The week is over!  It's Friday so as usual, it's time for This Week in Skinning.  We have a good collection of skins to feature this week, but be sure to browse through all the galleries and see what you might have missed.

Now for this weeks picks!

	Bluster for CursorFX by Libardo There are so many blue skins that this CursorFX theme would fit nicely with.  Great job!
	SD Micro Clock in DesktopX Widgets by Vad_M Vad_M always brings us some very useful and attractive gadgets for our desktops.  This is a "micro" clock with some detailed graphics.  Check it out.
	City Mouse in Dreams by AgustSigurdsson This is the matching icon set for the LoES suite which can be found on Skinartistry.com.
	After the Storms WS for LogonStudio Vista by ZoomerZ A really beautiful landscape scene is turned into a logon for Windows Vista.  Nice job!
	Dracon for Rainlendar by Libardo I have been waiting for this Rainlendar skin, and the wait was well worth it.  Definitely download this and check out this awesome design.
	Audio Crossover in Wallpapers by atomnet Another fantastic design.  Keep up the great work on these.
	Interim in Wallpapers by Richard Mohler A wonderful mix of colors and design makes me give this wallpaper a big thumbs up.

I look forward to more great works next week.  All your work is appreciated and stop by the skinners personal pages here on WinCustomize to see more of their skins.  See you next week!

Although Summer is here, you can still put some Spring into  your desktop, and this MyColors theme fits right in to the much warmer weather going on.  This is a theme designed for MyColors, and to find more information about MyColors, you can read through a walkthrough or view a screencast with more information. 

Visual Style and Wallpaper

The Spring theme has a vibrant colors that reflects pretty much everywhere.  I have been running some darker skins lately, and the bright colors were a welcome change.  The colors are not too bright either, and working with it on a daily basis wasn't a problem at all.

The wallpaper is simple, yet such a beautiful design. 

Icons

The color continues with the icons, and the ones with the flower designs are probably my favorite. 

Gadgets

The warmer seasons often have some unpleasant weather sometimes, so the included weather gadget can keep you updated of the current and upcoming conditions for your area.  This weather gadget is also expandable into a mini-mode to give you even more screen real estate if needed.

The Spring MyColors desktop is available for both Windows Vista and XP.  If you are a subscriber to Object Desktop then you are eligible for a discount for MyColors themes.  For more information visit the Spring MyColors theme page.

Hi folks!

Sorry I missed last week, with summer here , I have less time to devote to my blog articles, and I apologize for missing last week's deadline.

Because of the lack of time , I am going to be posting once every two weeks now till fall.

Having said that, here's this week's themes:

Well I picked out Blackbird by voidcore for the windowblind this week. it's a sleek little blind, which is easy on the eyes. One of the things that got my attention with this skin, is instead of having a different color for the active/inactive  highlight in taskbar, it has text that states "active","select" and "is active" upon mouseover  and when viewing the taskbar.

The greens and almost amber colors of the skin's contrast colors are very soft to the eye and are actually quite difficult to match with other skins. Because of this , I opted for things that either "almost matched " or blended well.

First I changed the right click menu to Seasons Reflections Plain Pack by buzzh58, Summer's Reflection. The yellow in the menu seems to blend nicely with the yellow/greens of the blind.

For Wall I chose Pool side by teddybearcholla. The half orb in the middle looks like it was meant to go with the start menu button and the whole look is refreshingly simple and clean.

I had a hard time finding DesktopX objects for this theme, but eventually managed to find two I thought worked well.

The first is Clear Window widget by bilbo1930. It's a nice clear weather widget with some splashes of color here and there to add definition.

The second was PJ's DXScripted Net Meters by pjpowell, one of my old favorites. It's small, and does exactly what it says, it monitors the flow over your internet connection.

For icons, I chose a nice crisp look without much fuss. Kwiksilver by skinhit fit the bill perfectly. This package is neat, well blended and very complete. The package goes well with many different looks as you will see later.

