When the GUI Champs '06 were announced late this past August, we made mention of some premium sponsors that would be handing out some of our top competition prizes. Much was made about how these were some sweet prizes and definitely worth competing for. We've already announced NVIDIA/EVGA sponsoring the prizes for the Most Original Visual Style and Most Original Icon Set, so that only leaves one prize, and thus one more premium sponsor to reveal. We are extremely happy to anno...
Late last week, the rumors began to fly that Google was thinking about buying Internet video site, YouTube for the princely sum of $1.6 Billion. Well, the New York Times went and confirmed the rumors on Friday after talking with several people close to the deal. It is stressed that the deal is in the very early stages at the moment and nothing is definite. Google is just the latest in a parade of companies to visit and chat with YouTube in recent months. This is just the...
In case you've been waiting to vote on Most Original Wallpaper until the last minute, well, time is running out! At midnight tonight (Eastern Time) voting will be closed for Most Original Wallpaper. The next time you'll be able to vote on a Wallpaper event will be in November for the Best Overall event. So get moving and vote if you haven't already! When Wallpaper voting closes tonight, voting for Most Usable Icon Package will begin. Currently there are 37 submitted ...
If you mosey on over to the GUI Champs website, you'll see a pretty exciting announcement at the top of the page; our first premier sponsor! So far we've announced prizes being offered up by Stardock (software, a pile of cash and some XBox 360s), as well as what some of our friends in the community are pitching in ( Microangelo Toolset 6 , DeviantArt 1yr subscriptions). We made a fair number of veiled references to some mysterious "premium" sponsors but have been pretty quiet ab...
Today, Google Labs released a beta for a new search service targeted at computer programmers; Google Code Search . This new service will crawl the vast stores of publicly available code (mostly open source) to provide programmers with an easily searchable index of code to help find solutions to various programming tasks. Google expects this new search tool to be mostly used by students trying to learn complex programming languages, while being an occasional resource to more season and ...
The GUI Champs '06 marches on! Since Monday, you've been voting on Most Usable Wallpaper. Today, we're shifting gears a bit and begin voting on Most Original wallpaper. Most Original Wallpaper Usable was all about, well, usability. The Most Original Wallpaper event doesn't have anything to do with easy of use, icon readability or any of that other fuzzy feel-good sort of stuff. This event is all about pure "cool". What is the most outlandish, a...
Another week, another poll! Last week, you were asked to give your impressions of ObjectBar 2.0. Some formatting changes to the poll have moved it off the front page for the time being, and that may have impacted our vote numbers, but for those of you who did respond, the results were pretty positive, with only 8 or so of you claiming that the software was responsible for killing your inner child. 126 votes were count this time. For those interested, as always, here are t...
Hundreds of wallpapers have been submitted to the 2006 GUI Championships . Many hours have been spent by artists crafting their masterpieces in an attempt to get their hands on a chunk of our $12,000 prize, and now we are ready to kick off the first event of this years competition! Most Usable Wallpaper Wallpapers provide the visual backdrop to our day-to-day computer user. For some, they're family photos, interesting artwork, screenshots from favorite video games or movies...
So you're not submitting any wallpapers, WindowBlinds or icon packs to the 2006 GUI Champs . So you've decided you don't want to compete for some of the $12,000 in prizes. But, you might be thinking to yourself "I wish there was some other way I could participate!" Well, since you're letting me project my own assumptions onto you, let me tell you that you indeed CAN participate in the competition without drawing a pixel, without putting together a single bad Bryce render!...
Internet search engines such as Google have been all the craze the past few years, with students flocking to them as an easy source of research material for school assignments. With the right search terms, you can find anything! Well, maybe not. Most of us don't know how to form the most effective search terms or phrases for search engines. We try and treat it as regular language and ask Google things like "When did the Berlin Wall fall?" and for major events or his...
Here are some news items of note that while I didn't think they deserved individual posts, were interesting and worth sharing nonetheless. Lenovo Recalls 500,000 Laptop Batteries More Sony Lithium Ion batteries recalled for safety reasons Microsoft Prices Zune Directly Against the iPod The 30GB Zune will retail for $249, the same price as the 30GB iPod The Chicago Manual of Style Goes Digital The gold-standard of grammar and style, the Chicago Manual of Style, is now available on...
Rumshot is an application for Windows similar to SnapShooter (Mac OS X) . Rumshot is designed to create a beautifully framed preview in a few seconds, as well as taking screenshots of your desktop. Rumshot supports themes for its previews. While Rumshot ships with only one default theme, you can download the extra Theme Packs, or easily create one. Rumshot makes it a snap to generate a stylish preview image for posting your screenshot on the web with no need to have or use Photoshop or a...
As it has recently come out that Symantec is one of the companies central in encouraging the European Commission in causing trouble for Microsoft and its Vista launch next year, it's no surprise that the security software and services company would start leveling accusations aimed directly at the software giant in Redmond. Symantec, a company best known to consumers for its anti-virus and anti-spyware tools, is now accusing Microsoft of withholding key APIs needed to build effective securi...
From everyone's favorite electronics company comes the newest entry into the eBook reader market; The Sony Reader. The new device, instead of using a standard LCD screen like previous devices, uses a new "E Ink" technology that is much easier to read over extended periods of time. The screen on the device is roughly 6" diagonally, giving it close to the viewing size of a regular paperback novel. Sony says the device will read documents in a variety of formats, including DRM protec...
It's been a few days since we had a news post about Google, so what better time to throw another one up, but to celbrate search engine company's 8th birthday? The little search engine that has helped change the world first launched as a research project in 1996 by Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin and has seen phenomenal growth since, due to its much-praised PageRank technology for determining relevant search results. Some other relevant dates in Google Hi...