Gameloft says it, others reining in Android plans

BARCELONA (Reuters) - French mobile phone games company Gameloft said it and other software developers were cutting back investment in developing games and other applications for Google's Android platform.

Android has won attention in the mobile industry lately, with Motorola and Sony Ericsson choosing it for their new top models.

"We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like ... many others," Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said at an investor conference.

Rochefort said the company has cut back on investment mostly due to weaknesses of Android's application store.

"It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue," Rochefort said.

Games for iPhone generated 13 percent of Gameloft's revenue in the last quarter. "We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android," Rochefort said.

Barnes & Noble says Nook sold out before holidays

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Barnes & Noble Inc said on Friday it had sold out of its newly-launched Nook electronic readers due to high demand -- a pre-holiday miscalculation that analysts said could boost sales of rival Amazon.com Inc's market leading Kindle.

The news followed a similar announcement on Thursday by Sony Corp about its electronic reader.

Amazon shares edged up 0.5 percent, while Barnes & Noble shares were little changed.

"Amazon can reap the benefit of Sony and Barnes & Noble's failures here," said Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps, who added that consumers looking for a wireless e-reader before the holidays now just have one main alternative -- the Kindle.

Industry experts have said that electronic readers sold by Amazon, Sony, Barnes & Noble and others will be top-selling electronic gadgets for the holidays. But demand is difficult to gauge because manufacturers do not releases sales results or sales targets.

Barnes & Noble said devices ordered from Friday will be shipped beginning the week of January 4. Gift givers will be issued a holiday certificate that notes a January shipping date.

"While we increased production based on the high consumer interest, we've sold out of our initial Nook allotment available for delivery before the holidays," the company said in a statement.

Moreover, e-readers sold in Barnes & Noble stores are in limited supply, said company spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating.

"We do anticipate having limited stock available in our highest-volume stores over the holidays," Keating said, adding the demand had "exceeded our expectations."

Sony said heavy demand for its latest e-reader, the Daily Edition, meant customers would receive their devices on a "first come, first serve basis" and shipments would not be guaranteed in time for the holidays.

Analysts say Barnes & Noble and Sony may have been too quick out of the gate with their e-readers to take market share away from Amazon, which holds the dominant position and says its Kindle is the best-selling product on its website.

"These two companies wanted to show the market that they would be competition to Amazon for the 2009 holiday season and now they have to face the consequences of that strategy and apologize to consumers for empty boxes under the tree," said Forrester's Rotman Epps.

Gartner Vice President Allen Weiner said the heavy consumer demand was undoubtedly a "positive sign" for the industry.

But he was quick to add: "There may be a lot of e-reader frustration -- it may be the Cabbage Patch doll of the year or the Tickle Me Elmo," referring to two popular toys of prior years that sold out quickly.

The various devices -- which range in price from about $199 to over $400 -- allow consumers to view a broad array of books, newspapers and magazines on a tablet-like device that is light and portable.
Amazon -- which itself was dogged with similar supply issues last holiday season -- said on its website that both its regular Kindle and its larger, pricier version, were both in stock and could be shipped in time for the holidays.
Alexandria Sage

Windows 7: Starting Up - Not So Fast!

Windows 7: Starting Up - Not So Fast!

Windows 7 was welcomed as a fresh and new beginning, and a final emancipation from woes of Vista for Microsoft, but apparently the new Windows is beginning to increasingly look a lot like the old Windows.

What's worse, of course, is that Windows 7's performance, like previous Windows, is beginning to show the same old performance problems from its past, as Laptop.com documents in recent tests. When it comes to the battery performance of Windows 7, for instance, Windows 7 comes out short, averaging some 47 minutes less than good old XP! Snow Leopard, on the other hand, has been proven to be much better when it comes to battery life than Windows 7.

