When it comes to social networking sites, Facebook is at the top of the list lately with it's powerful application platform and robust user pages.  Unfortunately one of its most promising features, Groups, seems to have been left in the dust.

A lot of talk and attention has been directed towards Facebook lately, especially since the opening of the application platform so any user with a PC and an itch to code can add more or less any function they desire to the wildly popular social networking site.  On the whole, the applications platform has done great things for the site and turned the profile pages into great information, productivity and entertainment tools.

Of course, all of this is great, except it’s not applied evenly.  On one hand you have your amazing profile page system, with limitless potential thanks to third party applications, but on the other hand you have the Groups system.  Like the name implies, a Facebook Group is a point for users with some common interest come together.  In theory, you’d think this would be a fantastic opportunity to leverage all the vast amount of data each user represents in some really interesting way.  Wouldn’t it be cool to see what countries of the world are represented in a particular group?  There are tons of possibilities.  Possibilities that are sadly ignored at the moment.

In a Facebook group, all you can do is post to the “wall”, a common bulletin board that is displayed on the main group page, post to a more traditional discussion board for your group, or post photos.  There’s no way to integrate applications, no way to easily extend functionality.  When you form a group, you essentially have a glorified web forum.

Things aren’t much better from an admin standpoint.  I am the co-admin on the Desktop Customization group on Facebook, which has seen very strong growth since we launched it just a few short days ago.  What can I modify?  Group description, type, news, basic profile information, and who else has admin rights on the group.  The options for which functions you want to have on your group number a massive four.

• Show related groups
• Enable discussion board
• Enable the wall
• Enable photos

That’s it.  At this moment in time that’s what you’re limited to if you want to run a group on Facebook.

Here’s what I’d like to see added to the Facebook Group system.  Adding in some of these features would make the group system as much of a killer feature as the profile pages are.  Facebook could be the premier site for social groups as well as individuals.

1. Applications for Groups
   Let the ingenious developers get access to the group system.  You’ve seen the success that resulted from profile applications.  Imagine the possibilities when you have access to a much larger, and more diverse pool of information.  Opening it up for third party applications also means less work for the Facebook core team as they don’t have to worry as much about developing new functionality themselves.
2. Tags
   Tagging is the wave of the future man!  Allow groups to tag themselves with keywords, making it easier for them to be found, and also for users to be better able to sort what’s out there.  I’d love to see all groups at a glance that flag themselves with the keyword “Vista”  While searching does accomplish this to an extent, single-click sorting from the group page is probably a lot easier for users to get their heads around.  We have tags for photos, why not for groups?
3. News Feed
   Right now, you can specify one current news item for the group.  That’s it.  When you want to update it, you overwrite the current news.  It would be nice to have a listing of news items to scan back through.  This would help the Groups system supplant external web sites.  Many group web pages are used to distribute news or information, and have a news page of some sort.  Give users that same functionality as a group.
4. Better Member Sorting
   My group has 120 people in it right now.  There is no easy way to sort through them.  Who’s the most recent?  How many people belong to the same main networks?  I’d like to see if there’s any sort of commonality between my group members.  Think of it almost as groups within the group.  This information will help any group admin figure out how to best promote and manage their group.
5. Posting Video & Audio
   Ok, I can toss up photos, which are great and all, but video is where things are going… I mean, I hear there’s this new-fangled thing called YouTube out there that lets users upload their own videos to share with people.  Also, a bit older but still cool, are these things called podcasts.  Allowing a group to link and host rich media content adds a lot of value.
6. Invite Users Who Aren’t Your Friend
   Ok, this one could border on a spamming nightmare, but in general, groups should be able to invite users who might be interested but with whom the admins might not be friends with.  Instead of having an internal method for this, I have been emailing contacts outside of Facebook with a group link to join.  Make it easier to connect with people without having to resort to outside communication.
7. Block Rearrangement
   This one is more important once more features are added.  On my personal profile I can rearrange blocks of content more or less as I please.  I can’t move anything on the group.  If we ever get more options on what to include in a group, being able to move things around is a must.
8. Better User Access Management
   Lets say I have an officer who isn’t an administrator.  I would like them to be able to moderate the discussion board, but not the wall.  Or maybe I want them to just be able to update the news item.  Right now, if you want a user to edit more or less anything on the group, they have to be a full-fledged administrator.  Granular access for officers is key for large and growing groups.

