I admit it. I'm a bad man.  It's not my fault though, I just don't have enough free time to be a good man.  You see, I play World of Warcraft.  It's a massively multiplayer on-line role playing game (MMORPG).  In MMOs, you are, in theory, supposed to group up with other players to go on quests and such.  I did this a lot when I was first got the game.  I even have a guild with around 100 members.  But as time has gone on, it's increasingly difficult to find people to go on quests with.  So for me, World of Warcraft is pretty much like Blizzard's classic RPG, Diablo except in 3D, I play it single player.

The problem is, without other people, some of the quests are really hard. If only I had a reliable "friend" who could help me out.  My son plays World of Warcraft on occasion. But he's not so much into questing as he is exploring and fishing.  Sometimes we've played together -- I have two accounts, one for me and one for him.  The second computer is only a few feet away from mine so we could play together.

And after dying that 3rd time trying to get through some cave, I would just look at that second computer.  Just sitting there.  What if I created an alternative character, like a priest or something to help out my first character so that when I am questing by myself, I can heal up myself just enough to get through.  After all, I'm paying for two accounts and it's NOT a PvP server so it's not like it's harming anyone.  The problem then is controlling both characters.  Trying to juggle two keyboards and mice is tough.

That's where Multiplicity comes in.  Using a network cable (or Firewire or a special USB cable that gives you an IP address) I hooked up both computers. I made my main machine the primary and my son's computer the secondary. Multiplicity then found the secondary machine right away and within minutes I  was using both computers with one keyboard and mouse.

Only my primary computer needs the keyboard and mouse.  When I move my mouse cursor off the monitor connected to my primary computer onto the monitor connected to the secondary computer, I'm now controlling it.  The transition is perfect, that is, there's no lag at all.  Now I was ready to fire up World of Warcraft and give it a try.  I created an alternative character and made her ("Amanda") a priest.  I then made a couple of macros that made it easier to have Amanda follow my main character around. 

Within a few minutes, I was able to control both characters without any issue at all. I just whip the mouse over onto the other monitor to make some adjustments to Amanda and then back to my main monitor to be killing the monsters and what not.  In instances where my guy would be getting overwhelmed, I just have Amanda cast a heal spell or a protection spell and off I go.

Now some people might say this isn't being fair.  I say bull feathers to that.  I'm paying for two accounts (me and my son's). If anything, I'm still at a disadvantage compared to the guy who has buddies helping them "power level" them.  I'm still at a disadvantage to the guy who's guild buddies supply them with massive gold and equipment right away.  And in terms of questing, having a party of 3 or 4 real people (and if I wanted to really get into this, I could use Multiplicity Pro and control 6 characters at once if I was really hard core) is still easier.  But those of us who are more casual players or simply enjoy playing the game mostly as a single player experience, this is a great help.

Just as often I'm using Multiplicity so that while I'm traveling to some place in World of Warcraft I can move my mouse over to the other computer and be surfing the net, checking email, instant messaging, etc. all without having to worry that I'm slowing down my primary machine by using its memory and CPU.

Multiplicity is mostly used by companies and power users, but ironically, its ability to handle full screen games so smoothly makes it an excellent gamer's utility as well.

..A long time ago Stardock developed a game for OS/2 called Galactic Civilizations. It was published by a small company called "Advanced Idea Machines". Stardock never saw a penny of royalties from the retail release of the game.  Learning from history, for Galactic Civilizations 2 on OS/2, Stardock decided to self-publish it.  To get to retail, it worked with a distributor called Micro Central.  Micro Central filed for bankruptcy and never paid a cent in royalties.  Years later, in 2003, Stardock developed Galactic Civilizations for Windows and went with an "established" publisher called Strategy First.  Strategy First soon after filed for bankruptcy without paying the bulk of its royalty payments.  It remains Stardock's goal to one day get paid for retail purchases for a Galactic Civilizations game.

But 2003 wasn't the same as 1993 (when the game was written for IBM's OS/2 operating system).  Now we have the Internet in mass, Broadband access.  And so Stardock's response was to create something called TotalGaming.net.  The idea being that users would be able to buy and download Stardock's games.  This system was up in its basic for when Galactic Civilizations I was released and thanks to it, there's still a Stardock's game team since nearly all the revenue Stardock collected from Galactic Civilizations was because of electronic purchases.

Last year (2004), Stardock decided to expand TotalGaming.net and bring on other games.  Nearly a dozen games were added to TotalGaming.net as of Spring 2005.  The challenge going forward was how to bring on more games in a way that was fair to game developers.  And that's where TotalGaming.net: Phase 2 comes in.

