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| I am so upset with Stardock... |
| Tuesday, May 30, 2006 |
| -Apurva Roy Choudhury |
| In Category: Customization & Skinning, General |
| Comments: 9 |
| Views: 4341 |
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Stardock is probably that one company that I have been loyal to,
the longest. Ever since WindowBlinds launched, and i shifted to the
windows platform (after using Kaleidoscope on the mac), I have been
following Stardock.
I have always thought that Stardock is a
great company with really good products. What they have always lacked
are good skinners and programmers who would take full advantage of the
stardock products (apart from WindowBlinds) to create great interfaces
or software. Even though the biggest skinners in the world are creating
mind blowing themes for WindowBlinds, there are doing little to create
other interfaces and widgets that better the usability of the PC in
general. Take the example of ObjectBar. ObjectBar is a great tool to
create bars and menus and meters and can give a whole new look and
functionality. But the most of the themes that people made using object
bar were the ones that mimicked the Windows XP Start menu on older
systems. So what is the point that I am trying to make? The point is
that Stardock needs to further encourage skinners to build better
stuff.
And at least from my personal point of view, they are
anything but encouraging. I have tried messaging, mailing and
commenting on posts just to get in touch with Brad Wardell (Frogboy)
and/or other people from Stardock, so that i could get some help from
their team while we were building the uZable Flick Gadget, but I got no
response. I even created the whole content page with screenshots way
before we released the gadget, and send out the links so that we can
catch some attention of the Stardock guys, no response yet. We
submitted the Flickr Gadget to Desktopgadgets.com (a stardock site
meant to showcase gadgets) and it took about a month to even get it up
there! Frankly i would expect the guys to jump at the submission of the
Flickr Gadget as 90% of the gadgets submitted there are crappy pieces
of code. For example, one of the popular RSS widgets there actually
manually parses the XML file to get the content of the feed! It really
looked like 18th century code!
I agree that I am no major
contributor towards the themes and skins library, and hence
insignificant. I also agree that people like Frogboy are really, really
busy people and cant respond to every mail they receive and need to run
a growing software company. (I could contest that though, I run a
software company too, and have always made sure that people interested
in contributing are catered to). Maybe it was just my tuff luck that I
had a bad experience. Considering all of these, I still think that
Stardock is doing a pathetic job in encouraging newcomers into the
skinning scene, as they are focused towards catering to and 'featuring'
a few handpicked skinners.
So I guess its time to move on for
me.... in search of clearer skies. I finally decided to go back to my
long time favorite platform, Samurize. Does this mean that there wont
be any new uZable Gadgets any more? Or the flickr Gadget ends right
here? Not at all.... It just means you guys can expect a high quality
uZable offering for the samurize platform (while the rest of the uZable
team continues their work on the gadgets). Will post some preview
screens here as soon as i can.
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| Thursday, June 01, 2006 : 7:15 PM
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I completely empathize.
I have been observing for quite some time myself. Their offerings from a technical perspective are quite amazing (DesktopX, WindowBlinds). But their developer and skinner support is extraordinarily bad. DesktopX's documentation from development of widgets, gadgets is pitifully weak when you consider possible competition from unthought of areas - take Google Desktop Gadgets for instance. |
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| Thursday, June 01, 2006 : 10:02 PM
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I was a skinner for quite some time. You can find my stuff on Wincustomize under the name dawebmassa. Some of my stuff, like Warehouse for DX and Shark Attack Blues for WB was quite popular
I contributed a lot to Stardock's base both in skins and input via beta-testing. I have been told some of my work helped bring DesktopX more into the light because I worked with it early on when it was not such a popular app.
Anyway, as they grew, getting in touch with Brad and some others became harder and harder and, as should be expected, some of this went to his head.
It's a shame that you've reached the point I reached a long while ago. I just gave up. I felt some of us more serious supporters were getting little to no recognition for work which helped OD gain it's foothold.
Best of luck to you but don't beat a deadhorse for too long. |
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| Monday, June 12, 2006 : 7:26 AM
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i have also followed stardock for a long time, however i am not a skinner. dont even know how to begin. but i can empathize with what you are saying. stardock used to be easy to use, identify, download, and a treat for us non-skinners. it seems to me that the almighty dollar has taken over what we used to enjoy for free. i can no longer support stardock for all the above reasons.
i am sadly using nothing but the crap that came with xp.
thanks for your ear.
good luck. |
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| Thursday, June 15, 2006 : 11:35 PM
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We are witnessing the "business-ification" of Stardock. They are transitioning from a small company based on a community to an organization focused almost entirely on profit margins. They don't want your skins; They want your money, gentlemen.
Remember when Brad/draginol/frogboy/lostlistener and friends used to turn up community forums all over the place to contribute advice, plug a small skinnable program someone was developing, or just plain chat? Those days have faded as Stardock has successively moved into larger facilities and expanded into other areas (like Multiplicity and PowerUserTV). It seems increasingly apparent that they are attempting to become a tech news/opinion group instead of a skinning software group. |
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| Saturday, June 24, 2006 : 11:36 AM
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I'm basically waiting to see what Stardock does in it's next major version of tools - when they come out with stuff for Windows Vista. There's a whole lot of "rumor-talk" about their .Net language support and how they're going to improve the tools to integrate with Vista's dashboard bar, etc.
I think what Stardock does in that version will be a defining point in their history. If they come out with better tools, with more support for easier and better creation of skins / widgets / gadgets / whatever have you, they have a better chance of surviving.
