Mozilla is celebrating a very important milestone this week; the 200 millionth download of their open source web browser, Firefox.  This news comes on the heels of the announcement that Firefox had recently passed 15% of the US market.  Firefox, a branch of the main Mozilla browser, which has its roots in the old Netscape product line is mounting a serious challenge to the long-standing king-of-the-hill in the browser market space, Microsoft.  Already it has 39% of the market in ...

Over the past few weeks, we've been letting out little bits of information on the impending release of Object Desktop 2007 .  There have been articles highlighting updates to utilities such as Keyboard Launchpad ,  Object Desktop Launchpad, Virtual Desktops, and Theme Manager , as well as the announcement of a brand-new utility; Enhanced File Dialog .  Well, today the wait is over, today we are officially launching Object Desktop 2007.  Part of our goal with this laun...

Anyone who's been on JoeUser long enough remembers the days of diamond-d, Orrin Woodward, Island Reef Casino etc.  These were blogs that pushed either a company, a product or a service.  Often times they would submit a flood of posts to crowd out the Recent Articles list.  And it turns out that some of those blogs were part of a Google bombing effort to raise one company's Google ranking.  These were articles that didn't invite discussion, and were usually bad copy-paste jobs...

With the upcoming release of Object Desktop 2007, we've been doing a lot of work to provide updates to some of the programs we include in the suite.  You've already read about the newest application we added, Enhanced File Dialogs, and you've taken a peek at the improvements to Keyboard Launchpad.  Now it's time to take a look at the final three components that are getting some updates and work for the launch of Object Desktop 2007: Theme Manager 2.3 Object Desktop Launchpad 2.0 ...

In the past week I’ve written about the new Enhanced File Dialog utility, as well as the updates we’ve made to Keyboard Launchpad in advance of the release of Object Desktop 2007, coming tomorrow (Tuesday, August 1st). Today, with less than 24 hours before the official launch of ODNT 2007, I’d like to take the time to walk you through some of the other products that have received some new features and a great deal of polish. Click on the links below to go straight to that section of the artic...

For those of you who didn't know, we do in fact have an IRC channel for WinCustomize on the official Stardock IRC server.  If you haven't stopped by in the past, give it a look.  I'd like to make it the main point for skinners looking for some real-time chat to gather. If you're unsure what IRC is, or how to join in on the fun, I've posted an article that should help you out. See you in chat!

Every day, thousands of people come by this website, and many of them participate on the forums, leave comments on skins, icons, themes etc.  One of the things that makes WinCustomize great is the community interaction, the ability to swap opinions and ideas, and even just regular everyday chit-chat.  Forums are great for community building, but sometimes you want a more immediate reaction, or you're bored and want someone to entertain you for a little while.  For those who want m...

It's Monday, so that means it's time for a new Weekly Poll.  Last week, we asked users to chime in on whether or not they like the new forum system and layout.  It seems some of our poll voting issues have been worked out as 207 of you cast a vote.  The results were overwhelmingly positive, with roughly 84% of you saying they were at least "OK."  Here's the breakdown: What do you think of the new WinCustomize Forums?   I like them. 78 37.68%   I l...

One of the questions many are asking themselves regarding the upcoming release of Windows Vista early next year is how will they actually install it?  Is it an upgrade?  A clean install?  Does it require the sacrifice of a dozen chickens and a pint of bats blood?  Well, today Ars Technica is reporting on the official upgrade matrix, a chart from Microsoft released that details what you need to do to get from your current version of Windows to any of the Vista editions. T...

It seems Dell just can't catch a break lately.  Yet another one of their laptops has bust into flames, with the battery burning straight through the bottom of the case.  The report of the incident comes from a Toms Hardware forum member who was able to see first-hand the results of a burning Dell.  Being the dutiful geek he is, he grabbed his digital camera and rushed to the scene of the disaster to snap a few shots. Click on the link below to read the tale of woe, and see a fe...

As a departure from the typical news about Google releasing their 2396th product, or Microsoft removing a feature from vista, today we bring you some news from the world of data security and privacy. Yesterday, it was reported that two laptops were stolen from a U.S. Navy Recruiting station in New Jersey, and another from Armstrong World Industries Inc.  Between the three laptops, personal data such as addresses, names for upwards of 43,000 individuals were lost.  An estimated 16,0...

Earlier this year, Microsoft rolled out the controversial Windows Genuine Advantage tool to Windows XP systems in an attempt to combat piracy of the OS.  The tool, which was labeled as a "High Priority" update, despite it not resolving any security holes or bugs in the operating system, was met with a great deal of criticism and frustration on the part of both end-users and technical professionals. Despite the issues encountered with WGA, Microsoft remains committed to the Genuine Advant...

Yesterday it was the Enhanced File Dialog utility.  Today, we'd like to tell you a little bit about an update we made to one our existing utilities in the Object Desktop suite; Keyboard Launchpad. Keyboard Launchpad is a program that allows the user to quickly and easily build "hotkeys" that can launch applications, open web pages, paste saved clipboards, issue system commands, control media players and much more.  It is a great utility that can save a lot of time when it comes to c...

Windows is full of various keyboard shortcuts to do any number of different tasks and functions.  There's the standard copy, paste, cut, open and close shortcuts that almost everyone is familiar with, but what if you could have a keyboard command to play a sound, or open a specific application?  If that's the case, then ObjectDesktop.net has yet another program you'd probably want to check out; Keyboard Launchpad (KLP). Keyboard Launchpad is a program that allows you to quickly...

Sharman Networks, the company behind the Kazaa P2P program have finally reached a settlement with the record industry.  The deal has the company paying out more than $100 million to the labels in exchange for all pending litigation to be dropped. While the record labels pushed this settlement as a victory over P2P, and tried to cast Sharman Networks in a bad light, Sharman instead pointed out that this settlement actually legitimizes P2P as a viable download medium for digital content. ...