WinCustomize subscribers will soon be able to have their own photo albums as part of their personal pages. Users will be able to upload pictures of family, friends, their skins, whatever (within reason). What's particularly cool is how easy it is to submit images - an Explorer-like view is given of your local machine for picking photos, giving them captions and then submitting. So you can upload dozens of images at once.

See my personal page for an example.

Once JoeUser goes through its speed/architecture overhaul we plan to offer premium accounts for users.

One of the features will be photo albums. Here's an example of what they'll be like from what we are about to launch on WinCustomize.com:

http://frogboy.wincustomize.com/photos.aspx

The adding of photos is really the key though. It's incredibly slick -- a built in ActiveX control (soon to be Java) enables me to see thumbnails of images that are on my hard drives and select as many as I want, type in the captions quickly and then press a submit button where it'll put them up.

Eventually we'll enable it so that you can allow (if you want) people to comment on photos and such.

American college graduates are making themselves increasingly vulnerable to outsourcing. I'm not the only one who thinks this. A top Intel executive has expressed this concern too.

The problem is that American technology workers have a lethal combination upon graduation: A sense of entitlement and a lack of skills. 

The sense of entitlement is the from the belief that simply graduating with a degree in engineering, computer science, information technology, etc. somehow should entitle them to a high paying ($40k to $50k) job right away. 

The lack of skills has to do with the poor quality of college education these days in these fields. They don't keep up well. I've yet to meet a technology major college graduate who actually benefited from their formal "education".  The talented people we meet on the net are often in a scenario where we have to simply wait for them to finish college before hiring them.  Their degree made no difference in hiring, them, it simply delayed their hiring and slowed down their development on projects with us.

How much someone makes is dependent on how much "wealth" they produce.  A person making $40k per year has to be able to generate at least $120k in "wealth" to be fully secure in their position.

If I make a product that will make $1 million during its effective lifetime, I obviously can't spend more than that if I want to stay in business.  Since Americans don't really care that much about WHERE something is made, my products and services have to compete with products made by people all over the world (as well as with "freeware").  Look at all the people who bellyache'd last month about RightClick costing $14.95!

So how much we can pay someone is dependent on how much they produce. Typically, it takes quite awhile for someone to be able to produce high quality results in high enough quantity.  Many (most) Americans aren't willing to go without even if it's to their long-term benefit to sacrifice short-term.

When I founded Stardock, I was very poor for the first few years.  In its first year, the company made less than $15k. My (ahem) "salary" was obviously less than that.  It wasn't for a long while before I was able to make more than what I could have made had I simply taken an engineering job. But that short-term sacrifice led to greater long-term opportunities. Increasingly, I see fewer Americans willing to do that -- but I also see plenty of Europeans who are willing to.

The Americans we hire in the technology area typically start at far less for two reasons. One, because we're a fun place to work at for most people and two, because we have a consistent record of rewarding those who increase their skills and output with significant increases in salary. 

But where we can't find someone to do the job, we don't discriminate, we'll look to anyone we can do the job and that increasingly means Europeans who are willing to sacrifice short-term for long term gain.

If Americans want to make the big bucks right out of college without fear of being outsourced then they need to dramatically increase their skills. And the first step would be to get our education system improved so that college graduates don't require a few years of training before they can produce anything of real value.

As I watch my two little boys playing out in the snow, I feel a certainty at the core of my being of why I was born. Why I was put on this earth.  To be a dad.  Being a dad is what I'm best at. It is what I love doing and being more than anything else in the world (other than being a husband to my wife). 

There is nothing I'd rather be than the dad of my two sons.

Those GMail accounts have a lot of disk space available to them eh?

Well here's a program that lets you turn your Gmail account into a virtual drive that shows up in My Computer. It's pretty darn cool. Using it right now.

SAN FRANCISCO--Echoing concerns voiced by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, a top Intel executive warned on Thursday that the United States risks becoming a second-tier technology player because of a declining educational system.

