As recalls fly fast-and-furious from laptop manufacturers who used certain models of Sony batteries, concerns are mounting that these recalls, and the subsequent disposal of yet-unshipped laptop batteries could create a shortage this holiday season.  Sony can only produce so many batteries in time for Christmas, and with manufacturers like Dell, HP, Gateway and Apple having dumped significant portions of their previous battery inventory, they may not be able to meet the demand.  Ev...

Today we announced the winners of the Most Original Icon Package event in the GUI Champs '06.  This marks the first major prize of the contest being given away.  knightpan won the EVGA GeForce 7600GS video card for taking the gold with his The Mayan Civilization icons (he has a matching WB Visual Style that's currently a finalist for Most Original Visual Style).  Head on over to the site to see who our other winners are! Also, we started keeping track of what countries our ...

It's time again to pimp some of the interesting things our community is producing.  I've posted about these guys before, but CerebroJD and DoctorNick, two of our forum moderators here at WinCustomize do this periodic podcast you might have heard of called Under The Skin .  Originally started by Paul Boyer, Doc and Cerebro have taken over and just this week posted Episode 15 . This episode is especially noteworthy because October Skinner of the Month, 47songs , is their specia...

Hi again, looks like it's time for another poll.  Not much of a ramble leading into this week's poll results, so let's just jump into it. Last week, before I posted the preview article with screenshots of some of the new site design, I asked everyone how excited they were about the upcoming site refresh for WinCustomize, just based on Brad's article talking about some of the features, from a month or so ago.  It seems that the majority of you were pretty excited about it, and I imagine...

Yesterday, I reformatted my main work PC.  It had belonged to someone else before I started working here, and when I started, I didn't think to take the time to wipe it down and rebuild it to make sure there wasn't any lingering wonkiness from old applications or files.  Well, after three months of me adding and removing my own software as needed, the system reached a point where pasting an image into Photoshop to resize was a serious undertaking that pushed the machine to the very edg...

As the holiday shopping seasons approaches, computer manufacturers such as Dell, HP and Gateway were at one point worried about system sales slacking off this year as people opt to wait to buy their next machine until Windows Vista is released in early 2007.  This was evidently a large enough concern, that Microsoft agreed to institute a coupon program for anyone who purchased a new PC within a certain time frame, allowing them to upgrade cheaply to Windows Vista. Today, some of the deta...

Half-way!  That's where we are in the GUI Champs '06 competition.  Today we announced the winners of the Most Usable Icon Package, along with the top-ten finalists for Most Usable & Most Original Visual Styles.  Later on in the week we'll be announcing the Most Original Icon Package winners, bring us within two weeks of the end of the contest, and so far we will have handed out $850 in cash, $3396in software and site subscriptions, not to mention an EVGA GeForce 7600GS!  ...

You've likely heard of Fantasy Sports.  Games where you pick out a roster of players from a given sport, and your "team" wins or loses on the average performance of all of your players in the past week.  Fantasy Football or Baseball leagues are pretty popular office games, and they give people an incentive to more closely watch the sports page of the paper on a near daily basis as they track the stats of all of their players, trying to figure out how they did in their league compared t...

The latest in the near-constant stream of beta products from Google hit the web yesterday, Google Custom Search.  Custom Search allows users to essentially create their own customized search index, including only site you choose, and defining the primary keywords to help define the search parameters.  This customized index can then be accessed directly via your own webpage by placing a Google search box somewhere on your site.  You can even have the results output to another page ...

Several weeks back, Brad posted a bit of news talking up some of the new features of WinCustomize 2007, and everyone seemed pretty excited about it.  Since then though we've been pretty quiet about the project, and that's left some of you just chomping at the bit for more details, maybe a screenshot or two.  Something, anything to show that we are in fact still working on it! Well, today we're ready to toss you your first taste of the new site.  I've posted an article with som...

A little while ago, Brad started talking up the upcoming refresh to WinCustomize.  He mostly talked about features and some cool stuff you could expect from the new site, but so far, all you've had are lines of text, nothing to really sink your teeth into.  Seeing as how we're all about the visual aspects of our computers, I thought it might be nice to give you a little taste of what the site is looking like at the moment.  Overall, better usability, and a slicker look and feel. ...

This time of year, back in 2001, Apple unleashed the little product that would be credited with saving the company from utter ruin, and became an unstoppable force in the portable music player market.  The first iPod came on the heels of an announced 22% drop in revenue for Apple Computer, long the last-place contender in the home computer market.  With floundering Macintosh computer sales, a new operating system that had only a small dedicated group excited, the company needed somethi...

A few months back, we started loosening up the requirements for what was and wasn't accepted into the public wallpaper gallery here at WinCustomize.  A lot of wallpapers that wouldn't have previously made the cut, were let in, but some were still considered "below the line" and were rejected. Going forward, we will no longer be rejecting Wallpaper submissions based on quality.  This however does not mean that everything submitted will be posted to the main public gallery. ...

Ok, it's a big day for Microsoft, first day that IE 7 is available in "final" form.  Vista nears RTM.  Office 2007 closes in on release.  So there's a lot to keep the folks in Redmond busy lately.  Here are a few news tidbits about everyone's favorite software company to hate: IE7 Vulnerable to Old Exploit Yes, that's right, less than 24 hours after release, IE7 already has a known and published vulnerability.  And the worst part is, it's an OLD one, dating back ...

Our buddy Ron Garveston over at Geek.com , yesterday posted a very nice review of Aquarium Desktop 2006.  Accompanied by several screenshots showing the software in action, Ron gives a pretty nice summary of what the program is, and what his thoughts are on it.  Head on over to Geek.com now to check it out. The comments section is full of users looking back to the days of After Dark and the fish screensaver, eSheep, and even Maxis' ElFish.