Did you know that the government will pay you for saving for your retirement? To the tune of 50% of what you paid, in some cases?

It's true. It's a relatively new credit that most people still don't know much about. Last year, I personally got $1000 back from it. If your situation is right, you can too. The form is simple (PDF), though most e-filing systems can do it for you.

Even better - if you missed out on contributing to a 401(k) or IRA last year, it's not too late. You can still open...

I think we could all use more money somehow - not just for ourselves, but also to be able to help out our friends and communities. I'd personally like to get to the point where I could decide to do just about anything I want and not have to worry too much about what it cost. I plan to do so the boring way - by making good investments.

I thought I'd share my decisions about investing with you in the hope that it helps you make your own. Many of you are just getting into work, and will have mon...

As the developer in charge of Stardock's Vista labs, I'm one of the few who gets to "play" with the new builds right away. Up until now this has meant several hours of reinstalling software over the top of a fresh install. This time I tried an upgrade from 5472 to 5536, and as it's the way many of you will be introduced to Vista I thought I'd share the results with you. I also wanted to see whether or not I agreed with blogger Robert McLaws, one of those who has been playing around with the int...

Wow. A lot of people have decided to order GalCiv II from us - direct! There are literally thousands of boxes being sent out right now. The corridors are filled with boxes which have more boxes in. It's like an air-raid shelter in here. We're looking into buying more of the building we're in just to store them all.

For those of you waiting patiently, be assured that we are trying to get these boxes out as fast as we can. There is an assembly line of people packing boxes into padded envelopes...

Brad and the rest of the game team are busy hammering out the gold version of the game (which is going to be great, by the way - even I like it, and I hardly ever play games nowadays), so I thought I'd take the chance to explain exactly how profiling works. If you've seen the raw notes that Brad posted, you'll understand why they need explaining!

I think this is actually my first post here. I'm normally part of that 4/5ths of the company you don't see - Stardock's desktop enhancement applica...

It's big news. Looks like Yahoo has decided to take a position in the widget market, and it's doing it in a big way, by giving away Konfabulator. No doubt they intend to use it as a tool to cement their web presence:

Yahoo is counting on the widgets to make users more curious about certain topics, services or events, ultimately driving more traffic to its Web site so it can serve up more moneymaking ads and expand its current base of 10.1 million subscribers who pay for premium services, Sch...

OpenID looks interesting. It's a method of identification without explicit registration (except on your home site - one you choose to trust, rather than one you have to trust). It's in the process of being rolled out on LiveJournal and other sites that use its software. I suspect it could come into use elsewhere, if it's simple enough to setup.

I wonder, will I someday sign myself GreenReaper of WinCustomize.com?

PS: My article about WinCustomize search plugins is more useful than this on...

This friday I finished up some work on a new version of one of Stardock's products, which'll probably see the light shortly after the company finishes moving to Plymouth. So what do geeks do with their down-time? Well, in my case, it's often pretty much the same to what I do for money, only for the communities I'm interested in. Recently, a lot of my time has been spent on the Creatures Community, the group of people who've played the Creatures series of artificial life games. When I'm not cont...

Does your computer sit there doing nothing most of the time? Worried that using a $1000 computer just for web-browsing is a bit wasteful? Are you thinking that SETI@Home or distributed.net may be fruitless endeavours? Well, you just might be interested in Folding@Home! Have your computer spend its time doing some useful calculations for medical research (see the FAQ) rather than letting those cycles go to waste, and download a client now!

I've made a Stardock/WinCustomize.com team - all you ...

Note: This article refers to changes introduced in the DXPlayer plugin distributed with DesktopX 2.4. If you don't have that version, upgrade now! (trial version here - registered users can use the support emailer to get a link, or download via Stardock Central like ODNT subscribers)

I know a lot of skinners feel like they have to be programmers half the time. This has been especially true in DesktopX - it seems you have to know VBScript inside-out if you want to do anything really cool. One...

The script described in the article below is available for use in free DesktopX objects - see the snowman's script for details.

This is really as much an article on what mistakes to avoid as it is an article on creating flakes - if you just want to see the end result, skip to the end (or try clicking this link to get to the object). As WinCustomize is having a problem with submitting skins for Journeymen right now, I've duplicated the object description and shots here, as well as links to do...

I've been skinning for a while, and using other skins, and I think I have a pretty good idea of what helps make a good, usable skin that people will like. So I've made this article: http://www.zen9361.zen.co.uk/mgs/

But I know I don't have all the answers, so I'd like to ask people here what they think. Do you have any advice that you'd like to pass on? What do you think makes a skin great? Am I totally wrong on something, and can you say why? Do you have any other resources that show good sk...