll want this.

Here is a qiuck list of what's going on:

1) Icons.

IconPackager is being updated to work on Windows Vista. It's been more challenging to do on Vista than previous versions because of the Live folder icon updating. In Vista, the folder icon shows thumbnails of what's inside the folder as part of the folder icon.  That means the folder is literally hard coded to a specific image.

We've gotten past the first part -- we can now make it so you can customize the Live folder icon. The next step, for sometime in the future, is to make it so that icon authors can create their own live folder icons where they decide where the folder content images will appear. But that's going to take some doing. 

Object Desktop users will see the beta of this shortly.

2) Logons.

We've got logons working and Object Desktop users will get the beta this week and we'll be creating a Vista logons section.

But we don't have the flexibility we had on XP yet. The logon part is in the middle so it's basically image replacement at this point. This should change as we ge tmore time.

3) Boot screens

We've got this working but it's not as easy to do right as we hoped.  Well, part of it is, part of it isn't. It' not as easy to do LEGALLY as we hoped because Microsoft is using a weird image format that requires a special program to create that isn't legal to distribute.  This won't stop people from warezing the utility around probably but we cna't go around doing it. 

What we are currently looking at doing is providing a free service where you submit the images in say JPG for BMP format and we convert them into the special graphics format needed.

4) GUI Skinning

WindowBlinds is working on Windows Vista pretty well at this point.  WindowBlinds 5.5 (due out in a couple weeks) is designed to basicaly let XP skins work on Vista.  SkinStudio 5.5 is in internal beta and lets people make Vista skins as well. 

But we won't get into doing really fancy stuff with Vista until WindowBlinds 6 which is due out this Spring. That's when we'll be doing blur effects and other effects in the skin.

Other people are trying to make msstyles. It's a doomed effort. Here's why: The Vista title bar buttons are hard-coded in their position. And the Aero look is pretty unique.  So other than replacing PNG images, don't expect much.  For people who just want to change the start orb or replace button images, it'll do fine. But you won't be making Leopard-like msstyles for Vista.

5) Wallpapers

You may have heard of Windows DreamScene. That's Microsoft's animated wallpaper program that we worked on with them that's for Windows Vista Ultimate. It lets you play video loops as your animated wallpaper.

We're releasing Stardock DeskScapes on Object Desktop shortly which extends DreamScene to support dynamic content. We've got some really interesting content in the works internally.

Dynamic content has the advantage that it scales to any resolution and uses almost no CPU (video has to use a little bit of CPU for decoding the video). Dynamic content also had the advantage in that it's well, dynamic. It's not just a repeating 12 second video.

That said, Windows DreamScene is pretty awesome.  I realize some..people on the net have said "Oh, you could do this since <insert ridiculous claim here>." Let's be real, if animated wallpaper was remotely practical before it would have been done.  What's technically possible is irrelevant. What's practically useful is what matters. Vista lets you have animated wallpaper without it sucking down your CPU and that's really the whole discussion. (I saw some thread where they got screensavers working as your wallpaper and sure, it used 50% of the CPU and screwed up the icons but hey it's neat right? No. It's not).

6) Gadgets

Well, there's a ton of gadget technologies. And Stardock has good news for the platform developers -- if you want your widgets/gadgets to work on the Vista sidebar, contact Stardock. We've developed a technology that can make third-party technologies work as native Sidebar gadgets.

Our first use of it, not surprisingly, is with DesktopX.  You'll be able to export your DesktopX content as Sidebar gadgets. Same dialog as you use to export your creations as widgets.

DesktopX 3.5 should go into beta very soon for Object Desktop users.

7) Desktops

This is an area we're going to spend a lot of energy in now that the desktop is hardware accelerated. Remember the Heavy Equipment DesktopX theme? Imagine that taken to the Nth degree. 

8) Mouse Cursors

CursorVista is in development and we hope to have a beta out pretty soon. (i.e. a few weeks I hope).

9) Super Gadgets

If this term takes off, I want credit in the Wiki!   Super Gadgets are gadgets that have far more functionality than the gadgets and widgets of today.  They're not just a few hundred lines of scripting code and PNGs thrown together but are in actuality full blown programs that have been made into the gadget form-factor.

The Windows Sidebar creates a new potential state for software. Right now, there's minimized windows and active windows.   But the Sidebar creates a potential third state -- Gadget state. That's where the Sidebar displays a given program in an intermediate state where it's displaying active information about the program but it's in a smaller form factor.

So that PIM you're using might be displaying all kinds of information and when you click on it, it opens up to being the full blown personal information manager (as one example).  Any program that deals in information could be treated in this way.

What Stardock has been working on is making it so that you can create gadgets and such using .NET, WPF, and other technologies so that we and other developers can create much more sophisticated things (and use a real debugger when making this stuff).

10) Misc.

Because Windows Vista's desktop is composited -- it's a 3D surface, it's really hard to predict what kinds of new things people will create.  But I can tell you that because of the flexibility in Microsoft's underlying platform design, the possibilities are endless.  Next time some Mac zealot says "we had X on the Mac for years before" ask them how many third-party innovations are occurring on the Mac these days when it comes to enhancing the user experience.  By contrast, Microsoft has a very well defined brand that they vigorously protect and still embrace third parties being able to build on top of their platform to create new and exciting things.