This is all off the top of my head after playing with Groups for a few days.  I’m sure if I were to seriously sit down and try and design my ideal Group experience, I’d be able to come up with a lot more.  I’d be happy though if even half of the above ideas were implemented.  Facebook Groups stand to do for small online social sites (gaming clans, blog groups etc) what the Facebook Profile page did for personalized homepages.  It could make them obsolete.

But for now, I remain frustrated with the lack of options and make due with what we have.  It’d be nice if there was any mention on the official blog of any work on Groups being planned, but I know that right now all the attention and effort is being centered on the application platform for user profiles.

In the first part of my iPhone review I wrote about my experiences with features like the camera, SMS, Calendar, Widgets, YouTube, and the iPod function.  Today I want to give my review on some of the more important features, and give you my gripes and final thoughts on the Apple iPhone.  It's now over 2 weeks that I have had the iPhone and I spent more time using the features I'm going to talk about today.

Lets continue with Part 2 of this review.

E-Mail:  This is another feature that is very important to me, as I like to check and send e-mail from wherever I am at.  I use GMail as my primary personal e-mail and the iPhone already had most of the settings taken care of from start.  I just had to enter some basic information such as username and password, and the e-mail started coming through.  This also appears to be the case for Yahoo Mail, .Mac,  and AOL.  You also have the option to configure POP mail and IMAP.  Configuring a POP account was just as simple and I was up and running with just a few clicks.

The problem with using GMail is that all the mail comes through to the iPhone regardless if you have read it or not.  There is no option to select mail as read, and you have to manually delete all mail.  There is no option to "select all" which I have found to be quite annoying.  The iPhone also does not include any type of spam filter.  Many people have reported problems with receiving loads of spam, but I have not had any problems with it, so I can't comment too much about that.  On the good side is the e-mail is the same as you would see on your computer at home, it's not broken down into text as other phones commonly do, and is very easy to read.

Turning the iPhone gives you the "widescreen" view which is much easier on the eyes, and definitely gives a better view of the sites you are visiting.  One of my biggest problems with Safari is its lack of a password manager.  I visit many sites that require a login and having to log in every time gets old real quick.  I visited many websites over the past week and have not found any rendering issues, although some users have been reporting some slight issues with some sites.

 Phone:  I guess I should mention the phone part since it is the iPhone.  Nothing real groundbreaking here, it has all the normal functions of a phone just with a nicer interface.  The contacts are nicely displayed although it could use some improvements on navigating through a large contact list.  The call quality is fine on both sides of the conversation, and the speakerphone worked well although it could use a slight volume boost.

The much talked about Visual Voicemail feature is a cool addition as well.  You will appreciate this if you have more than a few messages and try to navigate through them.  The iPhone displays all the voicemails and you simply tap the one you want to hear, and you easily navigate through that particular message with a slider on the screen.  I have only used the voicemail a few times, but it seems like a feature that will come in handy.

EDGE/Wi-fi:  Now this has probably been the biggest source of complaints regarding the iPhone is the use of the EDGE network, and its lack of 3G support.  Now I'm not going to get into the 3G vs. EDGE argument because there is pro's and con's on both sides, and it really doesn't matter anyways.  I am averaging about 130kbps using the EDGE network here where I live, and while that is not the greatest speed in today's world, it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be.   Most pages load in under 10 seconds, but more graphic heavy sites do take a bit longer, and updating widgets and maps takes just a few seconds as well.  My last data service was through Sprint and the speeds I'm getting now are equal to, if not better, than with them. 

Now EDGE is not the only way to get data as the iPhone also supports wi-fi.  When I'm at the home the iPhone asked if I wanted to join my network, and then asked for my pass key, and that was it.  It now seamlessly switches to my home network whenever it's in range, and if I'm in public, it also will notify me if I want to connect to any available networks.  The town I live in has free wireless to the entire town, so having that ability is great.  I'm seeing average speeds of 3.5mbs using a wi-fi connection, and it's obviously a much better experience.

