Island Dog's Articles » Page 172
February 19, 2010 by Island Dog
This week is done, and although it was a bit quiet on the skinning front the submissions to WinCustomize never stop.  There was a good assortment of uploads this week especially in the Wallpapers and WindowBlinds galleries, so be sure to dedicate some extra time over there. Now for this weeks picks! Cubicolour by muckyman This animated wallpaper has some beautiful colors and animation, grab this one for sure. N.C.T. (3D) by Vervi59 O...
February 18, 2010 by Island Dog

Stardock has pulled back the curtain on ImpulseTV, the latest major feature to come to the popular digital distribution platform, Impulse. Hosted by Jason Ocampo, formerly of IGN and Gamespot, and Brian Clair, formerly of Avault.com, ImpulseTV is designed to let people see games and software as they really are in order to get a better idea of whether they want to buy it or even try out the software. ImpulseTV features hands-on walk-throughs, game tutorials and tips, spotlights and demos on AAA and indie games alike, unbiased and outspoken expert commentary and more.

“There’s a lot of real gems out there that people would normally never hear about,” said Ocampo. “With ImpulseTV, we hope to shed some light on great games – both famous and unknown.”

Stardock continues its tradition of revolutionary digital download platform features with ImpulseTV, adding an innovative social networking aspect to the platform’s latest feature. ImpulseTV easily finds online friends with similar gaming tastes and fans will be able to view who has downloaded games featured on an episode of ImpulseTV, chat with them, participate in discussions stemming from each episode, or decide to purchase the game – all from the ImpulseTV episode screen.

With Impulse, users purchase their game and can then immediately download and install the game through the Impulse client which seamlessly manages updates, community features and more. Games become part of that user’s account such that when a user purchase a new machine, a user can simply re-download the Impulse client, logon to their account and re-download all their purchases, even years into the future.

Download Impulse at www.impulsedriven.com.

 impulsetv_1 impulsetv_2

February 18, 2010 by Island Dog
We have another review today, this time from Hookedgamers.com which reviewed Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy. “ Diplomacy may be a micro-expansion, but the features and gameplay it adds are akin to what one would expect from a fully developed sequel. It evolves Sins of a Solar Empire into a deeper, more varied, and more satisfying experience. Given that Diplomacy is available alone or as part of Sins of a Solar Empir: Trinity e - a package that also includes the o...
February 17, 2010 by Island Dog
There have been a ton of reviews coming in today for both Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity, and the micro-expansion Diplomacy.  Since there quite a few today I wanted to a quick roundup of some of the latest that have hit my inbox. Gaming Evolution http://gamingevolution.info/?id=9428 “…this quirky way of being mind-bogglingly complex while maintaining a strong sense of accessibility. Ironclad Games combined two genres I suck at, and only occasionally enjoy...
February 17, 2010 by Island Dog
WindowBlinds 7.01 was released not too long ago, but we had another minor update at the beginning of the week.  This was specifically address the issues with Photoshop CS3 and Messenger (XP), and fixes for gamma settings and a potential crash with long paths/usernames and Aero. To give a re-cap of “what’s new” in the 7.01 update in case you missed it: Microsoft themepacks now appear as sub-styles of Aero, and can be applied New guided tour on first run More tex...
February 17, 2010 by Island Dog
Since people have been asking for more, so here are a couple more screenshots of the upcoming ObjectDock 2.0.  You can gain early access to the beta by pre-ordering. ObjectDock 2.0 Pre-order
February 17, 2010 by Island Dog
BigDownload.com has posted their review of the recently released Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity, and the 2nd expansion titled Diplomacy.  “Diplomacy adds a whole new layer of strategy, and it's a lot to get used to. It significantly turns up the need to multitask, but at the same time, players are presented with new and powerful tools to expand their empire. Picking up the add-on and turning the game into Trinity makes for deeply challenging gameplay, and is definitely comp...
February 16, 2010 by Island Dog
It goes without saying we are big fans of ATI/AMD, and I personally recommend ATI video cards to anyone looking to build or upgrade their PC.  I just installed an ATI 5870 in my main PC and I wanted to share my experience from installation to actual usage from the point of view of an everyday user. The first part I have up is the actual installation of the video card.  Stay tuned for future updates as I’m going to break the card in for a bit. Link
February 15, 2010 by Island Dog

