Happy New Year! Hopefully all of you have had a safe and restful holiday season. It's back to work for all of us here at Stardock, but believe me: I got quite a lot of playtime in during my break!  My backlog of games is such that I didn't buy too much during the sale, but I still snagged a few things at some pretty great prices. I finally picked up Star Wars Battlefront II and, although I'm not such a great shot (at least I'm true to Stormtrooper lore when playing as an Imperial!) ...

Happy almost New Year, everyone! I have a little treat for you before we go on break here at Stardock: that’s right, I have a sneak peek at the new DeskScapes! I have to say, even though there are a few features that aren’t completely hooked up yet, what I’ve seen so far of DeskScapes 11 is pretty darn cool. Let’s have a look at what’s coming! New UI The new UI makes for an all-around better browsing experience. You can browse for backgrounds ...

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...

When I wrote this, it was Friday morning of the season finale for The Mandalorian and no - I hadn't watched it yet! Believe me, my plan was to do that first thing after work. I have always had a soft spot for cute things, and let's be real: Baby Yoda (name redacted because spoilers) is about as cute as it gets. I also admit to having a bit of a weakness for clever things like little creatures that live on your computer desktop or, since the innovation of things like Pokemon Go, critters you c...

Seasons Greetings, everyone! All of us here at Stardock are wrapping up our work for 2020 as we prepare to go on our holiday break next week, but that doesn't mean we haven't made sure to fit some festivity into our days.  Normally, we'd be a'wassailing at our holiday party together right now, but for obvious reasons, we're skipping that this year. Instead, we decided to share some cheer from our home offices by displaying our merriment in the form of ugly sweaters. Here are the results:...

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...

Holy cow, you guys, Disney went ham with show announcements last week and my brain is  still  trying to wrap itself around everything that we'll be getting from our favorite franchises in the next 2-3 years. Disney's "Investor Day" event was on December 10th, and in a four-hour long presentation they shared the slate for a  ton  of upcoming projects, most of which are specifically for the Disney+ streaming service. Disney+ has already amassed 86.8 million subscribers in it...

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...

An image taken from Wonder's website showing off their new app There is no substitute for organic mingling and in-person interaction. Planned calls on Zoom or Teams isn't the same as mingling with your friends or coworkers at a social event, no matter which way you slice it, but Wonder, a Berlin startup, has built a platform for people to come together in video-based groups. How is this any different from Zoom, Teams, or the multitude of other video chat options there are out there no...

A recent surge in coronavirus cases here in Michigan sees me once again working from home. Fortunately, the work I do at Stardock is pretty easily taken remote, but that doesn’t mean that certain tools don’t make that transition easier. I am, of course, talking about Fences . In a previous blog , I gave a rundown of a bunch of the really cool customization options that Fences has to offer - but I couldn’t cover everything . I wanted to share a little bit ab...

By the time I publish this, it'll probably be "old news" and, oh, I don't know, maybe the aliens will have landed by then, but seriously: what the heck, 2020!? The monolith discovered out in the middle of Utah's Red Rock Country about a week ago disappeared on Saturday. Heck, for all we know, it disappeared before then, but Saturday is when the federal Bureau of Land Management's Utah office announced that the monolith had been removed by an "unknown party." Unknown party, huh? I'm just ...

We make a lot of software here at Stardock, and while all of it is wonderful and useful in their own ways, there are just a couple of programs that I consider my “ride or dies” for my PC experience. Fences is absolutely at the top of that list (followed very closely by Groupy ). The basic functionality of organizing my icons, folders, and programs into fenced in areas on my PC desktop is great enough on its own, but the more I explored Fences I began to realize that ...

Everyone loves a good mystery, and officials in Utah recently stumbled upon a doozy . On November 18, the Utah Department of Public Safety discovered a shiny metallic monolith in a remote rural area of the Red Rock Country while surveying herds of big horn sheep by helicopter. The monolith is eerily similar to the one found in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film  2001: A Space Odyssey , though it doesn't come with its own iconic background music track. Officials have no idea who may have ...

Galactic Civilizations III launched in 2015 just a month or two before I joined the team at Stardock. From my first day here, this particular title was my training ground as I navigated my new job and learned all of the products the marketing team is responsible for.  It feels appropriate, then, as I pass my 5 year Stardock anniversary, that I take a look at GalCiv III and all of the expansions and DLC we’ve released over the years to continue making it a vast, enjoyable, exciti...

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...