Prior to coming to Stardock, I never got to work from home. I was the director of an afterschool program for K-4 kiddos and if you couldn’t be in the “office,” then you couldn’t work. Making the shift into an industry that is already largely digital was certainly different, and even though I would work the occasional day from home, I generally prefer to be in the office (there are some pretty great people there, after all). 

Now I’m working at home on the daily (like most everyone else), and the adjustment has been more challenging than I thought it would be. A day here and a day there working without all of the benefits I have at the office (like my 3-monitor, 2 PC setup) is no big deal, but now every day? I’ve had to make some adjustments.

We have an entire catalog of Windows customization and optimization software, and I put a solid few of them to good use, particularly in the office. Multiplicity, for example, allows me to control my dual PC setup without having to waste precious desk space on a second keyboard and mouse (because duh, that’d be less desk for my action figures, right?)

Now, I’m only working with one PC at home (although I do have my laptop for when I need it), so I don’t really need Multiplicity right now. But, I’m down a monitor and my setup isn’t as efficient as it is at the office. So, to that end, Groupy has been indispensable in helping me save space and navigate my tabs (sooooo many tabs) more efficiently.

Sometime last week, I needed to stream some Star Control: Origins on Steam for a promotion. My normal setup at the office involves 2 PCs, and El Gato, and (typically) a second person. I usually run production and monitor the chat while they play. Suddenly, I’m flying solo with less equipment, but I still needed to maintain and monitor the same amount of things - Teams, Steam Chat, X-Split scenes, etc - and so I turned to Groupy. I’ve had Groupy installed on my home computer since we released it, and while I do occasionally Twitch stream from home, I’ve never had to do it for work before.

Being able to hotkey between my tabs was absolutely essential. When you’re live streaming, you don’t want to break the viewers’ immersion, so not having to stop and drag windows around or squint at my messages was the key to keeping things running smoothly. For my hotkey, I use the default (Win+~), which works just fine for me.

Grouping Teams, XSplit, and my web browser together into tabs also saved me space. I have precious little to go around with my secondary monitor (obviously my first was taken up with the game), and this made it much more possible for me to keep everything up that I needed at one time. 

Now, if I’m being honest, I’m a fairly plebeian Groupy user. I know lots of other people, like our CEO Brad for example, who utilize the program to a much greater extent than I do. It works for them and they love it. While my needs are much simpler, Groupy has still allowed me an ease of use with my Windows programs that I never had before.

Are you a streamer and have you tried Groupy yet? Let me know how you use the app in the comments!

As thousands of people adjust to working from home amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, video chatting has surged to the forefront of necessary tools. This unexpected new development has driven many to try Zoom, an enterprise video conferencing platform with real-time messaging and content sharing.

Unfortunately, Zoom's infrastructure wasn't prepared for the surge of users that have joined since the pandemic started, and the convenience of the platform comes with a security cost. "Zoombombing" is the latest trend for online hackers, who will find their way into an active meeting and disrupt it by displaying pornographic images, writing racial slurs, or any number of other disruptive activities.

Zoom has become a popular choice for many teachers who have had to suddenly convert their learning structure to online learning. With Zoom, they can see and interact with their entire class while they instruct. As the reports of security issues continue to mount and accounts of hackers disrupting meetings become more disturbing, New York City has taken the measure of banning the app from school virtual classrooms. Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city was "not going to put our students' privacy and our students' data at risk. It's just as simple as that." 

The city's Department of Education partnered with the NYC Cyber Command to make the decision and are encouraging schools to defer to Microsoft Teams and Google for remote learning instead. The Department of Education says that they have been training teachers on the use of Teams for several weeks.

Eric Yuan, Zoom's founder, has said that he would freeze all new product development until the privacy issue is corrected. The company enacted a "waiting room" feature and additional password protocols for all basic and free accounts, including those used by classrooms. Only time will tell whether these additional features will be able to put Zoom back in users' good graces.

Spring has arrived and we have been working hard to get more content added to WinCustomize. Spring is something people have been searching for, so we've gathered up some beautiful wallpaper images that will look great on your PC or other devices.

Check out all the wallpapers here: https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/wallpapers

Here are some favorites to get started with!

