Without a doubt you have heard or seen the extreme devastation in Haiti due to the powerful earthquakes days ago.  This earthquake has literally leveled Haiti, and hundreds of thousands are estimate to be hurt, missing, or dead.  Larry (koop) came to me this morning and offered an idea to have a Haiti Relief and news blog where we can update it with the latest news, and links about the developing situation.  I thought it was a fantastic idea, and here we are.

Although we are in hard economic times, even donating a few dollars can help,and we have links to reputable donations that you can give to if you wish.  We will also keep this post updated with news.

Donations:

• You can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross relief for Haiti.  The donation will be added to your phone bill.
  
• Donate to the Red Cross Disaster Fund - http://www.redcross.org/
  
• Follow the American Red Cross on Twitter for updates - http://twitter.com/redcross

New and relief links:

• CNN “Impact Your World” - http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/impact/
  
• Fox News updates - http://www.foxnews.com/topics/world/earthquakes.htm

It’s always fun to check out some older, popular Windows XP visual styles and see how they look on Windows 7 with WindowBlinds 7 .  For the most part I have had good luck in getting them looking good, and todays favorite is Curvy .

The first TWiS of 2010 is here and it is great to be back!  2010 is going to be an exciting year with the launch of the new WinCustomize just around the corner, and all the other cool stuff we have lined up for this year.

So lets check out this weeks picks!

	Sixus by Vampothika This theme for CursorFX has some slick animations, and an awesome design.
	Dingy by CarGuy1 A really nice and relaxing animated wallpaper for your desktop.  Great work!
	Huevos icons by Pepua These icons are awesome and very creative.  Grab them today!
	WindMill by DisturbedComputer Just a beautifully captured image.  Fantastic!
	xRaptor by LightStar This is just one of those WindowBlinds skins that doesn’t need an explanation.  Just download it, you won’t regret it.
	Red n Chrome by don5318 Don5318 always comes through with some sweet Xion skins, and the latest is no disappointment.

CES 2010, the Consumer Electronics Show being held in Las Vegas is set to begin.  There are some big announcements and product unveilings expected, and if you aren’t one of the lucky ones to be in Vegas don’t worry, our friends over at Neowin.net are on the ground ready to let you know the happenings!

Keep an eye on the Neowin CES 2010 coverage at the link below.

http://www.neowin.net/news/category/live/ces

So what’s on the agenda for 2010 at Stardock?  Anything cool? Of course! That’s what we do!

Let’s walk through some of the items on our list…

Wincustomize 2010

In March, WinCustomize 2010 will launch.  It will go into beta this month.

The new site is a total rewrite and represents a great deal of development labor to clean things up to be faster and present information a lot more easily.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy

If you like Sins of a Solar Empire, you’re going to love the Diplomacy expansion pack.  Not just because it adds two new AI levels, not just because it adds a new multiplayer speed option, not just because of the new ships. No. The reason it’s turning out so well (besides the open beta where we’re getting lots of good ideas) is because it makes the game feel truly rounded out. 

Given able to give the pirates or other factions missions or send over envoys to get more money and resources and have other means to win the game rather than simply blowing everything up as fast as possible has really helped the game feel more well rounded.

Of course, I can’t just go without a little live battle.  With diplomacy, this scene belies my Palpatine like strategy of making the AI do my bidding.

Elemental

Another big thing for this year will be Elemental which we expect to release this Summer or Fall if all goes on schedule (which we make no promises on because Elemental is “our baby” and it won’t go out until it’s awesome).

The above screenshot is not really representative of what the final version will look like. The final version will look vastly better than this. But for anyone who has ever wondered what an epic turn-based strategy game and an role playing game put together might be like, Elemental is what we’re going for.  It’s our most ambitious game ever and has the longest beta program we’ve ever done in order to ensure we nail it down.

WindowBlinds 7.x

If you haven’t checked out WindowBlinds 7, you will definitely want to look at it. Even if you’re not into “skinning” the subtle improvements it can do to the Windows GUI can be quite nice.

WindowFX

Sorry, no screenshots yet but this is going to be a major effort this year too. There’s a lot of new improvements to Windows 7, Vista, and XP we will be making this year.  Users of Object Desktop get all our desktop goodies first. And this year, there’s going to be a lot.

DeskScapes 3.x

At the very end of last year, our animated wallpaper program, DeskScapes, got a major new version.  Last year was to get the foundation set.  This year, we can go to town with this technology.

What’s magic about DeskScapes is that on Windows 7/Vista it uses the DWM to deliver animated wallpaper. So what does that mean? It means the cool stuff happens on your video card rather than your CPU.  The only time your CPU gets touched is if you’re running a video as your animated background (and even then, it’s just the decoding of the .WMV or MPEG or whatever).

For this year, a lot of new effects and features are being added so that even your existing “static” wallpapers can get cool effects done to them – either kept static with effects or animated.

Impulse: Phase 5

It’s hard to believe that Impulse is barely over a year old.  In the past year, Impulse has gone from being a fairly primitive download utility with only Stardock software on it and a handful of indies to a full-blown digital distribution platform with titles available from Electronic Arts, Activision, Ubi Soft, THQ, and so on.

