First it was ads on their search results, then it was contextual ads on your webpage and eventually followed by radio and newspaper ads. Now, search giant Google is ready to tackle the next major ad domain; television. Google signed an agreement on Monday with EchoStar Communications to sell commercial ad spots on the company's DISH Network. Now, advertisers will use the Google AdWords system to bid on television advertising spots much like they would for placement on a web page ...
Ever since we launched Dream.WinCustomize.com earlier this year, we've been working on improvements to our upload system to handle large file sizes. In the past, users would just have clicked the submit button, waited and hoped it all worked. There was no display of upload progress, and for users with exceptionally large files to upload, often the browser would timeout. Well, we've made some steps to alleviate those problems. Now, there is an upload script in testing tha...
It's Opening Day for the Major League Baseball season here in the US, and droves of people are skipping school and work for this unofficial national holiday. Now, if you're a baseball nut but are stuck at your desk during those pesky day games, there's a plethora of technological solutions available to you to keep up to date on the latest scores. Koop passed along an article from Wired.com about desktop widgets for the baseball season. The article looks at 6 different widgets for...
Every day, WinCustomize serves up well over 1 million pages to users all across the globe. Our forums hum with activity and dozens of user submissions come in every day. There's no question that WinCustomize is a very popular site with a thriving community surrounding it that grows every day. We've been working a lot behind the scenes to improve the daily experience here through things like the new website, contests such as the GUI Champs and the St. Patrick's Day Icon Contest...
Maybe you don't have immediate access to your PC with all your editing software, or maybe you're a poor student without the vast resources to scrape together to go out and purchase a graphics package to edit your vacation photos. Well, instead of obtaining the software through more questionable means, you could turn to free and legal options. All you need is a web browser, a good net connection, and a stack of photos ready to edit. ExtremeTech takes a look at 5 web-based photo edi...
It seems that those poor electronics store chains just can't get a break lately. BestBuy misleads consumers with their intranet site, CompUSA is forced to close over half of all of its stores nation-wide, and now Circuit City has to lay off about 3,400 "overpaid" employees. The goal is to replace them with lower-cost workers as part of their cost restructuring plans for the company. These people, representing roughly 8% of the company's overall workforce, will receive 4 weeks ...
For the past month, Windows Vista Ultimate users have been enjoying the benefits of the Stardock DeskScapes, an extension Microsoft DreamScene (an extra given only to owners of Vista Ultimate Edition). DeskScapes took basic DreamScenes one step further by allowing authors to retain credit for their work through the use of the .Dream format. Anyone who made a video could attach their name to it, a brief description, and a link back to their website. In addition to giving a...
WindowBlinds 5.5 is the first version of the software to officially support Windows Vista, and is, more or less, the only game in town at the moment for users who want to really tweak the look of their Windows Vista system. This attracted the attention of prominent technology site, ExtremeTech , which ran a rather detailed review of WindowBlinds titled "A Face-lift for Vista?" The review covers the application usability, functionality, little gotchas, as well as a few of the outst...
Back in December of last year, we solicited user feedback on how to make WinCustomize a better resource to the skinning community on the article "How Stardock Failed the Skinning Community in 2006" . If you haven't read the original article and the subsequent discussion, it's worth your time to check out. And your cries haven't fallen on deaf ears, we are in the process of addressing the issues brought up by the community. To start with, we're trying to tackle one of the most commo...
BestBuy announced today that they intended to purchase Speakeasy, an independent broadband and IT services provider for around $97 million. This expands BestBuy's small business technology portfolio and grows the electronics retailer in a new direction. Speakeasy will operate as its own business unit, and provide services to small businesses through the Best Buy for Business unit. Speakeasy was one of the first Internet cafes, having opened in Seattle in 1994. Since then it ...
When we say you'll be getting new features when you subscribe to WinCustomize, we mean it, especially with the upgrade to WC2k7. With the move to a more modular design and heavy use of CSS, we can implement changes much quicker than before. Today I have two changes to share with you that have gone live in the past week or so. Some I think a few have you already noticed and chatted about briefly. Would you like your Nav Bar on the left, or on the right? WC2k7 moved the ...
In the wake of current legal troubles for competing online video service YouTube, Microsoft has decided to try and be more proactive in its attempts to block infringing material being posted to the Soapbox service. So while it works to figure out technological safeguards to prevent copyright violations, it has cut off new account sign-ups for the next two months. If you already have an account on the service, you're still good to go. Microsoft has already struck deals with NBC/Uni...
Just about every week, our intrepid Internet Evangelist, Island Dog, does a round-up article on what he thinks are some of the more interesting skinning submissions for the week. It's a great series to keep an eye on if you're looking for new, cool content to trick-out your desktop. This week there's the winner of the St. Patrick's Day Icon contest, a WindowBlinds skin, a nifty IconPackage, some RightClick menus, a very nice and usable .Dream animated wallpaper, as well as a pretty sli...
The Crave Blog at CNet is running a "First Impressions" article on Apple TV, Apple's attempt to take over the living room by bringing the ease of the iPod to the home theater. The article covers the experience from getting the device out of the box to getting it hooked up and running with your TV and home network. The initial verdict? Plus for ease of use and setup, definite minus for the ridiculously small hard drive for a media center device (only 40GB, smaller than many ...
For the past few weeks we've been running a little contest, mostly just for fun, for icon artists to come up with a handful of St. Patrick's Day themed icons for the desktop. The rules were they had to cover the 5 major desktop icons, be submitted to the Misc Icon gallery by March 17th and have a preview image posted to the contest forum thread. We ended up with five qualifying entries competing for 3 prizes (1 year WinCustomize subscriptions). A/V Man gh33da RPGFX ...