The State of Stardock 2005

Here's a summary:

WiindowBlinds 5

And if speed and super cool new skins aren't enough, then there's the fact that WindowBlinds 5 requires no resident program to have it run.  It runs as part of Windows by extending the native engine itself.  So no more "wbload.exe" sitting in your process list.  No more "WindowBlinds use too much memory" complaints because at this point, it's in their head.  If you turn off the Windows XP theme service, WindowBlinds 5 uses substantially less memory than Windows XP does by default and speeds up the performance of Windows XP while making it look a lot better.  Once WindowBlinds 5 is out, we can start to also look at Windows Vista support.

WindowBlinds 5 is part of Object Desktop.  You can get it as part of Object Desktop or purchase it stand-alone for $19.95.  Anyone who bought WindowBlinds 4 after September 1 will automatically get WindowBlinds 5.  Other WindowBlinds 4 users will be able to upgrade for $15.

Galactic Civilizations II is Stardock's biggest game yet.  The first game won editor's choice awards from most of the major game magazines.  The sequel promises to be even better.  Today IGN wrote "How could you not want to play something like Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords?"  In this strategy game, the player takes on the role as leader of an interstellar empire. They must combine their military, technological, diplomatic, manufacturing, and cultural strengths in order to survive in a hostile galaxy. 

The game is currently in beta over at www.galciv2.com and will be available at most retailers this February.  It'll also be through Stardock's TotalGaming.net game network.

ObjectBar 2

So before ObjectBar 2 hits, there will be Control Center 2 which is based on ObjectBar 2.  One of the things ObjectBar 2 can do is export its creates as executables.  In the "eat your own dog food" philsophy, we're making sure this works to the nth degree by having ObjectBar 2 create Control Center 2.  Control Center was Stardock's first desktop enhancement.  Made back in 1994 for IBM's OS/2, it was the original side bar.  On it, user could play virtual desktops, links, clocks, drive maters, memory meters, net info, and more.  Today, there's over 3.2 MILLION different side-bar type programs out there (okay, maybe a slight exaggeration).  Control Center precedes them but it to remain competitive, it, and its creator (ObjectBar 2) have had to adapt and evolve. 

To that end Control Center 2 has the best virtual desktops ever.  We say that absolutely.  When it comes out, try them out and compare them to any that have ever existed on any platform or today.  We've gone through them all to ensure incredible speed, lots of features, and a high degree of use. 

TotalGaming.net

Since then, TotalGaming.net has grown.  With nearly three dozen games including the Real Arcade Games, Space Hack, and a slew of major titles in the pipeline, TotalGaming.net is hoping to do for PC games what iTunes has done for music.

TotalGaming.net lets user buy games individually as you would normally expect or you can get a subscription to TotalGaming.net for $69.95 and receive tokens that allow you to "purchase" games at a steep discount (typically around 30% off!).

KeepSafe

It's often easy to forget you even have KeepSafe running -- until you need it.  Examples from within Stardock abound of when a file is lost, corrupted, deleted,  mangled, and that "Crap, I worked on this all day!" feeling comes in only to realize that it's not gone -- just right click on corrupted file and go back to a previous revision. Or if it's gone entirely, just go into the KeepSafe search dialog and start typing in its name and voila, you're back in business.

KeepSafe is one of the programs that makes up Stardock's new suite of information management utilities called ThinkDesk.  It will be available in public stand alone beta form hopefully early December.

Stardock Central has actually been getting a lot of work too.  A major new version is in the works and should be released real soon now.  Behind the scenes, many of Stardock's top developers have been working on this new feature.  Amongst the new features is the ability to toggle away the left bar so that you can use it as a really fast forum reader or navigate through WinCustomize.  Of course, that's not where most of the work has gone, it's in the unglamorous internals which have been reworked in an effort to make it  more reliable, faster, and handle a lot more users.

Of course, there's a ton of other things being worked on as well.  New builds of SecureProcess and ThinkMirror should be showing up fairly soon. Often times, sadly, the software is just sitting in the queue to be internally beta tested. In the good old days, we would just toss this stuff up and it would seem like every day something new (if untested) was being updated.  But as Stardock's software has gotten more popular, we have to be a lot more careful about what we toss out.  I know there's a new of RightClick in the queue (for instance).  There's also new builds of WindowFX waiting for more testing. There's builds of LogonStudio 2 floating around. And a new version of IconDeveloper. 

I think a new IconPackager beta was finally released recently so good news there!  There's a new build of ObjectDock in QA I believe.  We were thinking about re-enabling the "genie" effect that a few people have seen but have always kept off because we don't want to offend Apple.  I think the current view is to continue to keep that disabled and enhance WindowFX further so that if someone wants to create their own neat effects, they can.  But ObjectDock should be about being a dock in our view.

There's also work on DesktopX along with a lot of discussion internally about what it's roadmap should be.  The whole "widget" thing we think has been overhyped and with everyone and their brother doing it, we're not sure how much more to develop that.  DesktopX remains far more featured for widget creation anyway than other similar programs. We think that DesktopX needs to be seriously looked at in terms of robustness and making content creation more flexible (being able to sit down in your own editor to create your own stuff rather than having to use its built in editors for everything).  The whole thing needs a rethinking though.  DesktopX Pro continues to sell very well though and there's still nothing in our view quite like DesktopX in terms of being able to build custom, alpha blended, animated, desktops.  But like ObjectBar, DesktopX needs to pick a career, move out of the basement, and get to it. 

In terms of things being actively worked on, we have a desktop pet nearly done that we built using DesktopX Pro.  The game Society is in development as well.  We have a killer, unannounced product for Windows Vista in development that we think will absolutely blow people away.  It's a major program too, not some little tweak program.  It'll require its own section here on WinCustomize.  But that's a long ways off.  And it'll be part of Object Desktop.

We haven't done much on the blog site, JoeUser.com lately and probably won't until we have built up our IT team further.  Most of the IT guys are working on Galactic Civilizations II presently.  And incidentally, we're hiring.  We need developers of all kinds (game developers and non-game developers).  We need 3D modelers and artist, we need web developers and sales engineers and marketers.  They must be willing to relocate to Michigan though (no working from remote).

As we finish out 2005, it's been a good year.  But next year is looking even better.  With Windows Vista, the release of Galactic Civilizations II, and a number of other projects I can't really talk about coming to fruition, 2006 looks terrific.  It'll also be the 15th anniversary of the DBA