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Adobe Moves Beyond Flash: The Next Big Thing is Creative Cloud

Adobe’s newly launched Creative Suite 6 is being touted as the Google Docs for creative professionals. One of the Creative Suite’s features is the $50/month Creative Cloud that includes access to Adobe Edge, a tool for creating standards-based animation with ease and Adobe Muse, which allows you to create websites without writing code.

The flash battle was lost with Apple, and the company has moved on with these next-generation HTML5 tools that will also include a focus on Javascript and CSS. The biggest thing is that the average designer will be able to share and easily publish content socially, to the web, and via tablets.

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Google Launches AdWords for Everyone, Offers $50 Million in Free Advertising

Today, Google made AdWords for video available to everyone. The software giant is pushing this advertising platform as the next frontier of online ads.

Google points out that YouTube sees more than 800 million monthly visitors, making it by far the most popular video streaming site around, including in Canada. The company's model for ads on videos is a replica of its popular search ad model—advertisers pay for clicks and set budgets; they target their audience through filters and keywords; and they can measure the effectiveness of their spend through metric analytics.

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Online Video Taking Over Traditional Television, Study Finds

Video is growing and going mobile. Nearly half of Canadians are watching online videos more than they were last year. And 35% of smartphone owners, 56% of tablet owners, and 75% of laptop owners in Canada are regularly watching videos on their portable and mobile devices.

These are some of the more striking statistics found in new research from Ipsos MediaCT and Google. According to their March 2012 Canada Video Study, Canadians watch an average of eight videos per week, with only 13% watching none.

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Google Jumps into Real-Time Display Advertising, Advertisers to Only Pay for Viewed Impressions

Just as digital analytics company comScore took steps earlier this year to address the 30% of display ads that are invalid, Google is doing much of the same in working with the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) coalition.

“The lack of these actionable, truly useful metrics is a key reason that many major brands have been cautious in embracing digital advertising over the past decade," a post from Google's Official Blog titled Making the web work for major brandsstates, even as high-quality content and millions of users have moved online.”

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Little Games, Big Business: The Mobile Gaming Space Can No Longer be Ignored [Infographic]

Mobile games are proving to be worth a lot more than their deceiving 99¢ price tags. As a recently published infographic titled Little Games, Big Business observes, mobile games are the most popular app category on smartphones. And these days, people spend an average nearly eight hours per month gaming on their iPhones. Plus, the word "mobile" really rings true here: people play mobile games everywhere, from school, to work, to while bed—and even in the bathroom (don't pretend you're the exception!).

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Oracle Almost Bought RIM (in 2009)

Larry Ellison's company almost acquired Research In Motion, according to a testimony in court. The CEO revealed the fact while testifying in court against Google - but the big-game acquisition was actually considered way back in 2009, when RIM was closer to its peak.

In 2009, RIM's stock hovered between $45 and $90, much lower than its 2008 peak of $140. At $45, it's rock-bottom recession price, RIM had a market cap of roughly $21 billion, and seemed like a huge deal compared to one year prior, when the company was valued at over $80 billion.

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City of Edmonton First Major Canadian Municipality to Switch to Gmail; Expects to Save $6 Million

The City of Edmonton is switching to Gmail. And it's saving $6 million by doing so.

The City will become Canada's first major municipality to make the switch to Google email and office apps. Edmonton estimates that the change will result in savings of up to $6 million by the end of 2018. Roughly 3,000 staff members, many of which currently do not have email for work, will get City of Edmonton Gmail accounts.

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Google+, Now with 170 Million Users, Gets Major Revamp

Everyone's favourite social network, Goo—hold on, let me try that again. Google has announced a significant overhaul of Google+, the social network that, in the words of NDTV, "everyone signs up for but no one seems to use."

Now claiming 170 million users—let's not forget how pushy Google is about leveraging its massive userbases from other products to pump this number up—Google+ has introduced several new features. In a blog post, senior vice president Vic Gundotra calls the new Google+ "more functional and flexible," noting that it's not only "easier to use and nicer to look at," but that it also "accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google."

Check it out in the video below.

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Google Art Project Welcomes the AGO as the First Canadian Museum in Its Collection

For just over a year now, Google has been hard at work pulling together an enormous online collection of high-resolution images, paintings and other pieces of art from museums and galleries around the world.

The Google Art Project currently features works of art from 151 galleries in 40 countries worldwide, which now includes Canada’s own Art Gallery of Ontario. The AGO is the very first Canadian gallery to pair up with Google for project and has already contributed 58 pieces of European and Canadian art to the project’s collection.

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Google Joins HootSuite and Adobe in Attempting to Quantify Social Media ROI

Google has launched new social reports that aim to quantify the return of investment of social media. Phil Mui, Google Analytics group product manager, says that Google wants to "tie social activities and referrals to measurable, meaningful economic value so businesses can more effectively evaluate which social channels are impacting their bottom line, and which tactics will lead to measurable economic value."

But Google isn't the only one attempting this. Vancouver startup HootSuite partnered with Adobe recently in an effort to accomplish the same goal.

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