The CursorFX cursor  I chose actually came out of a windowblind I recently downloaded, Sandera by LightStar. The Blind came with alot of extras, including this cursor, which I recolored to fit the theme. Though with the recolor, I get a purple color for the wait cursor, the style and simplicity of the cursor matched very well the over all theme I created.

The second theme I'm featuring today is Spider-Man by  DaRkFuSsIoOn . I was going to do a whole setup of superhero themes done to de-emphasize the superhero side of the themes, but unfortunatly there were only two I could really do that with, and one I'd already used at one point.

I wanted to make this theme look as three dimensional as I could and so chose a dark wall from my collection, I can't find the link to this wall, and wb config doesn't provide names of the backgrounds available, so I can't tell you what it's called either. I chose the dark background after trying several silvery shiny looking ones, which actually changed the look of the blind so much it detracted from the appearance I wanted. If anyone has a link to this background do please include it here for me .

The cursor here is Metallica by J Aroche . The black and white , with the jagged edges added to the look I was heading for here.

Kwiksilver again, by skinhit worked the best here.

I had some fun with my DesktopX look, I went for some really shiny objects and it highlighted  the black background nicely.

Chrome Menu by Boxxi was a fun choice. This object reminded me of something I'd see at a car dealership, or in a trophy case... just really glossy and reflective.

I found a great object made by an old friend, Digital Trucker, RG111_Clock is chrome plated simplicity. The look was very three dimensional here and again made the dark background really pop.

I chose two more widgets here , both by Bilbo1930 , the first is True-Glass meter the second is True-Glass Weather. The transparency and reflection here made it possible to have so many widgets and objects.

I used Zig Zag 2 by Fairyy~ to complete the look. The silver and black complemented the blind's look nicely yet went perfect with the shiny metallic look of the DX  objects.

It's not that I intentionally speed as much as I just don't like being the victim of speed traps that I have made it my business to know what the best radar detectors are.

For the last 4 years in particular, I've been using various models of K40 radar detectors with the most recent one being a K40 Calibre installed last year.  The K40s are special because they are integrated into the car. That is, someone would not know that you had a radar detector.  The radar detector itself is installed professionally in the front of the vehicle (under the hood) and a remote receiver informs the driver of any radar threats.  Once installed, the read out is part of the dashboard (typically a pair of LEDs). 

Also during this time, I've been a daily lurker on many different car websites and the consensus, by far, is that the Valentine V1 is the best radar detector out there.  However, the V1 is a traditional radar detector which means it is quite conspicuous there on your windshield.  If you're reasonably handy, you can help this situation by hooking it up to a power source in the car, but it's still not nearly as seamless or subtle as a K40.

Pricing

The price difference between the K40 and the V1 is significant.  A fully set up K40 Calibre (with laser defuser) can end up around $2K.  The V1 is around $400.

Going head to head

Recently, while driving up north, I got a speeding ticket.  The K40 went off but it was with so little notice that it was far far too late (I was the trooper before the K40 went off).  So I decided to pick up a V1 and conduct a series of unscientific head to head tests over the past month or so.

So which radar detector is the best? The V1, by far, is superior. It's not even remotely close.  The V1 gave off far fewer false positives, seems to be much more intelligent in picking up what matters, was able to detect instant ons that were going on in the distance (The K40 never even went off), and gave far more advance warning.

Eventually, I decided to put them both in the car at the same time.  I had read that having two radar detectors in the car at once could cause them to interfere with each other. But at least in this case, there was no problem at all. The two were far enough apart (since the K40 is in the front under the hood) that they got along just fine.  It allowed me to really compare the two in performance and like my separate testings showed, the K40 was no where near as effective as the V1.

What I was really amazed at is the lack of false positives the V1 gives when it's in "advanced logic" mode. It really works phenomenally well.  The other thing I noticed was how well the V1 handled detecting troopers on the highway who were using instant on to nail targets. The K40 never even picked them up.  This evening, while driving up north, the V1 gave me plenty of notice of a state trooper on I75 but the K40 didn't pick it up until after I could see the trooper -- at which point I would have been dead meat if I had been relying on the K40.

