Stardock's Curtains released this week and Danioc has been hard at work on themes for it. He just released a new one on WinCustomize and it is hot! It's a dark theme pack with multiple color variations, and has quickly become one of my favorites.

Check out Play for Curtains.

Are you a fan of podcasts?

On Monday, the satellite radio company SiriusXM announced that it reached a deal to acquire Stitcher from E.W. Scripps to the tune of $325 million. Stitcher is a pioneer in podcasting that provides a popular one-stop platform for creating, monetizing, and distributing podcasts to listen via its app and other platforms. 

Stitcher brings its own mobile listening app (which was acquired for $4.5 million in 2016) to the table. It also operates the Midroll Media network for podcast advertising (acquired for $55 million in 2015). Stitcher's original podcasts run on multiple content networks as well.

SiriusXM already purchased another podcast management platform called Simplecast last month, and with this latest acquisition it has become clear that they intend to devote quite a lot of their resources and efforts to podcasting.  This deal will move thousands of podcasts to SiriusXM, including popular titles like Freakonomics Radio, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, LeVar Burton Reads, and many more.

In a press statement released Monday, SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer said, "The addition of Stitcher is an important next step as we continue to develop and strengthen our offering in the fast-growing podcasting market. With Stitcher, we will expand our digital audio advertising presence and look to generate new ways for creators to find and connect with their audiences. Stitcher has a talented team with deep experience in the podcast space, and we look forward to working with them to better meet the needs of creators, advertisers, and listeners."

The company boasts that combining Stitcher with their already robust satellite radio audience and Pandora (which they acquired in 2018), they will have "the largest addressable audience" in the United States for digital audio. 

What are some of your favorite podcasts? Do you have a podcast of your own? Share with us in the comments!

Add Additional Style Modes to Windows 10 with Curtains
Full Version Now Available

Get it Now

Stardock released its new customization tool today. Curtains™ allows users to apply new styles along the lines of Dark Mode and Light to Windows® 10.

Taking advantage of the groundwork built to support light and dark mode, Curtains includes several new styles including Fluent, Cairo, and Crystal mode that enhance the look and feel of the Windows UI along with apps that already support light and dark mode.  

"The advantage of using a program like Curtains is that it's essentially just adding new 'modes' to Windows," said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock. "It works with high DPI displays and your existing programs.  This gives users a little extra touch of customizing the Windows experience."

In addition, Curtains also includes styles that allow users to switch Windows to looking more like Windows XP or Windows 95 as well as alternative operating systems.

Users can easily create and share their own styles using the built in style editor.  A Curtains style can change everything that Light and Dark mode can change, including the Start button, title bar buttons, and title bar coloring. It also supports tweaking gradients, shadows opacity, and hundreds of other small elements of the Windows GUI.

"Curtains makes it very easy for people to make their own styles," said Wardell. "There are a lot of customization features that have been buried in recent years such as font faces and sizes, detailed color choices and much more. Curtains allows people to adjust all of that and save it with their style easily.”

Curtains is now available, or through Stardock’s  Object Desktop™ suite of desktop enhancements. Object Desktop includes programs such as Fences®, Start10™, Groupy™, SoundPackager™, DeskScapes™ and Multiplicity®.

Get it Now

Visit the Curtains webpage for more information.

It's hot here. I mean really hot. With that being said I need make my desktop a bit more "cool" by giving it an ocean theme with nice virtual breeze that I can imagine relaxing and cooling off with.

Fortunately, we have plenty of those types of designs here on WinCustomize. Lets take a look at some of the best ones to try!

Barreling Ocean Waves for Wallpapers

Reflections for DeskScapes Animated Wallpapers

Swimming Sea Turtle for Wallpapers

Fantastic Ocean Sunset for DeskScapes Animated Wallpapers

Changing the default icons is one of the earliest and most popular ways to customize the look and feel of Windows. Whether users were trying to emulate another operating system (like MacOS) or just trying to create a particular theme, changing the Windows icons has been a key part of desktop customization for quite some time.

