Ralph Lauren's Natty Nuptials

No bride walked the runway in Ralph Lauren's latest fashion show, but wedding bells were unmistakably in the air in this snazzy, celebratory and opulent collection.

"I've had two kids get married ever since I started working on this show about, well, nine months ago, so I suppose there must have been some influence," chuckled Lauren after his show, staged in a lower Manhattan art gallery on Thursday, Sept. 15.

Lauren's daughter Dylan married hedge fund founder Paul Arrouet in July, while his son David wed Lauren Bush earlier this month.

But these runway nuptials featured wedding goers who began their morning way downtown, as the show opened with a damsel in daffodil print skirt and a mohair cardigan riddled with holes. Topped with a straw cloche hat, the model carried an embroidered straw picnic bag for a look that was daffy but beautiful. Lauren kept things romantic initially, with a whole sherbet-hued section where each outfit was anchored by huge raffia platform wedges.

Then the glamour hit high tempo - high gloss ivory silk cocktails with flapper hats, box-pleated dresses accompanied by ostrich feather capes and brilliant white gabardine jackets with wide lapels. Finished with long thin earrings - a major Manhattan trend - and worn with braided satin shoes with golden heels, it made for a sophisticated statement on the final day of the eight-day New York Fashion Week.

A series of stunning pants suits, in ecru or ivory pinstripe, cut with board shoulders and finished with dress shirts and ties made for a polished Great Gatsby revival that was sleek and sure.

But the summer wedding moment was most apparent in the evening clothes, including a remarkable ivory tulle beaded dress with brilliantly fashioned fabric flowers, rose hammered satin columns and silver plume lame cocktails.

Defiantly pure in its slim silhouette and shiny new colors, and elegantly staged on a white marble catwalk, Lauren's latest collection was the best expression of a key trend in this season of shows - an aching for ladylike grace.

Microsoft CEO sees Windows as key to growth plan

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer assured analysts on Wednesday that Windows remains the software maker's financial foundation, even though slowing personal computer sales are raising worries about the operating system's ability to adapt to the new ways people and business are using technology.

"Windows is at the center of our 'go-forward' strategy," Ballmer said during a presentation held in Anaheim, near Disneyland. "We feel very comfortable that this is a smart thing to do for our customers and the smart thing to do for our shareholders."

The Associated Press monitored Microsoft's analyst meeting via webcast.

Ballmer's upbeat tone reflected a positive buzz surrounding Windows 8, a version due out next year that Microsoft is touting as the most radical makeover of its lucrative operating system since 1995. Windows 8 is being designed to run on devices that boot up faster and work on touch-screen computer tablets, as well as on PCs that depend on keyboards and mice.

The overhaul is Microsoft's most aggressive response to the tablet craze that Apple Inc. set off with its release of the iPad in 2009.

Since then, Apple has sold more than 28 million iPads and analysts expect tens of millions more to be sold by the time Windows 8 is ready to be shipped. Microsoft isn't saying when Windows 8 will go on sale, but analysts expect it to hit the market at some point between July and the 2012 holiday shopping season.

In the meantime, Microsoft is still promoting Windows 7, which has sold nearly 450 million copies since its 2009 release. It just recently surpassed Windows XP — a decade-old operating system — as the most widely used version of Microsoft's operating systems, according to company estimates.

To build the excitement for what's coming next, Microsoft provided its most extensive demonstration of Windows 8 so far Tuesday during a packed meeting with applications developers. It gave away 5,000 Samsung tablets running on a preliminary version of Windows 8 and also is allowing anyone to take the software for a test spin if they want to install it on their own machines. By Wednesday morning, Ballmer said more than 500,000 copies of Windows 8 had been downloaded.

"The initial reaction has been all we have been hoping for," Ballmer told analysts.

That may be so, but Microsoft still appears to have work to do to win back investors who have become increasingly convinced that the company has lost its competitive edge as Google Inc. emerged as the Internet's most powerful player and Apple Inc. shaped mobile computing trends with the iPhone and iPad tablet.

The Internet and mobile devices are now seen as more compelling franchises with greater future potential than the PC business that Microsoft has milked since the 1980s with Windows and its Office suite of software.

Since Google went public in August 2004, its stock has increased by more than six fold while Microsoft's shares have dipped 2 percent. And since Apple released the first iPhone in June 2007, its stock has more than tripled while Microsoft's shares have backtracked 11 percent. That shift enabled Apple to surpass Microsoft as the world's most valuable technology company.