With TotalGaming.net Phase 2, people can purchase games individually and then immediately download them.  Because Stardock has been doing electronic distribution of software for years with its popular Object Desktop series of products, it has long since migrated away from digital rights management (DRM) techniques.  Simply put, a user who pays $40 a video game expects to be able to download it and install it on their computer without any hassle.  They expect to be able to put it on their laptop and be able to play the game on the plane.  They expect to not have to worry about whether they installed it on "4" machines over the past 5 years sometime in the future.  In short, they want to be treated as a customer and not as a potential thief. 

Stardock's technology revolves around a technology called Secure Software Delivery (SSD) that it has developed over the past several years.  It works on a basic assumption -- the piracy to really worry about is not about some guy giving their friend a copy of their game but rather someone putting a game up for download on a warez site or a peer to peer file sharing mechanism.  Stardock Central, which is its practical application of SSD, works in a manner similar to iTunes -- users install the software via Stardock Central.  But once it's actually installed, the user can use it whether they're connected to the Internet or not.  They can play their game on the plane or install it to other machines in their home.  It's designed to provide a balance between piracy resistance and customer convenience. And unlike most DRM schemes available, SSD has a proven 6 year track record with Stardock's own software.  It's not any more secure than DRM, but it's a heck of a lot more convenience for gamers which, Stardock believes, is the key to success for wide distribution of electronic content.

In addition to being able to purchase games individually, they can also get a TotalGaming.net membership for $69.95 which provides 10 tokens.  Essentially, users who think they'll be buying a lot of games have the ability to pre-purchase in exchange for a steep discount on the games.  For instance, a user could pre-order Galactic Civilizations II for 5 tokens.  Where the final game is expected to list for $49.95, TotalGaming.net members would effectively be paying $35 (half of the 10 tokens which cost $70 for all 10).

Armed with the new royalty system for game developers, Stardock has been able to attract a lot of independent game developers to put their games on TotalGaming.net. In fact, presently, the limit on getting new games is essentially a matter of how fast they can be reviewed and processed by Stardock's Brian Clair (formerly editor-in-chief of Avault.com).  Moreover, TotalGaming.net is not going for quantity of games.  While some emerging electronic distribution "stores" are boasting the sheer number of games they carry, TotalGaming.net games go through a very strict quality process (hence bringing in professional game reviewers such as Brian Clair to look at submissions).

Meanwhile, Stardock is also negotiating with large publishers who have libraries of excellent games that are just gathering dust due to not being available on retail shelves.  Many of these games are just as good today as they were 2 or 3 years ago but have no real way of purchasing them.

Here are just a few of the new games on TotalGaming.net:

Astral Masters is one of the most addicting games on the net today. In the same spirit as card games such as Magic the Gathering, Astral Masters was designed from scratch to exist on-line.

Breakout, Arkanoid, yes, there are many Break-out type games out there.  However, imagine a break-out style game with a real physics engine. That's what BreakQuest brings to the table. It's incredibly cool. Try it for yourself.

Geom is so addictve that it actually caused Stardock some internal..."issues" due to excessive "play testing" of it in the development lab. It's one of the most addictive games out there today.

Gish is..well he's a hero.  Well, not exactly. He's..well...okay he's a big ball of tar.  But that hasn't stopped him from getting a girlfriend who has been kidnapped and needs rescuing. This game has already won a bunch of awards for its fun, creativity, and incredibly clever gameplay.

Jets'N'Guns has also taken its share of gaming awards. It brings classic arcade action into the 21st century.  If you've ever gone back and wished someone who really "got it" would recreate some of your favorite games of the past with today's technology, then this game is for you.

These are just a few of the games in there.  We'll highlight more in the coming weeks.  This just gives you a small taste of some of the cool stuff.  Not only are there other awesome games in there from independent developers but Stardock has its own slew of new games that we'll be talking about more soon as well.

You can either purchase games individually or purchase a TotalGaming.net member ship.  To learn more, go HERE.

What is Object Desktop and how is it used? If you've ever wondered how Object Desktop is used, see this article and add in your own experiences to the mix.

London UK was the target of terrorist attacks today. 37 people have died (so far) as a result of this attack.  Various terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, have claimed responsibility for the attack.

