It’s the weekend!  Instead of going outside and doing stuff, take a browse through the wallpaper section and give your desktop a fresh look for the upcoming week.  Here are my picks, what are yours?

Time is starting to wind down on the deadline for the Most Usable and Most Original Dream categories in the 2008 GUI Champs.  At 11:59pm EST tonight the doors for submissions will be closed.  After this point, and until user voting ends on these events on November 30th, you will not be able to upload new dreams, or edit existing ones on the site.   So if you have any last minute work to do, you better submit it soon! The judging will happen over this weekend, and t...

This Week in Skinning took a very short break, but it’s back with an extra long feature list.  We have had a bunch of new skins come in over the past week or so.  This weeks TWiS includes WindowBlinds skins, wallpaper, bootskins, logons, and more! TWiS is a great way to catch on skins you might have missed, and also feel free to pass it along to friends and show them what they have been missing as well.

One of the prizes in the 2008 GUI Championships is an ATI Radeon 4850 video card sponsored by AMD.  Zoomba took the time to run the card through a series of benchmarks and real-world testing to give everyone an idea of how this card performs. Whether you are a gamer, or just someone who wants some great graphics performance for editing, video, etc., then check out this review. Link: A Look at the ATI Radeon HD 4850  

With yesterdays big release of Object Desktop 2009 came a few new and updated applications.  One of which is the long awaited BootSkin Pro which enables you to skin your Windows Vista boot screen.  Users of BootSkin Pro will be able to create bootskins which can then be uploaded to the new BootSkin gallery here on WinCustomize. Check out the new Bootskin gallery here . BootSkins for Windows XP are still there , it’s just called BootSkin XP now. Stardock Design and s...

Stardock has released the 2009 edition of its popular desktop experience suite Object Desktop. Object Desktop is a set of utilities that enables users to completely transform the desktop experience of Windows XP or Windows Vista. Object Desktop includes 6 utilities that focus on enhancing a particular aspect of Windows. These are: WindowBlinds . A program that enables users to completely alter the look and feel of the Windows GUI by applying "skins" to it. These skins can make Window...

With the pending release of Object Desktop 2009, we have taken the time to update several of the Stardock Design .dreams to take advantage of the new features in DeskScapes 2.5.  The latest update is the popular Photo Dream .  The Photo Dream take your favorite images and randomly displays them on your desktop with smooth animations.   This update adds: Dynamic .dream updated to work on XP and Vista Supports multiple monitors New Static Wallpaper mode Other ...

If you need to record and share video demos of your skins, .dreams, etc., then there isn’t a better way than to do it with Camtasia Studio.  I took some time today and wrote an article on the basics of Camtasia, and how you can use it to really show off your skins. We are also proud to have TechSmith as a sponsor for this years GUI Championships currently taking place.  Link: Using Camtasia Studio to Record Skin Previews

More entries to the 2008 GUI Championships are coming in, and they are just fantastic.  I went through last night and downloaded some more Icon packs, and the quality of these entries are just amazing.  You need to head over to www.guichamps.co m to see all the great skins being submitted over there.  Here are just a few of the latest.

The end of the week is finally upon us, so I thought I would start doing a weekly roundup of the skins entered in the 2008 GUI Championships.  Entries are coming in daily, and I have to say many are nothing less than stunning. To see more of these skins and to download them, visit www.guichamps.com .  Be sure to tell your friends about it as well. Icon pack: Simple Dream: Planktonic WindowBlinds: Fluoxytine Icon Pack: Colorful pai...

From reading various blogs around communities it seems one of the popular things to change on Windows 7 is the logon screen.  The best is it can be easily done using LogonStudio for both Vista and Windows 7. Here are some popular logon screens you can use! More logon themes can be found in the gallery on WinCustomize.com .

The latest Master WindowBlinds skin comes from MikeB314 called ‘Subsecret’.  This WindowBlinds theme is compatible with both Windows XP and Vista, and includes some cool matching wallpapers. WinCustomize Subscribers get 20% off Master skin purchases, so don’t delay!

The holidays are approaching quite rapidly, and I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to gather some members of the community and start a new community theme project based on the holidays.  Christmas/Winter Holiday Theme Pack This would include at the minimum: WindowBlinds theme DesktopX Theme DesktopX Gadgets CursorFX theme Dreams RightClick Skins Icons (IP or just some dock icons) Wallpapers At the end this would all be wrapped up in a Theme Manager suite. My...

Well the coffee is ready, the days events are all planned out, so lets go ahead and take a look at the featured skins from this past weekend.  I notice the holiday themes are starting to pick up.  

The last work day of the week is finally here.  Things are very busy around here, and will get even more crazier since the holiday season is approaching.  I also see some holiday skins are appearing, and take a peek at our holiday community theme project going on. For now, here is the latest This Week in Skinning!