I mentioned in a post here that I've been ill. I don't like getting sick. I particularly don't like getting stick while on a 10-day business trip where I have to walk miles. Obviously I died. But I'm getting better, slowly.

I don't know how many deadlines were missed last month. I think quite a few.  I do know that SkinStudio 6 made it out and that's a pretty big deal.  Seems like there was a time when skin editors and such were "cool".  SkinStudio 6 is certainly cool. And CursorFX came out, that's very cool too.

Now, one of the things I hope people have noticed is the quality of releases lately.  You could almost say we had a New Year's Resolution to really bump up the quality of new releases. It has required quite a bit of work but if compare SkinStudio to older versions or CursorFX with older versions and the upcoming Impulse with Stardock Central and so forth, hopefully you're seeing a positive trend.

This Wednesday we're scheduled to release Object Desktop 2008.  And just because we love you, here's a sneak peek at the new Object Desktop website. The web team is going to kill me for showing a page that hasn't officially launched yet but by the time they see this news item, I'll be safely hidden somewhere in South America.  Compare that site to the current site. Big difference.  And guess who designed the new site? Alexandrie. 

Which reminds me, one of the coolest changes over the past year has been the coming together of the community. I get to work with Treetog and Alexandrie and MikeB and Voo and Hippy and Essorant and Danilo0c and more every day. It's just awesome.  The projects they're working on you guys will get to see in the relatively new future.  That's the one down side of working at a software company, everything you guys see is stuff that was done last year and we often can't talk about the cool stuff being worked on for next year.

This year will definitely be the best year ever for Object Desktop users. Particularly Object Desktop Ultimate users.  For one thing, we've finally gotten the MyColors discounts in. So on MyColors themes where there isn't a big licensing royalty, we are able to pass on big discounts to Object Desktop users.  Best of all, when a MyColors theme is installed, it inserts the individual components into the proper application data directories (i.e. WindowBlinds skin in the WindowBlinds skins folder).  Why is that a big deal? Because let's say you want to use the cool icons from Aqua Marine as clipart? No problem, it's in the IconPackager folder where MyColors installed it.

Speaking of MyColors, for early adopters, let me express my heart felt thanks for your patience.  As any techie users can explain, MyColors is an engineering accoplishment that's never been seen before, well basically anywhere.  MyColors not only has self-healing tech for the components but will automatically update itself or the content when there's updates.  I can't think of any other software out there that can update both itself and external content in such an integrated way.  Which meant, naturally, while it was first released it was a pain in the rear.  But it's looking pretty good now I think.

And lastly, for those of you into games, you may have heard Stardock's big announcement: Gas Powered Games (makers of Supreme Commander and Dungeon Siege) has signed on to have Stardock as its exclusive world-wide publisher.  Here's a funny statistic from NPD: In February, Stardock was the 7th largest PC game publisher in the world.  Not bad for a skinning company!