The latest Master Skin here on WinCustomize comes from Master Skinner Gef .  Gef's work in DesktopX themes is impeccable and this latest addition is no different.  I was very impressed while going through this theme, and there is no mistaken that Gef has paid much attention to detail. This DX theme, Starlight , has a dark and sleek look.  The top bar can be viewed and hidden by moving your mouse over the Starlight image, and the bar includes weather information, calendar, mai...

The Harley-Davidson Raw MyColors Theme was recently released, so as usual, I want to take you through a walkthrough of what is featured in this theme.  This is a theme designed for MyColors, and to find more information about MyColors, you can read through a walkthrough or view a screencast with more information. Visual Style and Wallpaper The visual style for the Harley-Davidson MyColors theme is a bit hard to describe, but the “Raw” name is one of the first things that come...

We haven't said too much about the GUI Champs lately, but rest assured, we are hard at work behind the scenes lining up sponsors and getting everything ready.  One thing we often talk about here, and even in the WinCustomize SkinCast, is the quality of the skins that were submitted.  So just to give a reminder at what the '06 GUI Champs was like, here are some skins from the competition. ...

Back when my smallest daughter was just about to be born, we had to trade-in our small 4-door sedan for a mini-van.  With two real small children at the time, and another one just about ready to arrive we needed a mini-van as much as I didn’t really want one.  That was way back in 2000 and we did end up getting a Chevy Venture.  It has been a really great vehicle with no major problems, and I have problem invested less than $1500 over the past 8 years into it.  So...

This weeks member spotlight is someone who has quite of buzz about them lately, and that person would be WinCustomize member and Apprentice, mkorashy .  He has been a member since January of 2007, and since then he has contributed to a number of galleries including wallpapers, DesktopX, IconPackager, and WindowBlinds. While I took notice of his wallpapers and icons early on, it was his WindowBlinds skin Artifice .  This is a superb WindowBlinds skin, and what really caught my eye ...

I wrote a bit about this yesterday, but today we have the "official" announcement that the Harley-Davidson MyColors desktop themes are available.  The Harley-Davidson branded desktops are ornamented with classic or raw imagery while retaining the PC’s functionality, included a branded media player, and customized icons.  The Harley-Davidson desktop themes can be downloaded for $19.95 on Windows XP or Vista and features the following:  A complete Harley-Davidson visual style ...

Master Skinner SKOriginals wrote an article today that I think might benefit skinners of all experience levels.  This article is about the Blur feature and the effects on Shadowing.  He puts the theory through some tests, and then writes an interesting conclusion. Check it out!  

One of my personal favorite skin galleries to watch is the ObjectDock gallery .  I'm always keeping an eye out for a dock background to match the WindowBlinds skin I am running.  We have several very talented skinners who always seem to keep us up to date with matching skins. These are of the latest backgrounds that caught my eye.

Today was a somewhat "big" announcement that Yahoo, Intel, and HP have teamed up to research more on "cloud computing". "The CCTB will consist of six actual sites, ostentatiously dubbed "centers of excellence," each of which will house about 1,000 to 4,000 processor cores. When those six initial centers are ganged together into one large cloud, the resulting machine will have a core count that should put it somewhere in the Top 20 supercomputers list , depending on the number of cores ...

Stardock is pleased to announce the release of SkinStudio 6.2. SkinStudio is an application that allows you to design custom visualstyles for Windows Vista and Windows XP.  These visual styles (skins)can then be applied using WindowBlinds .  When creating a new skin you can change the complete look of Windows by changing the start button, taskbar, buttons, titlebars, and pretty much everything in between. This update includes several major feature updates. WindowBlinds L...

I don't care for either Presidential candidate this time around.  Both suck, but Obama sucks worse.  Here is my reasons I will be voting against Obama. Higher taxes.   Obama has no clue about taxes and follows the tired liberal line of more taxes will solve all problems. Spending.   For years we have heard democrats complain about republican spending and deficits.  To a point they were right, but Obama's spending plans so far are incredible, and the costs wil...

Harley-Davidson is a name pretty much everyone knows, whether you are a biker or not.  They are one of the most recognizable brands and have a definite mark in American history.  Earlier this month, Harley-Davidson opened a museum in Milwaukee with a bunch of antique bikes and memorabilia, along with a history of HD productions.  This place is huge as they took 20 acres and placed 3 building and filled it with archives, a gallery, and of course a store.  You can find more...

We often get asked for tips on how we pick skins to be featured on the front page of WinCustomize or in various articles such as This Week in Skinning.  We also get quite a few questions on tips for uploading to WinCustomize which make skins much more likely to get through moderation. I put together a "Tips for Uploading and Moderation" guide so new users, and even experienced one's, can get a sense of what helps when submitting a skin for moderation. View the article here . ...

For those that have been around for a long time and/or have used Stardock Support even once you have likely heard of Mike aka Milksama. On this day July 28th in the year 2008 Milksama ascends from support into the realm of Developer. You may or may not have heard that Milksama has been coding on the side for some time with Stardock. Having been with the company near three years now he has paid his dues and is being raised from the proverbial "front lines". Read the rest of the post fr...

On one of the episodes of the WinCustomize SkinCast, we touched on how some of us look for skins to feature, and gave some tips on getting featured and getting more downloads.  This is especially useful for new users who have just started skinning, or are considering picking it up.  I wanted to put some of these tips into a guide, and also offer some suggestions and guidelines for when you do upload a skin to WinCustomize. Uploading Tips Previews.   Make sure to have a pre...