Stardock has made ObjectBar 0.65 available for public beta (this is the first public beta of it).

Info:
ObjectBar is a brand new program from Stardock, makers of WindowBlinds and DesktopX. It is designed to be the ultimate Start bar extender/replacement. Stardock has gone and integrated the best features of non-Windows OSes into it as well as adding its own features. Every OS has its own bar-like interface - MacOS has the Finder, Linux has its wharfs, NeXT had a dock, OS/2 has a warpcenter, etc. ObjectBar can provide the features found in those OSes plus what's in Windows XP such as taskbar grouping and extended quicklaunch features. Additionally, it supports plugins, skinning (and its skins are theme independent, a first for this type of program), tear off menus and more. Stardock teamed up with the author of MacVision to create this. This version includes themes that emulate the MacOS classic look, QNX and a custom one. The enhanced version allows people to download any of the dozens of additional themes out there (such as ones that give WinME/2000/98 the ability to have an XP Start bar).

It is also the first program to work with Explorer to provide fully skinnable system trays (you can move your system tray anywhere) along with theme independent skins (take a skin from one theme and use it in another).

Users can download it at https://www.stardock.com/products/objectbar

WinCustomize continued to grow. The launch of Windows XP has brought a ton of new users. Welcome to our community!

Referrals are still the lifeblood of our site. In fact, referrals have grown from being where 35% of our traffic came from (July) to around 45% (this month overall) to nearly 50% (this week). That's a lot of people learning about our site. Thank you to all those that link to us.

Here are the top 5 community sites that link to us:
#1 Stardock (about 60% of our referrals come from Stardock)
#2 Customize.org
#3 DailyRotation
#4 Teknidermy
#5 Shellfront.org

Monthly uniques increased from 540,000 uniques last month to 639,000 uniques for this month. That's a lot of people!

Total page views was several million (not terribly interesting but most sites always brag about their page views).

Here's an interesting statistic. How many regulars do we have? People who visit at least 1 time per day?

In September, tha tnumber was about 28,000. This month it increased to 32,000. So we effectively gained 4,000 daily regulars. These are the people who make WinCustomize what it is. THey are the "community".

We also get into occasional discussions about what is "The community". That is, the people who basically live on these sites (like me). The population of core users is about 8,000. These are people who are on the site at least 3 times per day (like me).

So how will things go into November? Well, we're in the process of moving to a new colocation provider so things will be a little bumpy over the next few days. Hopefully things will be even faster after that.

Enjoy your stay!

C-net and WinCustomize and Pixtudio have teamed up to give users a halloween treat! Stardock has created an auto install package of Pixtudio's Halloween suite. Check it out (you'll never believe where your journey will lead you in the end.. )

When you create an account, you are supposed to get an email to the email address you provided when you signed on. In it is a link that will "Validate" your account. We are getting some reports that this email or something is not working. We will be looking into this in the morning. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Does anyone get the impression that customization SOFTWARE (not talking about skinning itself) is starting to slow down in terms of development? Sure, individual programs continue to move forward with new versions (WindowBlinds, Hoverdesk, DesktopX, Litestep, etc.) but we haven't seen a lot of NEW skinnable programs recently it seems (well there's ObjectBar and CursorEX) but generally speaking, things like Chroma and KJFoL and other things that were really innovative at the time have gone by the wayside.

Where do you think things will go to next? One thing I can tell you, and I hope jorge from Winstep is reading this as he knows what i"m talking about intimately, it is going to be MUCH harder for future progrmas to get as widespread as the current generation. That's because the main download sites are now owned by a single source and they're trying to find ways to generate revenue to cover their expenses (the .com boom is over for sure) and one way they're looking at doing it is charging for listings (much like Yahoo does now) as well as for highlighting and such. So it would be much harder for a new Stardock or new Winstep to get its start.

But where do you think things should go from here? What would you like to see next?

I remember watching the Wedding Singer and Adam Sandler's character tells a story about how he knew that hsi girlfriend wasn't really the right person for him because when they flew over the grand canyon, his girlfriend didn't switch seats so he could see it even though she had seen it before.

Now, for those of you who are married or in long term relationships with someone, what is something that your SO has done that was so kind, so thoughtful that you knew they were the one?

I want to share something that my wonderful wife, Debbie has been doing recently. As some of you may have noticed...I stay up late. Usually working/hobby (my job is my hobby so it's hard to say where one stops and the other starts). But when I go to bed, I really like to read to get my mind "formated" so that I'm not thinking about work or whatevre. But that requires a reading lamp and the light keeps my wife up.

So I had been going in the other room since I didn't want to keep her up (and then would go to bed when I was done quietly to keep from waking her). But recently, she's begun going to bed with my reading lamp on specifically so she can get used to falling asleep with that light on. I never said a word to her, I would never think to ask her to do something like that. But isn't that wonderful? I am a lucky man.

Is your graphics card ready for Windows XP? Try XPBench, a small, fast, easy to use benchmarking program that tells you whether your card takes advantage of the new video features in Windows XP.

I was reading an article that discussed the failure of .com's and once against they totally blew off one of the key reasons why .com's failed - they didn't treat their customers well. So linked here is an article I whipped up that talks about how important individual customers are. A small number of loyalty customers makes a big difference and are more important than tons of indifferent ones.

Regardless of what one thinks of XP looking skins, Alexandrie has broken her own record with yesterday's stats of 10,320 downloads in a single day of her skins and it may go higher than that today.

Alexandrie has been in the skinning community creating wonderful and original skins for the past 2 years or so. Her favorite style is to make skins that could be OS skins. It's been for that reason Stardock has always asked her to make the official included WB skins.

The MaxWB (the default skin) skin in 2.0 was by Alexandrie and XP Platinum (the default in the upcoming WB 3.0) is also by her.

Skins that feel like they are an OS skin are generally quite popular. While many have made XP skin knock offs which were quite popular, until recently with skins like XP Wood (not made by Alexandrie) and XP Jeans, XP Nature, etc. people haven't tried taking the XP design into new directions.

Clearly this has paid off with such amazing stats. To the point that we're maxed out on bandwidth (which reminds me, please feel free to visit DeviantART, it's a great site with great people and lots of skins).

I wanted to create a new thread congratulating her on here past, present and future contributions to our ever growing community.

Today's the XP launch and not surprisingly...

The site has gone nuts. 509 people are currently on as I type this.

Personally, I think we should all go back to the good old days where it's a BBS on a phone modem and only 1 person can be on at a time. Why, I remember my BBS got sometimes THIRTY people on it in a single day.