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Who or what is Hatsune Miku? The making of a virtual pop star

Oct17
by on October 17, 2014 at 8:19 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Profiles and Interviews

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Doug Levy is a staff copywriter and editor for the Shutterstock blog. This post was originally published on the Shutterstock blog and has been reprinted with permission. Last week, mainstream America — and David Letterman — was introduced to one of Japan’s most intriguing phenomenons, the virtual star known as Hatsune Miku. Making a holographic appearance as the musical guest on the Late Night host’s show, Miku was joined by a live band to perform a song chosen specifically for special live performances in the US this month. If it all left Dave (and others) a bit confused, it’s not without…

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Snapchat will fire up its first ad campaign this weekend

Oct17
by on October 17, 2014 at 7:50 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

Snapchat has announced that it will show its first advertisements in its disappearing message app starting this weekend. The company pledged to not place ads next to personal communications, instead reserving promotional content for its “Recent Updates” section. The ad will disappear after viewing or 24 hours. Snapchat has also eschewed “creepy” targeting, an industry trend that leverages user data to make ads more relevant. After explaining that it’s selling ads because it needs to make money, Snapchat promised to use the revenue to “continue to surprise the Snapchat community with more terrific products.” ➤ Advertising on Snapchat [Snapchat blog]

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Build it or buy it? 7 things for startups to consider

Oct17
by on October 17, 2014 at 6:34 pm
Posted In: Analysis and Opinion, Around the Web, Design & Dev, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Insider, startup, YEC, yec.co, Young Entrepreneur Council

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When faced with a new technology need, should you build your own software – or stitch together solutions already available on the market? It’s easier (and cheaper) than ever to do the latter. But before calling up your CTO or signing up for the SaaS product you read about this morning, figure out which is really the better option for your business. I asked 7 entrepreneurs from YEC what they thought were the most important factors to consider when making this choice. When considering building new technology to serve his or her business vs. using an existing SaaS product, what is the…

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Palettab Chrome Extension offers color themes and fonts right from your browser tab

Oct17
by on October 17, 2014 at 6:04 pm
Posted In: Around the Web

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Looking for font/color theme ideas? Palettab, a Chrome browser extension whose mission in life is to generate ideas for your creative projects, is conveniently located in the next tab. Run by COLOURlovers, an international online community of over 4 million, each palette of five colors has its own identity, as members continually add and experiment with new color combinations. Once you install the extension, just click on a new tab in the Chrome browser and a five-part color combo — each with a unique name and author — appears. Nested inside of each color swatch is a different font sample. To select the color…

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Developers can now download the full Android 5.0 Lollipop SDK

Oct17
by on October 17, 2014 at 5:03 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

A couple of months ago, Google released the Android L Developer Preview to give devs a first look at what was coming in the next version of its operating system. As of today, the full release of the Android 5.0 SDK has now gone live. In the blog post, the company also mentioned that the newest version of Android would be available to the Nexus 4, 5, 7 (2012 and 2013) and 10 in early November – around the release for the Nexus 6, Nexus 9, and Nexus Player. As Google notes, if you’re a dev, this gives you just two weeks to…

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