Apparently the iPod craze is the latest greatest gadget since zippers replaced the buttons on your Levi's. Up 'til now managing those hundreds of files for us PC users has left an old friend out in the cold. Now we have ml_iPod! Your iPod just became useful!

Features:

Advanced media managment with an Artist-Album display

Full Playlist support

Intelligent syncronisation with your Winamp Library

The ability to copy songs from your iPod to your hard disk

This plugin was orginally written by Justin Frankel and Christophe Thibault. Development was then taken over by Will Fisher and Daniel Green. Other people to contribute along the way include barto, ibi, Darren Owen and Soundsys. mliPod uses code from gtkPod, to whom we are forever in debt. David Serrano made and maintains the website. Along with Eric Caoili as the logomaster extrodinaire.

Website: http://www.harrison-fisher.co.uk
Download: mliPod 1.12

Before I get flooded with comments of this handy little add-on for Winamp being nearly a year old, it's just been updated and it's new to me, so it must be NEW!

Consider this a distraction from the otherwise serious DeskMod conversation, but as something to light a fire under you and get everyone making stunning screen shots for us, here is your challenge:

http://www.flickr.co.../w00kie/sets/180637/

The bar has been set. I expect better from all of you. Beat those.

Wow, what an awesome response! It's great to see that everyone is as excited as we are. For those of you that had never been to DeskMod while it was fully open, I hope you stick around, because I think you'll really enjoy it! One thing is for sure, I can't wait to have everyone back together again. As I've been reading through all of the comments, I've stumbled upon a bunch of names that it seems like I haven't seen in ages. That was yet another reminder that we really, really need this site back!

Before I go any further, for those just finding out about DeskMod, I should really explain what exactly it is. DeskMod is a skin site (or, for the sake of the name, a desktop modification site) that was started way back in 1999 by Clark Template (aka xtreme) and myself. In case you don't know, a skin site is an archive of user-submitted skins (think Winamp), themes (think WindowBlinds), wallpapers, screenshots, icons, and pretty much anything else you can use to modify the way your computer looks and functions. As you may have guessed, we refer to all of those things as mods. At any rate, over time, a very strong and closely-knit community formed around DeskMod. That helped build a very large archive of mods, which in turn resulted in immense traffic. It was this traffic that made the site so difficult to run, as it required much more money than it was pulling in. While that was the reason the site closed most recently, the first closure (yep, there were 2 -- we've had stellar luck in the past) was actually due to a hard-drive failure.

There's a lot more to the DeskMod story, but let me skip ahead to something you might find relevant. When DeskMod re-opened for the first time, it was co-owned by Mike Pacific (aka the artist formerly known as iMike) and myself. About a year into the two of us running DeskMod together, we came up with the idea for ModBlog on a late-night phone call. A few months later, ModBlog was born, and the rest is history. While DeskMod was forced to close later that year, ModBlog was fortunate enough to live on, and has since done very well. In a way, It's actually thanks to ModBlog's success that DeskMod is able to come back. One final thing that you should know is at the very core of ModBlog lives the same code that powered DeskMod during it's second run. So, even though you may never have consciously visited DeskMod, you've actually been using a piece of it all along.

Now, on to new things. There are a few issues I want to clarify. First and foremost, there is absolutely no launch date planned yet. It'll be a little while before we're to the point of being able to nail down a date. Don't worry though, it won't be a boring wait. We're going to post very frequent status updates here, and even a couple of teaser screenshots. However, keeping with tradition, you can assume we won't be giving away too much in those screenshots!

To keep things even more interesting around here pre-launch, the whole DeskMod Team is coming back together to post very fresh news and original content. We'll be featuring mods from around the community (and even pulling some out of our offline archive!), interviewing well-known members of the community to see what they've been up to since we closed, and even posting a series of tutorials aimed at introducing new members to the world of desktop modification. Needless to say, you'll have plenty of reason to keep checking out DeskMod even before the new site launches. All of this will start within a day or two!

The second issue I'd like to clarify is what data we still have. The simple answer is, all of it! Of course though, I need to get a little more detailed. First and foremost, you can rest assured that DeskMod's 30,000 mod archive is still fully in tact. In fact, a few members happened to be in the right place at the right time, and were able to browse through the archive just a few weeks ago! Not only that, but every other piece of content is fully in tact as well. Everything from comments to profile information to points is locked away in a very safe place, and will be brought back online when the new DeskMod launches. However, we are still working to import the forum data from DeskMod Lite, which should happen in the next few days.

The final issue I'll clarify on is how the new DeskMod will differ from the old. There has been a lot of speculation on this subject, which cracks me up! Last fall, I had people messaging me all the time saying that they heard the new DeskMod won't have an archive. This may come as a surprise, but there was actually truth to that. We had a very detailed plan put together for a much different site for DeskMod, which featured no local archive. This idea was put together at a time where we didn't have the resources we do now, and were looking for any option to get DeskMod back. While the idea of not having an archive seems like a terrible one, those that we pitched the idea to actually like it. A lot, in fact. It was a very unique idea, technically advanced, and seemed to have a tremendous amount of potential. In the future I'll post the complete details of this idea. However, no matter how great that idea was, nothing can top DeskMod with a complete local archive, like it's always had. That's good too, because we're sticking with the archive. That's right, DeskMod will have a complete local archive, just as you've come to expect.

