Ah Las Vegas. Land of gambling and honeymoons.  At least, the latter I assume is what explains the noise coming from the room next door (or there's a lot of torture going on).

I got my CES pass without a problem.  I am a rare breed. I'm a software developer, Microsoft MVP, Featured Community Leader and a journalist all at the same time.  Having gone to these shows now as a software developer and a member of the press now, I can honestly say -- better to be press.  Lots of free goodies.

The Verizon 3G wireless card that I bring with me has continued to save the day.  You'd think that hotels would have nailed wireless access but you'd be wrong. Even in Las Vegas I'm surprised at how difficult it is to find a reliable hotspot. And when you do, it's $10 for 30 minutes.  Meanwhile, the Verizon card has been acting like a champ.

There's been a lot of cool stuff shown to us and I havne't even gotten to the show floor. 

A few highlights:

• Yahoo was showing off their next-generation instant messenger client.  If it ends up half as good as the demo, I'm switching to that.  Made explicitly for Windows Vista, it's slick, it's got great UI, it's powerful, and it looks clean.  In other words, quite unlike most IM clients.
• A big trend at the show is making Windows Vista much easier to deal with hardware.  Microsoft really does seem to have a nice combination with the Xbox360 and Media Center.
• I'm half tempted to get an Xbox 360 just to get to high-def content.
• You already read about Windows Ultimate so I won't go more into detail here.
• ATI showed off a really cool cable card HDTV tuner for Windows Media Center. Look up OCUR on Google to learn more on it.
• And Buffalo showed off a DUAL N wireless router.  Fast enough to stream HDTV content.

Hopefully today I'll get to actually go to the show. I'm in meetings until nearly 3pm PST.

More to come...

Here at the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft has been kind enough to take us and a number of administrators of Featured Communities around to a series of labs helping get us a sneak peek at Windows Vista.

As an encore, Microsoft got us a bunch of VIP passes to Bill Gates' keynote address very close to the front row.  Alas, Las Vegas traffic conspired against the shuttle that we were all in and the seats were opened to others and we lost them.  But just when we thought we were going to be stuck in the nosebleed section, PowerUser.TV's Kristin Hatcher came up with another idea -- Hanging out at the Microsoft private suite which, quite unlike the auditorium, had food and drink. Great food and drink in fact.  Kristin was able to persaude Microsoft's community relations team (who have been awesome on this trip) into letting us watch the keynote from there. 

So many of us saw the keynote from the comfort of a quiet private suite eating shrimp, crab legs, and drinking margaritas.  

As Microsoft just announced, one of the first Ultimate Extras (extra features users of Windows Vista Ultimate can download) is a new animated wallpaper feature called "Windows DreamScene".

So what exactly is Windows DreamScene? And what are the extensions and enhancements coming out for it?

Windows DreamScene is an animated wallpaper technology developed by Microsoft that plays high-definition video content as your wallpaper. The key ability of it is that it can do so without using significant amounts of CPU (basically the decoding of the video is the only real CPU use involved).  The animation itself is run through the hardware accelerated DWM.

Software developer Stardock, makers of popular desktop enhancement utilities such as WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectDock, etc. worked with Microsoft on the creation of content and has developed a number of tools to extend the feature set of Windows DreamScene. 

On the content side, Stardock Design created a number of 3D animated content for Microsoft including the default animated Aurora. Microsoft is holding back on releasing all the content they have until Spring 2007.  Stardock also added support for animated wallpapers on its popular WinCustomize.com community site at Dream.WinCustomize.com.

With regards to the additonal tools and enhancements Stardock has released two of them.

The first enhancement is a new program called DeskScapes.  DeskScapes extends DreamScenes to support dynamic content (i.e. videos are pre-rendered).  With dynamic content, you could have your wallpaper change based on weather, time of day, or news.  Or you could just have some cool Direct3D "stuff" that runs (like one of those fish aquariums running as your wallpaper). 

The other key feature of DeskScapes is that it introduces the .DREAM format. This allows artists to protect their artwork.  The .DREAM format supports triggers (changing what is playing based on specific triggers) and it allows creators to insert their author info and a link to their website which we think is crucial to encourage artists to spend the time to create good animated wallpapers.

The other tool Stardock is working on is tentatively called Dream Maker. What it does is make it easy for authors to create .Dream files.  Its goal will be to help make it as easy as possible to create your own animated wallpapers.

To learn more about Windows Vista Ultimate, go to www.windowsultimate.com. To download content to personalize your Windows Vista experience, visit www.wincustomize.com.

Get More Dreams (animated wallpapers): Dream.WinCustomize.Com

Screenshots:

(1) Dyanmic content uses virtually no CPU, it's all on the video card. (2) DreamScene in action. (3) .Dream Files support author info.

AMD/ATI are showing off their latest goodies for Windows Vista along with their plans for a "true" Quadcore.

Intel's Quadcore is basically two DualCores taped together into a single chip.  AMD is working on a quadcore where each core is truly independent and has a single large shared cache.

