Check out this article on JoeUser.com for some details on the upcoming beta of The Political Machine...

The Goodyear Theme Manager includes themes for Goodyear’s new Assurance featuring TripleTred Technology™ and Assurance featuring ComforTred Technology™ tires. Each theme has a WindowBlinds visual style, one or more wallpapers, desktop Icon Packager set and the distinctive Goodyear branded Wingfoot mouse cursor powered by CursorXP technology. The themes were designed by the artists at the Buzzwerks Interactive Marketing, a division of Hitchcock, Fleming and Associates (HFA) Interactive Ma...

Stardock TV lets you see how you can do cool things with your desktop in video form. This month's episode focuses on IconPackager but also touches on how you can use Object Desktop to create the ultra-minimalistic looking desktop. Check it out!

If you already have an active subscription to ObjectDesktop.net you can now get Object Desktop 2004 on CD for free other than shipping/media costs.

Object Desktop 2004 Released Desktop Enhancement suite provides unprecedented ability to transform the look and feel of Windows For Immediate Release: Contact: Bradley Wardell (bwardell@stardock.com) Canton MI (Tuesday April 6, 2004) – Stardock released Object Desktop 2004 today. Object Desktop is a suite of desktop enhancement utilities that are designed to extend the base feature set of Microsoft Windows. The features of Object Desktop focus on giving users the ability to ...

Mike Gunderloy is a Contributing Editor for ADTMag, as well as being a developer and consultant in his own right. Here are his findings about DirectSkin from Stardock: "DirectSkin gives you a custom control (OCX) to handle the grunt work of skinning your application. You can use the control in any environment that supports COM controls (including .NET; it works fine via interop). Once you've added the control to your project, it takes 4 lines of code to initialize, and then 2 lines if...

All Stardock.net related services (including this site) will be down tonight while we do server maint.

The Political Machine announced For Immediate Release: Contact: Brad Wardell (bwardell@stardock.com) Phone: 734-762-0687 Canton MI – March 29, 2004. Stardock Entertainment, the makers of award-winning strategy games, announced The Political Machine today. The Political Machine is a strategy game in which players take on the role of campaign manager for a US Presidential candidate. In the game, players must campaign, raise money, take out advertisements, win endorsements, and ...

With more and more companies licensing skinning technologies, Stardock has launched SkinningSolutions, a blog that features articles explaining the benefits that can be achieved. The first article focuses on DirectSkin, an OCX that allows software developers to make their applications skinnable with as little as four lines of code. You can see how artists such as Skinplant create new looks for today's software programs.

So you have Windows XP and you want to tweak it up to change how it looks and feels and functions. What's out there that's free? What's out there that's not? This article talks about what Stardock offers in terms of functionality to change various parts of Windows XP.

Consumers have come to expect that software applications have a professional look and interface. With the growing popularity of skinnable applications such as Windows Media Player and Winamp, the bar has been raised. Applications not only have to be functional, they have to offer a look that pleases the customer. DirectSkin offers a solution that is fast, efficient and cost effective. With just a few lines of code needed to integrate the DirectSkin OCX, developers can give their appl...

You may have noticed that there's been a lot of updates lately on Stardock Central. The reason for this is we are preparing for Stardock Central version 2. Version 2 has a much more robust back end than what we've previously had. Stardock Central is the program that connects to Stardock.net which hosts Object Desktop and its suite of programs, WinCustomize.com, and Drengin.net and its suite of games. It is a way of streaming software and other content to you in a easy and reliable wa...

Zippo Manufacturing has become the latest corporate client to license Theme Manager from Stardock as a part of their marketing program. Theme Manager allows companies to create and distribute complete desktop themes. The Zippo theme includes WindowBlinds, IconPackager, wallpaper, WinAmp and Windows Media Player skins. “Theme Manager is a really innovative way to reward our customers and to drive traffic to our website. Desktop customization has become so popular that we expect to...

BootSkin 1.0 is now available for download. BootSkin is a freeware program that allows Windows 2000 and Windows XP users to safely change their Windows boot screens. While other Windows boot changing programs exist, they have relied on patching the actual Windows XP kernel to change the screen. This can create all kinds of potential problems. BootSkin, by contrast, installs a driver whose only job is to display the boot screen. This allows users to change their boot screens without...

Stardock has launched PoliticalMachine.com. The new website is designed with the dual purpose of being the home page for Stardock's upcoming strategy game, The Political Machine as well as a neutral political discussion/debate site for users interested in discussing politics, current events, etc. The new site makes use of content from Stardock's new JoeUser.com blog site (visit JoeUser.com to get your own free blog). Articles submitted under the category of "Politics" automatically g...