Finalists for First event - Most Cheerful skin announced:

(in no particular order)
Tropica
Gilla
Candied Apple
Banana Cream
metalX v1.5
Soma v1.0
Olympics OS
losOS
FiberopticAngel
Design I

In all, LotsOfSkins led with 4 of the 10 finalists. deviantART took 2, Deskmod, TweakXP, VelocityART, and Skinbase each had 1.

Congratulations to all involved on this first event.

The judges will now begin voting.

For the second event, most depressing skin, there will be 15 finalists.

The third event, fastest skin, will have 20 finalists.

We will let you know in a few days who has won the first event. Congratulations to everyone.

The voting for Most Cheerful skin has closed. In a day or so, the finalists will be displayed and the judges will determine which ones will win the awards. The judges are made up of the administrators of the founding site, Stardock, and Theo Mandel, well known GUI designer and author of Elements of GUI Design.

Voting on the second WindowBlinds visual style - Most Depressing Skin, has begun.

Please go through the skins and find which ones convey a sense of darkness and well is just generally depressing. This continues the challenge of UI designers trying to convey a mood in their work. Please make sure you have USED the skins before you vote for them. Also note that the admins will be monitoring the voting very closely.

Have Windows XP? Want to change your logons or make your own? Grab LogonStudio 0.96. A safe and easy way to do it. Version 0.96 adds a visual logon editor for making it easier to create logons.

Ah capitalism... Amazon has a few Segways now available for purchase via an auction. So how bad do you want a segway...?

Contrary to what most people may think, it's been my experience that in contests that only a couple dozen people actually take the time to vote on contest entries of this nature.

In the GUI Olympics, that means that your vote really does count. And only the top 10 entries are ging to be considered by the judges for medals.

So go to http://www.guiolympics.com and vote!

The first event of the GUI Olympics is "Most cheerful skin". Visit http://www.guiolympics.com to go through the skins and find the top 5 most cheerful looking skins that you might actually use and then go to the voting booth. The 10 most vote getting skins become finalists that the judges look at and determine the winning skins.

This event is the first of 15 total events of the GUI Olympics. There are 2 more coming this week! Stay tuned.

The first event is most cheerful skin. A good user interface designer can design skins that imply a certain mood to them. Most interfaces have traditionally attempted to provide a "neutral" mood (gray).

If you don't have an account here (or at Wincustomize) create one and you can vote.

Go through the skins that are here, write down 5 or so WindowBlinds visual styles (skins) that you feel convey a sense of "cheerfulness". When done, go to the voting booth and vote on those 5 in which you award each with 1 through 10 points.

In a couple of days, those votes will be added up and the 10 highest WB visual styles will be listed as finalists. The judges will then pick from those finalists a gold, silver, bronze and 2 honorable mentions.

Make sure you go through all the skins. We ask that you have downloaded and used any skin that you vote for (use the screenshots to narrow things down of course).

We will list the finalists in their own section in the top left in a couple of days. The final judged results will show up later in the week or early next week.

FYI..

This site seems to be downloading people's icons and is preparing to sell them. Here's the URL. Did they get permission?

http://www.jabinc.cjb.net/

The first event will begin being voted on by users on Monday. You must have an account on WinCustomize or here to vote. These votes are then used by the judges as a guide.

The first event is "Most cheerful skin" followed by "Most depressing skin" and "Fastest skin" on Friday.

The first two are largely based on which skins effectiely convey a mood. In UI design, mood is a concern. One reason why gray is the most common design is that it conveys a neutral mood to the user.

Fastest has to do with how well the visual style (skin) designer was able to create a skin that is at maximum performance. This can be quite a challenge as there are many techniques to be used to make sure your interface doesn't slow down the system.

Just a reminder, you can continue to submit new skins during the entire contest. These are the first 3 events of a total of 15 events. "Best use of color" is coming up the following week for instance.

Good luck to all!

What does this have to do with customization? Nothing, but it's sure funny.