Examiner.com’s “Game Examiner” takes a look at Stardock’s Elemental: War of Magic, and gives his take on Elemental. A quick excerpt: “Stardock has already conquered the world of space with their strategy hit Galactic Civilizations, and now it looks like they are setting their sights on the realm of magic. Elemental: War of Magic is a turn-based strategy game set within a magical realm where players can duke it out with both armies and magical spells, so...

December is here!  With that means we have started a new Desktop Screenshots thread in the WinCustomize forums to show off your current desktop.  Browsing the thread this morning, I already see quite a few Christmas desktop, and a bunch of skins from the 2008 GUI Champs . Take a screenshot and post it to the thread!

The latest edition of the Demigod Developer on RPG Vault at IGN.com is now out.  Demigod is the upcoming real-time tactical strategy game from developer Gas Powered Games, and published by Stardock. Diary #2 focuses on the single-player aspect of Demigod. “These days, it gets very tempting for developers to forget how many people play these kinds of games exclusively single-player. That's why we made a great deal of effort to not just create the standard campaign for Demi...

If you are a blogger or website owner/administrator, you can earn some extra revenue by  becoming an Impulse affiliate .  Impulse is Stardock’s next-generation digital distribution platform, and becoming an affiliate only takes a few minutes of your time. Once completed, you will have the choice of several links and images to place on your site to download Impluse, and you will earn a 15% net sales commission of purchases made through Impulse that was downloaded from your site...

After a short break, we have a bunch of new submissions in the 2008 GUI Champs.  I am  especially amazed at the level of detail that is going into some of these icon packs.  I’d really be interested in finding out how long it’s taking some of these artists to make these icons. Here are a few of the latest additions, and you can see more icons, along with .dreams and WindowBlinds skins at www.guichamps.com . ...

Zubaz has labored over the holiday weekend to come up with a tutorials on the rrecently  updated Theme Manager 3 .  This tutorial covers one of the coolest aspects of this application, which is the ability to create suites that are compiled via “links” to the skins on WinCustomize. You can get Theme Manager 3 now by becoming an Object Desktop subscriber. Link: A call to the ScreenShotters

The latest Master Skin on WinCustomize is Nightlit by Master skinner starone .  This WindowBlinds skin has a darker touch to it, with beautiful color accents throughout.  There is also an XP and Vista version available, and matching icons and cursor themes as well. WinCustomize subscribers get a 20% discount on Master skins, so don’t miss out on another fantastic work from one of our highly experienced master skinners. Link: Nightlit by starone

I hope everyone had a good holiday, and at least spent some time with family and friends, and maybe got a little rest in.  Not much longer and it will be back to “business as usual”, but I wanted to post a few skins that I have seen come in over the holiday break.

Here are some highlights of our Thanksgiving.  I also wanted to see how embeding a slideshow would work.

I have spent the last couple of weeks browsing through the ad scans hoping for some good deals on either games, toys, or electronics, and there was really nothing to speak of this year.  The stores and malls were packed without a doubt, but the lack of any real sales will make this a dismal shopping day.  Many of the popular items this year such as certain games and other related electronics were not discounted at all, and the things that were on sale were stuff you wouldn’t buy anyway...

From all of us here at WinCustomize and Stardock, we want to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!  For those of you celebrating, have a great holiday and a fun time with family and friends.

This is a short week for most of us, so I wanted to just give a quick re-cap of some news we had this week.  Although it was a short week, we had a lot going on in the world of skinning.  Have a great Thanksgiving! News of interest:  GUI Champs – Dream Voting Christmas/Winter Holiday Winky Challenge Thanksgiving Skins BootSkin Pro Walkthrough Popular WB Skins in November Thanksgiving vacation for support Nightlit Master Skin  

The day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday, is nearly upon us.  This is the day where people get up way early and wait in huge lines to get so-called “sale” prices.  I have been going through the ad scans and I don’t see any real reason to get up early this year.  Many of these retailers will have the sales on their websites, along with a better selection, so I might just take that route. You can get a sneak peak at many of the Black Friday deals here. http://for...

BootSkin Pro is the newest gallery on WinCustomize, and with that obviously comes with a new piece of software to create and use them.  BootSkin Pro is available now for Object Desktop Ultimate subscribers, and allows users to create and use custom Vista BootSkins. Creating and/or applying Vista bootskins is a relatively simple process, but I did write a quick tutorial on how to do both, just so users won’t run into any issues. Link: BootSkin Pro – Changing and Using Vist...

I have written about SnagIt 9 by TechSmith , and how you can use SnagIt to take better screenshots and skin previews with it. You can find that article here . One thing I mentioned about SnagIt is that you can extend its functionality by downloadable accessories.  These include such things as stamps, outputs, etc. Here are some examples: Outputs. These accessories allow SnagIt to quickly and easily send captured shots to a designated output.  My favorite ...