The Windows development team lead, Brian Valentine, has announced that he'll be leaving Microsoft to take up a position with e-commerce giant, Amazon.com. Valentine had been with the company since 1987 and was responsible for cleaning up the mess that was the Windows 2000 development process and getting the product to market in a timely fashion, and has led Windows development overall since 1998. It was announced last month that the lead engineer position would be taken from him and ...
The holiday weekend shifted things a bit and I'm just now getting around to the weekly poll. Last week, I asked who here was planning on participating in the GUI Championships, coming up later this month (expect some pretty exciting announcements in the next few weeks!). Sadly, fewer of you than I had hoped indicated you would be making some sort of submission. Here are the numbers: Will you be competing in the 2006 GUI Championships? Yes 45 ...
Welcome back intrepid readers, to this weeks' installment of Pick of the Week. It's a short list this time around, but wow are the picks good! And now, I give you this week's top picks, as chosen by some of our volunteer staff. Hankers (Wizop) An IconPackage, Buuf by rgerrans . "The screenshot doesn't do justice to the contents of the package. A great Icon Package in my opinion" A rather enthusiastic nod of agreement from Koasati Corky_O (W...
Last week, pricing was leaked on the Microsoft Canada site for the various editions of Windows Vista. Today, Microsoft HQ has made the pricing official after posting Release Candidate 1 on Friday and beginning the push towards release early next year. Here's a quick overview of the pricing: Full Retail Version Upgrade from Windows XP Windows Vista Ultimate $399 $259 Windows Vista Business $299 $199 Window...
Give your desktop a sharp new look and feel with the Argos Suite from Stardock! This clean and elegant suite gives you everything you need to give your PC a new and refreshed look. Argos comes with a visual style that is easy on the eyes, a wallpaper, new logon and boot screens, as well as matching icons and mouse cursors! Argos is the newest suite by skinning veterans, treetog and danilloOc . If you've liked any of their previous work, definitely check this suite out! Inclu...
Those of you just dying to be on the bleeding-edge can now go out and get the second beta build for Firefox 2.0 from the Mozilla FTP site. We've previously reported on the new user interface being designed by Radiant Core, but it looks like this build doesn't have that in yet. Go forth, download, install and be merry! And let us know what you think.
Why is it that outside of Microsoft with Vista, no one aside from Google seems to be doing much that's news-worthy? Oh well, anyway on to the latest Google tidbit... Starting today, Google intends to let users download and print public domain books it has collected as part of its book-scanning project that has aroused so much anger from the publishing and academic world. The Google Book Search will allow users to search for specific lines in titles such as Dante's Inferno, grab th...
Yesterday, Apple announced that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is joining their board of directors. This brings together two of the most immediately recognizable computer brands. Google, which is more or less synonymous with Internet search technology, and Apple, the computer company for the "hip" and "artistic" types. Schmidt, however, isn't the only corporate big-wig on the Apple board of directors. Other directors include the heads of tax software company, Intuit, clothin...
The forum updates that have been going on across the rest of the Stardock websites have finally made their way to JoeUser. There are a whole slew of changes that hopefully I'll get to describing and documenting later for everyone, but one of the most immediate differences people have already noticed are the Forum Avatars; the little pictures that appear next to people's names on forum posts. We've had avatars for a while, as anyone who had one before would have it show on any comment they ...
This weekend, September 1-4, GalCiv 2 Lead Developer, Cari Begle (CariElf) and UI Designer/Stardock Art Director Paul Boyer (Mormegil) will be at DragonCon in Atlanta, Georgia. They will each be participating in a number of panel discussions over the course of the weekend and will field questions from both fans and aspiring game developers and artists. If you're going to be in the Atlanta area this holiday weekend, this is your chance to meet two of the people who made your favorite ...
Ok, like the weekly pick, I'm a day late with the poll too, and I can't think of any witty song lyrics that involve "Tuesday" to open with. Last week, I asked which NON Object Desktop application people most wanted to see an update to. 323 votes were cast, and there was a pretty close race between two of the applications. Here are the results: Which Non-Object Desktop App would you most like to see updated? Aquarium Desktop 13 4.02% ...
Sorry for the delay, this was supposed to go up yesterday but it slipped my mind amidst a bunch of other tasks I'm working on at the moment. Another slim week for picks, but what we dug up is definitely top-notch and worth checking out! Thanks to Island Dog this week for taking care of the administrative end of this while I was out on Friday! So, without further adieu, I give you this week's top picks, as chosen by some of our volunteer staff. FuzzyLogic (Super Wizop) A c...
Ok, today is a flood of Google news, so instead of three separate posts, I'm just going to wrap them all up in one... Last week it was the re-launch of the web-based word processor, Writely. This week Google has rolled out two new website administrator toolsets and announced a new deal with eBay. First off, there's the newly announced Google Webmaster toolset, a bundling of existing services such as the Sitemap indexing service, as well as site statistics and diagnostic tools. ...
Hotkey Freeware positions Skype for the Digital Home with Audio Device Switching, Alphanumeric Speed Dial, and more for PC and Mac Dual Booters San Francisco, CA and Plymouth, MI, August 24, 2006 – NHANDZ, a Digital Home company offering input devices and software that enable remote control of PC/Mac’s and Stardock, a leading developer of Windows enhancement utilities, announced the immediate availability of Keyboard LaunchPad (KLP) with Skype control. KLP with Skype control is a software...
Yesterday Apple Computer and Creative Technology announced that they had reached an agreement in the ongoing patent dispute over the iPod's navigation system. The patent in question is for the hierarchical user interface used in the Creative Zen to sort and display songs and other information. The agreement has Apple paying out $100 million to Creative, with that number to potentially decrease as Creative reaches similar deals with other MP3 player makers. Read more at CNet News.
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