 It's easy, even tempting, when one lives in another country or another continent to think of the whole thing as very far away. Such mindless destruction and hatred can have far-reaching effects.  Not all that far from the attack is where WindowBlinds, WindowFX, IconPackager, Stardock Central, Theme Manager, and other programs that are used by millions of people are developed.  Moreover, popular community helper, GreenReaper, had just left the London area to come to the US today. 

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the victims.  One can only hope that the monsters who were involved in this senseless, hateful act are able to be brought to justice.

I have a lot of computers.  It seems like I've always had more computers than one person should have.  And each computer is different.  I've got my development machine, I've got my casual office machine, I've got my laptop, and I've got my gaming machine.  I even have a tablet PC.

Each computer has different types of software on it and very different capabilities. And yet, by default, they all look and behave identically.  Windows has always been a one-size fits all solution. Even the Tablet PC version of Windows is pretty much the same as every other version of Windows. 

So what is a user to do? We all use our computers for different things so how can we easily custom tailor it to our needs? The answer: Object Desktop.  Object Desktop has seen its popularity steadily increase over the years as users have found themselves wanting to tweak, modify, enhance, etc. the way Windows works. 

Many people see Object Desktop as a visual, cosmetic product for Windows. I.e. something that makes Windows "look cool".  That's only a very small part of the story.  In a screenshot or in a first impression, it's always that "cool" stuff. But as users get used to using it, they realize there's a lot more under the surface.

For this article, I'm going to stick with pretty basic stuff.  Object Desktop gives you the power to really alter the way Windows works.  But we don't want to go crazy just yet, let's go with some fairly straight forward stuff and go from there.  I'm going to talk about my 3 main, non-specialized computers and how I use them.  For the purposes of the screenshots, I'm doing them all on my development machine (the machine I'm on right now) to cut down on the time it would take to put all this stuff together for you.

All the programs I mention before come with Object Desktop which is only $49.95 and plus you get everything added to it for a year!

The Laptop

I am probably the one guy in the world who runs his laptop at a relatively low resolution.  My ThinkPad T42 laptop does up to 1440x1050 resolution but I tend to run it in 800x600 or 1024x768 when I'm doing email or browsing the net.  And that's fine with Object Desktop which lets me transform the Windows UI into something optimized for low resolutions:

I use RightClick to have a new default right-click menu. I set it up to display my most frequently used programs along with a few other handy things on there such as my "Programs" menu.  I have it set to automatically open when I hit the Windows key.  Sometimes I tell it to hide my Start bar to get a bit of extra space. But I go back and forth on that depending on what I'm doing.

I also turn on IconX. That's because I sometimes will have my icons be only 24x24 on the desktop.  That's smaller than the default icons and IconX can scale my icons much better than Windows can.  The new version of IconX lets me specify labels so I can have nice big labels still for the icons.  These days, icons are pretty useless for individual things it seems like (IMO) and labels are much more useful.

When I'm using my Start bar, I use the new Stardock Virtual Desktops.  It's faster than other virtual desktops I've used and makes it easy to get more screen space when I need to.

I also use the Silica Media Player widget. And I admit, I mainly use it to control iTunes at this point. I have it set to come up when I hit the F12 key so I can quickly zip through songs.

Keyboard LaunchPad is really crucial on my laptop.  The reason is that, especially when traveling on the plane, I don't have much room for a mouse and while I like IBM's Trackpoint technology, it gets a bit old navigating to particular programs.  So what I do is I have my common programs tied to a series of hot-keys.  I am hoping that the next version will let me control iTunes directly from it (not that I don't like my media player widget but I pretty much just want to control things via the keyboard at that point).

Last but not least is WindowBlinds. I use it to run some minimalist skin. It changes my entire Windows GUI to have a nice, simple looking skin. But it is also important because I can set it so that when I right-click on a title bar it minimized the window.

What I've used Object Desktop to do is to get the most out of my limited screen space.  I want to be able to get to things very quickly and I'm not very concerned about what is on the desktop or what is pretty.

The Development Machine

My development machine is typically running at 1600x1200. So my screenshot isn't really reflective of just what I tend to have on it.  My development machine is where I do everything from write code for Galactic Civilizations to creating new skins, objects, scripts, etc. 

First off, I use DesktopX, as an environment here.  The whole "widget" thing has kind of created some confusion on what exactly DesktopX is for.  DesktopX is a desktop environment.  It lets you have real objects on your desktop.  In this case, what I do is import widgets and other content onto my desktop.  Widgets are great but each widget is a mini-program.  Imported content, by contrast, use very little memory because DesktopX itself takes care of running them.  So I tend to import my To-Do list, various RSS feeds, stock-tickers, sticky-notes, etc.