 
Maps:  I think Maps was one of the first commercials of the iPhone I saw, and I wondered if it could really search for a restaurant or store and have it pop up with the directions, map, and info.  Well in short, it does.  You simply type the name of the location you want to find, and it will pop up with an option to see it's information such as its website, phone number, address, and directions.  I did quite a few general searches as well, and what that means is I searched for things like "grocery store", "restaurant", etc. instead of the direct name of the business I was looking for. The majority of times the results that came up were pretty accurate to what I was searching for.  This is a very handy feature, and something I will definitely use often.

 
Battery:  This is very hard for me to review because I never sat down and timed when I was using (insert feature) and for how long.  On a typical day I will use the actual phone for 1-2 hours, check e-mail maybe 10-15 times, and spend maybe 1-2 hours on the internet (using wi-fi mostly), and that will bring the battery meter down to about 50-60% if that.  Battery life was probably the biggest concern I had about the iPhone as stories of it being less than average seemed abundant.  For about 3 days I had it on standby mostly with very little use and it got down to about 10%. 

I wish I could give better numbers, but from a typical user standpoint, I don't think battery performance is a big issue.  Obviously if you are going to have heavy use watching movies and listening to music than it will greatly affect performance, but for what the iPhone does the battery life is sufficient for me at least.

Keyboard:  Many of the features I have already gone through such as Safari, e-mail, and SMS would be pretty much worthless if the keyboard was unusable, and being used to actual buttons was another area I was concerned about.  The first few days of use were "interesting" to say the least, but over the past two weeks I have become quite proficient at typing on the "keypad".  I still make a few mistakes, but the auto-correct feature usually takes care of any misspellings I might type.  The biggest downside is not being able to look away from the screen while typing, as with "normal" phone keypads you eventually get used to the layout and can learn to type without looking.  When you are using Safari you can turn the iPhone to get the "widescreen" view, with a wider keypad also, but it's a shame that it doesn't apply to everything else, especially with e-mail. 

Introduction

SkinStudio is a program that allows users to create visual styles for Windows XP and Windows Vista. These visual styles are applied by the popular GUI skinning program, WindowBlinds.  A fully complete visual style will change the title bars, borders, push buttons, scrollbars, Start bar, Start menu, and virtually every other part of the Windows GUI.

SkinStudio 6 represents a complete rewrite of previous versions of SkinStudio.  The new version is designed to make it much easier for new users to get into skinning. Skinners can change as much or little of the GUI as they choose and SkinStudio will fill in the rest for them. A new skin can take a matter of minutes or weeks depending on how sophisticated the skin is.

The new interface of SkinStudio

The old interface of SkinStudio

A Tour of SkinStudio 6

SkinStudio 6 takes on a much more task-oriented design.  Rather than the user being overwhelmed with information by seeing all elements of the visual style at once, SkinStudio 6 instead takes the user step by step through the skin.

Editing controls

Each element shows either (or both) a Windows XP logo or a Windows Vista logo to let the skin author know which features are supported under which operating system.  Moreover, when editing a particular element, the interface is clean and to the point.

What can and can't be changed is very straight forward.

Moreover, each section will be tied to a particular part of the SkinStudio portion of the Customization Wiki. In this way, users can instantly get help making skins from not just Stardock but the entire skinning community.

Editing the IE7 tabs & Vista Controls

SkinStudio 6 is being designed with the upcoming WindowBlinds 6 in mind. All the new Windows Vista controls, Internet Explorer 7 controls and more will be easily editable. No more trying to figure out how to support the latest/greatest features.

Elements available to be skinned are now easily accessible

One of the most common complaints about WindowBlinds skins is that many skins didn't support many of the features.  This was often because the previous SkinStudio was designed at at time when WindowBlinds was much simpler and as more features were added, the newer features began to get buried in the UI.  The new SkinStudio design makes these new features much more accessible.

We're going to need your help

Because SkinStudio 6 is such a radical departure from the existing SkinStudio design, we are going to need a lot of feedback on this.  SkinStudio 6 will be available in beta form on Object Desktop on July 18th (2007).

Friday is always a good time of the week, not because the weekend is near (well maybe), but today is the today for "This Week in Skinning". Last week was a great week with several featured skins including an icon pack, a dream, a suite, WB skin, and more.

While you are browsing through skins this week, be sure to check the articles section as well. I put up a feature tour of ObjectDock Plus that shows some of the best reasons to upgrade, along with a new video demo.

Now for the picks!