The Verdict

So which would I use? The Valentine V1 right? Not necessarily.  The V1 is better. No doubt about it. The question really revolves around what is "good enough".  For cruising around town, the K40 gives ample notice. And let's face it, for most of us, that's when we get nailed. Going 45 in a 35 or 40 in a 25 is the scenario most people run into and the K40 works very well for that.  It doesn't work as well as the V1 but the K40 is completely integrated into the car. I can't do this with a V1.  The best I could do with a V1 would be to get a professional to install it up near my visor and put a remote display somewhere which would still be more than I would want on a day to day basis in my car.  What's nice about the K40 is that it works fairly well and it's largely invisible.

That said, the K40 is basically worthless for highway driving. I've had my installation checked a couple of times and I am sure part of the weakness of the K40 is how low to the ground it is (since it's installed near the front grill) compared to a traditional radar detector. But I can also tell that it's programming is fairly stupid compared to the V1. So if you do a lot of highway driving, the K40 is pretty useless.  So it really boils down to whether you speed a lot when you're on the highway as well as whether the "stealthiness" of the radar detector matters.

First looking through the galleries I thought this was going to be a tough week, but as I moved along I actually had to add a couple of more entries than usual, just because there was a bunch of stuff I wanted to feature. 

Now for this weeks picks!

	Shifty DX in DesktopX Themes by J. PuterDudeJim Really cool theme that has the ability to change colors just by adjusting the sliders.  This is great as it will match a wide variety of desktops.
	Waves in Dreams by muckyman A nice mix of colors and motions for your desktop.  Very nice.
	League of Extraordinary Skinners for IconPackager by Asect This is the matching icon set for the LoES suite which can be found on Skinartistry.com.
	IRONMAN folder in ObjectDock Icons by Libardo I can't believe this was done using Photoshop.  What an incredible job this is.
	Xeno for RightClick by Nimbin I really like the dark design, and I have quite a few WB skins in mind that this would work great with.
	Aladdins Cave in Wallpapers by ahabkaba I really enjoy the style and creativity of these wallpapers.  They look good on such a variety of themes.
	Arance - Orange in Wallpapers by floina This is a very nice and refreshing wallpaper.  Perfect for those summer-inspired desktops.
	Calm Fields in Wallpapers by DEVJIT Another beautiful scene which looks great on the desktop.  I would like to see more resolutions though.
	Red Pearl for WindowBlinds by voidcore This is a very creative skin.  The start menu and title bar buttons are probably my favorite, but it's a superb skin all around.  Great job.
	Haven for WindowBlinds by Night Train The colors are fantastic!  This is an example of a skin that will be perfect for a summer desktop as well.  Doesn't matter, it's a great looking skin for any time of the year.

Congrats and great work to all the skinners who submitted works this week.  Check out the skinners personal pages for more of their works.  See you next week!

This is an excerpt from something I wrote for our internal business plan. I've had a number of people comment that they think I should publish this so here it is:

Why do people make what they make? If you ask someone, they will answer that it’s based on how good of a job they do or their level of training or perhaps because that’s the “going rate”. But none of those answers get to the root of why people make what they make.

How much people are paid is derived from how much wealth they produce. The typical amount of wealth produced by a particular job title helps set the base salary – i.e. the market forces that set the “going rate”.

But the reason why an engineer makes X and a secretary makes Y has to do with the wealth they produce. To make more money, you have to find ways to produce more wealth.
People are not compensated simply because they are good at their job. They are compensated for what they produce either directly or indirectly through their labor via others. It’s not about fairness or skill or personality. Those things may be elements that lead to opportunities to generate more wealth but they are, in themselves, not the root sources of their salary.