Microsoft shares closed Wednesday at $26.50, up 46 cents.

The lackluster performance of Microsoft's stock has intensified the pressure on Ballmer, an exuberant leader who succeeded company co-founder Bill Gates as CEO in 2000. With Microsoft's revenue growth slowing, Ballmer has curbed spending and even laid off workers to save money. The penny-pinching helped Microsoft boost its revenue to $774,000 per employee in its last fiscal year ending in June compared with $622,000 per worker in fiscal 2006, Microsoft boasted Wednesday.

Ballmer, 55, is betting Windows 8 will help Microsoft catch up in tablets and renew demand for PCs that can be operated with a touch of the finger as well as with the traditional navigation tools.

Microsoft is also scrambling to build a mobile version of Windows that will be more widely embraced in the smartphone market, where it has fallen behind Google's Android operating system as well as Apple's iPhone system. "I don't love where we are now, but I am very optimistic of where we can be," Ballmer said.

The company's proposed $8.5 billion acquisition of Internet phone and video service Skype is expected to become a key part of Microsoft's mobile strategy. Microsoft is hoping to gain regulatory approval to close the Skype deal before January.

After losing billions of dollars investing in Internet search technology during the past five years, Microsoft believes it's in a better position to gain ground on Google — a name synonymous with looking things up online. Microsoft's Bing search engine has been steadily picking up market share since its 2009 introduction but the gains have mostly come at the expense of Yahoo Inc.

Deciding to rather save money than fight Google, Yahoo last year began relying on Microsoft's technology for most of its search results. That alliance has enabled Microsoft to process about 30 percent of the search requests made in the U.S. compared to about 65 percent at Google.

Yahoo has been struggling far more than Microsoft in recent years. The ongoing problems prompted Yahoo's board to fire Carol Bartz, the CEO who negotiated the Internet search partnership with Microsoft.

Since Bartz's unceremonious departure last week, there has been mounting speculation that Yahoo might put itself up for sale rather than hire a permanent CEO. Either way, Ballmer said Microsoft's 10-year contract with Yahoo won't be affected.

Tokyo game show turns to cell phones, has new star

Social games played on smart phones are hogging the attention at this year's Tokyo video-game exhibition, boasting new ways of making money by selling "virtual" goodies, not the usual expensive machines and software packages.

Gree Inc., a social networking service that began just seven years ago in the founder's living room, was the big star at the annual Tokyo Game Show, with its first booth ever. The show previewed to media Thursday ahead of its opening to the public later this week at Makurahi Messe hall in this Tokyo suburb.

Its stardom underlines the arrival of so-called "social games" aimed at casual users passing the time on smartphones and tablet devices rather than the sophisticated plots, imagery and controls found on gaming devices.

With Gree, mobile games are an additional feature to its social networking service, similar to those already common in the U.S. and other nations with Facebook and Twitter, although those don't focus as much on gaming.

Yoshikazu Tanaka, the 34-year-old founder and chief executive of Gree, said his business model of attracting massive users was similar to other sectors such as computers, fast-fashion and autos, in which prices were rapidly coming down despite high quality.

He said he was serious about expanding business overseas, targeting 1 billion users in the next several years. Gree already has drawn 140 million users worldwide, and has opened overseas offices, including San Francisco and London.

Serkan Toto, a mobile and game industry consultant, said the enormously successful Gree business model that has made Tanaka a billionaire is different from conventional game makers in that it gives away games for free, and it doesn't sell any expensive machines.

However, once users become fans of the games, some of them pay for special virtual "items," such as fancy clothes and cute pets, bringing in lucrative profits for Gree, thanks to sheer user scale.

Toto said Gree's show-stopping presence was telling, underlining its ambitions to grow globally.

"It was a demonstration of power: 'We are the future. We have the money'," he said, noting that Gree had reached an older crowd than the teenagers usually associated with games. "Social games are a way to reach new demographics."

Gree's booth was among the biggest at the Tokyo Game Show.

And it was drawing just as much of a crowd as Sony Corp., which exhibits every year, and was showing off its new portable machine, PlayStation Vita, set to go on sale Dec. 17 in Japan and early next year in the U.S. and Europe.

In Japan, PS Vita will face off this holiday season against DS3, the portable from Nintendo Co., which features glasses-free 3-D imagery.

Both Nintendo and Sony executives, in presentations earlier this week, expressed worries about keeping growth going in the gaming business, perhaps because of competition from devices like smartphones, Gree's specialty.

