Brad Wardell is President & CEO of Stardock Corporation. A small (couple dozen employees) Midwestern software company that develops Object Desktop, a desktop enhancement suite, and several games such as The Corporate Machine, Galactic Civilizations, Stellar Frontier, and more.
The best known program of the Object Desktop suite is called WindowBlinds, a program with an installed base of over 4 million users. But recently, as Stardock has moved towards the final release of WindowBlinds version 3, it has faced a new challenge from Windows XP itself. WindowBlinds 3 extends Windows XP to support UIS skins (UIS is the skin language supported by WindowBlinds, ICQPlus 3.1, MediaJukebox, and several other companies licensed to use UIS). But with a new program called Style XP, Windows XP can be modified to support Microsoft"s .msstyles skin format. It does so by patching a system DLL known as uxtheme.dll to disable the digital signing security. This enables anyone to make .msstyles.
The result has been serious competition on Windows XP for the hearts and minds of skin users.
Today, Neowin is interviewing Stardock"s Brad Wardell to get his take on all this. Click here to read the interview.