The Impulse Weekend Buys are back, and we have some great sales for this weekend.  This sale will last through this weekend, but don’t wait to pick something up. 

You can see these Impulse Buys, and other ongoing sales at www.impulsedriven.com.  Don’t forget to download your free copy of Impulse as well!

Whenever I install or update a PC with a new OS, I have a list of software that must be installed within the first hour or so.  Why?  Well because there are a few applications out there that are an almost necessity when working with Windows. 

One of those is Multiplicity.

If you have more than one PC on your desktop, you just won’t go back to your old setup after using Multiplicity.  If this is your first time hearing about MP, then MP is an application that allows you to control multiple computers with just a single keyboard and mouse.  It’s just like having multiple monitors, but each is still has the power of it’s own PC.  That means you can work with applications or games on one monitor, and control others without having to worry about slowdowns.

Examples of the benefits of using Multiplicity:

• Play a game on one PC, and seamlessly work with Photoshop on another.
  
• Have one PC dedicated to e-mail, another to social networks, and another for general use.  Control all with just one keyboard/mouse.
  
• Keep desktop clutter to a minimum, no need for extra hardware.

I think it’s safe to say everyone here at Stardock lives by Multiplicity, especially since many need multiple machines to test and code on.

As you see in the image below, Mike (Zoomba) has a very nice PC collection which he controls all via one keyboard/mouse.  He is running several different OS’s on these machines, and that isn’t a problem with MP.

I don’t have as many machines as Mike does, but it’s quality, not quantity, right?  I have Windows Vista as my main desktop, and my laptop is running Windows 7.  I also have a Netbook running Windows XP that isn’t seen in the image, and all these are controlled by the one keyboard/mouse set making everything more efficient.

Multiplicity starts at just $29 for the standard version, and $49 for the Pro version which supports up to six PC’s and features file copying.  A trial is available, and you can find more info at www.multiplicity.net.

Impulse is a convenient way to purchase and install both applications and games, but what if you want to archive these for backups or for later use?  It is possible to archive and restore your games/applications within Impulse, in which you can then leave them in their default location, or backup to an external drive.

If you are an Object Desktop subscriber, it’s recommended you archive your applications in case your subscription expires, this way you will always have access to your applications.

Lets go through the steps of archiving an item in Impulse.

Archiving

Open Impulse and browse to the My Games, or My Software tabs and find the item you wish to archive.  Make note that you must have it downloaded and installed before archiving.  Once you have your selection, right-click and select ‘Archive Application’.

Once clicked, the item will proceed to be archived, and the length of time this will take depends on the size of the product chosen. 

Once archived, the .impulse file is placed in the following default locations:

Vista - C:\ProgramData\Stardock\Impulse\backup

XP - C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Stardock\Impulse\Backup

The default archive location can be changed by clicking the Orb, selecting Preferences, then Folders.

Now your items are archived, and you can leave them or backup to your preferred choice of backups.

Restoring

You have your stuff archived, so now you need to know how to restore it.  Open Impulse and click the Orb, and select ‘restore archive’.

A window will then open with the location of your archives, now just select the one you want to restore, and Impulse will restore it.

It’s a pretty simple and effective way to keep a copy of your apps and games backed up to another source.  If you don’t have Impulse already, head over to www.impulsedriven.com and grab a free copy.

A lot of exciting things are in the works for WindowBlinds 7.  The target date for it hasn’t been set. It’ll be “when it’s done” but it will be, by far, the most significant update to WindowBlinds ever. We’re taking it in a pretty different direction.

The above is just a mockup but give you an idea of some of the things we’re thinking for for the config UI.

In the first two editions we covered the Orb, which holds most of the preferences and settings that can be altered in Impulse.  This time I wanted to focus on registrations, as I have been seeing people asking questions on how to register a product through Impulse.

Download Impulse from www.impulsedriven.com .

Registrations

Accessing your registration info is done by clicking the small blue question mark in the upper right-hand corner of Impulse.

Clicking ‘register a product with Impulse’ will bring up all your current registrations in Impulse.  Make note that purchases made through Impulse, and ones that are associated with your registered e-mail address should show up in Impulse.  However, there might be circumstances where you need to manually enter or manage registration entries, and this is the place to do that.

In the screenshot below, you will see the current registrations, serial numbers, and expiration date (if any).

Double-clicking an entry, or by selecting it and hitting the ‘Update registration’ button, will bring up a window with more details on the registration.

Clicking ‘Add registration’ will bring up a similar window which allows you to manually enter the serial number, e-mail address, and to select the specific product you are trying to register.  Once done, that product should appear in your list and will then be able to download it.

