Decades of non-stop war have taken their toll on all three races vying for supremacy in our region of space. The Trader Emergency Coalition (TEC) has seen several core worlds break off and form their own independent faction. Similar movements have taken place within the Advent and even the Vasari are seeing the formation of a new faction. The rebellions have caused a frightening escalation in the arms race. Now, super battleships, called Titans have begun to be constructed. These immense ma...

Microsoft is working on Windows 8 which will have a new experience called “Metro” that will serve as an alternative to the traditional Windows desktop. It’s been optimized for tablet computing and looks phenomenal. Meanwhile, Stardock has been working for the past year on having a Metro experience on the Windows desktop. Tiles is something new. It is not a “side bar”. It is not a virtual desktop program. Rather, it lets users organize all their “stuff” into Metro-style pages t...

Summer is almost over and what a summer it was! The summer started with Stardock selling its Impulse digital distribution platform to GameStop. This was the first time in Stardock’s history that it has ever sold one of its business units. The reason Stardock sold Impulse was because Impulse’s success was starting to come at the expense of the other two parts of Stardock – the software and games groups which had seen resources being taken from them to put onto Impulse to handle its amaz...

Photoshop has always been one of the top tools used by skinners over the past years, but many have also used the quite lower priced Photoshop Elements as well.  It has many of the same great features as Photoshop, but at a fraction of the price.  This week, Adobe announced the release of Photoshop Elements 10. “Powered by the same engine as Adobe Photoshop, the industry standard for digital imaging, Photoshop Elements 10 utilizes intelligent technology that makes it easy to g...

As you may know, WinCustomize has a Master ranking for skinners who have put forth lots of time and effort into skinning.  There are really just a few Master skinners compared to the overall skinning base, but how many of them really doesn’t matter because we can always count on them to share with us super high-quality skins. I wanted to share some of our most popular Master Skins for WindowBlinds . ...

The seasons are changing, and if you are prepping your desktop for the cooler weather and changing foliage, here are some wallpapers to help you get into the mood. Find more in the WinCustomize Wallpaper gallery - https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/wallpapers   ...

I know you have been waiting for it all week, and now you can finally end the week with the latest This Week in Skinning! This Week in Skinning-September 16th  

At long last it is the weekend and as usual we end it with a roundup of the hottest skins and themes submitted to WinCustomize.com.  Now for this weeks picks!     Techno Mi FX by H4RDSTYLER A real nice CursorFX theme with great animation.   Mist by Discovod This is a very subtle animated wallpaper, but even with a small amount of animation makes it go a long way.   Shroom by Richard Mohler ...

In case you have no desire to install the Windows 8 preview, I went through the difficulty of clicking the mouse several times and installing it for you!  This is obviously an early build, but it gives a general idea of what Win8 looks like.  

If you own Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity and Sins: Diplomacy and haven’t gotten your pre-order in for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, you have until the end of September to lock in your discount.  By pre-ordering now you save $10, but that special will end at the end of the month, so pre-order now! https://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/store#rebellion

Brad has put up an image and quick video of the upcoming Tiles update which takes on the “Metro” look. Stardock Tiles brings Metro to the Windows desktop Stardock Tiles quickie demo

The keynote for the BUILD Windows conference is today, and we expect and hope to hear some more detailed news about Windows 8.  I’m not there to report to you directly, but our good friends at Neowin are and I recommend following them for the latest news. http://www.neowin.net/ If you are on Twitter  you can follow the Neowin feed, and keep up with the #buildwin hashtag. @neowinfeed  

I was just checking some stats on WinCustomize, and noticed that Windows 7 makes up about 60% of the traffic WC receives each month!  A year ago, XP was still beating Win7.  

This is the first preview of the upcoming WindowFX 5!  www.windowfx5.com What do you think?