There has been plenty of talk about ways to modify and hack your copy of Windows 7, but what if you're looking for more ways to make it drool-worthy? Style7 is a little app that helps make it a little easier to make custom themes for Windows. The way it works is pretty simple (or is it?) and is done with a "simple" configuration file.

When you create a theme, it starts off using the default Aero and you work your way through it from there. You'll need to download Style 7, as well as a UxTheme patch to allow this mod to work. Personally, if I'm going to go through all this trouble, I'm just going to Google "Cool Windows 7 themes" or something. For those of you a little more daring, ehh, give it a try!

As someone who has used Windows as my primary operating system for years, I got very comfortable with modding various parts of the user interface. One of the things that was most fun to change is the startup image - my favorite was a very official looking FBI splash screen that made it look like you were logging onto a government computer.

Since switching to the Mac platform, I've been surprised at the relative dearth of modding options for the operating system. Thankfully, Steven Sande over at our sister site TUAW recently posted about BootXChanger, which allows you to change the monochromatic Apple logo that you see when booting into OS X to something different. While it's not an entire boot screen, it is enough to give your machine a bit of personality.

It turns out that creating images for use on the boot screen is very finicky, but BootXChanger comes with a set of fifteen sample images to get you started. Right away I was torn between using the radioactive symbol, or the classic Commodore 64 logo. The radioactive symbol won for now, but given the ease of switching boot logos, I can imagine I'll be swapping between the various options or maybe even taking a shot at making my own soon enough.

[via TUAW]

If you're anxious for Snow Leopard to ship, you might be excited to know that you can grab copies of the built-in desktop images, thanks to the developer previews and a crafty blogger over at Uneasy Silence.

While there are four images out of the set of 35 that feature leopards, the rest of the images run the gamut from beautiful landscape photography to classic pieces of art. The images are offered as JPEGs, so even Windows users might like to pick up a few.

It seems to be a requirement now that major operating systems release with a relatively substantial set of beautiful images to be used as desktop wallpaper.

No longer can OS manufacturers get away with offering eight photos and a few tiling images -- remember tiling your desktop? Does anybody ever do that anymore?

I'm a procrastinator. If something needs to be done by 2:00 PM, I'll often finish it at 1:59. My procrastinating tendencies sometimes make me late though. Like many people I've tried the old "set your clock ahead 15 minutes" trick, but it doesn't work -- I just find myself mentally calculating every time I look at one of my clocks.

This week Component X released an interesting little Mac utility for people that like me have a procrastination problem, inspired by Guy Kawasaki's Alltop. It's a menu bar clock replacement called Alltock that runs anywhere from right on time to fifteen minutes fast, but the trick is that you never know whether it's running fast or not. This forces you to assume that the time is accurate, and ends up more often than not making you a little bit early.

While I love the concept, the execution leaves a bit to be desired. While it's easy enough to hide your Mac's built-in menu bar clock, you can't move the Alltock clock over to the right on the menu bar. This is apparently due to the fact that Alltock was created as an application rather than as a system preferences pane, which was apparently necessary because the system's internal clock is not actually being changed. However, I find it hard to believe that it couldn't have been done as a system preferences pane -- on my system I've replaced the system clock with one from iStatMenu, which is a preference pane.

My other gripe with Alltock is the fact that there is no ability to hide the dock icon. If a user really wanted to replace their system clock, I see no reason to leave the new clock's dock icon sitting there taking up valuable screen real estate.

Complaints aside, the concept of Alltock is a winner, and hopefully a subsequent version will make it a truly viable system clock replacement.

What can I say? I loves me some sweet-ass icons. If you like to mod your desktop with gorgeously rendered icons as much as I do, you're going to love this list of what App Storm calls 50 unusually awesome icon sets for Mac. The icons are definitely Mac-themed, but if you're looking to appropriate them for use on another operating system, check out Lifehacker for some ideas on what to use.

If you're looking for a tool to easily swap icons on your Mac, check out CandyBar, Download Squad's favorite Mac icon management tool.

Have you got a favorite icon set or list of icon sets? Link it up in the comments.

