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Showing posts from October, 2016

Oracle gives marketers hands-on access to cross-platform audience data

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Summary:  After building up the capabilities of its ID Graph, Oracle is making the tool a direct part of its Audience Builder UI. For more than a year, Oracle has been building up the capabilities of ID Graph, a tool in the Oracle Data Cloud that helps marketers understand consumer behavior across channels. On Wednesday, Oracle announced it's putting ID Graph directly into the hands of marketers with an enhanced version of Audience Builder, the user interface within the Oracle Data Management Platform. The updated Audience Builder makes it easier for customers to manage and select certain types of customer identities, in order to analyze audiences based on the device or platform within which the ID was created. "In the past, you weren't really able to manage all of these different identities and where they were going," Oracle senior product marketing manager Karen Kokiko. "Marketers knew customers were making these journeys across devices... A consume

Weebly confirms hack; millions of Foursquare accounts also exposed

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Summary: Hackers targeted the tech companies as recently as February 2016, but Foursquare denied a breach. Another day, another hack. Weebly and Foursquare are the latest in a long line of tech companies under scrutiny for their security practices. On Thursday, breach notification site LeakedSource posted details of the attacks  in a blog post  explaining what happened. More than 43.4 million accounts were stolen in the attack, thought to have been carried out in February. According to a sample of the data, each record in this mega breach contains a username, email address, password, and IP address. Stolen passwords were stored with bcrypt, a strong system for scrambling passwords. In a statement, the company confirmed the breach. "At this point we do not have evidence of any customer website being improperly accessed," said a spokesperson. "We do not store any full credit card numbers on Weebly servers, and at this time we're not aware that any cr

Windows 10's big Microsoft Paint refresh: Now you get 3D objects, stickers, new tools

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Summary:  Details of a new Windows 10 Paint app have leaked ahead of Microsoft's supposed all-in-one Surface (Surface studio) launch later this month. Microsoft has been working on a major refresh of its Paint app for Windows, which introduces support for 3D objects, stickers, and other tools for creatives. A  video demonstration  and  tutorial  for the new Paint, found by Twitter user WalkingCat, details a complete overhaul and new features to support 3D creation,  sharing 3D designs with a community  of artists, and stickers. The new app is currently only available to invited alpha testers but it may get a wider showing at Microsoft's upcoming Windows 10 event on October 26,  according to  Windows enthusiast site Thurrot.com. Microsoft watchers expect the company will unveil an all-in-one Surface PC and a possible Surface keyboard and mouse. The tutorial video shows new painting tools that support pen and touchscreen for editing and staging scenes, using blended

Microsoft releases fix for Windows 10 cumulative update issues

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Summary:  Six days after delivering a failed Windows 10 update, Microsoft has offered a fix-it script and an explanation. Six days after it delivered a cumulative update that failed to install on some users' PCs, Microsoft has released a fix-it tool. In an email statement, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the update, which tries to install and then rolls back repeatedly, affects PCs that previously ran a build delivered through the Windows Insider Program and were later switched to the public Current Branch release. " We became aware of an issue with the recent Windows 10 cumulative update that impacted a small number of customers in the Windows Insider Program that were running a previous build of the OS. We have created a solution to resolve this issue, which is now live and can be accessed  here ." That link goes to the  Windows 10 1607 (RS1) Script fix to unblock update for Insider , a Microsoft Installer file that makes the same changes I described

New:: Google News Lite mode gives you faster pages on slow mobile networks

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Summary: G oogle has rolled-out new data-saving features targeting Android and Chrome users on slower mobile networks. Google's News and Weather app for Android is getting a new Lite mode, designed to save bandwidth for users on slower connections. The new Lite mode will do away with some of the extras found in the normal mode, while cutting images and other content to the bare essentials. Google says Lite will use less than a third of the data of normal mode. Besides saving on summary news information within the app, Lite mode also automatically optimizes the webpages that are opened. Google's  has said in the past  this feature helps load pages four times faster and use 80 percent less data. Lite mode will automatically detect when a device is on a slower network, or it can be manually set to always on or always off. The new mode is  rolling-out  this week to users in India, where mobile networks are largely 2G and 3G, and will arrive in Brazil, Indonesia, a