February 5th, 2001 was my first day as Sales Manager at Stardock! It has been a great adventure and I am grateful for the experience. In early 2001, Microsoft was about to release a new operating system called Windows XP. We were unsure how that would effect us and tension was high. We worked with Microsoft, the release of WindowBlinds 3 was announced at Microsoft Great Lakes, we became first a Microsoft Partner and then a Gold Partner. Today, Stardock is considered a high level ISV by Mic...

I went to the University of Michigan Art Museum yesterday for my second look at their exhibit of Pop Art. Well worth checking out, in my not-so-humble opinion. When Pop art was in its infancy, critics did not consider it "true" art. A critic, of course, is someone that lacks the capacity to create something, but has the qualifications to tell the artist what they did wrong. (Wry smile.) Which raised the question for me, "Is skinning true art?" Now I am rather opinionated on the topic....

A long time ago I heard these words of Wisdom from a tech: There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who do back up their files and those who WILL back up their files. If your are like most people in the world, you don't think about backing up until you experience some kind of fatal error. You get a virus, your hard drive begins to fail, etc. Then you scramble around trying to back up your crucial files. I have learned form experience (read "I didn't do it the first couple of tim...

As Sales Manager for Stardock, we are constantly finding new uses for our technologies. For the past two years Stardock has created desktop themes as an integral part of marketing programs for some of the largest and most innovative companies in the world. Nintendo, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Touchstone Pictures, Universal Studios and other corporations have licensed Stardock’s desktop customization products as part of their successful marketing efforts. This article explores why desktop customization h...