Have you ever wished that you could have someone edit your blog posts for typos, spelling errors and grammatical mistakes? Most of us aren't lucky enough to have someone dedicated to catching and fixing our every mistake.

Rather than asking one person to edit for you, why not effectively enlist the help of all of your blog's readers? That's what the folks at Brave New Code figured, anyway, when they decided to create the gooseGrade WordPress plugin.

The concept is simple: install the gooseGrade plugin on your site. Then when readers are visiting your site and they see something that could be corrected, they click on a Grade This button on your site and enter the correction they believe should be made. As the site's owner you have the final say as to what changes to apply, so this isn't a tool that is going to let people insert spam all over your site.

While the concept is interesting, I have doubts that people will take the time to edit someone else's work online, in particular I have doubts that people will take the time to understand that they even have the capability of suggesting edits. This tool would have to be baked-in to a major blogging platform like WordPress.com or TypePad before I think enough people would understand what is going on to actually make use of it.

I kind of wish that it was, actually, because the idea is appealing. It's just going to take a lot for this idea to reach the critical mass it would need to become successful.

[via Panache]

Icons are to me like clothes are to my wife - meant to be changed. I love sprucing up my desktop with customized icons and a funky background, only to change it all up a week later.

If you're like me, then you're going to enjoy this list of 50 of the most beautiful icon sets created in 2008 at NOUPE. The icon sets listed are intended for everything from customizing your Mac or Windows desktop, to iPhone replacement icons, to web development. There's a little something for everyone, so have a peek if you're at all curious.

Do you have a favorite resource for free icons? Link it up in the comments.

We love customization around here. Computers would be a sad, sterile place without being able to alter, to any degree, your workspace. Applications often provide "skins" for various reasons (usually just for fun). But the skins that provide a cool theme can also turn a workspace ugly in a hurry. In this case beauty is often in the eye of the beholder. Just as with clothes, there are plenty of skins out there I wouldn't put on my download queue, let alone my apps.

I'm going to leave full-on OS mods alone this round (with one notable exception of abandonware below). I'm sure everyone is familiar with WindowBlinds, etc.

Windows Media Player
The default UI is pretty bland, so MS has an enormous well of skins to choose from. I'm not sure what percentage of skins are marketing tools, but it looks like a pretty good number. Still, the sheer variety from amazing to totally fugly is staggering.

Coolplayer
There's definitely something to be said for bland, because Coolplayer's default skin is hideous. Red, orange and moldy tomato are not good color choices, nor is the wacky text layout which you should simply glance at for info. Lucky the thing is a nice player, I guess. I could keep listing music players with skins, but I'll leave them alone. Once you open that door, any kid with Paint can come along and thrash your look and feel. Maybe that's why OS X makes it so hard to radically change the look?

Kaleidescope
Speaking of Mac OS, this classic Mac OS goodie was a favorite of mine back in the pre-OS X days. There was an amazing variety of themes, and while I don't want to dwell on OS mods, I think Kaleidescope is a good example of the variety of artistry you find whenever customization is allowed. Still, while I love Masashi Ichikawa's work, I don't think I'd take a business client seriously if I saw their OS looking like KidPaint.

Firefox
Well, of course! Not only does FF let you customize the look, you can extend the functionality of the browser with add-ons, which also alters the look and feel. Version 3 of Firefox changed things a bit, but Mashable did a nice piece last year featuring the top 20 themes still compatible with v.3. I tend to use the default, as Foxlite (its name) works very well and keeps RAM issues to a minimum.

Is there anything more addictive than Twitter? If you're in full-blown Twitter addiction, you might be looking to spruce up your Twitter profile page. While you can change a few of the colors, the most effective way to differentiate your Twitter profile is to change the background image. If you want something professionally done that will really wow people, check out Twitter Image. They've done free designs for a number of well-known twitterers, and you can browse through screenshots of the professional designs they've done. Or, if you like, you can browse their currently two pages of royalty-free generic background images.

The free ones are part of a limited time offer that Twitter Image is offering for popular twitterers. If you have more than 2000 followers, Twitter Image will create you a custom background for free. For everyone else, they are currently offering 25% off (or more) of the $100 price, though the "or more" part is not clearly defined.

What I'm wondering is if there is actually anyone out there that is willing to shell out $100 for a background image for their Twitter page? While I'm not a heavy Twitter user, I follow over 100 people regularly, but do so almost entirely through client applications - in my case, Twitterrific on both my Mac and my iPhone. I could care less what background is on my own Twitter page, much less those of the people I follow - in fact, I find the customizations either forgettable, or annoying.

Am I out to lunch? Is there a market for $100 background images? Where do you stand? Let me know in the comments.

While Vista has now been available for almost two years now, there are a lot of people that are happily sticking with XP, myself included. And while there aren't enough flashy features to tempt me to switch to Vista, one that I do like the look of is the Vista sidebar. Happily, deviantart user joshoon has posted a package that allows you to install the real Vista sidebar on your Windows XP computer.

Installing the sidebar consists of installing three packages: Alky for Applications, Windows Sidebar Installer, and Gadget Extractor. Alky for Applications is where the magic happens allowing Vista-specific software to run under XP. An interesting side-effect of installing the Windows Sidebar Installer is that the Vista-specific fonts are added to your XP installation.

Because this is an XP-compatible version of the actual Vista sidebar rather than a copy, all of the widgets that you could install in Vista will work on XP.

[via Lifehacker]

Okay, I'll admit it: I'm a sucker for a fancy new screen saver. And if it's something that is totally unique, so much the better. Cubicle Flood certainly meets that criteria. In the Cubicle Flood screen saver, you get to see various views of what appears to be an empty office space through the office's security cameras. Over the course of eight or so hours the office starts to flood, until the whole thing is completely submerged.

I have to admit, sometimes when you're drowning under various pressures at work, having a screen saver that is a metaphor for your current condition can be somewhat comforting, in a perverse way. And boy does it bring out interesting reactions from your co-workers!

While you're visiting Idle Time Software to download Cubicle Flood (available for both Windows and Mac computers), don't forget to check out the Holding Pattern screen saver, which shows you a view out the window of an air liner.

Cubicle Flood is currently in beta, while Holding Pattern comes in First Class ($17.50, comes with 57 aerial views), or Coach (free, comes with 17 views) versions.

Speed is all about perception, so any tip that makes a computer feel faster is gold as far as we're concerned. Today's tip is a doozy from Raymond Chen, the venerable Microsoft developer and blogger.

According to Chen, a number of user interface timers in Windows key off of the double-click speed registry setting.

The default double-click speed in Windows is 500ms , or exactly 1/2 of a second. Try dropping that down to 250ms -- about three-quarters of the way towards Fast -- and watch the rest of Windows feel just a bit snappier, since a number of other Windows user interface timings use that setting as a reference. Cool!

The Playstation Portable is a jack of all trades. It plays music, videos, browses the Internet, and plays games. However, for an increasing number of people, this still isn't enough. With its powerful dual-processor configuration and Memory Stick Pro Duo slot, the PSP is a pocket powerhouse, capable of much more than just gaming and multimedia.

This is where the homebrew community comes in. With some modifications to its system software, the PSP can run 3rd party software, just like an ordinary computer. A massive community has sprung up online that is dedicated to these modifications. Read on to find out more.

Remember the days of the one-button mouse? Ahh, things were much less complicated back then. But simple is not always better!

Most people these days can't live without a two-button mouse, and in fact many of us have gotten used to using the click wheel as a 3rd mouse button, for things like closing open tabs in our browser. Without adding yet another button to your mouse, there is a way to get another action out of it. This is by cleverly using a double right-click gesture.

Think about it - you use the double click on the left mouse button constantly. Why not have a double click on the right one? If you'd like to add this functionality to your machine go ahead and download ClickZap, a very small utility for Windows machines that adds this very feature.

ClickZap offers the following actions that can be set for the double right-click:

• Lock Computer
• Log Off Computer
• Shutdown Computer
• Minimize Active Window
• Minimize All Windows
• Close Active Window
• Close All Windows
• Mute Sound

The default action is Lock Computer, but we'd prefer if it was Minimize Active Window, which appears to be the most commonly used action from this list.