SD Desktop (cx) for CursorXP By Vad_M I'm usually used to featured Vad_M's fantastic DesktopX creations, so it was great to see a cursor from him. Check this one out.

ImageMagick Object demo for DesktopX By Skarnivorous This object demo shows some of the cool things you can do with DesktopX. It generates a mirror image from a source image, and I can see some really cool widgets using something like this.

Approaching Storm for DesktopX By sViz This is a very cool widget that puts a "thunderstorm" on your desktop complete with lightning and thunder. Great job.

Ruby IP for IconPackager By pinchecl It's great to see icon packs being submitted again. Great set by pinchecl so be sure to download these.

Over the hills and far away in Wallpapers By webby85 A really beautiful wallpaper that goes great with a variety of skins. I would like to see more resolutions though. Great work.

XP Professional III in WindowBlinds By adni18 Not a new skin, but adni18 has given this skin a really nice update, and it's definitely worth checking out again.

Knot Vista for XP in WindowBlinds By I.R. Brainiac Another great Master skin has made its presence, and it's definitely a great piece of work. There are plenty of matching skins to go with this as well, so be sure to put this one on your list.

Not of this Earth for Xion in Xion By I.R. Brainiac Two in a row for I.R. Brainiac, but well deserved. This is a very cool looking skin for Xion. Nice work.

Looks like this edition had a few more than usual, so another great week it is for submissions. Be sure to check out the artists personal sites for more work, and be sure to leave comments on what you think of their works. See you next week!

Well it has been a little over a week since I purchased my iPhone, or should I say the iPhone my wife purchased for me.  Either way I have been trying to use all the features and find any issues or problems that are worth noting.  In this review you are are not going to get any scientific numbers or data, but you are going to get an honest review from someone who tested the iPhone with real use everyday. 

I picked up the iPhone on it's release day, and only had to wait in line for 2-3 minutes before I was able to get in.  The Apple Store in Orlando that I went to seemed to have more than enough on hand, even though there were over 100 people waiting in line since the early morning.  Upon getting home I was very excited to get it activated, and to activate you need to use the latest version of iTunes which after having to deal with countless phone sales reps in the past, seemed like a great idea.  No hassles, no sales pressure, just enter my info, select my plan and options, and be on my way.

It couldn't be that easy, well not for me it wasn't.  There was a wide variety of reports of people having trouble activating their phones which probably had something to do with hundreds of thousands of people trying to activate their phones.  I could not get my phone activated on Friday night and I actually had to make a trip to the AT&T store the next day.  I'm still not sure what exactly happened, but I was happy to get it finally activated and working.

My first impressions is that is was much smaller and lighter than I first predicted.  The only buttons are the volume controls, silence button, and the "lock button" all which are around the edges of the iPhone.  There is also a headphone port, mic, speakers, and data/charging port.  The black face of the iPhone has just one button which is the "home" button which allows you return to the home screen no matter what screen you are currently in.

This will be part 1 of a 2 part review.

Interface:  The touch screen interface lives up to the hype.  It's very clear and responsive, and I haven't had any trouble with the screen itself.  The home screen is where you find access to just about everything on the iPhone including Safari, e-mail, weather, camera, phone, and more.  I was very nervous about the screen getting dirty or scratched, so this past weekend I made another trip to pick up some screen protectors.  Simply tapping the icon will take you to your selection and all the applications are very intuitive and didn't require much thinking to figure out how to use and configure them.

Camera/Photos:  The iPhone includes a 2 megapixel camera.  I would have expected at least 3 megapixel or more, but that's the way it is.  You also cannot record video and there aren't any type of adjustments or settings for taking pictures.  The camera really isn't a big issue for me, as I only use it to take quick photos, and the quality isn't bad at all for what it is.  Clicking the Photos icon will take you to your photo albums on the iPhone which lists all your albums and give you basic information like how many pictures are in the albums, and a preview picture. 

Clicking any of the photo albums will take you to the pictures where you can view them individually or as a slideshow.  Turning the iPhone to the side will give you a landscape view and you can quickly scroll through pictures by swiping your finger to either side.  Selecting an individual picture will give you options to delete, or you can e-mail the photo, assign it to a contact, or use it as wallpaper.  All these functions worked without problem and I even setup my Flickr account so I can e-mail photos directly to my Flickr account and blog.

