On Uther server on World of Warcraft we have a pretty good-sized guild called Myth, Inc. If you're part of our guild, feel free to visit http://mythincguild.joeuser.com and join our blog group. You can create your own free blog at JoeUser.com and and write blogs to it.
I've created a Myth Inc. Guild Group called http://mythincguild.joeuser.com. So you can now create your own blog here at JoeUser.com and then join the MythIncGuild blog. Then we can all write to the same blog.
JoeUser.com is one of the sites our company owns so this isn't just some site that we're borrowing for this purpose.
MSNBC has a story on how widgets are starting to take off. With Apple's release of MacOS X Tiger with its "dashboard" feature, some pundits are thinking that widgets may have reached critical mass.
The same thing happened in the skinning world with the release of Windows XP. The basic skinning features in XP helped take Stardock's WindowBlinds to the next level in popularity. Will the same happen with widgets?
Our friends at deviantART are putting together quite a conference this month. It's in Hollywood California on June 17th and 18th. Stardock will be there including me, Mormegil (icon-a-day author) and Cordellia (Newbie's Guide to skinning). It's sounding like it's going to be a lot of fun with a lot of useful classes and topics.
Click the link below to learn more about it.
Whenever I talk to someone looking for a job, I'm amazed at how often they are down on their own abilities. What they don't realize is that the issue isn't always so much how good they are but rather how awful their competitors for many positions are.
Since finding myself on the employing end of the business line, I've been shocked at how often people given every opportunity to succeed will still blow it. Even when the position requires just showing up on time (or close to it) and answering emails, it's amazing how many people can't even do that.
The people I've been forced to fire over the years have largely had these things in common:
Time and time again though it's the same story. People blatantly not doing what they're supposed to be doing. Playing video games instead of working or not showing up, or doing something flagrantly dishonest. In the US, the path to success or at least doing reasonably well is not full of obstacles. And yet, people manage to blow it anyway. And I bet if you talked to any of these people, they would find excuses (another consistency, it's never their fault, it's always the world conspiring against them) to justify their actions/behavior/consistent lateness.
For many office positions, all it takes is some hard work, reliability, and integrity to get in on that ground floor. From there, you can rise as high as your ability, ambition, and desires can take you.
We have some good news..and some bad news. The good news is that Galactic Civilizations II beta 2 will have more features than originally discussed. The bad news is that it won't be available until the second week of June. The reason for this is that Stardock is in the process of moving to a brand-new building. Originally, this move was to take place in April as to not affect our release schedule. But the building construction has taken longer than expected and now is going to occur right smack-dab in the middle of when we were planning on making beta 2 available.
Since the point of the beta is to get feedback and interact with the user base, we don't want to put out a beta and not be fully available to receive feedback. Moreover, there is likely going to be some down-time as we migrate network equipment and such. So the new beta 2 date is second week of June. But it will be a bit further along too so there is a silver lining.
We will also be ending the open beta until Fall shortly after Beta 2's release. So if you want to get Beta 2, now is the time to pre-order the game.
Blog Navigator is a freeware RSS reader that makes it a snap to keep up with what's happening on the net. It supports any number of RSS feeds and can be set to download and archive different feeds for off-line read (great for those who travel a lot). It also integrates seamlessly into the various RSS search engines on the net allowing users to create their own custom blog feeds based on key words.
Version 1.2 adds/changes/fixes:
Activation and deactivation of channels and whole groups.
added support blog editing in offline mode with postponed article sending.
Blog Navigator will no longer fetch blog article details in offline mode.
added category caching so this time BlogNavigator will no longer ask the server for categories before editing but rather cache them between sessions (for possible offline editing). This also speeds up day-to day blog writing.
added "Print", "Print preview" and "Page setup" to "File" menu, it's interesting that nobody requested it yet.
significantly improved user experience for offline mode, Blog Navigatgor will no longer ask user to go online every time user tries to browse an article from the list in offline mode, but will rather check the offline avalilability of the article and display article description for offline mode + an apropriate warning.
added offline mode switch to article editor.
added support for enclosures - aka podcasting. Users can now download any files attached to their RSS feeds.
the "Forward" and "Back" buttons on the browser toolbars have added dropdowns with browsing history for better browsing experience.
baskets can now contain other embedded folders, or one another but will not show the embedded folder's content, for clarity. the baskets on top of such hierarchy would be too cluttered. But whichever group will contain them it will show them and all their children items.
favorites are now displayed as another branch
favorites addition and manipulation throughout the favorites branch.
moving a favorite to basket changes it into a basket entry, moving any entry into a favorite folder, changes it into a favorite.
favorites folder dragging and dropping to reorganize the favorites tree.
baskets/channels and other folder dropped in the favorites tree recreate the structure in form of IE favorites.
favorites folders dropped within the tree recreate the structure as a structure of baskets.
any rss/basket articles dropped on a favorites folder become an IE favorite
any favorite dropped onto a basket becomes a basket entry.
selects the first NON grouping item when user enters a channel.
menus for selection of style of article or newspaper/group displaying now indicates what style is selected.
Added ability to keepsafe IE Favorites.