IconPackager was introduced to make the process much easier, allowing Windows users to change nearly an entire set of icons with just the click of a button.

How to Change Entire Sets of Icons

One of the nicest things about IconPackager is that it's super easy to use. Open the program, scroll through the list at the bottom of the window to see all of the installed icon packs, then select the one you want and click the preview button to see a larger preview of the icons.

When you are ready to apply, just click ‘Apply icons to my desktop’. That's it! You can enjoy the icons from there, or customize them further using the color option in the IconPackager configuration window.

Changing Individual Icons from Properties Window

Changing all of the icons at once is great, but if you don't want or need to change all of them, you can select and alter individual icons using the properties page. Simply select an icon you want to change and right-click to bring up the menu. Then, click 'change icon' and you'll have a window come up that will show available IconPackager theme icons. Just pick the icon you want and hit apply!

Alternatively, you can also change individual icons directly through the IconPackager configuration under the Customization tab.

Getting More Icon Packs

WinCustomize.com has a gallery just for IconPackager themes! There are over a thousand custom created icon themes in the gallery that come in nearly every color and design you can think of. 

Get more IconpPackager themes here!

IconPackager 10 is individually available for your Windows PC, but you can get that and more with a low-cost membership to Object Desktop.  While you're a member, you'll get free updates, access to all betas, and any new apps for one year. You’ll also get access to other great programs like Start10, DeskScapes, WindowBlinds, Multiplicity, and many more!

Visit the Object Desktop site for more information.

Have you been waiting for AMD’s Ryzen 4000 desktop APUs? Well, your wait could be over in as early as just a few days, according to one retailer.

Reports started over the holiday weekend stating that Dutch retailer Centralpoint listed the incoming Ryzen 7 Pro 4750G, Ryzen 5 Pro 4650G, and Ryzen 3 Pro 4350G on their website. The listings say that the higher-end octa-core and hex-core CPUs will ship within "3 to 5 days", with the entry-level quad-core APU expected to arrive in stock on July 10.

Although there have been plenty of other leaks, Centralpoint is the first place to give an idea of pricing. The AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 4750G will fetch $357 USD, while the Ryzen 5 Pro 4650G is $243 USD and the Ryzen 3 Pro 4350G is $177 USD. AMD itself hasn't given any official word on pricing yet, so these prices could be little more than placeholders.

The specifications detailed on Centralpoint's product pages seem to support some previous leaks reported by Tom's Hardware back in May.

We talked a little bit about what AMD's plans for 2020 were back in January when they debuted several new products at CES.

Are you thinking about upgrading or building a PC soon? What's your hardware plan - does AMD fit into it?

I admit I should be using more keyboard shortcuts aside from just the most basic ones such as copy and paste. I was browsing Windows Central and they have an article which lists all the essential Windows 10 shortcuts. They even have them broken down to help you narrow down any you might be looking for.

I'm going to go through it and find some of the most useful that I might use.

Here's their list: https://www.windowscentral.com/best-windows-10-keyboard-shortcuts

Even though we are halfway through 2020 I just got an email that was telling me how Aqua Menthe is the trending color of the year. Not sure who determines this but I took a browse at some images that have that color and It looks pretty nice.

From Shutterstock:

"In web design, Aqua Menthe is an ultra-bright and vivid mint-green hue, with the hex code #7FFFD4."

What do you think about it? Would this look good on a WindowBlinds skin or Curtains theme? 

We are approaching Independence Day here in the U.S., and I wanted to point out a few skins that you can download. Some of the coolest ones I like are the fireworks and U.S. flag animated wallpapers. 

If you have any favorites I missed please be sure to link them in the comments!

July 4th USA for DeskScapes

American Flags for Wallpapers

America for Wallpapers

Fireworks Celebration

USA Flag for CursorFX

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