For those of you who are into the Mac GUI customization, NickelCobalt probably places somewhere near the top of your list of vaporware Mac themes. (Below BBX: Omega.) It’s been over two years since Paul Johnson’s NickelCobalt took 1st place in the MacThemes Theme Mockup Contest, and unbelievably, it is finally… almost here!

This has been a massive ongoing effort by Skins Factory designer Paul Johnson, master themer Max Rudberg, and Enhanced Labs designer Philipp Antoni, and the result is a very unique theme for OS X that mixes a metallic design with some cobalt blue. What truly stands out for me with NC is its feeling of depth. There really is nothing quite like it.

If you’re interested in beta testing this, head on over to the MacThemesForums thread to sign up.

Click for a full screenshot.

Update: The beta is now posted here. Enjoy!

Many, many, many of you guys have emailed me or messaged me on AIM over the past few days about MacThemes Forums being down. (Seriously, tons of you. You never know quite how popular something is until something goes wrong, as I found out!) Basically, the hard drive at the data center hosting the forums got hosed, and unfortunately, while we were led to believe backups were being made on separate disks, it turned out that they were being made on a partition on the same disk. Which of course got hosed as well.

The good news? The forums should be back up later today or tomorrow at the absolute latest. James Cox, who hosts the forums (as well as Growl, Quicksilver, and other cool projects at cocoaforge) is working hard on restoring everything, so hang tight. (And for the record, he’s not the one to fault for the whole disaster, he’s currently also giving hell to the data center.) Things got pretty hairy back there, but the worst is past. Sorry for the inconvenience everyone!

Another note: I’m currently stealing a wifi connection from a neighbor, we’re cleaning up at the house now, and should be back ‘home’ by later today, at which point I’ll announce the winner of the mini-contest. If you were planning to enter, be sure to sneak in your entry soon, as only entries submitted by 12PM EST (about 2 hours from now) will be counted.