LogonStudio RC 6 is now available. It's a program that lets you apply and create your own logon screens for Windows XP. It uses the .logonXP format and can import logonui.exe files. .logonxp files are both smaller and safer (it's amazing that someone who wouldn't click on a .exe attachment in their email will happily replace their logonui.exe with one downloaded off the Internet). Best of all - it's free! (www.logonstudio.com).

A new version of IconPackager is available. IconPackager is a program that allows you to apply a "package" of icons to change all of standard Windows icons to something new. The new version of IconPackager includes an icon explorer for finding icons in DLLs, EXEs, and ICLs as well as fixes a host of problems that were in the shareware version.

This is always a very tough issue for the moderators of WinCustomize because no one enjoys rejecting the hard work of graphics designers and other artists. But we want to make sure the site stays focused as a skin site first and doesn't end up flooded with wallpaper. So we're starting to become increasingly pickier on what wallpapers end up on the site. We generally focus on wallpapers that work as wallpapers (as opposed to just being artistically nice). On top of that, unique-ness helps...

Hopefully some people have noticed that WinCustomize is considerably faster this week than previously. We added another 10 megabits of bandwidth to the site. A special thanks to those of you who have purchased WinCustomize subscriptions for it was they that made it possible to afford the additional bandwidth. Give yourselves a pat on the back.

I'm in the process of writing a series of articles for my other life as a game developer over at Avault. This latest series though actually touches on how website in the post-dot com world are trying to generate income. The new article deals with subscriptions and how to go about them. Visit: http://www.avault.com/developer/getarticle.asp?name=bwardell12 to read it.

Even science fictions writers would have been hard pressed to come up with such a sensational story. 4 airliners, hijacked to be flown into buildings. Two of them into the World Trade Center. The WTC was 2 buildings that typically had 50,000 people in them at once. Think about that for a moment. How many people live in the city you live in? The town I grew up in only had 5,000 people in it total. Those two buildings usually had 50,000 people in them and could comfortably fit more t...

ObjectBar is one of the most powerful and easiest ways to create your own bars and docks and custom menus on Windows. If you've ever wanted to create your own skins for it, check out the new skinning guide.

Check out this review of WindowBlinds 3.4!

A great site for Windows XP news and info! XP-erience.org covers all sorts of great stuff.

How many of you are finding a growing gap between the net savvy and those who don't spend much time or at least don't use the Internet as an efficient way of gathering information? This article talks about the growing gap between the "information gods" and "information mortals". The net is a real liberating mechanism. You have the ability to talk to exactly the kinds of people you want regardless of location (whereas in "real life" their physical location has more to determine whether you han...

After a long development gestation, PocketBlinds 1.0 has been released. PocketBlinds is a program that completely skins Windows CE (title bar, push buttons, menus, radio buttons, etc.). Over the course of the last few months PocketBlinds has been rewritten to make use of new extension features in the latest version of Windows CE. The result is that it is able to skin any recent PocketPC with no visible performance hit. If you have a PocketPC, grab it now.

The fastest, best way to get skins, themes, icons, and wallpapers is not by surfing some slow website to do it (ahem) but by directly connecting to the underlying database of a skin site. That's what the WinCustomize skin browser does. It lets you search on skins at lightning speeds, browse through hundreds of wallpapers, skins, and themes very quickly and can APPLY skins and themes directly and even download the software you need if you're missing it. The 1.0 release candidate is ...

Thanks to WinCustomize subscribers, we've been able to order a new Dual 2.4Ghz server to help run the site. Any slowness on WinCustomize you experience presently isn't due to bandwidth but is rather because we've maxed out the CPUs on our servers. This new one will hopefully make a significant difference. If you're not a WinCustomize subsriber and want to help support the site visit here: https://www.wincustomize.com/store.asp

Cool Desk is a virtual desktop manager. Ever wish to have several screens on your computer? Cool Desk creates up to 9 virtual desktops and allows you to have different windows in each of them. The desktop manager window has a skinnable interface and allows you to switch from one desktop to another with a single mouse click. You can easily minimize, maximize, close, move from one desktop to another and even drop windows to the system tray area (near the clock) using the dockable "Windows ma...

WindowFX adds a ton of new special effects for Windows XP users. So what does WindowFX 2 look like in action? Try out this video: https://www.stardock.com/video/windowfx1.wmv This video was done a 1Ghz Pentium 3 system with a Geforce 2 card (Detonator 40 drivers).