Stardock Magazine: September 2002
https://www.stardock.com
## Contents ##
• Editorial
• IconPackager 2.02
• LogonStudio 1.0 release candidate
• WinCustomize Skin Browser
• WindowBlinds 3.41
• Galactic Civilizations Beta 2 Preview
• September 11th remembered
## Editorial ##
by Brad Wardell
What the heck happened to summer??? It’s just about here. Time to move to Australia where it’s starting to head into Spring.
Lots of exciting things happening here. The lab has alphas of all sots of incredible stuff that’s going to be in Object Desktop 2003. Most of which I can’t talk about yet. Microsoft has some exciting technologies in development as well that we’re eagerly looking to make use of too.
One of the cooler things that’s fairly far along is the IconX technology which essentially allows you to replace your icons with .iconx format icons. So your icons on your desktop can be of any size you want and be sized differently on a per object basis. This technology we expect to fold into DesktopX 2.0. This should make DesktopX much more appealing to users to don’t want to replace their desktop but instead just enhance their existing one with one that have a bit more control over.
A lot of work has been spent over the last few months with video card makers. What we’re working on is being able to deliver the kind of performance seen in video games onto the desktop. This way, you can have your cake and eat it too – tons of desktop enhancements but no performance hit thanks to massive and seamless hardware acceleration.
It’s going to be a great Fall and Winter.
## IconPackager 2.02 ##
IconPackager 2.02 has been released. IconPackager allows you to download "packages" of icons and apply them to change virtually all the icons on Windows. It comes with several packs of very high quality icons and hundreds of others are available on the net.
Version 2.02 addresses some bugs found in 2.0 and has better support for .ICL icon libraries which can now be used for storing icons. It also comes with an Icon explorer that will allow you to easily extract icons from EXEs, DLLs, and ICLs.
You can visit http://www.iconzone.com to get it or download it as part of Object Desktop.
You can purchase Object Desktop (or renew) or IconPackager at:
https://www.stardock.com/order.html
## LogonStudio ##
LogonStudio is designed to let you change your Windows XP logon screen. It also comes with a Logon editor to make it easy to create your own.
It’s freeware and can be downloaded at http://www.logonstudio.com
## WinCustomize Skin Browser ##
The WinCustomize Skin Browser is now available to the public in beta form. It makes it vastly vaster and easier to download and search through skins, wallpapers, themes, icons, etc. by being directly integrated into the database. Better yet, it can actually directly apply skins, themes, icons, and wallpaper right from the site.
It also has chat and message groups combined into it as well. It’s a free download and can be found at:
https://www.stardock.com/products/wincustomize
Here’s a screenshot:
https://www.stardock.com/products/wincustomize/sb1.jpg
## WindowBlinds 3.41 ##
Next week a new version of WindowBlinds will be made available. Much of the work put into 3.41 has been to increase reliability on Windows 98
It’ll be available at http://www.windowblinds.net in the next few days.
It’s on Object Desktop now in the form of 3.4d.
If you don’t have Object Desktop, you can purchase and download it now at https://www.stardock.com/order.html
## Galactic Civilizations Beta 2 Preview ##
Galactic Civilizations Beta 2 will be taking it into completely new territory over what was in the original OS/2 design.
Beta 2 will have star bases in it that will allow you to greatly impact what happens in a given sector. You can read more details on this at:
https://www.galciv.com/index.asp?action=full&NewsID=96
Here’s a screenshot just for Stardock Magazine subscribers:
https://www.stardock.com/products/galciv/galciv-sept02.jpg
You can pre-order Galactic Civilizations and get the current beta right now!
https://store.stardock.com/addproduct.asp?PRODUCT_ID=SSD-SDS-W055
## September 11 remembered ##
by Brad Wardell
This week is the first anniversary of the September 11th attack. Some people have posted on-line that they don’t see what the big deal is. They feel it’s over exposed. We disagree.
Stardock is an American company. And try to live up to the ideals that our country hold dear. Those ideals include tolerance, freedom, democracy, and equal opportunity. Many of the people who work at Stardock are from around the world. WindowBlinds and SkinStudio, for instance, are worked on in England, Poland, and USA. DesktopX is worked on in Italy and the USA. In all, Stardock’s team is made up by people from USA, Canada, Brazil, England, Denmark, Italy, Poland.
We like to work with the best and brightest people from around the world. We don’t make a distinction of whether the person is young or old or what color their skin is or where they live. And I think it’s safe to say we share the same ideals regardless of location.
Hence, September 11th affects us a great deal not just because we’re an American company, but because September 11th was a wake up call that the principles and ideals that we hold dear are hated so much that a group of people would hijack 4 commercial airliners full of people and manage to intentionally crash 3 of them into buildings full of people with the express purpose of murdering as many innocent civilians as possible. The 4th plane would have done the same if it were not for the heroic actions by the passengers.
In short, September 11th was unprecedented. It was a wake up call to western civilization that there are those who want to snuff out the ideals that western civilization represents. That is why we hope that people recognize September 11th for what it really is. That we must be aware of the dangers and challenges that a world with such powerful weapons available faces.
The cold war rested on the concept of mutually assured destruction. That only works as long as neither side is willing to sacrifice to get the other side. September 11th has shown that there are organized groups willing to put together fairly spectacular efforts and sacrifice in the process to murder those they hate. And that these people hope to acquire weapons of mass destruction (such as nuclear weapons).
I know it’s probably inappropriate to have an editorial like this as part of a magazine dedicated to letting you know the latest on PC desktop technology. But the principles and ideals that the west believes in, that America believes in and in turn we at Stardock believe in are important. I suspect most of you reading this (whether you’re in Japan or Russia or somewhere in between) share with us. September 11th wasn’t just an attack on the United States, it was an attack on our civilization.
We believe the history is on the side of the principles and ideals of western civilization.
See you next month!
Feel free to visit our news group to discuss these or any other issue:
News://news.stardock.com/stardock.discussion
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