Spring reflections

Sunflower Fields in North Dakota

Spring in Sweden

The Great Dandelions

Mount Vernon Tulip Festival

With our state on lockdown, our offices are empty. 
This gives me a rare opportunity to give a little tour of our offices with almost no one here.

A little bit about Stardock

So I started Stardock from my dorm room back in 1991 and incorporated it in 1993.  The building we’re in now, we bought in 2005.  We own it, so we are able to do whatever we want with it.  It’s about 20,000 square feet and we’ve had the opportunity to try out various working area styles.

The Welcoming Committee

As you enter the main lobby of Stardock...

This is Cheesecake.  An essential employee.  We allow dogs at work.

Stardock has 3 floors.  This is the lower floor in an area called Lab-2 (Lab-1 is upstairs).  The team is working from home.  We let people check out their PCs and take them home.

This is also part of Lab-2.   Lab-2 has the workstation area. It’s not an open floor plan, but rather a hybrid, where everyone gets their own workstation area.  There are also 3 offices connected to it – Senior Producer (oversees schedule) – Senior Publisher (oversees the “biz” side) and Senior Designer (the lead designer on the project).  We mix the artists and engineers together so that they can work seamlessly together.

This is the office I’m occupying down here.  I’m currently on a new project that won’t be ready for a couple years.  This is the first time I’ve been the senior designer on a game project since GalCiv II from the start.

This is part of our Cafe. 

Sitting area for the Cafe.  The nice thing about this area is that there’s a presentation area up front.

This is on the main floor.  This is where the Impulse team used to be back in 2011.  We occasionally use it for podcasts, but it’s been unfilled since 2011.

Also on main floor.  Has been empty since we sold Impulse to GameStop.

Biz Conference room.  I spend a lot of time here, unfortunately.

The fitness room.  Empty. So sad.

My office.  Empty now that I’ve moved to the senior designer office.

Gamer’s Bill of Rights.

Wife and kids.

Back of my office.  There’s a little framed box of the “contract” between Chris Taylor and I on Demigod.  It’s on a napkin.

Upstairs Lab-1 with Agile wall (Scrum wall).   So empty.

Kristy’s workstation isn’t empty at least!

Cleanest this area has been in years. The IT area.

Play-testing lab.

Derek Paxton, upstairs in Lab-1’s Senior Designer office.

The kids of the QA area. Today, just making sure everyone else is able to work from home.

Obligatory picture of gender neutral bathroom. We have gender-specific bathrooms on every floor but we also installed this along with an area for employees who have just had children to take care of things (and we did this back in 2005).

The general goal is to create an environment that is welcoming and comfortable.  We have extremely low turn-over and I think a big part of that is our company environment.

And with that, back to work!

Edge is going to get some excellent new features:

1) Side tabbing and tab grouping which are designed especially for 16:9 displays.

2) Cut and paste grouping by subject in "Collections".

3) Password breach warnings.

For a more detailed description, look here: http://www.infopackets.com/news/10737/edge-browser-gets-new-features-based-chrome

For a quick peek at how it'll look, go here: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/30/21199819/microsoft-edge-vertical-tabs-feature-chromium

And...stay safe and well while having a good weekend...here's some amazing free stuff to do, and see: https://chatterpack.net/blogs/blog/list-of-online-resources-for-anyone-who-is-isolated-at-home

I feel like we had just started the month and here we are closing it out already. This has been one crazy month for sure, and I don't think April is going to give us much relief. We still have news coming out and since plenty of people are stuck at home, this has been a great time to get our desktops fixed up and interact more with the community. 

Stardock News:

CursorFX 4 announced!

"CursorFX makes it easy for Windows users to customize their mouse cursors by applying skins, shadows, motion trails, and sounds. Users can also import .PNG files into the CursorFX theme editor to create brand new cursors from scratch. 

The new version of CursorFX adds support for Windows 10 and high DPI monitors, several new cursor packs, and more. Thousands of additional cursors are also available for download on WinCustomize.com."

Community Posts You Might Have Missed:

Community Covid-19 Check-in Post!

Post your Desktop Workstation Setups!

Getting More Wallpaper Content Added to WinCustomize

Coronavirus Pandemic Leads To Gaming Surge

WinCustomize Update: Make Use of the Skin Tags!

