Brad Wardell's Blog
So what are some other virtual communities you hang out on?
For me I spent a lot of time on the Stardock discussion forums debating politics and technology. I also hang out on Usenet in various news groups there discussing games, operating systems, politics, history, etc.
How about you guys? What are some virtual communities or discussion areas you enjoy being at?
Just curious, how many of you ever used BBSes? If so, what was your first experience with one?
I started out using a BBS system called C-net 10.0 on the C-64.
Back then, it was 1 computer, one phone line, one person on the BBS at a time. hard to imagine that now with 300+ people on here at once (when the server ain't crashed anyway!!).
So what do you guys think XP is going to do for skinning?
I think it's the best thing that could happen. First off, it will start to get people off of Windows 9x
XP also introduces people to the idea of a skinnable UI since you can switch between classic and Luna. An dpeople are already expecting that they should be able to do more. There's people currently trying to "Crack" digital signatures (I'm sure the ecommerce crooks are anxiously hoping they succeed) so that people can make (in theory) their own XP "visual styles".
Of course, that also begs the question, how many people with ME/98 are going to upgrade to XP?
For those of you who are married, what would you list as the most important things in a successful marriage?
For me, I would list it as 3 particular things equally balanced:
Love (the passion, the romance, the sex, etc.).
Friendship (the act of simply liking to hang out with that person).
and
Compatibility (being married means having a roommate which can be a challenge on its own).
What do you guys think?
Being a visitor to each of the major skin sites, it's really interesting how over the past several months each one has attracted its own type of user. And how those users have really made an impact of the website in question.
For example, on DeviantArt, the user base tends to be 15 to 25 year olds and the conversations there revolve around that more than what you see here (discussions on youthful love and high school and that sort of thing).
Over here the user base seems to be older and discussions tend to reflect that as well.
The question is the standard chicken or egg thing. What causes this sort of thing to happen?
The number of unique visitors to the site increased again this month. Since April, traffic to the site has increased by around 10X to being around 600,000 unique people visiting the site.
The top 10 referring sites to WinCustomize that are within the community were:
#1 Stardock
#2 Deskmod.com
#3 DeviantArt
#4 Customize.org
#5 LS2K.org
#6 WinStep.net
#7 ShellCity.net
#8 LotsOfSkins.com
#9 Desktopian.org
#10 Shellfront.org
We thank these sites for their continued support.
The bandwidth scenario has continued to become problematic as we are way beyond the specs of this site.
Let me start by thanking those who have purchased shirts, CDs and hats. You guys help make this site possible. To those of you who have downloaded a lot of stuff but haven't purchased anything (or registered), the days of the free ride are ending soon.
We will be implementing a system in which those who have not contributed via the WC store or registered their SD software will be very limited in what they can download per month.
We just can't handle the amount of bandwidth we're getting. The problem isn't the # of users, it's the users largely with cable modems who are downloading 100+ megabytes of stuff per month who haven't registered their software or bought something from the store. We will be implementing a 5 megabyte per month limit on those who aren't in the database to help decrease bandwidth use.
We have some exciting things coming up for the site too in terms of new features. They probably won't show up this month but pretty soon. Stay tuned!
The good news is that WinCustomize's popularity continues to increase. The bad news is that we have once again reached our bandwidth limits.
Stardock, who provides the bandwidth for WinCustomize has been, since late June, sharing its own bandwidth for its services with WinCustomize. In June, WinCustomize exceeded by far the amount of bandwidth it had available to it and the site became unbearably slow. So Stardock extended WinCustomize some of its own internal bandwidth to WinCustomize to pick up the slack adn things wwent back to being fast.
As predicted, the closer we get to the Windows XP launch, the more the traffic continues to increase. When Stardock loaned us some of its own bandwidth, the caveat was that WinCustomize was expected to be able to start paying its part of the bill. That isn't to say that it would have to be profitable, just that simply put, if it wants bandwidth beyond the monthly grant Stardock provides, it has to pay for the bandwidth above and beyond that grant.
We have done some analysis on where the bandwidth has been going and it's not so much that we're just getting a lot of new users. It's that we're getting a lot of new users who visit the site and then proceed to download 100 megabytes of skins, icons and themes with their cable modems.