The greatest worker will still not be as well paid as a mediocre worker if the product of the great worker’s labor doesn’t make as much wealth as the mediocre worker’s efforts.
For example, the reason the CEO of Stardock works so many hours, brings his laptop on vacation and is available on it all the time isn’t out of a sense of duty or guilt. It is because the CEO of Stardock wants to make more money and does this by producing more wealth through his efforts.

No one forces or suggests that a particular employee should work every weekend or be available on his laptop while away on vacation. But at the same time, he should realize he is making a choice. Most people are unaware that they’ve made a choice. Most companies are too rigid to even allow for such a choice. But in the right company, the management team will make sure employees have as many choices as possible in order to harness their native abilities to generate more wealth.

Compensation isn’t about fairness or hard work. Compensation is the result of the wealth the individual has produced. That Wealth can be measured as the difference in wealth that would have been generated by an organization if that person wasn’t there versus how much was produced by his contribution.

The individual who believes they are entitled to wealth simply because they are surrounded by it is always doomed to disappointment because they do not understand that those who obtained the wealth are the ones who are entitled to it.

Compensation is not given as a prize or gift. It is not a fief given by the benevolent corporation. Compensation is simply the portion of the wealth that the individual already controlled. The individual already controlled that wealth because they were the ones who produced it and the corporation is reliant on the individual to continue to produce that wealth.

The money people earn was always their money even before it was paid to them. The employee always had control over that compensation because they generated it. Compensation is not dispensed as a bribe or as tribute. Compensation is merely the affirmation of the wealth that the individual already produced. It was already their money. Companies that do not turn over this money are stealing is just as much as a thief who breaks into someone’s home.

Companies do not give compensation because they are generous or fair. Companies provide compensation because they want those individuals to continue to generate the wealth that allows them to mutually benefit.
The greedy company that attempts to withhold the share of the wealth that rightfully belongs to the individual destroys itself because by withholding the earned wealth, the individual can take their productivity elsewhere.

However, if an organization can successfully argue that a given amount of wealth would have been generated whether a particular person was there or not, then that particular person has no sovereign claim to any of that wealth and to think otherwise will only lead to baseless resentment. A person only “deserves” the compensation that they control. And they only control it if they produced it through their labor or investment.

With Impulse finally here, it's time to start a new set of guides and walkthrough to make sure you are getting the most out of Impulse.  I thought I would start it off with going over the Community features, specifically the Friends feature.  I really like this as I can keep tabs with what my friends are doing and other activity.

When you hit the Community tab, you will see a list in the upper right hand corner which shows which of your current friends are online, and also shows you any pending friend requests.

Clicking 'manage' will take you the friends request screen where you can review the pending requests you have.  As you see in the screenshot below, I have three pending requests.  From here you can choose to accept the friend request or just ignore it. 

That's the basics of managing your friend requests, so now lets move on to how to actually request someone to be a friend.  I noticed one person wasn't on my list, so I headed over to Bebi Bulma's profile and blog.  In the upper right hand section you should see a link to add a friend, so just click that and a friend request will be sent. 

You also have the opportunity to send a note with that request as well.

One you have all your friends organized, you can click the 'Friends' tab at the bottom of the Community section.  This will give you an overview of your friends activity.  It will show you who your friends are making friends with, and also show you comments and blog posts they have made.  It's a fantastic way to keep up to date on what your friends are doing.

You can also see a more detailed list about your friends, including links to their blog and profile by selecting the 'Friends list' or 'Dashboard'.  You will also have the ability to remove friends from here also if you wish. 

After reading this guide you should have a good understand of how to request and manage your friends with Impulse.  If you don't have Impulse yet, head over to www.impulsedriven.com and get your copy.

Stardock’s new Impulse digital distribution platform has been recognized by Microsoft as having met the stringent testing criteria and been awarded the right to display the Certified for Windows Vista logo.

Impulse, which was formally released by Stardock on June 17th, 2008, is a cohesive, integrated virtual platform for consumers and developers that has been designed to simplify buying, supporting, and developing PC games and software applications. Through Impulse, consumers can purchase, download and install games, utilities and even video drivers, enhancing the Windows experience.