SMS:  I was never a big user of text messaging, probably because I never had it as an included option on my plans, but the AT&T plan includes 200 messages, so I intend on using them.  The times I did use them they were just basic text messages, but the iPhone goes about this just a little different.  The iPhone uses text "bubbles" to list your messages into conversations, so you can easily view past text messages without having to search through an inbox.  Being somewhat new to text messaging, this definitely is an advantage over typical text messages.

 
Calendar:  A calendar on my phone is something I use very often, and I have been very disappointed with this feature with other phones, especially with Windows Mobile 5.  The iPhone calendar has a simple interface that will display your calendar and appointments in either list, day, or month view.  Clicking your appointment will give you the detailed view of times, notes, and any other relevant information.  You can also set alerts for your appointments and create new ones which will sync with your PC or Mac calendar.  I have been very impressed with the calendar feature, and it's definitely the best out of the phones I have used in the past.

YouTube:  I have been getting more and more into YouTube lately, and I was curious of how this application would work and so far I have been pleased.  YouTube is still in the process of converting video over for use on the iPhone, but during my searches I found most of the popular videos were available.  You can search for videos, view a featured and most viewed list, and add any videos you have viewed to a bookmarks list.  Videos load up fairly quickly and the audio/video quality is excellent, I'm just now waiting for more videos to view.

Widgets:  The iPhone includes several widgets including stocks, weather, clock, and calculator.  The weather is probably my favorite as with one tap I can see the current and upcoming forecast not, and it supports multiple locations, so I can move my finger across the screen and view the other locations I have set.  I'm not a big user of the stocks widget, but it does what it does in an easy to read manner.  The same goes for the calculator. 

Notes:  The notes feature has gotten some flack lately becuase it doesn't sync, which is a valid issue to raise, but I didn't expect much from notes in the first place.  Notes lets me simply add a quick list to the my iPhone which is great when making a trip to the store.  For example I was at the store this weekend and found an item I needed to remember the size of, so I simply created a new note, and e-mailed it to myself to view on my PC at home. 

iPod:  I guess it wouldn't be an iPhone without an iPod, so how does it stack up?  For all purposes the iPod in the iPhone isn't much different than what a stand-alone iPod does.  The interface is very similar only improved for use with the touch screen, but something it does have over a regular iPod is the Cover Flow feature.  Cover flow allows you to browse your music gallery by the album artwork, much in the same way it's displayed in iTunes.  Moving your finger across the screen moves through the album covers and you just tap to select the songs you want to hear. 

I don't have a video iPod so I can't really compare it, but watching music videos was done without problems and once again the audio/video was just about perfect.  Listening to both my iPod and iPhone I didn't detect any noticeable difference in sound quality, although the volume on the iPhone is just a bit lower than my iPod. 

I have used ObjectDock for several years, and when ObjectDock Plus was released, I pretty much jumped to get the upgrade.  I would say that ObjectDock Plus is best know for it's addition of tabbed docks, which is a great feature to organize dock shortcuts into categories as I do, but there are some other great features in OD+ that are sometimes overlooked.

I frequently see questions asking about the advantages of upgrading to ObjectDock Plus, so here is a quick tour of some of features you will find in OD+.
 

Tabbed Docks

Lets start with the most recognized feature which is the tabbed docks.  The tabs make it much easier and convenient to organize your docks by having individual tabs for whatever type of category you would like.  For instance, I have a tab for "Graphics" which contains shortcuts to applications like Photoshop, Vue 6, etc.  I also have one for "Office" which contains all the shortcuts for Office 2007.
 

The tabs and backgrounds are skinnable as well, and you can even assign each tab its own style.  The tabbed docks can contain the same shortcuts, urls, and docklets as the standard version of ObjectDock.  OD+ also has taskbar and system tray support so you can add a tab which will show the contents of each.  This is very handy if you want to use ObjectDock to replace your taskbar.

Multiple Docks

Why settle for just one dock, when you can have two, three, or as many as you want?  You can create several docks for your desktop, and you can even have both tabbed and regular docks on the desktop together. 

You can set each dock to have its own configurations, and even its own background.  Each dock can be set as a drawer, to auto-hide, or any of the other configurations that are available in ObjectDock.

