Microsoft UK commissioned British comedian Ricky Gervais to tape a training video on Microsoft's corporate values.  Gervais is best known for his character David Brent, the bumbling, sexist, racist and generally incompetent manager of a branch office for an English paper manufacturer in the BBC comedy series, The Office.  Gervais, along with The Office co-creator Stephen Merchant sit down for a 37 minute segment, approximately the length of one television episode, where they spoof ever...

This is on pretty much every tech news site out there, so there's no point in posting a link to any one in particular, so here's the summary: After AOL released around 660,000 search queries, purposefully it turns out, AOL has bid a probably not-so-fond farewell to Chief Technology Officer Maureen Govern this week.  Govern was in charge of the division of the company that released the data publicly and drew heavy fire from the public, press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation which is...

Kevin Mitnick, at one point considered the most notorious hacker in the world before being arrested by the FBI in 1995 and serving a 5 year prison sentence, has been himself hacked.  On Sunday afternoon, the webistes KevinMitnick.com and MitnickSecurity.com were hacked to display an explicit message about Mr. Mitnick and hacking, starting with "ZOMG!! THE MITNICK GOTZ OWNED!!" along with a string of expletives and a photoshoped image of Mitnick. The hackers, presumed to be from Pakis...

Just another manic Monday... wish it was Sunday... But since it's Monday, it's time for another poll here at your favorite Windows Customization site on the entire intarweb!  Last week we asked what version of Windows Vista you would be likely to upgrade to in the eventuality that you had to.  Yes, I know some of you intend to stick with WinXP for the next 30 years, but eventually everyone has to upgrade and that's what we were trying to capture.  In total, 268 of you responded, s...

Welcome to Week 3 of the Pick of the Week.  Last week, the pickings were slim because I forgot to poll the moderators in time so the small number last week were entirely my fault.  This week however I've given everyone plenty of time so there's a fair bit of good content to pass your way.  Now, on to this week's picks... WOM (Wizop) Two picks from WOM this week... A Logon Screen, A Storm's Pandora Box by Mike56 A WindowBlind, Quotidian v5 by ...

Yesterday, the U.S. government renewed it's contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers through to 2011.  ICANN is the non-profit organization that administers the overall naming and addressing rules of the Internet such as which companies get to sell domain names, which new Top Level Domains (TLDs) can be added (i.e. .com, .net, .tv etc...), managing the "root" zone and portioning out IP addresses to major carriers. The U.S. Department of Commerce maintains m...

Ok ok... maybe not that exactly.  Turns out Mark Shuttleworth, shepherd of the Ubuntu Linux Distribution last week posted to his personal blog on how Linux very much needs to become "pretty" to be more competitive.  His focus is on how Linux and Open Source software in general might be technically great,but it lacks the ability to connect with the average user who puts a high value on usability and general prettiness.  The visual example he provides is a very sleek Ubuntu logo des...

This year has been a bad one for privacy minded individuals, with numerous reports of laptops being stolen that contain thousands of social security numbers, medical records and other vital identity information.  It has resulted in a break-neck race by companies who deal with such information (insurance companies, hospitals, the government etc.) to encrypt all of their "at rest" data (Any data sitting on a disk.  Different from "in motion" data, or data being transferred over a network...

As recalls fly fast-and-furious from laptop manufacturers who used certain models of Sony batteries, concerns are mounting that these recalls, and the subsequent disposal of yet-unshipped laptop batteries could create a shortage this holiday season.  Sony can only produce so many batteries in time for Christmas, and with manufacturers like Dell, HP, Gateway and Apple having dumped significant portions of their previous battery inventory, they may not be able to meet the demand.  Ev...

Today we announced the winners of the Most Original Icon Package event in the GUI Champs '06.  This marks the first major prize of the contest being given away.  knightpan won the EVGA GeForce 7600GS video card for taking the gold with his The Mayan Civilization icons (he has a matching WB Visual Style that's currently a finalist for Most Original Visual Style).  Head on over to the site to see who our other winners are! Also, we started keeping track of what countries our ...

It's time again to pimp some of the interesting things our community is producing.  I've posted about these guys before, but CerebroJD and DoctorNick, two of our forum moderators here at WinCustomize do this periodic podcast you might have heard of called Under The Skin .  Originally started by Paul Boyer, Doc and Cerebro have taken over and just this week posted Episode 15 . This episode is especially noteworthy because October Skinner of the Month, 47songs , is their specia...

Hi again, looks like it's time for another poll.  Not much of a ramble leading into this week's poll results, so let's just jump into it. Last week, before I posted the preview article with screenshots of some of the new site design, I asked everyone how excited they were about the upcoming site refresh for WinCustomize, just based on Brad's article talking about some of the features, from a month or so ago.  It seems that the majority of you were pretty excited about it, and I imagine...

As the holiday shopping seasons approaches, computer manufacturers such as Dell, HP and Gateway were at one point worried about system sales slacking off this year as people opt to wait to buy their next machine until Windows Vista is released in early 2007.  This was evidently a large enough concern, that Microsoft agreed to institute a coupon program for anyone who purchased a new PC within a certain time frame, allowing them to upgrade cheaply to Windows Vista. Today, some of the deta...

Half-way!  That's where we are in the GUI Champs '06 competition.  Today we announced the winners of the Most Usable Icon Package, along with the top-ten finalists for Most Usable & Most Original Visual Styles.  Later on in the week we'll be announcing the Most Original Icon Package winners, bring us within two weeks of the end of the contest, and so far we will have handed out $850 in cash, $3396in software and site subscriptions, not to mention an EVGA GeForce 7600GS!  ...

You've likely heard of Fantasy Sports.  Games where you pick out a roster of players from a given sport, and your "team" wins or loses on the average performance of all of your players in the past week.  Fantasy Football or Baseball leagues are pretty popular office games, and they give people an incentive to more closely watch the sports page of the paper on a near daily basis as they track the stats of all of their players, trying to figure out how they did in their league compared t...