As you might have read in my earlier post , I received an ATI 5870 video card and I had to nickname it “the beast”, because this sucker is big, and that’s just how I like it.  I’m upgrading from an ATI 4850, which is another fabulous video card, but I’m certainly not going to deny myself the opportunity to try out this latest one. 

If you are interested in all the fancy numbers, you can view the technical specs here , but here are the main features from the ATI site.

  • Get unrivalled visual quality and intense gaming performance and for today and tomorrow with support for Microsoft® DirectX® 11
  • With ATI Eyefinity technology get the ultimate immersive gaming experience innovative ‘wrap around’ multi-display capabilities
  • Tap into the massive parallel processing power of your GPU with ATI Stream technology and tackle demanding tasks like video transcoding with incredible speed
  • Feel the brute strength of more than 2 teraFLOPS plowing through the most demanding games
  • Experience the speed, responsiveness and performance of ultra-high bandwidth GDDR5 memory
  • ATI CrossFireX™ technology with multi-GPU support offers advanced scalability

ati5780_2 ati5780_3

February 15, 2010 by Island Dog
Good Monday morning to you all!  We start off another brand new week, and in aside from lots of coffee, the best way to get it started is to go over some of the featured skin picks from the weekend. Check out the latest!
February 12, 2010 by Island Dog
Geekosystem.com has published a list of the “30 Great Gaming Geeks” and Stardock’s very own Brad Wardell makes the cut. “And for every geek out there toiling under a clueless manager, for every code monkey slaving away on a financial services platform for MBAs who wouldn't know PHP from Python if an external class fell from the heavens onto their desks, for every indie game designer staying up nights to program his masterpiece while administrating servers during the day - Brad Wardell ...
February 12, 2010 by Island Dog
  This ATI Radeon 5870 video card arrived today.  This thing is a beast, and that is definitely a good thing.  I will snap some more images during the install, and then run some tests on this thing.
February 12, 2010 by Island Dog

Are you ready for the weekend?  I certainly am.  Let me first mention our Impulse fleet on Star Trek Online has a great group of players, and from what I hear everyone has been having a great time playing.  Going forward, we hope to have more groups forming for our Impulse community so Stardockians and our customers can have a chance to play together more often.  Let me know what you think of that idea.

This was without a doubt a super-busy week.  We had a bunch of releases on Impulse, including our beloved Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity, and the Diplomacy expansion.  Check the links below for the list of other releases we had this week.  It’s getting to the point there’s not enough room in this article to list them all.

If you are following the development of Elemental: War of Magic, be sure to take a look at the blogs and developer journals from this week, there have been quite a few and they are all worth the read.

Lets get to the roundup!


News and Articles:

 

New and Updated Releases on Impulse:


Weekend Impulse Buys

2-12-2010 1-02-39 PM

February 12, 2010 by Island Dog
The weekend is finally here and we close this week off with our weekly edition of This Week in Skinning.  As always, the best of the best skins are featured from the week, and there’s another fine set of skins this week. Check out This Week in Skinning !
February 12, 2010 by Island Dog
The weeks are just flying by, and so ends another glorious week on WinCustomize.  The big news this week was the release of WindowBlinds 7.01 , which is really an awesome update.  More textures, MS themepacks appear in the skin list, and more.  Don’t forget you still can grab WB7 while it’s on sale in the Impulse Store .  Now for this weeks picks! My Dirty Valentine by Vampothika Just awesome, perfect for a Valentine’s desktop...