The people from Patchou.com created a great extension and add-on that add some cool advantages for msn messenger which works with versions 3.6 and 4.0. Also an away message can now be selected like in ICQ: Features List Logging (historic). Automatically keeps a text file of your chats so that you can laugh of all the stupid things you said, some months after . This works quite like IRC logs (if you know what I am talking about). Personalized Away. If you want your contacts to rec...

DeviantArt is the world's largest on-line art community. They have recently begun allowing users to order prints of some of the great artwork available over there. Proceeds from the artwork go to the artists as well as to the site to help pay the bandwidth bills. Check it out.

Microsoft, AOL, and OEMs are at odds over what should be on the Windows XP desktop. Stardock has developed a solution that may solve the problem.

Stardock has released SkinStudio 1.1. SkinStudio is a program that lets you design your own custom interface to replace the drab UI of Windows 98/ME/2000/XP. The skins it produces can be used by WindowBlinds and ObjectBar to transform the Windows GUI. It's a free download, check it out.

Deviant Art turns one year old today and they have a new project and many cool things happening today! Staff members are keeping tight lipped about today's events, building up suspense and making this a very exciting time indeed. Deviant Art has been through a lot lately, dealing with bandwidth issues, but they have stayed strong and given the community 100% and to that we are all extremely greatful! The staff has done a great job with the site thus far and we are anticipating more great...

Ever wonder what some of the graphics people at Stardock do when they're not making skins, icons, or themes? They make video games. Try out this cool new one!

Late last week we did a band width analysis to see where the bandwidth goes. Around 20% of it was spent on THUMBNAILS alone. We made a change in which anonymous users would see the tiny thumbnails (we store 2 sizes of thumbnails - tiny and large) by default instead of the large ones. Sure enough, bandwidth use went down. We also made the change that the default would be the tiny thumbnails as well. Now, let's say you want to have the larger thumbnails again, you need to have an accoun...

Remember Microsoft Bob? Alex G, one of Stardock's graphics designers, took a break from working on Galactic Civilizations to create this modern rendition of Microsoft Bob using DesktopX.

As anticipated pixeljunction.com version 2 has been released, and it's packing a punch. PJ has got all the features the big boys do, and more. Their quality tutorials have been converted to fit the new layout, and I must say it's impressive. The facelift included not only a new layout but a new php/mysql backend. Don't walk but run to pixeljunction.

So where did that traffic come from? 1) Stardock: 68% (up from 63% las month) 2) DeskMod: 7% (down from 11% from last month) 3) DeviantArt: 2.8% (same as last month) 4) LotsOfSkins: 1.5% (down from 2%) T-shirts are in manufacturing and should be available soon. That and the CDs should hopefully offset the costs of the site. With CD sales, we were about $3,600 over budget for the month so we still need to find a way to generate an additional $3,600 per month to pay for the in...

Convergence is the part of Stardock's Object Desktop that ties all the programs together. It allows users to create true "skins suites" called Skin packs. A skin pack is a collection of icons, skins, and themes put together into a single file. When applied, Convergence communicates with your installed programs and directs them to change their various skins to the ones in the skin pack. So a user wanting to have a particular overall look to Windows would simply apply a single Conv...

Our first T-shirt goes to manufacturing this week. The design is by Flipnet. The shirts will be on sale for the first month for only $12 apiece! Proceeds from the shirts will go to pay for the bandwidth running this site! We should have the shirts ready for sale within the next 2 weeks!

Stardock has released an update to DesktopX that addresses some problems found when running it on Windows 98 and Windows ME. Click on the link to get the latest version.

My cock-up with transfer of DNS servers for web/email forwarding. Hopefully will be resolved soon, if MyInternet ever respond to my email !!! _Martin_

Over the past few days we have broken a few records for the site in number of visitors per day. This is largely due to the increased popularity recently of DesktopX. The main limitation isn't in raw bandwidth but a limitation in server capacity. Our solution is to upgrade the server. A new server has arrived -- a dual 1Ghz monster machine. We are in the process of setting things up and should have it ready to replace the existing server shortly. In the meantime, with several hundred user...