The fine folks at Neoseeker.com recently had a chat with Stardock’s Brian Clair about the upcoming micro-expansion Diplomacy for Sins of a Solar Empire. “We recently visited the IronClad studio to chat with them about the upcoming Diplomacy micro-expansion for their award-winning Sins of a Solar Empire 4X RTS title. We had a few more questions for the team but they're busy working on the final stages of development as they prep for the Feb 9th launch. So, we got in touch w...

Another week is just about over, and looking through WinCustomize I see the Valentine’s Day Community Suite is coming along rather nicely.  More on that soon though.  Now that we are closing out the month, the first one of 2010, skinning started off slow because of the long holidays, but has gradually picked up over the past couple of weeks.  I’m confident this year is going to rock! Now for this weeks picks! Gridlok DX by RedNeckDude This...

Lets start a new thread for 2010 where you can post your workstation, whether it’s at work or home. Here is my current setup.

  Stardock has released an update to KeepSafe today.  KeepSafe is an application that offers real-time backup and seamless way to protect important data and documents.  If you have ever had an important document become corrupted while working on it, or lost an important revision you will appreciate what KeepSafe can do for you. KeepSafe is easily configured using wizards, and you can choose what file types to keep backed up, and even choose the location where to store the...

After a couple of weeks of backroom deliberation, the WinCustomize moderators have cast votes, and the majority has had the difficult time of picking one WindowBlinds skin as their pick of the year.  While there were so many great skins being considered, it falls back to an old favorite, one of the most popular WindowBlinds skins ever that has recently gone through an update. The favorite WindowBlinds skin of 2009 by the WC moderators is…… StealthOS by MikeB314! This...

Whether you are interested in one or not, at least you can be thankful the rumors are done and that the much speculated iPad is announced.

For the most part, it really seems like a big iPhone or iPod Touch.  They also introduced the iBook Store which seems to obviously be going directly after the Kindle and the Amazon book store.   Base price is $499 with options like 3G connectivity and more storage space that can bring it over $800.

I’m still looking over the details, but it certainly is an interesting device, but certainly not game changing.  It won’t be out for a few months so I guess we have time to think about.

WindowBlinds 7 is here, and some of the older tutorials and guides show the older user interface, and since WB7 was such a big change I wanted to create some new guides instead of updating old ones.  This time we are going over the basics of using WindowBlinds to change the visual style of Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7.

If you don’t already have WindowBlinds, you can grab a free trial at www.windowblinds.net.  You can also purchase the full version there, or get it as part of the Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancements. 

This is the main configuration window.

The bottom is where you will find your skin list of all installed skins, and you can easily move through the list by “swiping” with your mouse.  Clicking a skin from the list will show a preview of the skin in the window above so you can get a quick look at what the skin will look like.  At the very bottom is the tabs where you will find options such as coloring, sub-styles, textures, etc. We will talk more about that in another tutorial.

You can download additional skins from www.wincustomize.com.  Just double-click the .wba file and it will automatically be installed into your skin list.  Just choose the skin you wish to use, and click ‘Apply Changes’ in the upper left-hand area.  That’s it!  Your skin will be applied and you will have taken the first step in customizing your PC.

When I built my latest PC less than a year ago I got some great deals on the components, mostly from Newegg.com.  This was my move to 64-bit and quad-core so I wanted a minimum of 4GB of RAM, which I purchased for about $50.  That was definitely a great deal.  I would liked to have at least doubled that at the same, but hey, I had to stay within budget.  So here I go this week looking to grab another 4GB and wow, has the price increased!  From $50 to $93, ...

This is with FF and Chrome, haven't tried in IE yet. https://www.wincustomizetest.com/explore/wallpapers/42914  

The Game Developers Conference for 2010 is being held in San Francisco this year, and the Stardock team will be there ready to talk about Impulse and other projects going on. GDC runs from March 9th to 13th.

We will be at booth #131 so if you are there be sure to stop by!

http://www.gdconf.com/index.html

There have been more than a few new and updated skins for WindowBlinds this past week.  It’s great to see more and more WB skins being created/updated to work with Windows 7!  Sometimes it’s easy to miss them when a bunch of skins are coming in, so here is a quick recap of the latest!  

Chart-box.com has published a list of their top 10 best Real Time Strategy games of all time.  Coming in a number 4 we have Sins of a Solar Empire! " From a rather unknown developer, Sins took bold steps and big risks to blend the typical turned based strategy with the RTS genre. Thankfully for us they managed to nail it, bringing to the table a completely new style of RTS. Featuring unparalleled scale and intelligently complex tactical thinking. Sins breaks the mould and stands ou...

I’m excited today, but I really can’t tell you exactly why.  Oh well, maybe it’s all the coffee.  Anyways, it’s Monday morning and per our routine it’s time to post some of the featured skin picks that came in over the weekend. Lets do this!

Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably know that Apple has a big event planned that is supposedly going to be the unveiling of the much speculated Apple "tablet". I myself, while being completely addicted and obsessed with new technology, am excited to see what is delivered, but I'm pretty confident I won't be getting one at launch this time around.

In talking with others around the office, the guesses for price are around $800-$1000 with me taking the $800 bet. Of course we know absolutely nothing about it, but that doesn't stop it from being fun to guess. We have had some interesting discussions about what this tablet, and any other tablet-like computer should be.

I envision the Apple tablet to be like a big iPhone. It's going to have games, not hardcore ones, but fun, casual games like Peggle for instance. It will have the typical "widgets", web browsing capability, e-mail, and basically everything else that is on the iPhone. My best way to describe it would be an enhanced media device.

This render from an artist on Flickr is exactly what I think it will look like.

For now, all we can do is wait until January 27th and seen what the hype is all about, and if it lives up to it.

The month is starting to wind down, and this has been a really exciting week especially with the pre-loading of Mass Effect 2 starting today!  Last week I mentioned we needed a nickname for the Impulse publishing team, and our fan on Facebook posted some good suggestions.  Some of the suggestions were “the Impulsinators”, “The Impulse Drive”, “The Impulsives”, and “The Impulsers”.

I personally favor the “Impulsinators”.

Well anyways, lets take a look at the weekly roundup on Impulse !

Articles to check out:

• The importance of optimization
• Windows 7 Superbar Stomps the Old Taskbar – Part 1
• DeskScapes 3.1 Supports Multi-Monitor Wallpapers
• Elemental: The MUST HAVE 2010 TBS requirements
• Impulse gets jump lists
• This Week in Skinning - January 22nd
  

New Releases on Impulse:

• Bob Came in Pieces
• LogonStudio 1.7
• DeskScapes 3.1
• 4x4 Hummer
• Classic Car Racing
• 1C Racing Mega Pack

Coming Soon:

• Elemental: War of Magic
• Command and Conquer 4
• Star Trek Online
• Mass Effect 2

Weekend Impulse Buys: