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!

Enigma itself has improved by partnering with Rainmeter. There's now a quickstart wizard so you can set up the theme without editing text files, and Enigma can take advantage of some of the new features in Rainmeter, including iTunes and wifi plugins. Also, the new Rainmeter is fully compatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7. Now anybody can set up a well-designed desktop mod without having to edit a single file in a text editor.

Just a few days after being spotted in Chrome's new tab page, the official Google Theme Gallery is now open for business.

Am I really going to stick with the grass theme? Probably not, but I was in the mood after finishing up my yardwork this evening. There are currently 29 different skins available.

As with other theme galleries, not all of the options are going to win a GUI beauty contest. Some of them (like Legal Pad - check it after the break) might make you do a spit take. There are, however, some interesting options. At the very least, maybe this will help spell the end of bothersome Chrome skinning that involves backing up the default.dll and restoring it after Chrome crashes due to an incompatible skin.

Some of the themes - like Dots, also pictured after the break - even bleed past the bookmarks toolbar on the new tab page. The download and history pages, however, are kept clean below the divide. Thank god, because that would be a little more than I could take.

Remember, you'll need to be running the Chrome 3 beta or developer channel or be using a recent build of Chromium to get in on the fun. If that includes you, check 'em out then tell us which one you're switching to in the comments. Unless you're not impressed with the selection, in which case - sound off!

After all this "make your Firefox look like Chrome" nonsense, I'm holding out for the Firefox skin - just so I can post confusing screenshots.

[via Google OS]

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.

We're no big Windows Vista fans, but it does have a few nice features, particularly graphically. And as much as living in XP is at times preferable to moving to Vista full-time, sometimes you just want to spruce things up a bit.

LIfehacker points us to Alan Le, who further points out where you can get a set of Vista mouse cursors to install on XP. They look great, and it will take you all of about 2 minutes from the time you decide to download them until you have them installed in all of their glory. Really it's mainly just the difference between anti-aliased cursors vs. the tired old XP aliased ones, but it sure makes a difference.

Wallop was started inside Microsoft as an experiment in their labs. They decided to spin it off into its own separate company and got it funded by a few VC's. Wallop is a different kind of social network. It's completely built in Flash and supports modules that add to a custom personal expression. The beta came into effect, and we had an inside peek at what it looks like. It blows MySpace away as far as looks are concerned, but is it an effective social network?

Categories for your Wallop space include, a Homepage, Pictures, Music, Mods, Blog, Conversations, and Network. Take a peek at some different screen shots of the Wallop Flash interface after the jump.

Ingredients:

• 1 Cup SQLyog (community edition) for exporting/importing (substitute: phpMyAdmin)
• 1 tsp. favorite FTP client (FileZilla, CuteFTP, WSFTP, CoffeeCup, iFTP)
• 1 whole fresh WordPress install, unzipped and ready to upload (get it here)
• 1 new host (Dreamhost is a good host)
• 30 mins to complete
• a dash of know-how (provided below)

WordPress (WP) is a piece of cake to install, but what if you need to move a WP install to another host, and you don't want to deal with your posts being all wonky and your links weird? You can try using the import function of WP, but I found it to be very hard to work 100% and give you exactly what you had before. Below is a way to get your exact blog back, almost exactly what you had at your old host. The only requirement is that your new hosting environment be somewhat similar (similar version of PHP and MySQL).

I suppose this would be a WP hack, and isn't the way WordPress says to do it, but in my experience, the WP way to import doesn't give you exactly identically what you had before (especially with templates). My way does. So you're ready to bake your first WP turnovers? Great. If you are sick of the old host you are now using, they don't have enough features, or you just plain got a better deal, here's how to move your WP install over to your new host.

Instructions:

Step 1: Use SQLyog or phpMyAdmin to backup your entire database. You should also go into WP and use the backup plug-in to make a copy of the site itself (preferably offline and somewhere safe).

Step 2: Next, use your favorite FTP client and connect to your old host, where your site currently lives. You'll need to copy your theme files, especially if you have made any custom hacks to them. If you don't copy them out, you'll not have them when you move your site. WP newbie tip: All theme files reside in www.yoursite.com/wp-content/themes/themename. That is the folder you want to copy. If you have multiple themes, copy all you want to end up on your new host. I would copy them to your hard-drive, then later we'll put them back. You can copy the whole themes folder if you want, no big deal.

Step 3: You must also copy any theme files you have that you want to keep. These live in www.yoursite.com/wp-content/plugins. Copy the whole plug-ins folder for later.

Step 4: FTP to your new server. If you don't already have the WP software in a zip file, you'll need to download it here. Once downloaded, unzip it, and upload it to your new server via FTP.

Step 5: Install WP like you are setting up a new site. Create a new database, or use an existing one but be sure that the tablenames (table prefix) is exactly what it was on your old host during WP install. Once the new WordPress install is complete, now comes the fun part.

Step 6: Export your WP tables (or the whole database) that pertains to your WP blog from your old host. I generally use SQLyog community edition and export just my WP tables into a "textfile.sql" file on my hard drive.

Step 7: Go to your new host's MySQL database (just created with the new WP install process), and delete the new tables from the database.

Step 8: Use SQLyog to import your textfile.sql file into the new host's MySQL database.

Step 9: Simply FTP all your theme files and plug-ins to your new host's folders. The locations are exactly the same as your previous host (besides the root directory).

Step 10: Lastly, be sure you manually go into your sidebar, header, and any other files in your template and change anything you may have hard-coded to the old host. Most WP users don't have that problem unless they have custom hacks in place.

Hot tip: If you use AJAX, lightbox, and some other special add-ons that are not plug-ins, it is a good idea to let them reside in your theme folder, so if you move that theme, all the cool effects and special hacks go with the theme you're using. Makes things easy.

As long as your old tablenames match the new tablenames (that were installed by WP), your new host will fool your blog into thinking that it still lives with all the same data at the old host, but everything will point to the new host. This is part of the underlying structure of WP, and this makes the blog act like nothing changed, though you are duplicating the files and moving the physical location somewhere else. This act of splicing your WP install into another one you have created give you the ability to get exactly what you had before. Beware that this may not work, I obviously don't have every configuration and system out there. All of the moves I have tried using this method have worked flawlessly, and I have highly hacked and modified installs, so it should work for almost everyone.