It seems like Windows Vista just came out yesterday.  And now Windows 7 is coming.  What does this mean for WindowBlinds users? The answer is: A lot.

First off, the reports are true, Windows 7 is better than Windows Vista.  It is also true that Windows Vista has gotten treated unfairly.  Vista was just released too early.  I bet Microsoft rues the day they didn’t address what was in this post (and yes, I talked to Jim Allchin at the time about it).

But as good as Windows 7 is, it’s pretty hard coded.  If you love glass (Aero) and that Windows 7 super bar, then you’re all set and can stop reading.

Let’s take a visual tour here.

In all, Windows 7 is going to be an awesome upgrade.  I think one of the directions we’re going to see WindowBlinds evolve is to provide more personalization options for users, enhance functionality and usability of programs and the OS.

The WindowBlinds 7 betas will likely start to show up on Object Desktop in the next couple months. At that point, you’ll have a better idea of the direction we’re going to take. 

We’d like to hear from you.  Let us know what features you’d like to see in Object Desktop in general and WindowBlinds in particular.

The new WinCustomize is going to be a radical departure from what we have today.

In the web 2.0 age, we can do a lot of interesting things that should greatly improve the navigation of the site. The days of clicking, waiting for the page to load, clicking, waiting for the page to load and so forth will go away.

Instead, the site will feel more akin to a desktop application. Want to see the most popular skinners, click on tab and it'll expand to show it.

The site will end up being far cleaner, far faster, and far easier to use than what we have today.

It’s Friday, and another busy week is just about over.  As I said in another post, the galleries had quite a bit of activity this week, especially in the WindowBlinds gallery.  I got a great response for the new format for TWiS, so I think I will keep it like this, at least for the time being.

Don’t forget to show TWiS to your friends, and show them what types of cool stuff they are missing out on.

Now for this weeks picks!

Logons (XP and Vista)

IconPackager

Dreams (Animated Wallpaper)

ObjectDock (Backgrounds and Icons)

DesktopX (Theme, Gadgets, and Widgets)

Wallpapers

WindowBlinds

I’m still enjoy Windows 7 so far, and I have been playing around with it ever since I got it installed.  I wanted to share some screenshots for those who are going to test the beta.  I’m also trying out the photo gallery feature in Live Writer.

View Full Album

If you use a PC day in and day out, customizing your desktop environment is something you can do to bring a more “personal” touch to your desktop.  WindowBlinds allows users of Windows XP and Windows Vista the option to change the look and feel of their desktop by changing the visual style of Windows, also called skinning.  There are literally thousands and thousands of skins for WindowBlinds created by hobbyists, all the way up to professional graphic designers.  There are skins to match just about every taste and style, however, sometimes you might want your own style or just a few simple UI changes.  This is where SkinStudio comes in.

Windows XP (Un-skinned and skinned)

SkinStudio is an application developed by Stardock, which also develop WindowBlinds.  SkinStudio’s main function is to create and edit skins for use with WindowBlinds.  At first thought, creating skins for Windows could be a daunting task, but SkinStudio has been developed for making skins or modifying existing ones easy for the every day user.  You might like the look of a particular visual style or theme, but just want to change the start button for example.  You can easily do this with SkinStudio, and I wanted to share some resources to get your started.

Some things you will need:

• A copy of SkinStudio.  SkinStudio is a free download, and SkinStudio Pro is available for purchase for just $20.
  
  
• Graphics editor of choice.  There are many options here, some paid and some for free.  My favorite free editors are Paint.NET and the Gimp.  Other applications I recommend are Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Paint Shop Pro.
  
  
• SkinStudio tutorial.  This tutorial was created with beginners in mind, and goes through the complete process of creating a skin from start to finish.  It’s also available as a .pdf download, so you can print and follow from there as well.
  
  
• WinCustomize Wiki.  The WC Wiki has a ton of resources, many of which are generated by the skinning community themselves.  It’s a great place to get other tutorials.

With the tools above, you can have your new or modified skin going in no time at all.  SkinStudio has different categories to help you find the section of skin you want to create. 

For more information, including screenshots and downloads, visit www.skinstudio.net.

Well I finally got Windows 7 installed on my laptop.  The only issue I had was getting the partitioning right, but that was my problem. 

Installation took about 10 minutes, and in about 20 minutes overall I was on the desktop ready to work.  Very impressive!

So far, Windows 7 seems very fast and haven’t run into any problems as of yet.  No problems with application compatibility yet, and I’m really liking some of the design changes.

Still have a lot to go through, but my initial quick impression is great!

Couldn’t get to CES this year? No problem. Here’s a quick tour of Microsoft’s booth.

So what are some of the cool things at CES that you wouldn’t normally hear about or see unless you were here.  Well, that’s what this blog is for.

Kristen and I visited the Blackberry booth. They came up with a new Curve but it’s only on AT&T and no 3G. No Verizon yet.

LG has a watch phone that is extremely cool. I’m not sure how cool it would be to wear a phone on your hand all the time but still.  Unfortunately, it’s Europe and Asia only. 

Duracell had a bunch of very cool new technologies that are coming out later this year. They gave me a quick demo of some of them including this small solar powered recharger that supports hooking in lots of different devices.

This little USB rechargeable battery goes into the cigarette lighter of cars. It was very slick.

If I had a pool, I would want this. A floating massage chair. Mmm…

This was one of the coolest things at the show and it won’t even be out until 2010. Hitachi has a new technology that can take a SD image and makes it like an HD image.  Now, this isn’t upscaling. It has heavy duty processing in it that intelligently improves the details in the image. It was really impressive.

I also saw, but couldn’t take pictures, of a Samsung TV that could show 3D without the need for glasses. It was pretty cool but gave me a headache.

And now for the video journal of the day:

Welcome to the New Year, and the first edition of This Week in Skinning for 2009!  I wanted to change the format up a bit, and I haven’t decided on a final version yet, so the look of this feature might change over the next couple of weeks.  Let me know what you think.

Now for this weeks picks!

BootSkins / Logons

ObjectDock and CursorFX

Dreams (Animated Wallpapers)

Wallpapers

WindowBlinds

See you next week!

WOW! There is so much cool stuff here I don’t even know where to begin.

CARS are CARS…

Microsoft was demonstrating its new Sync technology that integrates with MSN Direct (www.msndirect.com). The voice navigation on it is really phenomenal and Microsoft is starting to open up pieces of this technology to third parties.

A BMW representative gets a demo from Microsoft. Maybe BMW will replace their sucky iDrive thing with this.

People who are into modding their cars would have been in nirvana. We saw some seriously cool stuff where you could turn your car into the ultimate sound beast.

Alexandra and Kristen give the modded car a spin.

KIT up close. So cool. I’m not sure what the point of this exhibit was but it got me to go up there.