“Microsoft is pleased that Stardock has earned the Certified for Windows Vista software logo for their Impulse application,” said Jeff Price, senior director in Windows Client Product Management at Microsoft Corp. “This highlights Stardock’s commitment to providing its customers with higher quality applications that deliver a more secure, reliable and compatible experience with Windows Vista.”

Applications that receive this recognition have been independently tested to assure the highest levels of compatibility, functionality and reliability and must meet both Microsoft's own security guidelines and the privacy standards set for by the Anti-Spyware coalition.

Phil Madis, Director of Business Development at Stardock, added, “We are pleased to have been awarded the highest level of Vista compatibility certification by Microsoft. By undergoing and passing the rigorous testing process, we are able to assure our customers that Impulse has been optimized for ease of use, optimal performance and to take advantage of the enhanced security features of Windows Vista.”

It should be noted that Impulse supports both Windows Vista and Windows XP. Impulse was developed using Microsoft’s .NET technology.

Impulse is the greatest thing since sliced bread...yada yada yada.

But how good is it really? Ultimately, only you will be able to decide.  What I'm going to do here is give my personal opinion on how Impulse stands on the eve of its launch.

The Comparisons

Let's just get this out of the way, Impulse is not Steam or Direct2Drive or Xfire or whatever.  It's has a very different design philosophy.  So let me just say this: You would have to pry Steam out of my cold dead hands.  You should judge Impulse as how well it addresses your problems.

First Impressions

So I double click on the Impulse icon.  How fast does it load?  On my ThinkPad T60 it's about 5 seconds but YMMV.  In its phase 2 edition (August) I think we need to make it more multithreaded so that when you launch it, it comes up like a window. I.e. instantly.  But it is pretty snappy (a lot faster for me than the betas were).

My next question would be, how much RAM is this thing using?

On load up, about 15 megabytes which is pretty good given that Internet Explorer uses 84 megabytes! 

The Store

From a digital e-commerce point of view, the million dollar question is, how good is the selection in the Impulse store?  With Steam or Direct2Drive, I can get a gazillion different games.  So what about Impulse? The answer depends on what you're looking for. 

The first week of the Impulse launch will be spent handling the logistics of getting hundreds of gigabytes of games, utilities, and applications up on the servers. So what is available at say 1pm on the day of the launch will be different from what is available at 5pm of the same day with each day adding more and more stuff.

But by Christmas, I suspect it won't be selection that makes one choose one digital store over another but rather the features and services that these things provide.  Impulse, for instance, supports refunds for users having technical issues. That's a pretty big deal IMO. As far as I know, that will be unique to Impulse.

Community Features

So that we're all on the same page, Impulse isn't just a download manager ala Stardock Central.  It is a full blown digital distribution platform.  The platform comes in the form of Impulse Reactor which is a server-side virtual API set for developers.

A developer could, for instance, using the free Impulse Reactor SDK (which will be launched in mid August) type into their game: CVP.SaveGame() and save their game to the player's virtual drive.  Or CVP.LoadPreferences() to get a game's preferences.

The first game to make use of the Common Virtual Platform will be The Political Machine.  Unfortunately, The Political Machine v1.1 wasn't ready by the Impulse launch so we had to hide the "Games" button from the community area for multiplayer match making.  As soon as it's ready, the button will come back and players will be able to find games either there or within The Political Machine itself.  Other games that will be using it include Sins of a Solar Empire, Galactic Civilizations II v2.0, and Demigod.  We are also working with a number of third party developers to begin using this.

Blogging

I am very biased in favor of non-website whenever possible. I just find website stuff slow. 

The blogging and forum behavior on Impulse is pretty fast but I'd like to see it much faster.  As in, instantaneous.

I think in the coming weeks you'll see a lot of improvements to performance across the whole thing as the initial launch was largely about just getting stuff in there.

