If you've ever thought of getting a master's degree in Education or Educational Technology via on-line courses I recently heard from a friend that CMU has some excellent programs for doing that.

CMU is one of the top schools in the country for degrees (particularly Masters degrees) in education.

What is a WinCustomize advocate? They are someone who brings new traffic to WinCustomize.com.  They do this through a variety of ways. But the most common way is for someone to recommend a skin, article, theme, icon package to their personal site (site the sites tab at the top) and then go onto other sites to let people know about those things. When someone clicks on the link, that user gets an advocacy point. 

Example: I recommend Kol's iCandy JR Toolbar. It then shows up HERE. If someone posts that URL on a different site, then when someone visits that link, Kol gets an advocacy point (for making the thing in the first place) and I get an advocacy point.

Each month we list the top 10 advocates. Ones who haven't gotten prizes before get goodies sent to them in the mail.  So with no further delay, here are the top 10 for January...

Let us know which "undocumented features" in the latest DesktopX builds you've run into.

Please make sure you let us know which precise version you're running (i.e. released version, beta, or alpha).

Thanks!

There's lots of cool themes in the library but then there are lots of..well not so cool themes. And then there's themes that just don't work right at all.

What do you think it takes to make a good desktop (DXTheme) with DesktopX? What are the requirements? What are the kinds of desktops you would like to see?

The next generation version of DesktopX is in development.  What sorts of features would you like to see in the 3.x series?

So what kinds of widgets would you like to see?

(zoom)

So SkinStudio 4.5 is finally out for the general public.

This version is the version that lets people create Start menus that have per pixel alpha blending:


(courtesy of A^J).

It also has a great deal of optimization for the importation of .msstyles. So msstyles authors can now much more easily also make a WindowBlinds version of their own skin which greatly increases their potential user base.

Moreover, if installed on the system, WindowBlinds 4.5 will show ".msstyles" as one of the types you can add when in display properties. It's quite seamless and users thus gain the performance benefits of WindowBlinds 4.5 over the bundled uxtheme rendering.


(zoom)

I should also mention - SkinStudio is free. There is an enhanced and pro version that adds a bunch of goodies (Pro version adds support for making Windows Media Player skins -- so you can convert those msstyles into a Windows Media Player skin for instance).

It's downloadable at http://www.skinstudio.net

SkinStudio 4.5 has been released.  SkinStudio is a free program that makes it relatively easy for artists/skinners to create their own interfaces for Microsoft Windows. With it, users create visual styles that can then be applied with Stardock's WindowBlinds GUI customization program (www.windowblinds.net). When installed, it also enables users of WindowBlinds to seamlessly make use of visual styles that are in .MSStyles format. It includes support for both the WindowBlinds skin format as well as USF (Universal Skin Format).

Version 4.5 adds support for creating per-pixel alpha blended Windows XP Start menus, random window frames, Unicode support, and vastly improved MSStyles importing options.

Stardock also makes SkinStudio Pro which supports making Windows Media Player skins and soon Firefox skins. The Pro version is also part of Stardock's Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancement utilities (www.objectdesktop.com).

Issue	Conservative	Liberal
Abortion		X
Environment		X
Religion		X
Military	X
Taxes	X
Social Services	X

I'm a conservative on the key issues of the day. Taxes, Military Policy, and Social Services. But I'm liberal on many too. Pro-Choice, Pro-Environmental policy, Not religious.  I also support civil unions for gay couples (though not marriage).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to paint myself out as some sort of moderate.  However, one of the things I have noticed is a tendancy of those on the far left to take the "all or nothing" point of view.  If you don't adhere to all their positions, you're a right wing kook to be derided.

To be fair, conservatives are guilty of this too. But it is much more pravelent in my experience for the left to drive away those who have any conservative opinions and label them as "far right".

The problem when you do that is that you end up having a very small group left to carry your banner.  For instance, if you're pro-life on abortion, you can forget speaking at the Democratic National Convention.

The Democrats need to try to be more inclusive.  But at the same time, they need to shed their militant extremists.  A difficult balancing act to be sure.  But as has been pointed out elsewhere, the Democrats have been steadily losing ground since 1996.  By all accounts, the Democrats should have at least picked up a senate seat or too.  2004 was the EASY senate re-election one.  2006 is going to be even tougher for them.

What do you call a Senate with 60 votes held by one party? One party rule.  I happen to believe it important for the US to have two strong national parties (at the very least two).  But election after election the Democrats are losing more and more ground.

They need to start recognizing that just because someone doesn't agree with them on some of the issues doesn't mean they have no common ground.  Moreover, they need to not demonize those same people (Bill O'Reilly, for instance, is many things but he's not "far right" as one example).

TechTV's Keven Rose has decided to take the new Mini-Mac and try to stuff a PC inside of it.

Very intriguing.