I say surviving because I see the desktop gadgets space heating up furiously. Competition is coming in from various sides. From open-source projects like Samurize. From technology rich companies like Google. From Microsoft itself.
I can only wonder how the DesktopX platform, in particular, will fare when facing all this stiff competition, especially when it's easier to build things (at least theoretically) on the other platforms. |
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| Wednesday, December 20, 2006 : 2:39 AM
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Stardock is basically trying to become the Microsoft of the customization world. Nothing they do is original anymore, it's just copies of much better programs like Konfabulator. Brad
Wardell/Frogboy/Draginol/Khat also wants everyone to think that Stardock is solely responsible for skinning in it's entirerity. A very common example of this something that occurred awhile back on the AquaSoft site. AquaSoft did a review on a little known widget apt called AveDesk and suddenly out the blue Wardell attacks both the author and site admins because DesktopX didn't recieve front page attention. Despite the fact that he had been inactive on the site for nearly a year and never sent any news updates, AquaSoft was supposed to bend over backwards to promote his software. The same thing has happened to the more popular site of NeoWin. Wardell became a site admin to help "contribute," but the only things he posts are basically advertisements for his own software. You can also read through forums at WinCustomzie were he encourages his yes men fanboys like IslandDog, Atheletic Trainer, JAFO, etc. to join sites like NeoWin to attack other users or vote up their software on download sites such as Download.com or BetaNews. |
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| Friday, December 22, 2006 : 10:52 AM
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Thanks for writing this and everything you say and the same in the comments is absolutely true (except for JimmyWu who has seemed to turn reality on its head but more on that later).
What Stardock has had to adjust to is massive growth without being able to scale well to it.
For example, take your awesome Flickr gadget, I personally was the one who made it public. And that's part of the problem. That's a big part of Stardock's problem -- the handful of key people from the beginning are still the ones in critical areas but the demands on time are so much so that we end up doing nothing very well.
My email (bwardell@stardock.com) gets over 1500 email PER DAY -- not counting spam. Half of those are various mailing lists and CCs but that still leads a good 600 or so emails that I just can't get to each day and so they go by the wayside.
The net result is that we fail at doing what we've traditionally been really good at -- building grass roots community support.
So what is the specific cause and what is the solution?
I'd say the specific cause is that a company the size of Stardock would normally have one product. But Stardock has dozens. And so without being able to adequately focus on any individual one, it ends up being beaten by those who focus.
Look at Konfabulator (now Yahoo Widgets). Clearly inferior in technology but it totally came to dominate the widget scene even though DesktopX was there years sooner. Why? Because it focused on just that.
(BTW, JimmyWu, DesktopX was out years before Konfabulator and is a superset of Konfabulator in every way. And to correct the record -- I never "Attacked" Avedesk, what happened on Aqua-Soft was that the author of Avedesk criticized DesktopX for getting a mention on the homepage on Aqua-Soft in which I pointed out how often AveDesk got attention on the site. The discussions are probably still publicly accessible for anyone really curious. Similarly, on Neowin.net people can access what news items somenoe has posted and the vast majority of mine are non-Stardock related.)
It was this past Winter (around March 2006) that we really recognized just how bad it was. And then started to make changes.
What we were doing before was hiring in more and more developers, artists, support people, etc. when we should have been also bringing in more managers. That is what we've started to do. It's been a long, slow process but I think in 2007 you'll see some major changes. I certainly hope so.
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| Saturday, December 23, 2006 : 2:13 AM
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Brad, as much as we disagree on a great many things, it's great to see that StarDock is recognizing what some of us have been saying for years. Growth can be difficult.
Your point on Konfabulator's Widget's vs. DesktopX is well made. It's also directly applicable to StarDock's operational schema. Despite being owned by Yahoo, Konfabulator has a high degree of independence in marketing, site design, as well as a great deal of internal freedom. In short, Konfabulator is its own product, and previous to the name-change to "Yahoo Widgets", would have had only a cursory public association with Yahoo.
StarDock has obtained the "megalithic Microsoft-like" image in the minds of many (myself included), although this may be only be perception instead of reality. In the early years of development it is certainly wise to associate the corporate identity with the individual products for publicity's sake. However, WindowBlinds and DesktopX have reached their own individual statuses. One of the smartest things I think Stardock has done in recent years is obtain domain-names for Windowblinds and DesktopX, even though they still link back to Stardock's central site. They are brands unto themselves, and I believe that marketing them as such would reduce the perception of Stardock as a big company.
Management is another issue. As you've pointed out FrogBradginol, managers for each product is a necessary move. I'm not recommending spinning these off as separate businesses, but because they do have their own sufficient branding and community sufficiency, they are ideal candidates for their own place - make that http://www.windowblinds.net its own entity with its own look and tools. Ditto for DesktopX. Let 'em take center-stage in their own respective venues instead of diluting 'em down with Stardock first, WindowBlinds/DesktopX second! Give 'em room to breath in their own respective spheres with a faint perceived interaction with their parent company, much as Konfabulator to Yahoo - it makes it feel more grass-roots while still providing the goods and resources.
My 2 cents, anyway. Again, good to see that Stardock is realizing the essentiality of compartmentalization rather than having the mother-company image all over everything. |
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| Wednesday, June 18, 2008 : 10:34 PM
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None of this really surprises me. I was actually one of Stardock's early customers way back when they were primarily an OS/2 game company. Their treatment of me with Avarice (which NEVER worked right on OS/2) soured me to the company early on. It sounds like their latest transition to the "big time" mirrors their transition from OS/2 to Windows quite closely. |
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