If you have an application that has subscriptions, and need to renew them, just select in the registration list, click the ‘renew’ button, and it will take you directly to the shopping cart with your upgrade ready to go. 

Have you forgotten your registration info?  No problem.  Click the blue help button again, but this time select ‘look up serial number’.  Enter your e-mail address and a list of registrations will be e-mailed to you.

That covers much of the registration features in Impulse.  Look out for more tips and tricks articles!

Impulse: Phase 3 was recently released, and one of the new features was Impulse Now.  Impulse Now is a small tray applet that lets users know about available updates and provides an easy way to access features in Impulse.

If an update is available for a game or application in Impulse, this icon will flash to notify you of updates.  There are two different sets of menus available to view, you can access one or the other by left and right clicking on the tray icon.

Left-clicking

Left-clicking the Impulse Now icon brings up the main tray menu, which gives a variety of options. 

• Open Impulse: Pretty self-explanatory, and also double-clicking the tray icon will open Impulse.
  
  
• Application Groups: There are two categories under this, which are My Software and My Games.  Both of these are a way to quickly access an application or game installed in Impulse.
  
  
• Updates: If Impulse Now is signaling that a new update is available, clicking View Updates will show you what’s available.  If you need to check for an update, just click Check for Updates.
  
  
• Configuration:   Here you can access the configuration menu which gives you many options to configure Impulse Now to your liking.

Right-clicking

Right-clicking Impulse Now gives you mostly configuration and help options. 

For more information, and a free download, head over to www.impulsedriven.com .

Stardock announced the third major update to its digital distribution platform, Impulse today. Known as Impulse: Phase 3, the update includes a host of new features.

Impulse Phase 3 includes five major new features that developer Stardock believes will be compelling to both PC users and software publishers. These new features are:

1. The Impulse client has had its user interface significantly improved and updated with features such as player rankings, achievements, intelligent match-making, and more. It also includes a new tray application that lets users track friends, receive update notifications, and much more.
   
2. The beta of Impulse Anywhere, a new web-based method for users whose home Internet connections are non-ideal to download their software on another machine, take the files home and install them.
   
3. The release of Impulse Reactor, a development platform that lets users add many new features to their games without having to re-distribute a third-party client (i.e. users don’t have to distribute the Impulse client). Impulse Reactor includes features such as intelligent match-making, multiplayer tournament support, NAT negotiation, friend lists, rankings, community features and much more. Gas Powered Games’ much anticipated PC game, Demigod, is being released next week and makes full use of Impulse Reactor.
   
4. Impulse Reactor Overlay, an in-game overlay that lets users instantly access chat, friends lists, profile data, micro-expansions, and more. Demigod will also be the first title to make full use of this.
   
5. Game Object Obfuscation (Goo) - An alternative method for developers to protect their intellectual property. Goo allows developers to associate licenses with people rather than their PCs which will eliminate the issue of “limited activations”. It also provides the underpinnings to support vendor neutral software downloads and transferring of licenses.

“One of the key things about Impulse Reactor and Goo is that it’s a win-win for users and publishers. For users, it begins the process of our customers owning their software license. For publishers, it provides the highest level of security for their software but in a way that doesn’t inconvenience legitimate customers,” said Brad Wardell, president & CEO of Stardock. Stardock is in the process of migrating from traditional activation on its digitally distributed software to Goo and working to incorporate Impulse Reactor into its existing titles.

One of the first publishers to adopt Goo is Paradox Interactive, whose titles on Impulse will soon be protected via the new technology.

In addition, Stardock and Activision Publishing, Inc. recently signed a distribution agreement which will make select Activision titles available on Impulse in the near future. Stardock expects to add additional major publishers this spring.

“With Phase 3 of Impulse completed, we are now focusing on bringing the catalog of games and applications on Impulse up to parity with what is available on other services,” said Wardell.

For further details about Impulse please visit www.impulsedriven.com.

This May we intend to launch a completely re-designed WinCustomize.com. The new site will be a major departure over the existing site with an emphasis on speed, ease of access, and efficiency.  The site will “seem” a lot simpler because there’s a lot fewer clicks.

What you see above is an early version of it (all the thumbnails will, for instance, be re-created as high quality PNG’s instead of low quality JPEGS).

One thing not shown here is that the Library list in the Explore menu won’t say “CursorFX” of “Dream” but instead say “Moue Cursors”, “Animated Wallpapers”. When the user’s mouse cursor goes over it, the right-side will explain what it used to make it happen. This way, new users understand intuitively what they are customizing and experienced users can quickly see which programs are being used for it.

