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Facebook expands Lookalike Audiences to let advertisers target people who use their sites, apps, or Pages

Mar25
by on March 25, 2014 at 7:19 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Social Media

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Facebook today expanded its advertising tool Lookalike Audiences to allow advertisers to target new users based on people who visit their websites, use their mobile apps, or are connected to their Facebook Pages. Until now, advertisers could only create “lookalikes” based on existing information like email addresses, phone numbers, and user IDs. Facebook first announced Lookalike Audiences in March 2013. For those who don’t know, the feature is supposed to help businesses reach potential customers who share “similar characteristics with their current ones,” which the company refers to as “lookalikes.” Today’s update means advertisers can: Find more people who “look…

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Microsoft confirms Windows Azure will become Microsoft Azure on April 3

Mar25
by on March 25, 2014 at 7:05 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Insider

Microsoft today announced it is renaming its cloud computing platform and infrastructure from “Windows Azure” to “Microsoft Azure.” The rebranding will take effect on April 3, 2014. The company wouldn’t offer much detail on why exactly it made the change and merely touted the breadth of the service: Today we support one of the broadest set of operating systems, languages, and services of any public cloud—from Windows, SQL and .NET to Python, Ruby, Node.js, Java, Hadoop, Linux, and Oracle. In today’s mobile-first, cloud-first, data-powered world, customers want a public cloud platform that supports their needs—whatever they may be—and that public…

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Valve is bringing Portal to the Nvidia Shield: Could a general Android release be next?

Mar25
by on March 25, 2014 at 6:48 pm
Posted In: Around the Web

Portal, the beloved first-person puzzle game released by Valve as part of The Orange Box in 2007, is coming to the Nvidia Shield. A release date wasn’t given, but Nvidia says it’s “coming soon” and will join the hundreds of Shield-supported Android titles already available. That implies Valve is developing an official Android port, instead of simply making it available to new and existing Shield owners via PC streaming. “Nvdia has created a very powerful and unique device with Shield,” said Doug Lombardi at Valve. “Our companies have a strong history working together and we’re looking forward to Portal‘s arrival…

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Put your best face forward with PortraitPro’s airbrushing app for Mac and Windows

Mar25
by on March 25, 2014 at 6:25 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Product Reviews, Product Updates

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Portrait touchups have always been controversial—especially now with ongoing debates about extreme Photoshopping that transforms humans into wiry, plastic facsimiles of themselves. The relevant question with software like Anthropics Technology’s PortraitPro is not only how to use it properly, but whether to use it at all. Regardless of whether you’re a working photographer or editing personal photos yourself, any portrait run through the newly updated PortraitPro 12 is guaranteed to look better. And let’s face it, most people would prefer sharing flattering portraits to their social networks or with friends and family. I tested PortraitPro software and was impressed with its default…

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WordPress.com now automatically strips all formatting for text pasted from Microsoft Word

Mar25
by on March 25, 2014 at 6:08 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Product Updates

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If you run a blog directly through WordPress.com, rather than a self-hosted site using the free software from WordPress.org, you’re going to encounter some handy new features when you next create a new post. Prefer to write in Microsoft Word? Now, when you paste anything across from the insanely popular word processor, none of the code will come along with it. That means you won’t have to worry about any unwanted formatting, such as peculiar line breaks, fonts and font sizes. In addition, the Visual Editor now comes with a ‘Paste as Text’ mode so that regardless of which word…

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