PCMag.com, in a series of recent tests, discovered that even though Windows 7 easily beats Vista in all of its tested categories, the old and still popular XP stacks up extremely well against the newer OS by trumpeting it in 50% of all of the tests. That certainly is good news for XP, but bad news for Windows 7.

When it comes to boot up time, tests by iolo, PCWorld and ComputerWorld show that Windows 7 can be as much as 42% slower than XP, though it is somewhat faster than Vista.

Yahoo Tech is also reporting that browser speed on the new OS is slower as well. For example, based on aggregate tests of five major browsers, XP still tops the newer OS. XP by an average of 13 percent faster!

As Microsoft scrambles to undue the damage from an employee, who admitted that Windows 7 copied OS X's look and feel (something long obvious even before that confession), it will, I believe, have a much tougher time in the future regarding damage control resulting from an ever increasing number of tests that show that Windows 7 is not quite as the great of an OS as Microsoft would have everyone believe it is!

Much more serious, and damming for Windows 7, is this conclusion of a recent test which states:

" Windows 7 is still virus vulnerable, warns a security specialist.

SophosLabs reported in its security blog that a test Windows 7 system on a clean PC was affected by 80 per cent of viruses.

Sophos' Chester Wisniewski, said engineers loaded a full version of Microsoft's recently launched operating system, and configured it to follow system defaults for UAC (User Account Control) without installing an anti-virus package."

Yes, Windows 7 is definitely better than Vista, but that can easily be said for any OS. Still, when you have one test after another demonstrating that Microsoft's finest isn't quite as fine, in some areas, as XP, and is still plagued by performance and security issues', ones that Redmond proudly insisted it had finally addressed, you have to wonder a little.

As much as I like Windows 7, and as interesting as it seems, it's still no kitty cat. As a guest OS Windows 7 is more than fine, but when it comes to being my primary OS goes, I will take Snow Leopard any old day! It certainly has had its fair share of hic-ups along the way too, but over all, it's still a faster, better performing and a more secure OS than Windows 7 is pretending to be, which, as far as I'm concerned is nothing more than 'Window Dressing' on Microsoft's part!

Sadly, as time goes on, I suspect that we haven't seen the last of these tests or reports, and I'm fully expecting on seeing more and more of them, because, in the end, Windows 7 is just that - Windows, and its still Vista, but in new clothes, and complete with all of the old buggy boo's included, such as Windows infamous registry and DLL's!

Quick Tip – Simplify List Margins with CSS

After working with CSS for a while, it’s easy to think that you know every single property available. Today’s quick tip in CSS is a reminder that there are still overlooked (but worthwhile) styles out there.

Have you ever set default margins for a layout, and then had to go back and manually adjust all of your lists? By default, list item markers have a negative positioning in relationship to the list item itself. This means that zero-ing out margins automatically leads to an overflow if the list is contained inside anything else.

Wouldn’t it be easier to put the list item marker at the same starting point as other elements instead? Lucky for us, there’s a style to help do just that. Allow me to introduce the list-style-position property.

Meet list-style-position

The list-style-position property is an easy way to change the basics of how an item is displayed. With it, you can specify if the item markers (e.g. bullets) appear outside the designated area, or leave it hovering outside to the left. It may sound like a small change, but the results can make life much easier when arranging a page.

To take advantage of the positioning property, you can assign the following property to your list CSS selectors.

view plaincopy to clipboardprint?

1. ul, ol {list-style-position:inside;}

ul, ol {list-style-position:inside;}

Prefer writing CSS in shorthand? This style can also be included under the list-style property to keep things neat.

Simple Margins

I find that the inside style is much easy to work with, especially when it comes to margins. If default margin and padding values are set to 0 on all elements, a list with a style of “inside” will still display the item markers.

Take a look at the screenshot below for an example:

Looking for a better example? Check out the demo page for more.

This probably isn’t a change you’ll need to make on every web layout from this point forward, but it is a good property to be aware of. If you’re ever struggling to piece together margins, consider setting your list’s positioning to inside. It may save you some headache.