Following on the success of the St. Patrick's Day Icon Contest, we've decided that these community mini-contests are a pretty good idea and want to do more of them.  Our next contest idea was provided by community veteran, WebGizmos, and fleshed out over a good number of emails and conversations.  Now, since this is a WG created and sponsored contest, it should be no surprise to anyone who has been around the community for any amount of time, that it's an ObjectDock one  Thi...

Google continues it's rampage through the online advertising industry with its announcement last week that it would be buying competitor, DoubleClick, for a staggering $3.1 billion.  The acquisition would further cement Google's place as leader in online ad serving, further marginalizing competitors such as Microsoft and Yahoo.  However, in what can only be described as an ironic turn of events, Microsoft is crying foul over the merger, saying the company should be investigated under ...

Just when you thought there were enough social networking sites out there with places like MySpace, MSN Spaces and Facebook, another one looks to soon be entering the fray.  The magazine, Rolling Stone, plans on launching a new social networking site in the same style as MySpace in the coming months.  The news was revealed when a company executive spoke before a group of journalism students at New York University. The question is though, will the magazine's audience, which tends to ...

In the push to get the iPhone out the door mid this year, Apple Inc. shuffled a good portion of its development resources over to the project, resulting in a several month delay to MacOS 10.5, Leopard, according to a news story on Apple enthusiast site, tuaw.com.  To hit targets of showing off the iPhone in January at MacWorld, and have it ready for the summer release, Mac users won't be seeing the next OS update until October of this year. A quote from the article: " we had to borr...

One of the strengths of the Firefox web browser is its extensibility via a very robust plugin framework.  Developers can add all sorts of cool bells and whistles to the browser to add functionality never thought of by the original developers.  This is such a popular feature, that the net is flooded with extensions for users to pick up and try.  However, it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, so users are either overwhelmed by the choices and run away, or spend hours tryi...

3D Fabrication is something that's pretty well established in the engineering world and is used to quickly build prototypes for machine parts.  The process is based on laying down layers of plastic, building up the shape layer by layer.  The only problem with these devices is that they typically run between $20,000 - $100,000 to purchase.  Don't even think about repair and "refill" costs. Well, soon, that technology may become a heck of a lot cheaper.  So cheap in fact, th...

Two interesting Google bits to share with you today.  The first is that Google is going to be holding a Worldwide Developer Day on May 31st, where developers can come to Google offices around the globe to back in the Big G's glory, and pick the brains behind one of the most successful Internet companies out there.  It's focused on developers only, so if you're looking for the secret sauce that makes the business end so successful, you're out of luck.  The event will be held at 1...

Two weeks ago, I asked what people expect to be their level of involvement in a WinCustomize Wiki should it be launched.  The responses were pretty evenly spread out between the possible responses, and about what I expected.  As we draw closer to launching the wiki, there will be news items posted here at WinCustomize for those interested in helping out. Here are the results: How Would You Contribute to a WC Wiki? Major Contributor 17.86% Minor Contributor 20...

This week, search giant Google launched a new search service aimed at making search data even more accessible to users, no matter where they are.  The new service, in beta testing via the Google Labs program, is called "Google Voice Local Search" which will allow you to call up from any phone, and ask things like "Pizza" and it will give you information and directions to pizza places in your immediate area (likely based on the area code you call from).  It's essentially the old 411 sy...

Following the Apple's recent challenge to the music industry to stop requiring DRM for online music sales, and EMI's pledge to do just that via the iTunes service, software giant Microsoft joins the DRM-free initiative.  Selling music via its Zune music service, Microsoft plans to provide DRM-free music from EMI as well.  While it will remain in the proprietary .wma file format, it will be free of copy protections, so users would in theory be able to convert their Zune music purchases...

If you're looking to learn how to make really outstanding DesktopX widgets, you need go no further than RomanDA's ongoing tutorial series here at WinCustomize.com.  Just this morning, he posted part 5, focusing on WMI to extract all sorts of interesting and useful data directly from your Windows operating system.  This is very useful for people looking to make drive, CPU and RAM meter gadgets.  The tutorial walks you through all of that from start to finish, though you will have t...

AppScout, a website run by the editors and analysts of PC Magazine, just the other day sat down with Stardock CEO Brad Wardell to talk a bit about Stardock DeskScapes, the software that extends Windows Vista DreamScene beyond simple videos and into the realm of dynamic animated content for your desktop.  Describing DeskScapes as " one of the first third-party apps to truly take advantage of the OS's graphical capabilities..."  they proceed to grill Brad over what DeskScapes is and how...

I'm sure you've all spent countless hours thinking to yourself "Man, this web browser is really spiffy, but why doesn't it give me the functionality of MySpace or Facebook?"  Well, if that's the thought that has crossed your mind any number of times, then the folks at Mozilla Labs have just the thing for you!  Today they announced work on "The Coop" a social networking extension for the Mozilla Web Browser platform (Mozilla is the superset of code that Firefox is derived from). The ...

Frequent flyers breathed a sigh of relief yesterday when the FCC announced that it would uphold the current ban on cellular phone usage on airplanes while in flight.  The stated reason was over concerns about interference with ground-based cell users.  However, the response they received from the flying public was largely emotional, with thousands of letters and emails sent in describing horror story situations that could happen if phones were allowed on flights. Imagine the person ...

ITNews.com.au is running a story about how the days of "Big Bang" service packs for Windows are a thing of the past, that Vista will instead receive a steady stream of patches and fixes over time.  However, service packs will still exist, they just won't be the massive affairs of Service Pack 1 for XP that came in at 30mb and bundled together a great number of fixes and updates. The change in approach, according to Michael Sievert, corporate VP for Windows marketing, is due to new develo...