"We have a lousy education system," Intel Senior Vice President Pat Gelsinger said, speaking on a panel of technology leaders at the Intel Developer Forum here. "We have a weak infrastructure that is decaying."

Gelsinger noted that companies like Intel can adjust by hiring workers in other places but said the consequences for the United States could be devastating. He has noted in the past that the decline in the number of doctorates being awarded is particularly troubling.

I think it goes well beyond this. American culture is also becoming less competitive in the global market place in my opinion. The American need for instant gratification is really problematic.  Stardock, an American company, is really half European, half American. That's because many American workers want to make money really fast and in the technology indstury, particularly when dealing in emerging markets, it takes considerable up-front investment in time and energy. Many young Americans don't have the patience or willingness to make short-term sacrifices in order for long-term success.

For widget developers out there who are interested in making DesktopX 3 widgets/objects/themes early, let us know (email me at [email protected] with "DesktopX 3 Beta" as your subject).  You need to previously have submitted objects, widgets, or themes here to qualify.

For those of you who already have the DesktopX 3 beta, check the link below to let us know your experiences.

For those of you on IRC, you can visit us on IRC at irc.stardock.com. You'll need an IRC client such as mIRC.

Active channels:
#stardock
#neowin
#wincustomize

example: irc://irc.stardock.com#wincustomize

What a week it's been.  We have guests from Europe this week and I'm one of those guys who normally sleeps in until 10am.  But i've been having to get up at 8:30am. Yea yea I know poor baby. But I'm tired..

And now I'm hungry..

What is it with people who throw a fit and delete all their stuff in a given on-line community? Who do they think they're punishing? Just themselves. It's a classic "cut your nose to spite your face" scenario.

Happens on WinCustomize.com all the time. Some skinner will get mad because some guy ticked them off in the forums and so they go and delete all their stuff in a huff.  Typically, a few weeks later, they come back and ask us to restore their stuff for them.

The same thing happens with blogs. Every week or so, somebody gets mad at someone else and deletes their entire blog. Once in awhile, the person throwing the fit will be someone who's pretty popular so it gets more noticed.

From talking to the drama kings/queens over the years who do this, the explaination I get is almost always the same: "I want to make a statement".  They don't really know what the statement is.  The more intellectual ones will say something like "I don't want to support a community that would have members such as <insert user X here> who poison everything with his/her vile behavior."

The thing is, they are the ones losing out. Vile nasty people lurk in every community. But they burn out. The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long.  And toxic users burn very very bright and last very briefly.  I've been participating non-stop in on-line communities for the past 20 years. From 300 baud BBSes to what we have today.  People who are nasty and ill-willed towards others always flame out.

But before they flame out, they usually manage to take out one or two drama king/queens with them. The key is not to be one of them. 

Like I said, ultimately, the person taking themselves out isn't really making a statement. A user who leaves a community inevitably only makes their absence felt for a very short amount of time.  There were users here who were prolific in their day, who got mad, deleted their blogs in a huff and within a few months, the regulars of the day barely remembered them.

It's even worse with skinners who leave because the fanbase has such a short attention span.  I've known skinners who got mad at us at WinCustomize.com, deleted their skins and were convinced that their leaving would spark some sort of mass exodus -- or at the very least deal a fatal blow to the "community".  And inevitably, they are shocked -- and hurt -- to learn that while there is usually some short term sorrow at their leaving, within a few weeks, it's as if they had never existed.

And that's the thing about on-line communities that people need to understand. Being a drama king/queen is the fast track to misery. Even I, who have spent years building communities would be largely forgotten within months by most people. The hole that my absence would make would be filled by others. I never mistake my popularity for more than it really is.

And so to the potential net personality reading this - that is my advice to you - don't look to any sort of on-line community as being some sort of sentient being. It's not. It's just a mass.  Do what you do because you enjoy it. Make your wallpaper, skin, theme, article, blog, whatever because it's what you want to do.  And if it ceases being fun - and it will from time to time -- take a break. Don't eliminate yourself by removing everything you've built up. The effect on the community will be negligible and may only bring you regret later on.