OK, Twilight fans, brace yourself because the first trailer for the upcoming third installment of the saga – Eclipse – is now available for your viewing pleasure.
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is based on Stephenie Meyer’s novel Eclipse, and should be airing on June 30, 2010. However, you can have a taste of some action, and (of course) more of the vampire-werewolf-human (but-maybe-not-human-for-long) love triangle you’ve probably grown accustomed to in the first two movies.
One thing I have always pondered about is whether elements that are hidden will load any images associated with it, either inline or through CSS, directly at page load. And apparently, my colleague Jonatan Larsson has as well.
Jonatan and I discussed this back and forth, how it actually works and how we’d want it to work. Both he and I felt fairly certain that if an element, for instance, had a background image associated with it but was hidden (i.e. has display: none), it wouldn’t load its background image until it was shown.
So, Jonatan set about on doing some tests and his findings were that images for hidden elements, set via CSS or inline in the element, would load every time – contrary to what we thought/expected.
Part of me thinks this is good that when the element is shown, everything is already loaded and will look good, but the performance fan in me is thinking that a web browser should only load what is actually displayed.
What would you want or expect? And do you have any other findings
According to the Guardian and Global Dashboard, Facebook has threatened to sue Daily Mail over an article which wrongfully claimed Facebook makes it easy for older sex predators to approach and seduce minors.
Daily Mail’s article, which can (in edited form) be found here, was written by a former police detective Mark Williams-Thomas, and had originally been titled “I posed as a girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you.” It contained the account of the author posing as a minor on Facebook, which, according to him, attracted sexual predators right away.
The problem? He wasn’t really using Facebook to conduct the experiment, he used a “different social networking site”, as explained in today’s update to the article, added at the bottom by Daily Mail staff. The full text of the update is as follows:
“In an earlier version of this article, we wrongly stated that the criminologist had conducted an experiment into social networking sites by posing as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook with the result that he quickly attracted sexually motivated messages. In fact he had used a different social networking site for this exercise. We are happy to set the record straight.”
Needless to say, this caused a strong response from Facebook, which is still referenced throughout the article. According to the Guardian, a UK spokeswoman for Facebook said that the company was considering legal action due to the “brand damage that has been done”. “If you were a Middle England reader and your child was on Facebook, this sort of thing would have a very serious effect on what you thought of us,” she said.
Facebook has a point here; besides the obvious erroneous reporting, the article details how someone posing as a 14 year old girl would get messages from older men (more accurately, users whose Facebook profile indicates they’re over 18 years old), which cannot be done on Facebook. Therefore, Facebook can argue it has measures in place to prevent exactly the kind of behaviour the article describes, unlike the unnamed social network the experiment was conducted on.
We’ve contacted Facebook’s UK PR representative on this matter but have yet to hear back.
With Microsoft becoming increasingly marginalized in areas like mobile media, DirectX is becoming less of a must-use toolset and more of a gaming-specific one. The other side of the coin is, of course, the increasing relevance of standards like OpenGL, OpenAL, and OpenCL: powerful cross-platform systems for graphics, audio, and parallel processing. You may remember OpenCL from its debut on the Mac in Snow Leopard, and OpenGL ES of course powers the UI on the iPad. OpenAL is still a ways from being brought under the public eye, but it’s getting there. In the meantime, OpenGL 4.0 was announced today at GDC, and clearly it has DirectX in its sights.
As mobile gaming takes off, developers will need in-depth analysis to determine consumer behavior with their games and adjust their games accordingly. Motally, which provides user-action tracking services for the mobile web and apps, is expanding its product base today offering a targeted analytics service aimed towards mobile games on the iPhone, Android and Blackberry platforms. The service is currently in private beta, but developers will be able to sign up to use the service.
Motally’s game-oriented analytics platform allows publishers to track in-game data including where users drop out in-play and which levels users interact with most. Motally also allows for the dynamic changing of the game’s design, allowing developers to measure the impact of changes immediately. As a result, publishers can tweak their games including design, performance, and ad placement by pinpointing areas of the game with the most traffic and identifying trouble areas.
Motally’s game analytics allows publishers to analyze what level players are reaching and then dropping off, determine the top players and their high scores within a game, and to reach out to those on the leaderboard and present them with special offers or advertisements. The data also includes which virtual goods on an application are most popular, which games are most popular in a developer’s portfolio of games, and the conversion rates of players opting into paid premium game offerings.
Game developer Portable Zoo has already been using Motally’s analytics, and claims that data collected from the platform allowed the developer to adjust games to increase average engagement time, and the overall appeal of games.
Motally’s venture in gaming is smart considering the rapid growth of mobile gaming, especially on smartphones. Motally, which recently launched an extension of their mobile analytics to include content developed on Apple’s iPad and rolled out a flexible API, support analytics for applications on the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry platforms as well as the mobile web. Motally offers more advanced features that allows developers to troubleshoot and debug their products from anywhere in the world, without having to re-deploy apps and games to the Apple iPhone store. For a young startup, Motally has seen significant traction as a mobile analytics provider. Backed by renown investor Ron Conway, Motally’s clients include Twitter, Yelp, Fandango and Verizon.
According to the 
As mobile gaming takes off, developers will need in-depth analysis to determine consumer behavior with their games and adjust their games accordingly. 
