Hasta La Gadget!

Local authorities close two of the five pretenders in Kunming for lack of permits. Meanwhile, reports of other faux stores worldwide have been flowing in, from Croatia to Queens.

Heat waves aside, this last weekend has proven to be a fairly rough one for e-book sellers. In spite of backing off a bit from its initial demands, there have apparently been some major changes afoot in the iOS App Store, with a number of apps scaling back access to their online e-book markets or being pulled from the store altogether. Kobo, one of the former, told The Wall Street Journal (which also reported on its own iOS woes) it was informed on Saturday that it needs to stop selling books through its app. The Google Books app, meanwhile, has been removed altogether, though Google has yet to comment on the matter, possibly revamping the app to comply with the stricter rules. While the adjustments will certainly be a nuisance for the companies involved, selling books through Apple devices will not be an impossibility, so long as customers can still access the markets through Safari.

Update: You can now add Amazon to the list as well. The latest version of the Kindle app removes the Kindle Store button that previously allowed you to purchase e-books on your iOS device.

Google Books, Kobo, more get iOS App Store shakedown (update: Kindle too) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At an estimated 18 million to 21 million units, Samsung may have sold more smartphones than Apple in the second quarter, says Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston.

Originally posted at News – Wireless

PriceGrabber finds in its recent survey of U.S. consumers that there’s a huge pent-up hunger for the next version of Apple’s smartphone.

Originally posted at The Digital Home

This article was written on November 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

There are so many different things that can be done with Paint.NET, the possibilities are really endless. Many people have created tutorials that guide you through the process of creating something but the problem is that it can take time to sift through all of them to find a good one.  I took the time to go through the Paint.NET forums to find so of the best tutorials that have been posted. Today’s Microsoft Monday is simply a directory of eight different tutorials that I think you’ll enjoy.

1. Making Glass Buttons – You know the shiny Web 2.0ish buttons you see all over? This tutorial written by BuzzKill in the Paint.NET forums will explain how you do it. This tutorial is explained well and full of images.
   
2. Antiquing an image –
   If you’ve ever had an image that you’d like to convert to more of an antique look, this tutorial will explain just how you do it. The before (on the left) and after (on the right) below shows what you’ll be doing:
    
3. “Toy Car Conversion“ – This isn’t exactly a tutorial, but it’s pretty cool.  Using a picture of a full-sized sports car, you can modify it to look like a toy car, or even a cartoonish toy car as shown in the before and after pictures below. The bottom right image looks the way it does thanks to the Toon Filter, but you can also use the ink sketch and pencil sketch feature.
    
4. Flaming Text – creating flaming text requires just a few steps and no filters! The end product will look something like this:

    

5. Playing with Ribbons – this tutorial is pretty amazing! Not only are the instructions easy to follow, there are also great screenshots.  They start out with something simple and move to something advanced. The three different end products below were created using the ribbon tool. Cool, huh?
   
6. Glassy Effect – Here’s one for the most basic of users, using basic effects. If you’ve never used Paint.NET before, you too will be able to do this. It simply uses the “tile reflection” effect under the distort menu to get this result (before on left, after on the right):
   
7. Round Glass Button – Very similar to the glass button tutorial we listed above, this round glass button tutorial is simple and takes no time. Your end result will look something like this:
   
8. Create a Rose – It’s hard to believe that the creation of the rose below started out as a bunch of black and white dots. This literally took me about 3 minutes to make, maybe even shorter. It’s quick and easy, and you can make it any color you’d like! This particular tutorial has simple instructions and screenshots so you know what you’re supposed to be doing.
   

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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