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.
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.
I'm really curious as to what people at WinCustomize think of Windows Vista.
From a customization point of view, Vista has some immense opportunities. But my fear is a real splitting of skinning between XP and Vista.
XP, let's face it, works pretty good. And it's been out for years. So getting people to switch to Vista may be a slow process.
What do you think?
The Korath are the warriors supreme of the Drengin Empire. When the Drengin Empire absolutely positively has to win, the call goes out and the Korath always answer. The Korath always win. The Korath were the ones who took the Torian home world thousands of years ago. If the Drengin are a bunch of ruthless, evil, conquerors, the Korath are that to the nth degree.
As the Terran Alliance was about to celebrate its victory over the Dread Lords, it was the Korath who led the charge to crush the increasingly powerful human civilization. The humans had never dealt with the Korath. And if they had, they would not necessarily have noticed the difference in prior times. But now, in the past couple of years, the physical difference between the Korath and other Drengin is quite noticeable.
The Drengin (and Korath) take pride that the Drengin home world has been unified under one supreme emperor for over 100,000 years. Until they met the seemingly benign humans from Sol 3, they thought this was a source of great advantage. But the pleasant negotiators of the Terran Alliance have a blood-thirsty past. And the Drengin and Korath have come to rue the day that they dismissed the evolved apes of Earth as being a race of merchants.
The Terran Alliance and Korath fought a series of battles for control of key parsecs. This is one of those battles.
(AI note: This is a test of the Korath computer AI, notes and changes and errors will be documented)
Game settings: Intelligent (AI playing at the same level as the human player)
Detailed look at the player setup. CPU usage is increased to allow advanced algorithms.
Terran Alliance base world: Poseiden. Two very special tiles
Korath base world: Karza'Dun. One very special tile.
Terran Alliance First 10 tech choices:
Korath First 10 tech choices:
The quadrant:
The center has two key worlds that the Terran Alliance will attempt to take. It has the advantage of knowing where the planets are (because this is a pre-canned map that I've played before whereas the Korath have to explore it).
Even split in galaxy.
Very close overall still.
Korath base world:
More built up but no super projects.
Terran base world:
Manufacturing capital constructed. But one tile not filled.
In 2227, both sides that military parity. But the Terran Alliance had invasion tech. In fact, the Korath were quite slow in focusing on their Spore weapon technology.
It was a walk over.
Their ships had an attack of 2 each, mine had 3. But they had adapted to the changing circumstances but now they only had 2 worlds to my 5.
In the end, it was over.
Two things in particular:
Mistake #1: Planet Construction.
VS. 
Their capital world had only a 34tp production on research with no research bonus additions. Mine was at 74 X 2X with the tech capital.
Mistake #2: Their research path
They should have focused more on their weapons earlier on. They didn't get their spore weapons until too late. Though really, looking at what techs they researched, the main problem was the home planet.
The Korath played badly. But as badly as they played, a lot was learned and it was largely in the tweaking of values that the solutions can be found.
Back to tweaking and adding new functionality to make it smarter.
The Dilbert comics are pretty good at demonstrating how much waste occurs in really large companies. Large companies, however, usually have enough momentum (or at least inertia) to absorb a heck of a lot of waste. But companies that are moving from being a "Start up" sized company to being a small/mid-sized company don't usually have that advantage.
Over the years, I've read a lot of books on building a business and one of the points that comes up time and time again is to beware of taking your eye off the prize. Or more to the point - don't take resources away from what made you successful in the first place to focus on delusions of grandier.
One of the most common things cited was that many companies fledgling executive teams are embarassed or ashamed of what made them successful and instead try to reinvent themselves as a "respectable" company. So they move away from what made them successful and focus on making products and services that they think are more prestigious. The results are predictable -- disaster and often the end of the company.
Some of the warning signs (paraphrasing) includes:
The things to look out for included:
The phrase "pride before the fall" is not an empty phrase. It is very true. The desire for corporate respect can override sound business judgment.
The start-up with the ugly website selling geeky stuff that changes its site to having a picture of a female model in a business suit with a pen with some meaningless phrase with high-minded catch-phrases that don't adequately describe the company's business objectives is something a lot of people have probably seen. During the dot-com bomb, many Internet start-ups skipped the first step and immediately jumped to the second step.
Over the past couple of years, Stardock has grown tremendously. Our revenue has increased nearly 700% in the past 5 years.
And where has that revenue come from? Basically two sources: Object Desktop (our suite of desktop enhancements) and the game franchise of Galactic Civilizations. We do make sizeable amounts from other sources, but you take away resources from those two things and we become a much smaller company in time.
So as we expand our company, the challenge is to ensure that we aren't taking away resources from what made us succeed in the first place. Instead, we need to bring on new resources to put into related ventures. Things that build on our existing success but don't supplant what we are already doing that works well for us.
Master Skins. What are they?
A Master Skin is a skin made by a user with Master access or higher that is premium content. On WinCustomize.com we have access levels:
Users can rise up through those access groups based on merit -- becoming part of the skinning community and contributing to it in the form of skins, themes, icons, wallpapers, helping other users, writing articles, etc.
Once they get to Master level, they can choose to submit a skin and ask for a price on it. By the time they've become a master, they've probably provided a lot to the community for a considerable amount of time. This becomes a way for users to "give back" to the skinner for all the hard work they've done as well as for the skinner to be able to help support their hobby.
It also provides an incentive for up and coming skinners to create great stuff to share freely with others. By doing so, they too move up through access and can one day become a master. Half the income generated by master skins goes to the author and the other half goes to help maintain the site. WinCustomize.com subscribers get a 20% discount on Master Skins.
Master skinner Adni18 has uploaded literally hundreds of skins and themes to WinCustomize.com over the past 6 years. In that time, his skins and themes have been downloaded over 11 MILLION times.
Today, Adni submitted a suite called Suite 18. It contains a WindowBlinds skin, 4 gadgets, a wallpaper. When he submitted it, he made it a Master skin for $9.99. If you're a subscriber, it is only ~$7.99 (though the price is only updated during the checkout phase).
Master Skins are integrated into the main gallery section. You'll see a little tag by the skin if it's a Master skin. Now some people are going to say "I shouldn't pay for skins". I'm not one to argue what people think they should pay for. One of my main "day job" activities is helping produce PC games. PC games make millions of dollars (GalCiv II certainly did). Are games worthy but skins aren't? I certainly don't make that distinction. What I do know is that if the community wants to encourage long-time skinners to keep making cool stuff, then making some income to help pay for computers and software and their time seems to be a pretty worthy thing.
I also like the idea that it provides an incentive to up and coming skinners to make stuff. Skinning is fun. It's supposed to be fun. But it can also be a lot of work too. I used to skin a lot a few years ago. But I'm not very artistic and with 3 small children, it's hard to find the time. But I applaud those who dedicate the time to share their great creations with the rest of us. And I am glad to have a way to contribute in my own way back to them. Plus, it provides another incentive to subscribe to WinCustomize.com and help keep the site growing and running.
Brandon "Sidebar Geek" LeBlanc covered an assortment of topics as they met with technology enthusiasts in different cities:
Several topics covered with visitors:
The adventure continues as they head to Washington DC and beyond! If you have IE7 you can track wher ethey are with the gadget located here.