AdvancedPC is a great community site. They are hosting a skinning contest, supported by Stardock, for the best AdvancedPC WindowBlinds skin. Artists can have free rein as long as the design relates somehow to AdvancedPC.

Essorant (Tim Dagger) is one of the great members of this community. His distinctive skins are among my favorites and, if you appreciate Essorant's work as much as I do, I can assure everyone that buys this package that you will not be disappointed! Head on over to his site and support this wonderful artist! Thanks for the great work, Tim.

Alienware's new ALX computers feature a liquid-cooling technology that allows every component to be over-clocked to the max. Coupled with Alienware's video array technology which was shown at E3, these are the fastest rigs available today. To get more details or to discuss, see the post over at JoeUSer: http://skinningsolutions.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=17382

Application Development Trends, an on-line magazine with 30,000 plus subscribers, has just completed their review of DirectSkin 4.2. Highlights of the review follow: "DirectSkin gives you a custom control (OCX) to handle the grunt work of skinning your application. You can use the control in any environment that supports COM controls (including .NET; it works fine via interop). Once you've added the control to your project, it takes 4 lines of code to initialize, and then 2 lines if you w...

The GUI Olympics has been covered by a number of news sources. What makes the GUI Olympics so extraordinary? A quote from Michael Smith, Group Manager, Worldwide ISV Relations at ATI Technologies, explains, "ATI is proud to be a sponsor of the 2004 GUI Olympics. We have worked with Stardock for several years now and we are glad to be able to support the growing Windows customization community. ATI believes that competitive events such as the GUI Olympics bring out the best that artist...

The contest at FileFront offers a number of great prizes, including subscriptions to Drengin games (includes Galactic Civilizations and the Altarian Prophecy Expansion Pack plus much more) or Object Desktop! The perfect prize in time for the GUI Olympics! Visit now to enter!

FileFront is featuring an exclusive preview of The Political Machine. The preview includes a number of exclusive screenshots. Check it out! "The Political Machine looks to be a very promising title."

Any organization needing help for fund raising or other seasonal activities can download a free walking desktop Santa, complete with ringing bell, for use in their fundraising campaigns. By offering its software to organizations that help others, Stardock hopes to accomplish the most good this holiday season. Santa was created with DesktopX technology, but users do not need any software installed on their PCs. Just download and run the executable and Santa will walk across your desk...

According to Fox News, Apple Corps., the company that was founded by the Beatles, is suing Apple Computer over the iPod and iTunes. Apple Corps. contends that, under a long standing agreement, the Apple logo and name would may only be used for computers and never for a music company. When Steve Jobs founded Apple Computers, the Beatles already had a famous corporation named Apple. Jobs admitted using a similiar name for his company as a "tribute." Apple Corps. sued and won a settlement and...

Tonight I was interviewed by Craig Crossman for the ComputerAmerica radio show http://www.computeramerica.com/ about WindowBlinds, Object Desktop and about the visual styles created for films such as Terminator 3. The interview focused on desktop customization and how skins can enliven the user experience, make us more productive and how customization has emerged as an important marketing tool. A listing of stations carrying the show can be found at http://www.computeramerica.com/l...

The Official Terminator 3 visual style for WindowBlinds (https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?Library=1&skinid=3324) is approaching 50,000 downloads and the official Windows Media Player 9 skin (https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?Library=9&skinid=234) has been downloaded more than 140,000 times. Combined with the official wallpaper, there have been more than 200,000 downloads for this highly popular movie theme from the WinCustomize site. Its easy to see why companies are turning to cus...

What games do games developers play when not working on their own games? The team here at Stardock has been fortunate enough to have had the chance to play Rise of Nations, the real time strategy game developed by Big Huge Games for Microsoft, since the Beta release. Our marketing people worked with Microsoft to create a visual style for the game. The visual style was created by Essorant (Tim Dagger) to celebrate the game and is available for download exclusively from WinCustomize. ...

Terminator 3 coverage: Site name: CBS MarketWatch (requires registration) URL: http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/newsfinder/newsArticles.asp?guid=%7B8B270DD8%2DCC84%2D46F4%2D9743%2D3531F92B0B69%7D&siteID=mkt&scid=2&doctype=183&property=symb&value=&categories=& Site name: DallasNews.com URL: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=danews.story&STORY=/www/story/06-10-2003/0001962573&EDATE=TUE+Jun+10+2003,+09:03+AM Site name: Finanz Nachrichten URL: http://www.finanznac...

Created by The Skins Factory, the theme includes an official WindowBlinds visual style that transforms the Windows task bar, start bar and start button, title bars and more to reflect the movie’s futuristic look and feel. The visual style also adds a “T3” button to the Windows title bar that offers fans one-click access to the T3 website. A matching Windows Media Player skin and wallpaper are available to give your desktop a complete T3 look and feel.

Skin-O-Rama is Skinit.net's skinning contest. Prizes will be awarded for the best skins created for a variety of programs: Winamp3 Windows Media Player 9 Winamp2 QCD Trillian (Pro or Standard) ObjectBar WindowBlinds .ICL Icon Library .MSSTYLE Visual Styles IconPackager DesktopX The contest rules do require that you register for membership, but you can register and participate immediately. The contest ends June 6th.