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.

The wallpaper gallery here on WinCustomize is one of the most searched areas of the site. It's content though can sometimes be lacking when searching for a specific thing, or just the fact not a lot of people upload to that gallery anymore.

Well, we're working on changing that! We have a dedicated account that will be bringing new wallpaper content to the site. It's already started and you might have noticed a bunch of new wallpapers already. We'll try to bring a wide variety of styles, but if you think there's a specific type or category needed, please let us know.

We'll be expending this to add additional animated wallpapers to our DeskScapes gallery as well!

For now, check out some of the new wallpapers in the gallery here.

https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/wallpapers

I know there’s an overall stereotype about gamers being solitary and reclusive by nature, and while it’s not altogether untrue, there are definitely outliers. I’m one of them, and the coming weeks of isolation are looming over my head like an ominous shadow - dramatic, sure, but that’s not exactly off brand for me.

I am an extremely social person. I host dinners and game nights regularly, I go to the gym (albeit not nearly as often as I’d like to), I visit with friends and family and love going to social events. The recent mandates meant to help contain the spread of COVID-19 are a necessary inconvenience that I am more than willing to bear in order to keep my loved ones safe. Am I happy about it? Oh, heck no, but who is?

These may not apply so much to me, but I laughed.

Memes aside, if there was ever a time when isolation was completely manageable for me, now is it. The Internet has been an incredible tool that I’ve been lucky to grow up with, and while it certainly has its dark sides, I have been fortunate enough to use it to cultivate and maintain friendships with people from all over the world. 

As I’ve mentioned before in other blogs, I am an avid board gamer. The thing about board games is that they typically require other people to play with (although there are several games with solo variants!). It makes me a little sad not to have my basement game room filled with people and laughter, but it’ll pass before long - in the meantime, I’ve moved my board gaming online.

There are so many options for board gaming online now, it’s really exciting. I can play some of my favorite games with some of my favorite people, some of whom don’t live close to me and can’t exactly pop over for a game night during non-pandemic times. Some board games have their own specific apps, complete with music, sound effects, and visual effects that fit the overall theme. Tabletop Simulator, however, is a basic program that is powered almost entirely by user-created mods.

While I certainly prefer face-to-face interactions, this really is the next best thing. I have a group of friends who I spend most of my time with online (since they live in places like San Francisco, Vancouver, Florida, London, etc.) and we use Discord to chat while we play things or stream Netflix or Disney+ together. Yesterday, I fired up Tabletop Simulator and a few of them joined me for a game of (sorrynotsorry) Pandemic.

We were ill-prepared for how quickly the disease spread this game.

If you’re unfamiliar  with the game Pandemic, it is a co-operative player experience wherein you’re all working together playing various roles (Medic, Scientist, Quarantine Specialist, etc.) to contain and halt the spread of 4 deadly viruses. Everyone plays against the board, and while the early game may lure you into a false sense of security, don’t be fooled - chaos comes, and it comes fast.

We usually play on the highest difficulty level and use the “On the Brink” expansion because we enjoy the challenge. We introduced a few new people to the game yesterday, who thoroughly enjoyed themselves, even though we ran the player deck out and lost at the last minute (ouch!). It just meant that we were all fired up to come back for a rematch against the dastardly board.

If nothing else, you can have fun doodling ridiculous cat faces before, after, or during your game!

There are thousands and thousands of mods to download for various games, as well as some premium content for more popular games like Wingspan. If you’re looking to connect with friends while you’re in self-isolation, online multiplayer games are a great way to do that, whether they’re board games on Tabletop Simulator or multiplayer video games like The Political Machine or Offworld Trading Company.

How are you combating boredom and staying connected with people?

We always posts screenshots of our desktops, but lets take it a bit further and post images of your desktop setups!

CursorFX 4 was announced last week, and I wanted to go through the cursor theme gallery on WinCustomize and find some of the popular themes that might be fun to check out.