My Friends

The friends stuff is a pretty big deal for me as both a user and as a gamer.  It's only in its beginning stages really.  Eventually, you'll be able to easily get games going and filter by friends or friends of friends to help improve the multiplayer experience.

When I play on-line, my biggest gripe is the griefing and such I run into.  I'm 36 years old, I just don't have time to waste in a multiplayer game with some 15 year old whose out to "max their ranking".

Features that didn't make to the launch that make me sad

There are 3 big features that had to be put into phase 2 (August) that make me sad. The Impulse side was done but we just didn't have enough time on the game side to make use of them yet.

Those are:

1. Multiplayer Matchmaking.  People could start and join games right from Impulse.
2. Achievements.
3. Game Rankings.

They'll get in there, we just have to update The Political Machine and other games to make use of them so that we can show off what's possible to game developers.

The same is true for NAT negotiation and such.  One of the biggest pains in the butt on the PC is getting ports and firewalls set up right for a game. In Impulse phase 3, the Impulse back end will be set up to act as a kind of back-up for games that use our platform.  So a user could connect to another user without knowing anything about routers and what not.  We're hoping Demigod will be the first game to make use of this.

Getting Updates

So right now, there's a tab called "Updates" that shows up if there are updates to ones programs.  I'd like to see an option put in asap that simply has Impulse download these updates automatically.

My other request is that when downloading updates, I want to see my actual bandwidth speed. I realize this is cosmetic but somewhere, techies should be able to get some idea of how fast their connections are.

Getting to my stuff

Impulse lets users add new categories to  their applications and move things around via the dock (we'll talk about that more soon).

If there's an update, an exclamation point shows up next to it.

What's not in the launch version are forums for every application or a chat channel. Eventually everything will get its own forum and chat channel.

Registering your stuff

Users can associate various programs with their account.  Right now, the only commercial programs that you can associate with your account are Stardock ones and programs you bought from Impulse. But the next step is to let you be able to associate any program with your account regardless of where you purchased it.

This way, when are setting up a new machine, you can just let Impulse download and install all your stuff (freeware, shareware, games, whatever).

Preferences

Clicking on the orb in the top left opens up additional options.  You can set up where things install on a per category basis:

The Dock

Impulse is designed to customizeable.  The initial launch doesn't have the skinning selection features in. That's coming "real soon now(TM)". But you can add and edit your own categories:

 
Extending Impulse

When you press the minimize to dock, Impulse launches the dock:

Impulse Dock

The dock displays the same content as the Impulse client. By default, it is set to auto-hide so it will hide to the taskbar edge with the user able to bring it up by moving their mouse to the bottom edge of the screen.

The dock is pretty powerful and yet light weight.

We plan to release later on an Impulse Tray applet that users can optionally use to stay in touch with friends, posts, updates, etc.  It will not be part of Impulse itself as it will be designed to be as tiny as possible. 

So what's next?

I think most people will find Impulse pretty compelling. Initially, its game content is not on par with Steam or Direct2Drive but that should change over time.  Obviously on the non-game software side, it enjoys a tremendous advantage. 

Impulse itself is pretty snappy but I found the forums and blog services be a bit on the slow side. This will be something Stardock will need to improve.

Download speeds of new programs, by contrast are fast. Faster than anything I've ever used anywhere.

The customization features, while decent, could be a lot better. I.e. I'd like to be able to select from a list of skins.  Stardock's the leader in this area so it's something that it will be adding and supporting through its skinning site, WinCustomize.com.

It will be important that Impulse show off the features of Impulse Reactor as quickly as possible.  Getting the Multiplayer matchmaking in should be up by the end of the month.  Achievements, rankings, etc. are all going to be crucial as well.

I'd like to be able to filter out programs that are available but not installed. I'm an extreme case since I have a ton of things linked to my account but still.

I think people will be pleasantly surprised at how fast and memory efficient the overall program is.  Given how pretty it is, on might expect it to be slow and a memory hog but even in its first release, it's really snappy.