They also talked a lot about OCUR which will become publicly announced in its final form in a few hours.

One of the demos Microsoft had for us was to show us wher they're going with Maps.Live.com

The part that got interesting for me was that they're putting together tools to make it easier for on-line communities to create 3D models for buildings in their area.

While Google Maps does let certain places be showin in 3D, what Microsoft is doing seems to be the next level -- open it up and try it yourself.

Meetiing with the Microsoft Live team today. It's been very interesting.

Microsoft has a very cool little tool on Live.com that is still in beta. But it will make it easy for people using Live Instant Messenger to find the location of their various contacts and help organize a get together or whatever. You can try it out here:

http://dev.live.com/mashups/partycrasher/

Most of what they mentioned is under NDA but they are doing a lot of cool mapping stuff. They also wanted to remind the world that Microsoft has been doing on-line mapping and virtual earth stuff for a very long time.

It's like being a kid in a candy store. 

Two days from morning to late night meeting with people from Microsoft. Big kudos to Microsoft's Nick White for putting together these meetings as it's been incredibly educational.

See the link below for the latest info.

The ants in Las Vegas are addicted to Advil. That's the only explanation I have for how, at the hotel here, that armies of ants came crawling out of the wall, streamed right up to my bottle of Advil and went inside of it.  They have a problem. They won't admit it. But they do.  You haven't lived until you've seen the inside of a bottle of Advil 1/4th full with piles of ants.  Damn bugs.

Having been using the "gold" version of Windows Vista for a few weeks, I am pleased to announce that it's pretty good. It's not buggy in any major way. There are, however, various device issues. I'm not yet satisfied with the compatibility of games and Vista but I suspect that by the time it's generally available, the video driver makers will have provided some decent updates.

Most of the first two days we're spending time talking to Microsoft about some of the cool features of Windows Vista that are not very well known. 

Next up, fun with USB flash drives..

I hope everyone had a great holiday and a happy New Year.  Last week was very slow so I decided to skip a week, but now we have a brand new year and it's time to highlight some skins from the past week or so.

Dragon's Jewel 3 for CursorXP
by Artur Berk

Artur has been creating some fantastic cursors lately, and his latest "Gold and Magic Sphere" adds to that list.

Download

Vista-Style for DesktopX Themes
by gef

Gef has created a Vista style theme for DesktopX which includes a wallpaper changer, calendar, MP3 player, and more.  This is a great way to get the "Vista" look until you upgrade to the real thing.

Download

Clipboard for IconPackager
by Asect

I always look forward to new submissions in the IconPackage cateory, and Asect has shared a very nice one with us.  Included is 200 icons, and a bonus pack is included the Misc. Icon section on Wincustomize.

Download

Chocolate for Windowblinds
by patrick24

This WB skin has a great combination of dark and brushed steel elements.  I have also been running this on Vista with the Windowblinds 5.5 beta and it looks very nice.

Download

Luminati for Windowblinds
by navigastio

Some of the comments on this skin is that it's "easy on the eyes", well I would have to agree.  This is a very cool skin that is very usable in day to day work. 

Download

A great start to the New Year, and I know we will see some awesome skins this year.  As always, e-mail me your favorite skins and themes that you would like to see featured here on Wincustomize. 

RightClick is a program that sometimes doesn't get enough attention, but I have to tell you it's one of the most useful app's on my desktop.  For those who don't know, RightClick is part of the Object Desktop Ultimate suite, or available as a stand-alone product.  It will basically let you design your own right-click menu and let you add items such as short-cuts, folders, and even DesktopX Widgets.

With that being said lets run through the basics of RightClick and show users how they can setup RightClick and customize the menu for the way you want it to work.

Now here is your "normal" right-click menu.....

Lets take a look at the configuration window which you can access by right-clicking the tray icon and selecting "Edit Desktop Menu".  In the "Content" tab you add/remove items from your right-click menu.  You can add a clock, programs menu, taskbar, shortcuts, widgets, and more!  Just select the item you want and click "Add".  From there you can configure the specifics of the item, such as choosing which DesktopX widget to use, or which shortcuts to link to.

In the "Skins" tab you can choose the skin you wish to use, or you can choose to have RightClick inherit the WindowBlinds skin you are using.  You can even adjust the transparency of the menu.  Several skins are already included with RightClick, but there are hundreds available to download at the RightClick gallery on WinCustomize.  Many of these skins are made to match WindowBlind skins, so it's not too hard to make a desktop with matching skins.

With the "Hotkey" tab you can select a hotkey that will bring up your desktop menu.

There is almost a countless amount of configuration varieties you could come up with for your right-click menu.  One of my favorite features is the ability to insert the Programs menu, taskbar programs, and even the system tray.   Another really cool feature is that you can add RSS feeds to your right-click menu.  In the screenshot below you can see several different configurations of RightClick showing some of it's features.

For more information visit the RightClick website, and also see the other applications that are available with Object Desktop Ultimate.

• RightClick
• Object Desktop Ultimate