Having problems with a profile picture that has been reused one too many times? With so many social networking profiles to manage, and running out of ideas on how to customize them for every single platform, it’s time you start looking for external help. We’ve compiled for you 10 websites that you can use to create your very own Avatar. Apply effects, distort, clean up or reimagine yourself in an ...

   Many dismiss copywriting as something that ad agency people do. Truthfully, all of us need to pay close attention to copywriting if we want to achieve our business objectives. The goal of a “regular” text is to inform or entertain. The goal of Web copy (and ideally your website in general) is to get people ...

Dr. David Dockterman is chief architect, learning sciences at Scholastic Education and an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is an educational software pioneer and has designed dozens of award-winning instructional technology programs. A recent Joan Ganz Cooney Center survey of 500 educators found that half of all kindergarten through eighth grade teachers are now regularly using digital games in the classroom. Nearly one in five ...

In some cases, you are not able to update/upgrade your WordPress and plugins to a newer version without providing your FTP connection information. This is a common issue whereby the WordPress system can’t write to your /wp-content folder directly. To solve this issue you need to define the FTP details in your wp-config.php file so WordPress will remember it. Alternatively, you may also provide WordPress with write access to your ...

   In my nearly two decades as an information architect, I’ve seen my clients flush away millions upon millions of dollars on worthless, pointless, “fix it once and for all” website redesigns. All types of organizations are guilty: large government agencies, Fortune 500s, not-for-profits and (especially) institutions of higher education. Worst of all, these offending organizations ...

The Facebook Marketing Series is presented by Webtrends, providing the unified, customer intelligence to deliver real time relevance in every marketing campaign, every digital channel. Learn how. By now, we all know that having a Facebook Brand Page is a worthwhile investment. But for some companies, one Page might not be enough. For example, if a restaurant chain prides itself on local ingredients or a business seeks to cultivate a strong ...

In the art of photography you will find many small niches of focus. The technique of using an ultra wide-angle lens for one, has been around for quite some time and can display a deep level of professionalism. Yet even amateur and professional photographers alike can utilize these unique lenses in their own work. I’ve taken the liberty to collect a showcase of brilliant UWA photographs. The collection includes shots from ...

   Editor’s Note: This post is the first in the new Smashing Daily series on Smashing Magazine, where we highlight items to help you stay on the top of what’s going on in the industry. Vasilis van Gemert will carefully pick the most interesting discussions, tools, techniques and articles that were published recently and present ...

Discuss the show on Twitter: #BehindTheLaunch In Mashable‘s new video series, Behind the Launch, we’re taking cameras behind the scenes at Vungle, an in-app video advertising startup. Last week, we met the the founders and saw them bring on Colin Behr to head up business development. This week, they courted big-name startup investors, such as 500 Startups‘ Dave McClure, DFJ Esprit‘s Krishna Visvanathan and AOL Ventures‘ Adam Smith. But Vungle needs to ...

ePub is an open standard format for ebooks, a format used to publish electronic books, magazines and newspapers. The difference between an ePub format file with a normal doc file is its reflowability to suit the many display dimensions of mobile devices i.e. tablets, smartphones etc. It was created to be flexible with font size and text layout, allowing you to read the same material on any mobile device that ...