Fly-Out Menus

This is a really cool feature, and can make your desktop way more productive as well.  You can create a fly-out menu the dock and have it display locations such as My Computer, Documents, Pictures, and more.  When you click the icon a "fly-out" menu will appear that will show the contents of that location and allow you to browse through with quick and smooth animation.
 

Task Grouping / Taskbar Options

As mentioned above, ObjectDock Plus can display your taskbar in the dock, but this is also configurable as you can choose which windows to display.  You can choose to see all windows, minimized windows, or non-animated windows only.  If you have several of the same windows open, you can reduce clutter by using task grouping.  Task grouping will "group" similar windows together and make it easy to access them in the docks.

Colorize Backgrounds

There are hundreds of docks, including tabbed docks, available on WinCustomize and many of them are made to match specific WindowBlinds skins for a perfect desktop match.  Maybe you want to add your color though, and with OD+ that is possible.  You can change the dock background to the color you desire with just a few clicks of the mouse.  It makes it real easy to match your dock with the huge amount of skins available for your Windows desktop.

There are just a few of the features available in ObjectDock Plus I wanted to highlight for you.  You can find more information, screenshots, and video at the ObjectDock home page.  If you are a subscriber to Object Desktop, you can purchase ObjectDock Plus with a discount.

• ObjectDock Plus Video Tour

• ObjectDock Plus

It's a holiday week but no worries, this weeks edition of "This Week in Skinning" is here, and quite a good one I might say.  Just for a quick recap of this weeks skinning articles, don't forget to check out the Independence Day Skin Guide and This Month in Dreams. 

I was assuming this week was going to be pretty slow, but going through the galleries I see we have quite a few submissions this week, so I might just have to add another one or two to the list.

Now for the picks!

USA Flag for CursorXP by GH33DA GH33DA created a .dream and wallpaper of the flag, now he brings us an animated cursor to match.  Great job.

Wolfie's RSS News Junkie for DesktopX by woWolves A clean and simple RSS reader for DesktopX that is animated and resizable.  Be sure to check this one out.

Lava Lamp in Dreams by TheMasterBaron Reminds me more of a glowing lava flow than it does a lava lamp, but a nice and bright dream regardless.

Mack. for IconPackager by Skinhit Icon packs have been scarce lately, so I was happy to see a new pack from Skinhit.  Be sure do download this one.

Xion Xtreme Color Pack in ObjectDock by J. Aroche Xion has been popular lately, and J.Aroche has created a color pack of icons so you can make the Xion icon really stand out in ObjectDock.  Nice work.

Intrigue in Suites by SKoriginals This Master skin suite includes a WB skin (Vista sub-style), IconPackage, cursor, and much more.  There are also plenty of other matching skins on WC, so be sure to find them as well.  Great job.

VX1 in WindowBlinds by LightStar Lightstar brings us a very clean and usable WindowBlinds skin.  I'm using it on Vista now and it works great on there too.

This was really a great week, and there was so much more I wanted to feature.  Take the time this weekend and take a browse through the galleries and the personal sites of the artists featured here this week.  See you next week!

Some of the great people in the #stardock IRC channel suggested that since the 4th of July is approaching, that a feature of Independence Day inspired skins should be made.  What a great idea!

So today I browsed and searched through the galleries on WinCustomize and found a variety of skins that will fit perfect for anyone wanting to create a holiday theme on their desktop.

If you have any questions about using these downloads you can take a look at the "Changing your desktop" guides, and the WinCustomize Download Guide for more information about the files that you download.

• Changing your Desktop Theme
• WinCustomize Download Guide

July is finally here and a holiday is also approaching.  With a new month comes another edition of "This Month in Dreams" where I highlight some .dreams that were submitted to WinCustomize throughout the month of June.  We had quite a few less than last month, but still some great ones that deserve to be featured. 

Lets get those submissions coming in and make July another great month for Dreams.

If you would like to download the .dreams you seen featured in this video, the download links are below.  You need to have Vista Ultimate, DreamScene, and Stardock DeskScapes (free) to use these animated wallpapers.

USA Flag by GH33DA
Aurorix 1440 by NGTV
The Moon by Gonerelly
Island Oasis by PaulG2
Grimstad Grassfield 1 by dEEPZoNE
RED by KnowTheFuture
Lava Lamp by TheMasterBaron
Liquid Dream by Stardock Design