If you happen to be looking for some of the legacy cursor themes that used to be included with CursorFX, then you'll be happy to know we uploaded them to WinCustomize. You can find them here: https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/cursorfx

Black Fire by vampothika

Piranha FX by neone6

Trident by theAVMAN

neovision by jester382

Sharingan Cursor by Hakudos

This spring, Windows10 v. 2004 or 2020 first half year update (code named 20H1) will be coming and it's feature heavy, with some meaningful changes such as those in Cortana  and notepad, Windows subsystem for Linux (WSL 2), Windows explorer with much better local search and tied to OneDrive, sandbox and virtual desktops, and a beefed up Task manager.

There are more, and I suggest reading up on them in the link above.

And have a good weekend! 😉

Ah, Kickstarter: the land of hopes, dreams, and thousands of people with cash to burn. In its earliest days, Kickstarter was a platform that provided creators with a venue for funding projects they otherwise would never be able to do on their own (and for some, couldn’t do even with successful funding).  

Nowadays, Kickstarter is still an effective way for indie developers and other small creators to get their projects funded and out in the public eye, but it’s evolved into something more beyond that. Kickstarter has become an effective and impressive marketing tool for well-established companies in electronic and board gaming industries, among others. 

I’ve had the discussion with several different people, all with varying opinions on the matter. Should Kickstarter really be used as a marketing method, or should it be reserved for those small creators who actually need it in order to break into the market? Everyone’s thoughts are pretty mixed, but I’m not likely to believe that Kickstarter will ever bar any legitimate project from launching a campaign - after all, the more profitable the project, the more money Kickstarter makes.

I recently came across an article on The Verge that talked about the marketing strategy behind (at the time) an up and coming Kickstarter from Spinmaster and Cool Mini or Not (CMON), two very established companies in the board game world. CMON is well known for its Kickstarter campaigns and the sort of hype they create, and when they launched Marvel United last month, I decided I’d hop on for the ride. The way they ran their campaign was brilliant, and I’m going to break down what I think made it a successful project in next week’s blog.

I personally have been fortunate enough not to have been burned by a Kickstarter yet. There are certainly records of failed projects, but on the whole most projects are backed in good faith, funded, and rewards are distributed as promised. In fact, a study shows that only 9% of successfully funded Kickstarters fail to deliver to their backers.

Honestly, I think one of the reasons I’ve avoided the sting of money wasted is that I tend to only back projects from companies that I’m familiar with. Board game publishers like CMON, Smirk and Dagger, Slugfest, Calliope Games, and so on, have an established customer base and don’t really need the funds from a Kickstarter to get their games started - they’re just using it to generate hype and gain early adopters by using Kickstarter exclusive rewards.

While a brilliant marketing move, many would argue that this goes against the spirit of what Kickstarter meant to do in the first place: give a platform to smaller creators for funding their projects. But, does the existence of these bigger names on Kickstarter really take away from indie creators?

In order to be effective on Kickstarter in the first place, creators need to have a decent seat in the PR arena. Whether big companies are also campaigning on Kickstarter or not is irrelevant if no one even knows about your project to begin with. You could argue - perhaps rightfully - that the existence of these other projects pushes smaller projects out of the range of discoverability, but that’s not really true, either. Thousands of projects, indie or not, still crowd out the market.

Sometimes, I discover a project on Kickstarter and feel compelled to back it. More often than not, however, I hear about a project elsewhere on social media or through word of mouth, and that’s what drives me there to check it out. If you’re not able to put the time and effort into PR, then Kickstarter won’t be an effective platform for you anyway.

This blog post from Stonemaier Games has an excellent breakdown of a pro and con argument for big companies using Kickstarter as a platform. As it stands, I definitely see both sides from a consumer and a marketer’s point of view. 

What projects have you backed on Kickstarter? What do you think about how the platform has evolved over the years?

We've been working on WinCustomize.com to get some added features to make the site more usable, and one of those is tags in the upload screen. Keywords aren't exactly new here, but we've been working on the functionality of them and now they will really improve the search process on the site. For example, put 4K in the search box. You will now get a much better search result than before. 

This is still a work in progress, but we wanted to let our skinners know that this is something to pay attention to now when uploading and updating skins. If you currently have skins on the site, you can also update them to include new tags and we encourage skinners to do so. 

There's still much more to do and I'll be sure to keep you updated on the process. Also a big thanks to Pat for his hard work on the site, and if you have any related suggestions about tags please leave a comment.