General Announcement: Cogent will be conducting network maintenance at several of it's datacenters overnight tonight, including ones where some Stardock Servers are housed. Between 10:00pm on 1/19 and 6:00am on 1/20 there will be brief periods of down-time and slow connections over the course of the maintenance. This down-time will affect all Stardock sites & servers including (but not limited to): WinCustomize.com DemigodTheGame.com SinsOfASolarEmpire.com Stardock.com...
We are in the final stretch folks. This Friday, December 5th is the deadline to submit Icons and WB Skins for the Most Usable & Most Unique events in both categories. At 11:59pm EST on the 5th, we will lock the ability to upload new skins/icons, as well as the ability to modify already posted ones, so if you have any last-minute updates, get them in soon. Judging will happen next Monday, and user voting will begin on Tuesday. The IconPackager event is absolutely ...
For years we’ve awarded “medals” to winners in the various GUI Champs events. In past years though they were really just virtual medals, and then some physical prizes. This year though we wanted to do something special. The 2008 GUI Champs has a new site, the best prize pool ever, so why not actual medals? That’s a picture I took of one of the medals this afternoon. These babies are actual metal, and are 2 3/4” in diameter ...
You've seen some teasers from Brad recently showing off the new look of Impulse and talking about a number of improvements we've been working on to make the overall user experience a better one. Today we've put out an update to Impulse that will allow you to check out our latest beta version of the client. For all the details on how to update to the beta version, and some of the new features, head on over to the ImpulseDriven Community site. Be sure to let us know what you think a...
Attention all Dream-Makers, you only have a few more days to tweak and upload your Dreams for consideration in the Most Original and Most Usable Dream events! Friday, November 21st 11:59pm EST is the cut-off for those two events. Dreams submitted, or updated, after that point will NOT be elligible for the public voting round. So if you have any changes to get in, time is running out. Just to remind everyone, here's what we have up for grabs in these two events: 2 Sapphir...
Greetings Skinners! Today we're making some minor tweaks to the GUI Champs 2008 Competition Schedule. These changes are in part to work around the holidays (Stardock is closed December 20th - January 4th) and to give folks in the Dream category a few more days to work on their entries. Dreams Most Original & Most Usable Dream Submission Deadline: November 21. Dream User Voting: November 25th - 30th. Most Usable Dream Announced: December 2nd Most Original Dream Announced...
The 2008 GUI Champs have been underway for just under two weeks now and already we have some absolutely fantastic skins in the library. Today we have a mix of Skins, Icons and Dreams already vying for the top spots when we pick the winners in November/December. As was the case last year, we already have two outstanding Icon sets, some killer skins and great dreams, some of the best content of the entire year so far! Below are the latest entries. Be sure to check back regula...
We have covered quite a few Halloween skin categories over the last couple of weeks. By now, you should be able to get a Halloween inspired desktop put together rather quickly. Continuing on, this time we wanted to feature some WindowBlinds skins with a spooktacular look and feel. Dont forget if you are a WinCustomize or Object Desktop subscriber, you get the Halloween theme free . If we missed any, please post the links to the skins. ...
Reading through some of the answers in the WinCustomize Member Survey, I was surprised to see many didn’t know about the personal sites that each user can have here. Any member, subscriber or not, can create their own personal site on WinCustomize with their own personal url. Personal sites can contain a bunch of information like images, links, guestbook, articles, and much more. You can share the page with friends and the public to show off the skins you ha...
Last week we created a short survey for members (subscriber or non-subscriber) to fill out. This is to get some community input on the current state of WinCustomize which will in turn help us in the planning of the next version of WinCustomize. Thank you for those of you who have filled the survey out already, the response has been impressive, but we wanted to send out a reminder to those of you who have yet to fill it out. WinCustomize 2008 Member Survey
This weeks member spotlight goes to a member who has been creating some really stunning 3D wallpapers. That member would be Atomnet . I see he does much of his work in Cinema4D, and it's obvious he knows what he's doing when it comes to 3D work. Atomnet has been a member of WinCustomize since July 2002, and is currently at the rank of Apprentice. While most of his work in the wallpaper category, he has also submitted some icons, so don’t forget to check those out as well.&n...
Welcome to the fourth bi-annual GUI Championships! The GUI's is the ultimate Windows Graphical User Interface (GUI) competition. Graphics designers from around the world will be competing in three primary GUI categories; WindowBlinds, Icons and Animated Wallpapers. This year's competition has a prize pool of nearly $15,000 with prizes from AMD/ATI , Wacom , Corel , TechSmith , DeviantArt and WinCustomize ! Starting today, October 14th, 2008, skinners will be able to...
Today is the launch of the 2008 GUI Championships! After many months of hard work rounding up sponsors, and building a completely new competition website, we are almost ready to go! As I type this, the finishing touches are being put on the GUI Champs site, which includes a completely new uploading system (much better than the current WC one). We're still on track for a site launch later today. So keep your eyes peeled to this space, and to GUIChamps.com for up...
Alright, we're about two weeks away from the start of the 2008 GUI Championships and the launch of the brand new GUI Champs website . We're seeing teams form up, and I know some of you out there have been working very hard on your entries for months now. With the contest so close though, I wanted to make sure that everyone was clear on the rules, the technical requirements etc. So now's your chance. Ask away! Any burning questions or nagging doubts? Want to kno...
It's a Master Day here it seems! We started off with J. Aroche's promotion to Master Skinner, and continue on with a brand new Master Skin from vStyler! Avanti for XP and Vista by vStyler is a contemporary looking skin to give your Windows User Interface a completely different look. Using cool blues, interesting transparencies. and a cube-ish design to buttons and menus, Avanti is a unique and very usable skin. To go along with the WindowBlinds skin, there are a bunch of f...