The shift to smartphones was affecting game-software makers as well.

"The network itself is the new platform," said Yoichi Wada, head of Japanese game software maker Square Enix. "Game developers need to keep in mind that gaming is spreading to casual users, including newcomers."

But the advantage of offering gaming on cellphones is simple: Almost everyone in the industrialized world owns a cellphone, and as more nations join that fold, people in those nations are bound to buy cellphones, too.

Tanaka said the advent of social gaming had changed the industry because people were always connected to networks with smartphones and tablets like the iPad, and people aren't necessarily going to go out and invest hundreds of dollars in a special game machine.

Tanaka said he envisioned a time when cellphones would become plentiful in places like Africa and South America for low prices, and people, who would never dream of buying expensive game machines, would be accessing Gree services from cellphones as gaming newcomers.

"What is coming next is very important," he said as a keynote speaker, a good indicator of his spot in the limelight. "Gree is targeting all cellphone-users."

Takashi Sensui, general manager at Microsoft Japan Co., said Microsoft sees social gaming as an opportunity to grow, as it is strong in games for cellphones and computers, as well as with those for its Xbox 360 home console.

What computer device people may want to use merely depends on where they are, such as whether they are on the move or they are at home, he said.

"You can use Microsoft's platform anywhere, anytime and everywhere, on any type of device to enjoy entertainment," he said.

Casey Anthony must pay some $100,000 in probe costs

Casey Anthony, the young Florida mother acquitted of killing her daughter, was ordered on Thursday to pay almost $100,000 to cover some of the expenses incurred after she falsely claimed 2-year-old Caylee had been kidnapped.

Judge Belvin Perry ruled that Anthony must reimburse $97,676.98 in investigative costs incurred between July 15, 2008, when Anthony first told detectives that her daughter had been kidnapped by a nanny, and September 29, 2008, when detectives determined Caylee likely was dead rather than missing.

Anthony was charged with Caylee's murder and four counts of lying to investigators. In a nationally televised trial this summer, Anthony was acquitted of the murder but found guilty of the lies.

Prosecutors requested she repay $517,000, the full cost several police agencies and the prosecutor's office said was incurred as a result of her lies.

Perry explained why he ordered the lesser payment from Anthony, who is living in an undisclosed location while serving a year of probation for a 2010 check fraud case.

"The state asks the court not to apportion any of the costs because (Anthony's) lies or series of lies are inextricably intertwined with the entire investigation. The state further argues: 'Attempting to prove Ms. Anthony was a murderer proved she was a liar,'" Perry wrote in his order.

But the judge said the defense noted that "testimony provided at the hearing indicated that as of September 30, 2008, there was no longer a missing person investigation but a homicide investigation."

Perry left open the door to increasing the amount Anthony must pay. The judge told the Orange County Sheriff's Office to provide more detail about the work of 30 deputies and employees on the case so the cost of their time and effort may be added to Anthony's bill.

So far, Perry awarded $61,505.12 to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement; $10,283.90 to the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation; $25,837.96 to the sheriff's office; and $50 to the State Attorney's Office, the minimum required by statute.

Anthony's lawyer could not be reached for comment.

Charlie Sheen Tells Matt Lauer He's "a Lot Calmer"

Charlie Sheen went off the rails and stayed there for a long time over the past couple years, but according to the actor, he's toned things down a bit and is feeling good. Sheen lost his spot on "Two and a Half Men," which was virtually unthinkable when the show was flying high, but the show's producers have gotten Ashton Kutcher to take his place and it seems the popular sit-come won't miss a beat.

Sheen spoke with Today's Matt Lauer last week and noted that there are parts of his past that "I would have amended a little bit." Despite that, Sheen insists that he's both sober and much calmer now. Asked about drinking or doing drugs, and specifically how long its been since he's done anything of that sort, Sheen replied, "I don't really keep track of the time. It's been awhile, because I feel like, without getting into my feelings about AA and all that stuff, if you're walking around hanging on to your time, it's only a matter of time before it goes, you know?"

Lauer pushed Sheen a bit, reminding him that producers would be keenly interested in the amount of time that he's been on the wagon in order to get an idea of how trustworthy he's likely to be. Sheen has cost studios millions over the past years because of his erratic behavior that has led to cancellations and delays. Sheen told Lauer, "I guess I would just have to lead by example. Words are only worth so much. It's the actions and the behavior that matter."