MySpace, one of the top Internet sites, and home to countless bloggers, is getting ready to launch an integrated news service with self-aggregating content and social bookmarking.  The move will place it in competition with Web 2.0 social bookmarking sites such as Digg and del.ico.us.  Users would be able to easily add news bits they find interesting to their site.  The hope is that having news on the site and as a new social element, will encourage users to come back multiple tim...

A lot has been going on around the community the past week or two.  This news item is just a quick summary of some of the major points that you might have missed. This Week in Skinning - March 9th Every week, Island Dog does a quick round-up of some of the more interesting items posted to WinCustomize in the last seven or so days.  It's a good series to keep an eye on as you might miss some of the great stuff that gets featured otherwise.   Desktop Themes: Ready to Chan...

For IT managers and systems administrators, the second Tuesday of each month is typically a day to dread.  For a while now, every second Tuesday, Microsoft has released a slew of patches for Windows and Office products, fixing bugs and security holes en-masse.  For anyone who has to test patches prior to deployment, Tuesday usually means you have a lot of work ahead of you.  And sometimes, there are so many changes and updates, you get them certified and published to your enterpri...

To the average Internet user, the web is a largely unchanging thing.  Aside from prettier pictures and some more interactive sites, to the layman the technology used today to display a page is more or less the same as it was back in the mid 90's.  The idea that the underlying language used to build and display websites changes would seem pretty silly to most.  But to anyone who has tried to follow the ebb and flow of Internet standards knows that's not the case. Today, we have ...

It's that time of year, the Game Developers Conference 2007 is underway and all sorts of tech is being talked about and shown off that relates to games (PC, console) and how we play and interact with them.  Every now and then, something really unique and interesting comes out of these presentations that has implications far beyond that of video games.This year, Emotiv Systems unveiled a brain/computer interface that allows users to exert control over the virtual world using only their mind...

Another year has passed, and it's time to take a look back on the year that was, and what it has meant for the skinning world, and where things are likely to be heading in the upcoming year.  Brad Wardell takes us through 2006 to explain his views on how the skinning landscape has changed, and how he feels Windows Vista is likely to impact the community going forward.  It's an excellent read if you're wondering what the future holds for all things skinning.

Believe it or not, there is currently more data zipping around you, over wires, the air, on discs and thumb drives, than there is actual permanent storage space to hold all of it.  Thankfully, not everything is captured, and we do prune our digital archives from time to time.  IDC released a report recently detailing its estimates of how much digital content has been created.  This includes photos, music, IMs, email, documents, videos, applications etc.  The estimate also...

GamingTrends tossed together a very nice review of Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar and took the game apart examining the game based on a handful of categories; graphics, sound/music, controls, gameplay, and value /replay value.  Each section is individually scored with the final score of the game being the sum of the separate scores. Dark Avatar received its highest marks for gameplay and replay value, with a good bit of attention paid to how no two games you play turn out quite t...

As the number of homes with broadband and multiple PCs increases, so do the number of small, generally insecure networks.  These little pockets of high-speed connected systems are ripe targets for hackers and viruses looking for vectors to launch attacks from.  While a few years ago, home networks were the realm of the geeky, the sort of people who had somewhat of a clue as to what they were doing, today anyone can walk into a Wal-Mart and buy a wireless router for $50 and suddenly th...

This is a bit off the beaten path of what we normally cover here, but this is just something that's too cool to not pass along.  Scientists in Israel have invented a way of making elaborate 3D models out of flat 2D discs.  It works by pretreating a special gel disc about half the size of a beer coaster with a special monomer solution that selectively shrinks when you heat it.  It's being called "Chemical Origami" While uses are limited at the moment, some scientists image t...

Last week, the big news was the confirmation that electronics retailer Best Buy was pulling a bait-and-switch on customers who browsed the site BestBuy.com for deals before going into the store.  Turns out that the company has an Intranet site that exactly mirrors the look and feel of the public website, only the prices are different.  Deals advertised on the public site in some cases weren't shown on the internal site at all, or at a higher price, forcing consumers to either not purch...

It seems like every other day another fantastic review for Dark Avatar hits the web.  Today's glowing review comes from the fine folks over at Gaming Nexus who handed us a 9.7 out of 10!.  Reviewer Tyler Sager put the expansion pack to Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords under the microscope to try and glean from it every possible secret, find every nook and cranny where we might have hidden away new features and functionality.  The tagline for the review is "A perfect expansio...

One of the toughest game review sites on the net, GameSpot, awarded Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar an amazing 9.1/10 and Editors' Choice Award!  Jeff Lackey took the expansion pack through its paces and decided that it could be called an "expansion" only on a technicality, that it felt practically like a new game. In addition to commenting on the improved graphics, extent to which you can mod the game, and the power of the ship builder, Jeff has this to say about the new planet...

If you're like me, you probably couldn't code your way out of a paper bag, and the extent of your programming abilities are getting a computer to display "Hello World!" in a terminal window.  Finding out what to learn, where to go for help, what books to read etc. makes the prospect of self-teaching something as complex as computer programming pretty daunting.  Well, MSDN has recently launched a site with the novice coder in mind.  The Beginner Development Learning Center sit...

Critical praise continues to come in from the gaming press.  Our latest review comes from the folks over at GameVortex who gave Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar a glowing 95% review.  Reviewer Ricky Tucker breaks the game down into 4 categories; Graphics & Sound, Gameplay,  Difficulty, and Game Mechanics.  Needless to say,  the improved visuals, and AI got a vigorous nod of approval. Here's a little bit on what he had to say about the campaign included in t...