I have seen quite a lot of desktop backgrounds over the years from all manner of friends and family. Heck, I remember as far back as one of my family’s first PCs, a Packard Bell, that we excitedly bought a screensaver and background software for so that we could have aquarium fishes swimming around when we idled. I mention the above mostly to point out a pretty obvious fact: everyone has different tastes. There’s no right or wrong way to customize your desktop - and, whether yo...

Back at the beginning of quarantine, I talked a little bit about how Groupy helped me work from home . It saves me the desk space of having to juggle around too many monitors by letting me use my two-monitor setup more efficiently.  It’s about more than just saving space, though. Groupy allows me to sort my work into categories, making it easier for me to compartmentalize what I’m working on, especially when I have several tasks working all at the same time. To b...

I absolutely love a good joke. As long as the joke doesn’t hurt or disparage someone, I’m 100% for April Fools' pranks. While some corners of the internet are to be avoided on April 1st, I personally always look forward to some of the funny prank products that game and tech companies come up with for that day.  I got curious about the origins of April Fools' Day, so I did a bit of searching online and found a few different accounts. The most credible explanation of it...

I normally don’t mind change. Change means progress, new and exciting experiences, interesting people, and so on. Change is good! Unless it’s your Start menu. Look, I spent a lot of time on Windows 7. I skipped Windows 8 entirely. So when Windows 10 came around and handed me a brand new Start menu (not to mention a bunch of other new stuff that I wasn’t used to), I wasn’t a huge fan. Like it or not, though, I’m a Windows user and I’m pretty mu...

One of the most common questions I think I get about the Multiplicity software is: why are there 3 versions and what the heck is the difference between them? It’s a fair question - one that I also had personally when I started learning about our software - and I’m here to help answer it. A while back, I wrote up a guide to setting up Multiplicity KM . Multiplicity KM is the version that is included in Object Desktop, and lets you control 2 PCs with a single keyboard and mo...

The Internet is a wonderful place - most of the time. You can stay connected with friends and family who live far away, learn new information at the touch of a button, and play games with people no matter where you are! Unfortunately, with every great thing there often comes a vice - and in the case of the Internet, that means scammers. There’s always going to be someone trying some new way to take advantage of others who don’t know any better. Plenty of us have been online lon...

I don’t know about you , but I’m a sucker for cool stuff. I’m a collector. I love to brazenly display my fandoms and hold onto keepsakes long after they’re relevant. My home office is basically completely decked out with paraphernalia from my favorite fandoms, many of which are video games. Several pieces have come from collector’s editions, which have become, much to my dismay, relics of the past. There are a few major pulls that most collector&rsqu...

A couple of weeks ago, I used an internet archive tool and took a look at some of the history behind a few of our now discounted software products. This time, I’m going to look at 3 more classic products that we still have up on our website for posterity, even though they are no longer supported or available. The first one we’re discussing, according to Wayback Machine, first appeared online over 20 years ago. DesktopX DesktopX was a desktop utility program desig...

Since the creation of “ Tennis for Two ” (which later became Pong) by nuclear physicist William Higinbotham, gaming has come a long way. When video games first started becoming a “thing,” there wasn’t a whole lot of variety available, but as technology has advanced, it has opened the floodgates for a plethora of new adventures.  I have talked a lot about different genres - things like Horror , and Open World , and Strategy - but I want...

Stardock has been around for a long time - for more years, in fact, than the age of our youngest employee (I’m writing it this way because I like to make the long-timers feel old. ). I’ve been around for a little over five years now, and sometimes I have fun diving back into history and looking at things we’ve done in the past. I’ve mapped the history of WindowBlinds , dove deep into the evolution of PC icons , taken an ‘over the years’ look at th...

Are you a Microsoft Surface user? Whether you have an older Surface Pro or are up-to-date with the most recent model, take a moment to read on about a snazzy little app called TouchTasks. What is TouchTasks? TouchTasks is a touchscreen app for Windows that creates “zones” on your device so that you can easily access apps and tasks.The zones are conveniently located on the edge of the screen and will work in both portrait and landscape modes. You can customize each zone b...

It's already been an exciting year for Stardock software - and it's only February! We are working on DeskScapes 11 still (you can see some  previews and walkthroughs) , but today I’d like to focus on our newly released beta for Tiles - what’s already there, and also what new things are coming to the app with the latest version. If you’re unfamiliar with the software, Tiles is a program that lets you create multiple desktops of related programs, fil...

Happy New Year! Here’s hoping that 2021 is significantly kinder to us than 2020 was. To get back into the swing of things (I’ve just enjoyed a 2-week vacation and I need to find my groove again), let’s take another look at DeskScapes 11! I gave a little preview of the upcoming version of Deskscapes just before our holiday break, but today I want to focus on something a little more specific within the app: designing your own backgrounds (Dreams).  There are...

As 2020 draws to a close (I thought it would never end, to be honest!) I thought we would take a look back on Object Desktop and all of the great apps and updates we’ve added this year.  If you’re unfamiliar with O bject Desktop , it’s a suite of desktop enhancement apps that lets you completely customize your Windows experience. It has several award-winning applications - including Fences , Groupy , and Multiplicity - and will completely transf...

Sometimes, my blog writing has me diving back through years of Stardock’s history from the development and evolution of WindowBlinds , to the evolution of the Drengin in Galactic Civilizations III, and even all the way to a history of desktop icons . This time, I’m taking a look at one of our old products, one that was here long before me: IconX. A screenshot of IconX on Windows XP, pulled from the program's original website. First, let’s tal...