Impulse: Phase 5 might as well be called the “community release” of Impulse.  Because Phase 5 will be a nearly complete revamp of the platform to greatly expand its community features.  Moreover, a lot of work has been done behind the scenes to open up Impulse to third party developers to integrate community features into their applications and games as well as streamline their publishing and distribution onto the net. 

General Theme

The big theme for this year is probably “Community integration”. We will show screenshots of some of this stuff as we get closer.

That’s not all

Of course, this year we’ll still have plenty of updates to lots of other things from Demigod to DesktopX to new Object Desktop programs and so on.  Plus we have some unannounced projects that we hope to finally be able to make public this year.

It’s going to be an exciting year and we can’t wait to spend it with you guys (and gals!).

As the new year approaches, we’re starting to look forward to the DesktopX 4 beta.

So what are the goals of it?  Well, to be honest, the goals are pretty modest: Strip out the parts that are difficult to work with and build it back up.

Stripping it down

First off, DesktopX comes with several plugins that I have asked to be removed:

Any plug-in that doesn’t work on Windows 7 with UAC on would be removed.  The existing DesktopX library would be renamed “DesktopX legacy” and only new creations would be supported.

The source code for our plugins would be made public so that the community could take over their development since, unfortunately, there just aren’t enough development resources available these days to work on such things.

If users wanted to use that code to make weather and other types of plugins to make it easier for people to create new gadgets, that would be great.

The Future: Building it up

Instead, what I would like to see would be Python to be adopted as the means to creating “plugins” that DesktopX could then read in.  Essentially, DesktopX scripting would move to Python and away from JScript or VB Script.

You could still use other scripting languages as well but we would move away from VB Script being the default.

Clicking on the “New” Script would open up the user’s default editor associated with DesktopX (preferably a python editor).

For 4.0

But for 4.0, we’re looking to clean it up. Fix long-standing issues and get to a more solid foundation from which to build on with Windows 7 being the focus for future development.

It’s Christmas Eve, and if you are like me you still haven’t finished shopping yet.  If you have friends or family across the country or the world, getting a gift to them in time now is pretty much impossible, or is it?  With Impulse you can send a game or application as a gift digitally and they will receive it nearly instantly. 

In the checkout page, just click “purchase as a gift”.

Fill in some basic info, and after you make the purchase they will be sent an e-mail with instructions to download.  It’s very easy and is a great way to send a friend a favorite game.

Happy Holidays everyone!  This will be the last Impulse Roundup for 2009, and what a huge year it was for Impulse.  So many new games, new publishers, new features, and 2010 will be even bigger!

We hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday, and the Impulse roundup will see you next year!

Articles to check out:

• Impulse Holiday Gift Guide – Day 3 for the Online Gamer
• Elemental: Beta 1D Change Log
• WindowBlinds: A video tour of skinning
• CNET's The Download Blog Takes a Look at Fences Pro
• Quick video demo of Fences Pro in action
• Object Desktop 2010 Review from Windows7themes.net
• Galactic Civilizations story so far and the fate of the Yor

New Releases on Impulse:

• Mass Effect 2 (Pre-order)
• Mass Effect 2: Digital Deluxe Edition (Pre-order)
• EVE Online
• Devil May Cry 4
• King Arthur
• Blood Bowl
• Armada 2526
• The Stalin Subway - Red Veil
• Europa Universalis III: In Nomine
• Burger Island 2
• Fences Pro
• Puzzle City
• Great Journey

Sales on Impulse:

Make sure you have Impulse Now running to get the scoop on hot deals on Impulse.  See here for more info!

• Impulse Now

Happy Friday, and this will be the last regular edition of This Week in Skinning for 2009!  This was an interesting and exciting year for skinning.  The uploads on WinCustomize increased in times where normally they decrease, and we have seen many new skinners enter the community, but unfortunately, we have also seen some leave as well.

Over the next couple of weeks we will take a look back at some of the highlights of skinning throughout the year, so if you have some suggestions, please feel free to send them my way.

Thanks for all your contributions this year, whether it was actual skins, or just being there in the community.

Now for this weeks picks!

	Snowfalke by B2R This CursorFX theme has a great color and subtle animations.
	Ring Stack by ahabkaba These are some really cool tiles to use in ObjectDock.  Great work!
	Autumn walk by realityDream This is a beautiful scene, and looks great on any desktop.
	The Remote Destination Squad by kenwas This is a very cute scene, and is another perfect Christmas wallpaper.
	Alpine by MikeB314 This Master WindowBlinds skin is very clean and sleek.  There are also plenty of holiday wallpapers that are a perfect match to this.

Fences Pro was released this past week, the follow-up to the extremely popular freeware Fences.  The Download Blog on CNET takes a look at Fences Pro.

“Fences Pro ($19.95) largely answers our request; or at least it tries to. Fences Pro's settings menu not only lets you name a default folder in which all newly installed icons should appear, it also showcases a list of rules you can configure to deposit specific types of icons (images, music videos, etc.) into any of your "fences." The icon installation rules worked well in our tests, saving pictures we downloaded from the Web to our specified "Pics" fence, and application shortcuts to "Programs."

Read more at The Download Blog.