With over 3 million monthly users, WinCustomize is the world’s most popular site dedicated to desktop customization so we’re putting a lot of work to make sure it’s done just right.

Even in beta, one of the things that’s really amazing is how easy to navigate the new site is versus the existing site.  For example, on WinCustomize today, if I want to read articles I have to click on”Articles” and wait wait wait for the articles page to come up. Then I get a list of top articles and newest articles along with a running log of featured articles.  It’s just a lot of “stuff” to deal with.

By contrast, on the new site, I click on articles, a menu comes down that quickly lets me navigate to what I want to get to, often without having to go to a seperate page.

Same thing for the community page.  Right now, users click on community which then takes them to the master forum list page which takes a good 5 to 10 seconds and then they decide what they want to read.  On the new WinCustomize, a user clicks on community and the menu pops up listing the most recently responded to threads along with options to jump to a particular forum right away.

Of course, it’s in the libraries (which are currently called galleries but are being rebranded as libraries to support Sins, GalCiv, Demigod, and Elemental mods along with other mods in the future) that the magic will really come in handy. For instance, right now, if I just want to find a wallpaper, it’s a pain to find one that fits my monitor.  On the new WinCustomize, I’ll be able to just search on 1920x1200 wallpapers and then download.  IF I’m a WinCustomize subscriber, you’ll be able to simply press a button to make that wallpaper your background immediately (to give you an idea of the direction we want to take for subscribers).

Stay tuned for more info.

Fences is one of my favorite applications I have running on my desktop.  Having a clean and organized desktop is very important to my productivity, and Fences solves any issues I had with a messy desktop due to icons scattered all over the place.

I wanted to give another quick walkthrough of Fences in case this is the first time you have seen it.

Fences is available as a free community preview, which you can download from here.

https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/

Fences on the Desktop

You can organize your Fences however you want on the desktop, but there are also pre-defined styles you can also use.  You also have a preview Windows shows an example of how they will look.

There are also a variety of options for customizing the look of Fences.  You can easily adjust the opacity of Fences by using the slider control, and you can even adjust the colors to fit the theme you are using.

My favorite feature of Fences is the ability to hide the icons currently on the desktop.  By simply double-clicking the desktop, the icons will disappear and re-appear when double-clicked again.  As you can see in the screenshot below, the Recycle Bin icon didn’t change.  That is because you can right-click an individual icon and exclude it from being hidden.

Stardock announced today that the forthcoming update to its digital distribution platform, Impulse, will include a new technology aimed to pave the way to solving some of the common complaints of digital distribution.

The new technology, known as Game Object Obfuscation (Goo), is a tool that allows developers to encapsulate their game executable into a container that includes the original executable plus Impulse Reactor, Stardock’s virtual platform, into a single encrypted file.

When a player runs the game for the first time, the Goo’d program lets the user enter in their email address and serial number which associates their game to that person as opposed to a piece of hardware like most activation systems do. Once validated, the game never needs to connect to the Internet again.

Goo has a number of unique advantages that developer Stardock believes both gamers and developers will appreciate:

1. There is no third-party client required. This means a developer can use this as a universal solution since it is not tied to any particular digital distributor.
   
   
2. It paves the way to letting users validate their game on any digital distribution service that supports that game. One common concern of gamers is if the company they purchased a game from exits the market, their game library may disappear too.  Games that use Goo would be able to be validated anywhere.
   
   
3. It opens the door to gamers being able to resell their games because users can voluntarily disable their game access and transfer their license ownership to another user.

“One of our primary goals for Impulse Reactor is to create a solution that will appeal to game developers while adhering to the Gamers Bill of Rights,” said Brad Wardell, president & CEO of Stardock. “Publishers want to be able to sell their games in as many channels as possible but don’t want to have to implement a half-dozen ‘copy protection’ schemes. Game Object Obfuscation lets the developer have a single game build that can be distributed everywhere while letting gamers potentially be able to re-download their game later from any digital service. Plus, it finally makes possible a way for gamers and publishers to transfer game licenses to players in a secure and reliable fashion.”

Because Goo ties the game to a user’s account instead of the hardware, gamers can install their game to multiple computers without hassle.

Goo will be released on April 7 as part of the upcoming Impulse: Phase 3 release. Stardock also expects to be able to announce multiple major publishers making use of Goo in April as well as adding their libraries to Impulse.

Impulse is poised to exceed one million customers in the next week despite only being launched nine months ago.

To learn more about Impulse, visit www.impulsedriven.com .