Added ability to mark a Favorite as important (flag it).
added support fro storing BN in "All users application data folder" a few other system folder or anywhere on the disk.
ability to drop a drag from the browser list or the address list on the article list if the selected folder is a basket or a favorites folder.
added an option to auto-activate channels, with that much channels shiping with BN on the default setup, we can't afford the activation wialog to pop up every 5 seconds on users.
added a fistfull of channels and podcasts.
added an option to create favorites folders just like any other BN folders.
File -> Save as added to Article editor.
Stardock also makes Blog Navigator Pro which targets blog authors. It supports most blog site networks (blogger, JoeUser, Moveable Type, etc.) protocols. It lets users create articles from within Blog Navigator's WYSWYG editor and supports creating of articles off-line.
Blog Navigator can be downloaded at www.blognavigator.com.
Blog Navigator is a freeware RSS reader that makes it a snap to keep up with what's happening on the net. It supports any number of RSS feeds and can be set to download and archive different feeds for off-line read (great for those who travel a lot). It also integrates seamlessly into the various RSS search engines on the net allowing users to create their own custom blog feeds based on key words.
Version 1.2 adds/changes/fixes:
Activation and deactivation of channels and whole groups.
added support blog editing in offline mode with postponed article sending.
Blog Navigator will no longer fetch blog article details in offline mode.
added category caching so this time BlogNavigator will no longer ask the server for categories before editing but rather cache them between sessions (for possible offline editing). This also speeds up day-to day blog writing.
added "Print", "Print preview" and "Page setup" to "File" menu, it's interesting that nobody requested it yet.
significantly improved user experience for offline mode, Blog Navigatgor will no longer ask user to go online every time user tries to browse an article from the list in offline mode, but will rather check the offline avalilability of the article and display article description for offline mode + an apropriate warning.
added offline mode switch to article editor.
added support for enclosures - aka podcasting. Users can now download any files attached to their RSS feeds.
the "Forward" and "Back" buttons on the browser toolbars have added dropdowns with browsing history for better browsing experience.
baskets can now contain other embedded folders, or one another but will not show the embedded folder's content, for clarity. the baskets on top of such hierarchy would be too cluttered. But whichever group will contain them it will show them and all their children items.
favorites are now displayed as another branch
favorites addition and manipulation throughout the favorites branch.
moving a favorite to basket changes it into a basket entry, moving any entry into a favorite folder, changes it into a favorite.
favorites folder dragging and dropping to reorganize the favorites tree.
baskets/channels and other folder dropped in the favorites tree recreate the structure in form of IE favorites.
favorites folders dropped within the tree recreate the structure as a structure of baskets.
any rss/basket articles dropped on a favorites folder become an IE favorite
any favorite dropped onto a basket becomes a basket entry.
selects the first NON grouping item when user enters a channel.
menus for selection of style of article or newspaper/group displaying now indicates what style is selected.
Added ability to keepsafe IE Favorites.
Added ability to mark a Favorite as important (flag it).
added support fro storing BN in "All users application data folder" a few other system folder or anywhere on the disk.
ability to drop a drag from the browser list or the address list on the article list if the selected folder is a basket or a favorites folder.
added an option to auto-activate channels, with that much channels shiping with BN on the default setup, we can't afford the activation wialog to pop up every 5 seconds on users.
added a fistfull of channels and podcasts.
added an option to create favorites folders just like any other BN folders.
File -> Save as added to Article editor.
Stardock also makes Blog Navigator Pro which targets blog authors. It supports most blog site networks (blogger, JoeUser, Moveable Type, etc.) protocols. It lets users create articles from within Blog Navigator's WYSWYG editor and supports creating of articles off-line.
Blog Navigator can be downloaded at www.blognavigator.com.
Object Desktop 2005 is available. But what exactly is it? What's new in Object Desktop 2005 over the past year? And what's coming next? This article goes over what's new in it in great detail. Check it out.
With ObjectBar 2 nearly ready for completion, we're looking for skinners who are interested in helping us provide some good default content for it. We have an ObjectBar section here at WC but it's not highlighted. We want to make sure there are plenty of interesting examples out there.
While ObjectBar's features are unique in many areas, what it is trying to accomplish, is not. In other words, it's goal is shared by other programs but it's executation is unique.
For instance, Hoverdesk worked towards a similar aim. It hasn't been updated in the past couple of years but there were some nice themes for it:
http://www.skinbase.org/section.php?sections=hoverdesk
Aston, which is a shell replacement also has some nice themes:
http://browse.deviantart.com/skins/themes/aston/?view=2&order=5&limit=24
Same for Talisman
http://browse.deviantart.com/skins/themes/talisman2/?view=2&order=5&limit=24
Here's a program I like called Desktop Sidebar:
http://www.desktopsidebar.com/images/Image17.jpg
It's designed specifically to be a Longhorn type dock. But imagine how this might be done, relatively quickly, using ObjectBar. Rather than a complex skin, you would make a relatively simple skin and then create several custom DesktopX widgets and embed them. Since the alpha channels of widgets is maintained, look very closely at that screenshot. See the headers? You could have labels that are largely transparent and hence merely add dimension to the background skin. Then your bar would be able to inherit the currently used visual style.
It is important to note that you can export your ObjectBar bars in 2.0 as EXEs. As long as the user has ObjectBar installed, they can use them. But the beauty here is that they behave like regular programs with their own simple configuration for tweaking it.
If you have DesktopX Pro, you can also make use of gadgets.