Aside from the archive, there will be some differences. That's a good thing though. After making the same type of site for nearly 3 and a half years straight, we needed to change things up a bit. Plus, the old site format just wouldn't have worked with all of the new ideas we have. All of the features you're familiar with from the old site will be there (and more!), it'll just be in a new format, and hopefully a little easier to use. The people we've shown this new format to have been extremely positive about it, and we're pretty sure you'll feel the same. Thanks in part to this new format, the new DeskMod will be one of the most technically impressive sites out there. That's a bold claim, but we haven't waited this long just to come back and be average. One thing that we've learned over the years is that to make a really great site, the functionality everyone uses every day needs to be what's impressive, not little frills that no one uses. With all of that said, we promise it'll retain the feel DeskMod has always had and that you'll enjoy it very much!

That's all for now, but stay tuned for many more status updates as well as all of the fantastic content that the DeskMod Team will be posting!

After being dormant for nearly a year and a half, DeskMod is set to make a triumphant return to the desktop modification community!

For those that don't know, DeskMod launched in 1999 and quickly became the largest site dedicated to skins, themes, wallpapers, screenshots, and anything else you use for customization your desktop (aka mods). DeskMod grew to be a very large site, thanks to both a very strong and close-knit community as well as partnerships with Winamp, Sonique, DFX, Konfabulator, Mozilla, Geoshell, Shareaza, and several other applications. Even with the tens of thousands of incredible mods, it was DeskMod's incredible community that made the site such a special place. Finally, the site itself was constantly developed at a very fast rate to stay technically advanced and innovative. As you can probably tell, many of these principles carried over to ModBlog.

Sadly, DeskMod's history hasn't been free of trouble. There's enough "excitement" to write a book on. A year and a half ago, DeskMod was forced to close simply due to its own popularity. The money required to keep DeskMod online greatly outweighed its revenue, and after struggling for months, it finally had to shutdown. Since then, DeskMod "Lite" has been online to serve as a temporary community while a plan to bring DeskMod back was developed. Thankfully, that plan does exist now. This new community site, which is powered by ModBlog, is the final link between the old DeskMod and the new DeskMod.

There is no set launch date for DeskMod, but it is under heavy development, and the wait will not be long. However, as always, quality will definitely not be sacrificed for a quicker launch. It's been quite a while since DeskMod went offline, and a lot has happened around the web. While it would be very easy to bring the existing DeskMod site back online, that simply wouldn't do DeskMod justice. DeskMod was known for being a very technically advanced site, so it certainly wouldn't make sense to bring back a site coded 2 years ago.

So, what will the new DeskMod be? For starters, you can rest assured that all of the fundamentals will be there. All of the mod uploading/viewing/do wnloading functionality and all community and informational aspects will be there. Furthermore, DeskMod will continue to be 100% free, just as it always has been. DeskMod will be housed on the same massive hardware and bandwidth resources that ModBlog is, which will ensure that we're never forced to close the site again. This is it. DeskMod will not go offline this time around. Third time is a charm, right?

The DeskMod development team have placed a very huge weight on themselves. That weight is knowing they have to (and very much want to) produce a site for DeskMod that is more usable than ever, but will also blow you away with just how technically powerful it is. The new site is being built from the ground up on an entirely new engine. This new engine will replace ModWorks v2, the engine that powered DeskMod v3.x and still powers ModBlog. Thanks to this new engine, the developers will have the flexibility to build the type of site that's needed to fulfill their vision.

The new DeskMod will certainly be different from previous incarnations, but that's going to be a great thing. It's time to bring web communities, and interactive sites in general, out of 1999, and that's exactly what's about to happen. The plan for the new DeskMod has been in development for nearly 3 years, which has given a great deal of time for updating and refinement. It's a shame it didn't happen sooner, but the end-result should be better as a result. Hopefully you'll find the new DeskMod very worth the wait!

Thank you very, very much for sticking around DeskMod. It hasn't been very easy to keep the faith in its return, but your patience will truly pay off. For those of you that will be new to DeskMod, please hang around for the site's launch. You'll quickly figure out just why DeskMod is such a beloved site! In the mean time, feel free to join and interact with this ModBlog Group. For those that hung around DeskMod Lite, have no fear! The Forum and ChatterBox contents from that will be imported very soon.

Keep a close eye here, as new information and progress updates will be posted very frequently. Additionally, desktop modification related news will pick back up soon, and you never know, a featured mod or two might appear!

That's all for now. It sure feels great to say that DeskMod is coming back, doesn't it?

Keepin' it green,
The DeskMod Team