I also have a bunch of custom objects that I can't take screenshots of that display the status of our various databases and stores, and recent bug entries into our bug database. We created these with DesktopX too.

The Silica Calendar widget is one I always run.  So often I just don't remember which day of the week something will be and while I can double click on the clock in the Start bar, it's a lot quicker to hit F12 to bring up the calandar.

Not that my code ever has memory leaks but I also make heavy use of the Silica Memory meter widget. So I can keep track of my overall memory use to see if something is leaking.

I also run RightClick on this desktop.  Except on this machine, I have all my development tools right off the main menu.

I use Keyboard LaunchPad to do only two things really -- first, I have Visual Studio and its corresponding tools all assigned to a single hot key.  So when I hit Ctrl-Shift-D on my system it loads up several programs at once.  And secondly, I have Ctrl-Alt-1 through 6 specified to load up a bunch of web pages I often go to.

I use WindowBlinds primarily for cosmetics on this machine. I just want my GUI that I'm staring at all day to look cool.

Ditto with IconPackager.  IconPackager lets me change all my Windows icons to something that looks cool.

My overall strategy here is that I turn my desktop into a headline news reader with lots of objects on here that gives me all kinds of info. I also keep track of my resources and schedule. But I also care about how it looks, I want it to be nice looking as well.

The Gaming Rig

The gaming rig is my play machine. It's ridiculously powerful for game playing.  I do quite a bit of work on here too as I end up doing a lot of web work and such on this machine. But mostly I'm playing games on it.    It has a really good video sub-system (right now an ATI X800 on it) so I tend to be able to turn on a lot more eye candy than I might otherwise use.  I also tend to change the way it looks a lot since my tastes vary quite a bit.

First off, I use WindowFX very heavily here.  WindowFX lets me add shadows to my windows.  It also has a feature that lets me scale my windows. This is incredibly cool. Basically I can assign it so that when I hold the SHIFT button when I click on the minimize button, it will turn the window into a scaled window (See the screenshot for an example).  I can even interact with the window even when it's scaled which is quite useful if I am doing IM in a scaled window. 

Again, I have WindowBlinds here and I tend to have various kinds of skins running. I don't stick with anything very long.  I will often just pick whatever is the currently featured skin.

Same with IconPackager. I have it change all my icons to something cool.

IconX is where I really have some fun.  First, I set my default icon size to 64x64. So they're very large.  Secondly, I have the mouse over size be 128x128 and I have it animate to that size so that grow on mouse over.  Some icons in particular I change to use a PNG file.  I am hoping that a future version of IconX will let us set individual icons to have their own unique size but I'm not sure how the UI would be done for that.

The Silica Picture Frame is very nice to have.  Remember, this is a home machine, so I will tend to have a lot of company over from time to time.  So I have the Silica Picture Frame widget cycle through the latest family photos.  I can resize it to be any size I want so if I have a lot of guests over, I'll make it full screen.

The Silica Drive Meter.  I use this because this is also the machine I take my home movies and turn them into DVDs.  As you can imagine, the work files for this can get pretty huge so I tend to want to keep real-time track of my disk space as some of the cryptic programs I use for messing with video files don't bother to check to see if there's enough space to do what they're going to do before hand.

I don't use the Stock monitor widget as much as I used to.  I don't have a lot of stocks but last Winter before I sold some stock I was using this quite a bit. I suspect others would find this useful too.

Enhanced File Dialog is still in beta on Object Desktop but I find it incredibly useful.  Basically it extends your existing Windows File Load/Save dialog to let you have additional functionality (resizable, add new places on the left side, have some quick launch buttons in there, etc.).  A lot of the graphics programs I use don't seem to remember where I want to load images from or where I want to save images to and so being able to press a button to get back to where I want to go is a life saver.  When this program is completed, I'll put it onto my other machines but the other production machines don't tend to run beta software which is why I only have it on this machine.

The tip of the iceberg

Everything mentioned above comes with Object Desktop -- today.  And believe it or not, I've barely scratched the surface.  Object Desktop is probably one of the best software deals on the planet.  It comes with everything you need to turbo-charge your Windows desktop to work however you want it to work.  We haven't even gone into talking about ObjectBar or SkinStudio or IconDeveloper or how you create things with DesktopX.  And we haven't touched on how you can use these programs to really change the way Windows looks & feels.  I'll leave that for another time.

