The major skin sites and several tech news sites (including OSNews) have gotten together with Stardock to create the first GUI Olympics. It is the ultimate user interface design contest in which users from around the world can submit their WindowBlinds skins and represent the website of their choice. Stardock is putting up $10,000 in cash and prizes that will be distributed to 75 different award categories (which means that just submitting a skin gives you a reasonable chance of winning something). Half of the cash award goes to the website a user represents. In this way, users can support the websites they enjoy using as well as win for themselves and have a lot of fun.If you would like to participate, pick up a copy of SkinStudio and WindowBlinds and create your own skins. When you submit a skin to the contest, it will ask you which site you want to represent. There are 15 different events included and the users themselves get to vote for their favorite skins. These votes will serve as a guide to the judges who mostly come from the major skin and tech news sites. Dr. Theo Mandel, one of the authors of the CUA 91 user interface specification (i.e. the UI that Windows and OS/2 are based on) will also be one of the judges.
If you’ve never made a skin, this is a great way to start. Making WindowBlinds skins is fairly easy with SkinStudio and it can be a lot of fun.
To enter, find out more, or just to check out the skins that have been submitted already, visit the GUI Olympics web site.
