Our friends at OSNews.com have a link to an article about Xandros Desktop, a desktop for Linux. It makes for interesting reading, even if you don't have Linux.

Stardock has pushed the final release date of WindowBlinds 4 back one week so that it can go through final compatibility testing. The first release candidate should be available in the next day or so for those users who have Object Desktop.

If you want WindowBlinds 4 right now, you can get Object Desktop.

Also, the WindowBlinds 4 Media Guide has been completed. Now you can check out everything that's new in WindowBlinds 4.

Stardock has pushed the final release date of WindowBlinds 4 back one week so that it can go through final compatibility testing. The first release candidate should be available in the next day or so for those users who have Object Desktop.

If you want WindowBlinds 4 right now, you can get Object Desktop.

Also, the WindowBlinds 4 Media Guide has been completed. Now you can check out everything that's new in WindowBlinds 4.

Technically yesterday...

March 31, 2001 WinCustomize opened its door to the general public.

Linuxworld has a good article on the new features of XFree86. It also talks about CursorXP as well.

Check it out.

So there are 3 variables in running a vastly popular website:

1) Bandwidth
2) SQL server performance
3) Scripting performance

Bandwidth is the easiest to solve. You just pay more money and you get more bandwidth. But on a site as popular as WinCustomize, the number of people on at the same time (think thousands) require a lot of SQL and page generation resources.

So even as we increase the bandwidth, you then end up where the SQL server gets maxed. So then you increase your SQL server resources and then more people are able to get on until the scripting resources are maxed. That's where we are now.

You can optimize things, tweak things, etc. And you're always battling out having a site that looks nice and presents information and isn't too hard to code and maintain with the demands of thousands of users browsing the libraries at the same time.

So what got this going in the first place? First, as some long time users know, late last Fall we increased our servers and bandwidith and everything else and our traffic increased dramatically. By March, we'd reached a new level of website popularity (Which is good except that since we're not ad driven, it's a mixed blessing). But we also just launched GalCiv.com which is seeing traffic that is an order of magnitude beyond what we had projected.

We have the bandwidth situation reasonably okay, but the SQL and scripting resources are what we have to work on further.

For the past 18 months myself and a few others at Stardock have been working on a PC strategy game called Galactic Civilizations.

Yes, my friends, I have lived a double life of skinning and PC game development!

The game has just been released and should be available in most retail stores in North America either now in the coming days.

Gamespot, just reviewed it and gave it a great review.

If you'd like to check it out, visit its home page www.galciv.com.

Right now the libraries are down for most users. In preparation for the launch of SDCentral, we are creating redundant servers (i.e. east coast, west coast) for users to obtain our software from.

But doing so is a very slow process since there is so much to transfer. As a result, bandwidth is at a premium. Added to that, Stardock is launching Galactic Civilizations (https://www.galciv.com) which is further using up our limited bandwidth capacity as well as pushing our SQL databases to the limit.

We hope to, in the next 48 hours complete the transition and then try to reconcile the increased SQL server activity.

During that time, only Stardock Customers, WinCustomize subscribers, and users with Apprentice access or higher (mostly authors) can access the libraries.

If you are currently logged on anonymously and have purchased Object Desktop or WindowBlinds or any other Stardock product, you can create an account and then tie your account to your Stardock account (the one created for you when you purchased any of our software) and you will be able to access the library. If you don't have Object Desktop and would like to use this opportunity to get it, visit https://www.stardock.com/order.asp

Alternatively, you can purchase a WinCustomize subscription by going here: https://www.wincustomize.com/store/

I realize some people will object to this. The problem is that right now, we just don't have the bandwidth to get done what we need to do. And since 90% of our bandwidth is consumed by non-logged on users or users who are not customers, it is the logical to disable that and allow those who are actually the ones who pay for the bandwidth to continue to download the skins and themes which still enables us to finish the file transfers from Atlanta to California servers.

We apologize for the inconvenience. Within 48 hours we should be back.

We are still putting some finishing touches on WindowBlinds 4. So we've decided to delay until the week of March 31st.

In the meantime, here are some screenshots of WindowBlinds 4 in action:

http://www.windowblinds.net/wb4/new-1.jpg
http://www.windowblinds.net/wb4/new-2.jpg
http://www.windowblinds.net/wb4/new-3.jpg
http://www.windowblinds.net/wb4/new-4.jpg
http://www.windowblinds.net/wb4/new-5.jpg
http://www.windowblinds.net/wb4/new-6.jpg
http://www.windowblinds.net/wb4/new-7.jpg

WindowBlinds.net also has a brand new home page designed by our lead admin, Alexandrie! She's also been the one working on other Stardock pages.

If you want a sneak peek at WindowBlinds 4, you can purchase Object Desktop which is the suite of desktop extensions that includes DesktopX, ObjectBar, IconPackager, WInStyles, SkinStudio, and more. You can find out more about Object Desktop at http://www.objectdesktop.com

This month so a dramatic increase in the popularity of the major skin sites.

Deskmod saw a 14.5% increase in their ranking from last month. Neowin, a very popular site for talking about the latest in customization on Windows, saw a 23% jump as did Skinz.org.

The overall popularity score increased from 9.5 to 10.4, the single largest increase in a single month. (The value is based on a formula that looks at the site rankings of roughly a dozen customization sites and add them together, roughly speaking it could be looked at how many millions of people are visiting customization sites each month though it's not terribly accurate, just a rough ballpark used to look at changes from month to month).