Every month, the moderation team is polled on what their favorite skin submission was from the previous month.  They're asked to also give a line or two of explanation of why they liked the skin.  Here are the moderator picks for November, 2007. IR Clock - Cal Slider by RomanDA "I make an effort to watch the hours change and even stayed up until midnight to watch the day change.  The collaboration of I.R. Brainiac's images ...

Here's the Day 34 Update for the WinCustomize Charity/Subscription Drive . Subscriptions: 923 (46.15% of goal) Charity Dollars Raised:  $3,059.71 (61.19% of total) We've crossed the $3,000 line!  Ten days left people.  If you haven't subscribed yet, now is the time to do it! 

Ah, it's that time of year again.  Time for snowmen, snowball fights, hot chocolate by a roaring fire, Christmas decorations, sleigh rides and more.  Yes, it's Winter at last. To get the season off to a good start, Stardock Design has put together the Winter Wonderland Suite. Take a stroll through a snow covered lane and see candy canes, snowmen, and twinkling lights. Winter Wonderland brings back memories of the Holidays of the past, and makes you dream of white holidays. T...

Last week, we announced the Create Your Alienware Dream Contest .  WinCustomize has partnered up with Alienware to put together a contest to give artists some serious encouragement to really put their nose to the grindstone and turn out some of their best work yet.  I mean, what better motivation do you need than a $3,000 Alienware Area-51 7500 gaming PC?  I would kill for a machine like that! A week in, so far we have two entries, and a help article to give you a bit of guid...

Christmas time is here again, and Island Dog has already started rounding up great holiday skins.  Today he's put up an article highlighting three great Christmas CursorXP themes.  They go perfectly with the Christmas theme I'm running at the moment, especially Christmas Time by Keila. So if you haven't already, hit the link below to check out the full article.

Here's the Day 33 Update for the WinCustomize Charity/Subscription Drive . Subscriptions: 900 (45% of goal) Charity Dollars Raised:  $2,987.32 (59.75% of total) So close to 1,000 subscriptions!  And probably just one day away from breaking $3k.  Keep it up!  We only have 11 days left.

We're just a few weeks away from Christmas now, so I think it's OK to start talking about it, start the decorating and holiday music.  We are within the acceptable Christmas window now, which is decidedly shorter than what retailers are pushing. So as we approach the festive holiday, I was thinking of Santa, that incredibly fun part of the Christmas tradition for me growing up.  And today in the office we got to talking about the sort of things our parents did (or what some folks wh...

This week's poll is a little different from what we usually talk about.  This week it's all about how we support and fund the site.  Currently we support WinCustomize primarily through subscriptions and web ads.  However we have repeatedly turned away the much more profitable ads because they're just so darned annoying.  We know that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how well an ad pays if it drives users away.  That's why you'll never see pop-ups, hover ads etc ...

Two weeks ago I tossed up a poll to get a feeling for how I did with our first attempt at a live video stream.  Turns out that I did even worse than I thought as the majority of votes were for something in the range of "Oh my god, that was horrendous" or "I didn't watch"  Here's the pretty picture... To those who didn't like the show, I'd be interested in hearing feedback or suggestions on how to make it better.  It was my first attempt at anything like that, and I admit to ...

Oh the weekends go by too fast don't they?  To ease you back into the drudgery of the work week, I present to you my favorite skins submitted to the site over the weekend.  Among the submissions this week is a suite of skins from theAVMAN.  Insight Pro comes ready to go with a WindowBlinds skin, a RightClick skin, CursorXP theme and wallpapers On top of that, we had a few more skins of note... ...

Here's the Day 30 - 32 Update for the WinCustomize Charity/Subscription Drive . Subscriptions: 874 (43.70% of goal) Charity Dollars Raised:  $2,902.14 (58.04% of total) We're really close to the 50% mark on subscriptions and the $3,000 mark for Childs Play.  Hopefully by tomorrow we'll have crossed at least one of those thresholds as we move into the last two weeks of the drive. Last week, I said I'd be giving away 5 subscriptions to the best "5 reasons I love WinCust...

The other day I happened to pop on over to my WinCustomize profile page to see if there was any action on my guest book, and I glanced past my "Member Since" date.  You know what I saw?  That I was coming up on my 5 year anniversary as a member of the Stardock community. November 30, 2002. Five years ago I came across a game called Galactic Civilizations.  There was a beta test going for anyone who bought the game so I signed up for an account, sent over some cash and was so...

Another week rolls to a close, and to mark the occasion, Island "The Burninator" Dog has rounded up his picks for some of the best content submitted to the site in the last week.  On display today we have a BootSkin, some crazy Cursors, a Dream, an IconPackage, a few ObjectDock icons, two wallpapers and a WindowBlinds skin.  A good week overall I'd say. Firefox Midnight for ObjectDock By Mirsguy

While it's still November here in the US, Jafo who's ahead of us by a few hours has kicked off the December Screenshots thread on the forums.  So what's your desktop looking like heading into December?  Festive?  Snowy?  Something decidedly anit-holiday? Show us what you're running throughout the month of December!  Just post a screenshot to the thread and bask in the oohs and aaahs of your fellow community members.

Here's the Day 29 Update for the WinCustomize Charity/Subscription Drive . Subscriptions: 791 (39.55% of goal) Charity Dollars Raised:  $2,642.51 (52.85% of total) Remember, you can win one of five donated subscriptions by going here and giving 5 reasons why you love WinCustomize.