We've finally gotten around to updating our own screenshots. 

The game goes to manufacturing in about two weeks!

Things continue to progress.  Much of Stardock's resources are currently finishing up Galactic Civilizations II. But within the next few weeks, most of the development team from GalCiv II will be migrating over to work on Society full-time which should get things moving.

Interest in the game remains very high and our goal is to have something interesting to show by E3 (May).  So what is Society really about?

Society is a game that is about building up a virtual society. Your society continues to exist even when you're not on-line to play it.  While it does have warfare, warfare is just one of many aspects of the game.  Players have virtual ruling families that can be married off to the ruling families of other players to build alliances.  They have unique resources that they can trade back and forth in order to build unique equipment. 

What we think makes Society special is that we've come up with solutions to many problems one would tend to run into in a strategy game that exists in a persistent world.  For example, buildng up some beautiful city over days and weeks wouldn't be very fun if it could be destroyed while you're sleeping.  What we've done is create some new game mechanics. 

Most MMOs take existing single player or multiplayer game mechanics and try to extend them to a persistent environment.  Society, by contrast, was designed to be persistent from scratch. It's not taking some existing game design and putting it on-line. Its design only works in a persistent world.

Stay tuned.

Back in 2001 Microsoft's early betas of Windows XP contained a user interface dubbed "Watercolor". But only months before the operating system shipped Microsoft completely replaced it with an entirely different look and feel called "Luna" which became known as "Windows XP Style". That move has created speculation that current Windows Vista look and feel, called Aero glass, would be replaced by a different look and feel later in the beta process. However, this week's PowerUser.TV podcast has an interview with Microsoft developers who have confirmed that there will be no major change to the look and feel of Windows Vista from what is being shown in build 5270. In other words, Aero-Glass is it.

If you have a Yahoo.com account, please subscribe to PowerUser.TV.  The rankings over there are based on # of subscribers. It's totally free and painless and will help get the show displayed in more places if it's in the top ranked podcasts.

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Back in 2001 Microsoft's early betas of Windows XP contained a user interface dubbed "Watercolor". But only months before the operating system shipped Microsoft completely replaced it with an entirely different look and feel called "Luna" which became known as "Windows XP Style".

That move has created speculation that current Windows Vista look and feel, called Aero glass, would be replaced by a different look and feel later in the beta process.

However, this week's PowerUser.TV podcast has an interview with Microsoft developers who have confirmed that there will be no major change to the look and feel of Windows Vista from what is being shown in build 5270. In other words, Aero-Glass is it.

PowerUser.TV has a new episode and it's a big one!

This week we travel to Las Vegas for the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show. We recorded at the Microsoft booth and got to interview Jenny Lam and Chuck Cummins about what’s new with the User Interface in Vista. If you are into customizing your computer, you can’t miss this!

Plus we talk with Marcel (Redmak) Klum and Steven (Neobond) Parker of Neowin.net and find out what they saw at the show and what’s new for Neowin this year.

Finally we talk with Jed Rose of Microsoft about the Windows communities and how Microsoft is trying to incorporate their feedback into their products. In all, a VERY interesting show.

Of course, recording on the floor of CES means a LOT of background noise. I asked all 180,000 people to please be quiet but I guess majority rules, eh?

Disruptors:

Here's a bunch of pictures.  Some community members are in there.  IN the 3rd row Patrick from OSNN is there.  Sorry about the blurry pictures of the monitors.  Steve (Neobond) has his back pictured in the 4th row.  Marcel (Redmak from Noewin) is the first picture on the left.

Rather than just copying and pasting news from Betanews.com over here (which I can assure you Nate always says to me "Brad, I really wish you'd just copy and paste our news and change Nate Mook to Brad Wardell) here's a direct link. 

Lots of good stuff there.  He got a good tour of the Samsung booth and has some good writeups on that there too. Check it out!

Yesterday we managed to do a PowerUser.TV recording (it'll be up next week).  It was a real challenge as we were using new equipment and our software program wasn't cooperating.  But we were able to talk at length to two people from the Microsoft Windows Experience team and there were a couple of pretty big news items in there (that you'll have to tune in to hear about <g>).

Microsoft was really pushing MCE (Media Center Edition).  I think they recognize that they have the right product at the right time.  That seems to be the consensus of many people I talked to.  As a Tivo guy myself who has also dabbled with BeyondTV, Microsoft really may be on to something with MCE.

When I get back from Las Vegas, I'm going to write up about some things I learned about Microsoft that I think people will find surprising.  It's really a new company and I say that as someone who has dealt with Microsoft for a decade.  Stay tuned on that.

I did get to wander the show floor so if anyone has any questions, comment here and I'll address them in the next article.