The latest Demigod blog on IGN is up, and I think the title alone is reason enough to read.  This blog gives a great intro into the story of Demigods, and of course, why they fight. 

“Demigod is a strategy game that adds a host of action RPG elements such as item purchasing, spells, battle experience and much more in order to add a new dimension of skill and excitement for players of real-time strategy games.

Because of Demigod’s RPG roots, the question arises, why are these Demigods fighting? What is their ultimate goal? The short answer is simple: Godhood. The long answer has a great deal more to it. “

That’s all you are going to get from me, now head over to IGN and check out the rest.

Link: Demigod – Why We Fight

So there I am, doing an all nighter at Stardock, minding my own business as I logon to people's machines to read their private email when lo and behold, I find a mother lode of secretly stashed work in progress skins from Stardock Design.

Now, I don't even know the names for some of these skins. I don't know when they're coming out or in what form. But there's some cool stuff here. And this is just the tip of the iceberg (I'm too lazy to take screenshots of all of them).

Oh and look what I found, a mark up of the next version of MyColors!

They're going to want to kill me you know so this will be my last post for awhile.  I'm going to have to "go away for awhile".

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 latest edition of Theme Manager 3   was released a few months ago, and it received quite an overhaul in many areas.  The most obvious change was the UI which is more uniform and familiar with other Stardock applications. 

So what exactly is Theme Manager?

The best way to describe it is it’s an application that works as a hub between other desktop enhancement applications (such as WindowBlinds, IconPackager, etc.) to apply different desktop environments at once with a single interface, without the need to open each individual program and chance the theme.

Theme Manager 3 supports various desktop elements:

• Wallpapers
• WindowBlinds skins
• DeskScapes (animated wallpapers)
• Bootskins
• Logons
• Cursors
• Icons
• and much more

With Theme Manager 3, you are also able to manage MyColors themes and .suite files, and even lets you easily create your own .suite files for your own use, or to share with the skinning community.

In the ‘Applications’ tab you can click through the various categories which will display the current skins you have installed, and you can even apply the skins individually from here also.

Moving over to the ‘Desktop’ tab, one of the sub-options is ‘My Current Desktop’ which shows the current skins you have on your desktop.  You can save your current figuration to a .suite file by clicking the save button.

Click the ‘Create New Theme’ tab to create a new .suite file from scratch.  This is one of the coolest features of Theme Manager 3 as you can create a .suite from just skin links from WinCustomize.com.  You can also create the theme from local files, but creating from links makes it much more easier.  It also allows you to search WinCustomize right from Theme Manager 3, and select the skins to be included.

This is a great overview of some of the things you can do with Theme Manager 3.  Theme Manager 3 is included with an Object Desktop subscription, and can be downloaded here.

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.