Keeping up with his regular stream of screencasts, Island Dog yesterday put together a great video demo for WindowBlinds 6, showing users how to do everything from apply a theme, to recoloring, adjusting transparencies and blur effects, adding explorer backgrounds, using the wallpaper manager and even importing .msstyles into WindowBlinds directly. It's a great video to link to friends and family who are interested in getting into desktop customization.

Since 2005, skinning community site Customize.org has hosted the Desktopography project, an annual exhibition of stunning wallpaper art that is simply some of the best wall work I've ever seen.  Participation is by invite-only, but because of this the results are always top-notch.  The idea is that our moods can be heavily influenced by what we see every day, and for many of us we spend our days staring at a computer screen.  While it's hard to get a good nature look to your Windo...

We're quickly coming up on the full launch of Impulse, our next generation digital distribution, software management and community tool.  Impulse, as pretty much everyone should know by now, is the successor to Stardock Central, and will eventually replace the aging download tool entirely (though not immediately, it's going to be a phased retirement).  Since early this year we've had first a private group of testers hammering on Impulse, and then the larger community in an open beta t...

Every month the moderation staff here at WinCustomize is asked to pick their favorite skin submitted in the previous month and to give a bit of explanation on why they liked it.  Here are the mod picks for May: Igloo by kittymalone "It's the third month in a row I'm picking a creation by kittymalone.  I'm sorry, but I can't help it.  I'm hooked on her fabulous, easy-to-use-on-a-daily-basis creations.  In my opinion one o...

Last week MyColors Camouflage was released, along with a free matching Cursor theme by Treetog. Today, Island Dog walks through everything that comes with this great new theme for users who like a darker look to their desktop.  He shows off every bit of the theme, including the WindowBlinds skin, media, clock, calendar& weather gadgets as well as the icons. If you weren't sure about Camouflage, check out this article to get the full run-down on the outstanding work Treetog did ...

Last week we talked a bit about a potential feature for the next WinCustomize site update; Skinning Groups.  The idea is basically to add functionality to the site that would make it easier for skinners to get together and organize larger projects.  I wanted to gauge everyone's feelings on the idea so the poll was a simple Yea/Nay deal. Overall, most of you were in favor of it with about 80% saying yes to 20% saying no. A few concerns were raised in the discussion of the idea, a...

Recently vStyler released the third in his Vienna skin series; Vienna 3 Rapture.  As with many previous MaxStyles/vStyler skins, Vienna 3 has spawned a number of great accessory skins, making it possible to completely theme out your Windows PC in Vienna 3 goodness. Here are the skins released so far:     And of course, there's the sk...

We've hit the two month mark with the show and this week I'm again absent from the show (I was locked away in our datacenter racking some new servers) but Spencer picks up the slack and talks with Jorge, the developer behind WinStep Technologies and their flagship Winstep Xtreme software, a complete desktop replacement for Windows.  Jorge tells Spencer all about the history of Winstep from all the way back in the NeXT days up through programming under Vista.  He also answers a...

Welcome back fellow skinners, forum trolls, and all the various random folks who wander by this site every day.  It's Monday, and that means it's back to the work week, and I'm here to start things off on the right foot with some great skins that were released to WinCustomize over the weekend.  While many of us were out BBQing with friends or enjoying some nice weather, a lot of folks were slaving away on new skins for all of us to enjoy.  Here are some of my favorites from the w...

Have you ever downloaded a skinning product, a Stardock Game, or any MyColors theme?  Then you have benefited from the work of probably one of our least well-known but most important people here at Stardock: Kris Kwilas, VP of Technology.  You might know him as Nakor on the forums or IRC and have probably seen him dolling out support help here and there.  Virtually every product we've released, every site we've launched, every server we've deployed has been worked on in the last ...

Oh thank The Flying Spaghetti Monster , it's Friday at last!  And since it's Friday, that means we have Island Dog's weekly installment of This Week in Skinning.  This week's list is a great one with some killer cursors, a nature dream, some new Corinthia styled icons, two fantastic wallpapers and two new WindowBlinds skins; Cylon by SKoriginals and Vienna 3 - Rapture by vStyler.  Check out the full article for all the skinning goodness.

Go incognito with the new Camouflage suite from Stardock Design's own Treetog! Yes, this new theme is 100% Treetog goodness.  Skin, wallpaper and icons all made by the master.  It's a terrific theme for people looking for something different from the regular old glass imitations.  Dark colors and a great style make this a must-try theme. Plus, like with Cosmos and Liquidox, we have a freebie skin to toss your way, to give you a taste of what the whole theme is like. ...

We're constantly featuring articles written by members of both Stardock and the larger WinCustomize community.  We look for interesting pieces about skinning, the community or technology in general.  This week in particular there have been some great articles I want to feature more prominently. ID's May Roundup Blog A great synopsis of what ID's been up to across the skinning community in the last month.  This month he talks about the WinCustomize Podcast, the status of ...

Last week, our friends over at WinStep Software released the latest version of Winstep Xtreme, 8.5.  This version is packed with great new features and a ton of cool eye candy.  Winstep Xtreme 8.5 brings Apple Dock style icon reflection to Windows, an absolutely awesome visual effect that looks good with pretty much any icon. Here are a few highlights from the 8.5 version: New optional and user configurable icon reflection effect on docks and shelves. Restored the weathe...

This week's poll is about a potential feature that's being debated internally for the next major update to WinCustomize.  Since we're gearing up for the GUI Champs, and a major feature of the competition has always been forming skinning teams, we wanted to know if something like that would be a good addition to WinCustomize proper. Should WinCustomize add a "Group" feature to allow skinners to affiliate themselves with one another, and to work together and post skins under a team label?...