New and Updated Master skins:

Emerald Green by don5318

Naked Noir WB by vStyler

Trio by LightStar

Lucid by basj

Tech news of interest:

Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 Zero Day Vulnerability

Google Provides Learn from Home Options Amid Covid-19 Pandemic

As I write this, we’re starting to find a lot of friction due to the way some communications apps work when it comes to multiple servers.  I’m looking at you, Microsoft Teams.

While connecting multiple Teams servers (not teams) isn’t hard, it is a bit tedious. 

I end up having to click on the drop down and then select the server I want.

Now, ideally, I would like Teams to let me have a truly integrated experience (where I can move teams from various servers onto a single master page) but in the meantime, there is a solution for the user who wants to have multiple Team hosts available in a single click (or keyboard hotkey): Groupy.

Stardock Groupy lets users combine multiple windows together as if they are web pages.

Once installed I move my communication windows together:

Now I can either click between tabs to get right to the other server or use Windows key-~ to tab between them.

If you’re someone who’s using multiple communication apps or servers, I highly, highly recommend you download Groupy.

Seems as if all we do is about viruses, anymore, eh?

Well, there's a new zero day vulnerability in Windows and you really should fix it as you could end up infected with ransom ware as a result of its exploitation. MS has found two cases of that, and now that they have described the exploit, chances are much higher of getting hit by it. To get a good description of the problem, check the linked article. If you wish to read the original MS notification, it's here.

"On 23rd March, Microsoft acknowledged a zero-day vulnerability that affects all the Windows computers. The list of affected computers includes the most-updated Windows 10 including the insider builds; Windows 8.1 and 8; Windows 7 which has reached its End of Life, and many versions of Windows Server. However, the vulnerability is a limited targeted attack which means it’s not that widespread and only a certain number of users can be affected — mainly those who deal with font files and the preview pane.

Microsoft has zeroed down the attack to two exploits in the Adobe Type Manager Library which the attackers are taking advantage of. Having said that, the sad part is that Microsoft will be releasing the security patch next month, most probably on April 14, 2020. So until then, you can take a series of actions by yourself which can fix Windows Zero-Day vulnerability on Windows 10 and 7 computers right now."

I'm including a snip of the 'how to fix' article because I added how to deselect the two panels in Windows explorer...it's done with Alt+P, then proceed to the Options, etc.

(from Beebom linked article)

Don't forget to disable the Web client service (at the bottom of the linked article), and then to reboot.

And have a good weekend!

Over the last few months, the Covid-19 Pandemic has changed the way of life for millions of people around the world. Recently in the United States, schools have been closing across the country, prompting educators to do their best to get resources up online so that all learning doesn’t stagnate. 

 As children and their parents adjust to this temporary new normal, teachers have been working on setting up remote classrooms and teleconference lessons. To help, Google and YouTube have stepped up to the plate by providing new resources for helping teachers to keep their classrooms running.

Google’s page, called Teach From Home, provides several recommendations for how teachers can teach remotely using Google products. Right now, the page features ideas like doing a video call with a class using Hangouts or creating an online quiz using Google Forms. There’s also a “Teach from Home” toolkit, which has a series of slides with resources on how to teach remotely.

The toolkit suggests that teachers can use google calendars to schedule 1:1 appointments with their students, host video conferences using Hangout Meets (which Google has provided a free premium membership to through July), and make a class website. Google’s accessibility settings also make closed captioning possible and help teachers accommodate those with additional learning needs.

The Learn@Home resources highlight educational YouTube channels that students can watch at home. The page categorizes the channels with recommendations for families with kids 13 and older, families with kids five and older, and for families with preschoolers. YouTube has established a partnership with Khan Academy and other educational creators, featuring channels such as Discovery Education, PBS Kids, Cool School, and Sesame Street. Both Learn@Home and Teach From Home are currently available in English, and will be available in other languages very soon.

Google is also launching a $10 million Distance Learning Fund as part of the company’s $50 million contribution made through Google.org, to COVID-19 response efforts. To begin, Google.org will donate $1 million to Khan Academy’s fund to assist them in providing remote learning opportunities for affected students.

This is certainly an interesting time right now. I know many of us around the world are social distancing, self-quarantining, or whatever phrase you are using for it. 

So let's take a moment and check-in here and let the community know how you're doing during all this.