Object Desktop

Purchase Object Desktop and you get all of the Object Desktop programs such as WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectBar, IconPackager, SkinStudio, WindowFX, and much more. Plus you get everything Stardock updates or adds to it for an entire year. Object Desktop     [download only] Get all of Object Desktop now and everything created and updated for it for an entire year after! Get it on CD-ROM here. $49.95 Object Desktop Renewal Renew your access for an additional year to new Object Desktop updates and new programs. $34.95 Object Desktop Upgrade Upgrade from one of the components below to Object Desktop. $34.95

Some other screenshots:

This week's featured skinner is Pixel Pirate.  Pixel Pirate is 22 years old and lives in Denmark. Many thousands of you may be using his work right now.  He recently released the "Encoded" series of skins which demonstrates not only his skill as an artist but his flexibility as a designer as it includes WindowBlinds, CursorXP, Logons, Boot Screens, and a full blown icon package.

He is the 34th most popular skinner of all time on WinCustomize.com and ranked #2 in creating tool bar icons.  Overall, he has over 600,000 downloads.  He is also one of the more active forum posters (ranked in the top 300 people worldwide in posting in the WinCustomize general forum). And to top it all off, he's a WinCustomize subscriber!

And so this week is dedicated to Pixel Pirate, someone who has given a great  deal to the community. Three cheers for Pixel Pirate!

After quite an absense, the popular shell-theming support site, Litestep.net has returned.  Litestep is a free and open source replacement shell for Microsoft Windows.

From the site:

Welcome to LiteStep.net. Many months, or should we say nearly a year, ago this site was the focal point of the LiteStep community. Then we had a hard disk failure and now it's time to bring LSnet back, again.

Lighttek Software has released Talisman Desktop 2.9. Talisman is a program that replaces the Windows shell (explorer.exe).  Users can then apply Talisman themes that are far more flexible than what is capable on Explorer.

- New Theme Manager.
- Automatic installation of downloaded themes.
- New templates for creating your own themes.
- New Calculator object.
- Support of audio playlists.
- New functions for List and Calendar objects.
- Many other new functions and commands.

DesktopX 3.1 is nearly complete and it has a lot of new goodies and tweaks.  To recap, DesktopX is a desktop environment that integrates true object-oriented abilities directly into the Windows GUI.  Using DesktopX, users can add virtually any kind of object onto their windows desktop or design completely new desktops.  Users can also export their creations as stand alone mini-programs called widgets or as full blown desktops (.desktop files).

What is going to be new about DesktopX 3.1 comes in the form of many little touches to improve its usability.  For example, power users who want to live in the desktop creation environment will be able to flip on and off a tool palette that floats on the desktop.  The default widgets are being enhanced to be nicer and make use of the new DesktopX 3 style preference dialogs (that use the standard Windows dialogs). There are quite a number of other changes but the development team wants to keep that a surprise.  DesktopX 3.1 should be out sometime this month.  The beta for it is available for Object Desktop users.

Guilds, as a general concept, are terrific for Massively Multiplayer games.  And nearly all regular players in WoW are in some sort of guild.

The problem, in my view, with guilds is that they don't have enough tools to organize events, manage resources, and etc. 

As a guild leader, I really don't have much real power. I can kick people out, promote people, and so forth.  But it's not like I have in-game power to resolve disputes over loot or try to provide "stuff" for new members, but there's nothing built in.

This leads to one of my frustrations, ones shared by my officers and that is the problem with people abandoning the guild to form new guilds.  It's incredibly frustrating to equip some new guy only to have him leave a week or two later to create his own guild - often dragging away a few other members.  Our guild's officers have run into this regularly.  They'll spend time helping leveling up members, providing them good equipment and then they'll turn around and leave.

What I'd like to see would be:

1) A taxation system.  Once someone joins the guild, 1% of the money they earn goes to the guild master and 2% is split amongst the officers equally. This allows the officers and guild master to distribute gold and purchase equipment for new members without having to dig into ones own pocket completely to help those users.

2) A exit guild cost.  There should be a cost to leave a guild that is based on what level you are and your rank within the guild.  If you're a level 60 officer in a guild then there should be some sort of stiff price to pay to do so.  It might give some people pause for thought before leaving and taking 30 buddies with them to start some other guild.

3) Punishment system.  There should be some way for guild masters and guild officres to punish users who have caued harm. Nothing particularly annoying and I don't even know what  the punishments should be per se. But there should be some way for the guild master and officers to enforce the guild's rules/charters/covenanet/what have you. Right now, other than kicking them out, there's not much you can do.