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.

What happened to the weekend?  It went by way too fast, but this week is going to be great as it’s going to be a super busy week for skinning.  In case you haven’t been keeping up, the 2008 GUI Championships is going on right now at www.guichamps.com .  The entries so far have been fantastic, and I know there are a ton more that are in the works.  Send to the link to your friends and family, and let them know they are missing out of some really great skins. If you spent...

In last weeks WinCustomize poll we wanted to know what your favorite 2008 GUI Championships category was.  This year we have Icon Packs, Dreams (animated wallpapers), and WindowBlinds skins.  It was close but WindowBlinds had a bit of a lead over Icon packs, and Dreams came in third.  You can view the current entries at www.guichamps.com . With all the recent news about Windows 7, we wanted to know what your future operating system plans are.  Do you plan to s...

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...

I just got another monitor the other week, and in trying to find some wallpapers for it, I noticed it’s getting difficult to find wallpapers in a variety of sizes on WinCustomize.  It’s not because of a lack of search feature, it’s just because many of the wallpapers that are submitted only include one resolution, and sometimes a very odd resolution. I also don’t see a lot of artists listing the resolutions that they are uploading.  I’m just pointing this out as people have been ...

The first competition deadline for the 2008 GUI Championships is rapidly approaching.  November 21st, a Friday, is the deadline for Most Original & Most Usable Dream entries to be submitted.  There’s still plenty of time left to get your submissions for this category in, but we wanted to give a heads up that the date is approaching.  Best Overall Dreams still have until December 11th. We have seen some really spectacular .dreams submitted so far, and I hope to see a big ...

Entries to the 2008 GUI Championships are really starting to roll in, and I wanted to give a brief update of some of the latest skin submissions from the past few days.  The WindowBlinds submissions are really starting to pickup as well. Head over to the GUI Champs site and check out the rest of the gallery. Link:   www.guichamps.com