Meanwhile some of the zealots at Neowin are ticked off because I didn't drool about msstyles:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?s=6a61959b56e725077a983be020bf56b0&act=ST&f=34&t=57226&st=15entry574673
I wrote a post there asking for comments on what stuff they would like me to add (like, duh what happened in the msstyles area). Now, I realize there are people, including here, that think msstyles are a HUGE thing. But the statistics don't back that up. Last year, around 400 msstyles were released to the public. More WB skins were made. Only XP users can use them. And of that 400, a very high percentage were derivatives ("It's luna but now it's yellow!") or ports from WindowBlinds, MacOS, or elsewhere. And there wasn't any software released last year that were involved (style xp and style builder were 2001 and neither have ben updated in any meaningful way in nearly a year).
That doesn't mean that I don't think they deserve coverage. But it's amazing how much tunnel vision some people have. I'd say what happened with Ashton last year or SysMetrix was a bigger story than msstyles. November 2001 made things seem a lot different. But in 2002, it's mostly a story about the creation of 400 skins, which while impressive in quantity, is not something one could argue was a dominating issue.
The Neowin forum zealots, rather than putting forth rational suggestions have mainly been screaming bloody murder about it. I'd be interested in hearing the msstyle story and I'd be interested in adding it in proprtion to its overall affect on skinning.