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 ...

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!

You didn’t think we forgot about the promotions for this month, did you?  We didn’t forget, just in a crunch for time especially since Jafo is on his North American tour.  In case you are new to the site, we have a variety of classes starting at Citizen, Apprentice, Master Apprentice, Journeyman, and finally Master status.  People usually are promoted to Apprentice by their contributions to the galleries, and community participation.  After that it’s all uphill and the ...

Looking back at the theme submissions from last month, the WinCustomize moderators picked some themes that really caught their eye while moderating.  With so many skins coming in, it’s always hard to narrow down a few skins, but I think it’s always cool to see what their favorites are. WOM picked Captain’s Pointer by theAVMAN ”A nice big golden cursor with a unique animation.” Lantec went with the Solid State suite by 2of3 ”A LOT of work involved.....not only...

Stardock is excited to announce the release of the fourth phase of its popular digital download platform, Impulse .

Impulse enables users to quickly purchase, download, install and update any of thousands of available games, applications, and utilities to their machine. Once purchased, the program becomes associated with their account. If a user purchases a new PC or reformats an existing PC, a user can install Impulse, log in with their account and instantly re-download all their programs.

In the year since its initial release, Impulse has garnered widespread support from major game and application publishers. Most new PC games, for example, are now released on Impulse and a growing number of application developers are releasing their titles on Impulse as well.

“The objective of Impulse is to make it so that your software truly belongs to you,” said Brad Wardell, president & CEO of Stardock . “Anyone who has ever dug through boxes of CDs or looked through old emails to find a serial number can recognize the advantages of Impulse.”

In addition, PC gamers will soon be able to make use of a new Impulse feature called “Ready to Play”, a revolutionary new free program that allows users to create instant virtual communities based on profiles in order to quickly get multiplayer games going with like-minded people.