Today, bandwidth use has reached a point where it's now affecting Stardock's own internal servers. Paying customers of Object Desktop have seen their download speeds drop because WinCustomize has been eating into that bandwidth. Stardock's own home page has been affected as well.
The word from Stardock's IT and sales staff to me today is basically the WinCustomize is likely negatively affecting Stardock's own ability to support customers and reach new customers because of the performance hit.
So what do we do? The temporary solution that we're hoping to implement today is as follows:
During peek hours (when bandwidth is maximized) the IT team will be able to flip a switch that will only allow X number of connects on WinCustomize at once. That will effectively keep WinCustomize from using bandwidth beyond its grant.
However, users with apprentice access or higher or users whose email addresses here are in the Stardock database as a customer will be able to continue to download skins/icons/themes using Stardock's extended bandwidth given to this site. In other words, customers and users who have gained higher access over the months will be unaffected as Stardock will be providing to them its own internal bandwidth to use WinCustomize. Users who have purchased shirts, hats, CDs from WinCustomize also count as a customer.
It's not a perfect solution and it's one we had to implement quickly and hopefully won't be required to be used very often (most of the time, it's not going to even be a problem). One problem, for instance, is that many users here probably have an email address here that is different than the email address they may have used when they purchased Object Desktop or WindowBlinds. We will be working on this so that users can link their accounts together seamlessly.
Another problem is one of fairness since a user with say Apprentice access is unaffected even if they aren't in our database. All we can say to this is that we will try our best to be as fair as possible.
Right now, the options present to us is to turn OFF the skin libraries during peek hours for everyone or to turn it OFF for some people. We are currently choosing to turn it OFF just for most people to keep bandwidth under control.
Over time, we hope to make the system ore sophisticated so that users will be able to download 10 megabytes without being affected (so that casual visitors aren't affected by the policy). We may be able to put this in right away in fact.
Some libraries will be unaffected by this - Dashboard and Coolplayer since this is the official website for those apps and they aren't using much bandwidth. The bandwidth eating sections are DesktopX, Wallpapers, and WindowBlinds mostly.
We hope you understand the necesity of this move and we hope it is an infrequent occurence (or that at the very least we figure out a way to resolve it more seamlessly).
As I mentioned above, the primary problem we're running into is that we're getting 650,000 unique people visiting and severla thousand of them each month are downloading >50 megabytes per month in skins/icons/themes without having registered the software they're downloading the things for not have helped support the site with buying a CD (if you're going to download 300 megs of skins from here, buy the CD!).
Thanks for your understanding.
Pretty good article at Microsoft on what's going on with the PocketPC. Notice what the author is using in her screenshots though to make the PocketPC look better -- PocketBlinds!
WindowBlinds 3 will be made generally available in mid October, just before Windows XP's launch. It will be based on a completely new architecture that is smaller and faster than previous versions of WindowBlinds.
It will work on Windows 98, ME, and 2000 as well as Windows XP. On Windows XP, WindowBlinds 3 will take advantage of the new visual styles features in the OS that allow it to skin the Start menu and Start bar.
Windows XP will come with a new look known as Windows XP style along with 3 color schemes (blue, silver, and olive green). WindowBlinds 3 will allow users to add UIS (WindowBlinds) skins to the mix where they are treated as native XP visual styles.
Stardock and Microsoft worked during the beta of Windows XP to ensure compatibility for WindowBlinds 3. Stardock also worked closely with Nvidia on the new Detonator drivers. WindowBlinds 3 should work flawlessly on NVidia cards running the new drivers as well as drivers from ATI and Matrox who were also part of the WindowBlinds 3 compatibility program.
The formal WindowBlinds 3 beta program will begin on September 26 on Stardock's desktop enhancement subscription network (Object Desktop).
To order Object Desktop: https://www.stardock.com/order.html
A Media guide for WindowBlinds 3 along with an updated white paper will be made available on September 27th. WindowBlinds 3 will contain a host of major new features over version 2 that target increasing the program's productivity and ease of use.
WebBlinds is a program that turns Internet Explorer 5.0 or later into a fully skinnable web browser. Rather than trying to create a web browser, Stardock, creators of WindowBlinds, has worked to make Internet Explorer a better web browser. The full version adds smart ad-blocking and performance extensions to Internet Explorer. Visit www.stardock.com to download.
