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While the name Ad-Aware remains the same as it has for the past 13 years, everything from the user interface to the code powering Ad-Aware 10 is entirely new.

Ad-Aware Free Antivirus Plus (download), Ad-Aware Personal Security (download), and Ad-Aware Pro Security (download) are substantially new programs. More so than any recent version of Ad-Aware, the suite is usable, lightweight, and worthy of your attention.

That may sound preposterous given how bloated and unwieldy the suite had become, but this is a new animal entirely. Ad-Aware's parent company, Lavasoft, was sold in January 2011 by its Swedish founders to … Read more

This Samsung Galaxy Note advertisement is quite the stunner. Peter the elephant is seen on camera using the large mobile device to draw and play music, as well as flip through photos using his trunk. The smart pachyderm also manages to take a picture together with the pretty model.

At first it looked like the entire clip was made using CGI, but the YouTube video description has links to two other unedited outtakes that prove the ad was made with an honest-to-goodness elephant.

Now, please excuse us while we go try training our pet cobra to play nice with the Note.

… Read more

Two new features designed to protect your privacy while you browse the Web and guard you against misleading SSIDs come to all three AVG suites in a service pack update.

The Service Pack 1 update for AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012, AVG Anti-Virus 2012, and AVG Internet Security 2012 are available exclusively today from Download.com.

Both of the new features are available to free and paid users, but the tracking ad blocker called AVG Do-Not-Track is the big one. It works similarly to Do Not Track Plus. While the toolbar is an optional browser add-on, AVG Do-Not-Track appears to be … Read more

In a win for animal shelters and dogs in general, puppy mill ads on Facebook are being pulled.

Oodle Classifieds, the company that powers the marketplace section of Facebook, has agreed to stop allowing ads on the popular social-networking site from people who breed dogs and sell them over the Internet, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).

Many puppies sold online come from breeders that keep dogs caged in unsanitary, overcrowded, and often cruel conditions without adequate veterinary care, food, water or socialization. Puppy mills that sell directly to people are exempt from … Read more

The new iPad is already making an impression on the Web, at least according to ad network Chitika.

Monitoring ad impressions triggered by all the iPads seen on its network, Chitika found that the new iPad is scooping up a hefty five percent. The company's real-time tracker page provides an ongoing glimpse into how many new iPads are popping up on its network, which typically sees hundreds of millions of impressions per week among all mobile devices.

The data specifically looks at the percentage of iPad impressions over the past 12 hours based just in the United States. Chitika … Read more

By way of advertising, Twitter's mobile platform is about to look a lot more like its Web site. The microblogging giant announced today that "promoted" tweets and accounts will appear in Twitter timelines on mobile apps for iPhone and Android.

"Today, we are taking an important next step in making our Promoted Products available to those users," Twitter wrote on its blog today. "This will help ensure that people see important Tweets from the brands they care about."

Before today, Twitter's mobile users saw limited advertising in its search function, but now … Read more

I never expected to write "Santorum," "Apple," and "1984" together in the same blog post, but here you go.

Apple fans (and anybody else even vaguely familiar with the history of commercials) will recognize a whole lot of vintage Macintosh-inspired marketing coming from Santorum's latest anti-Mitt Romney ad.

The video is titled "Rebellion." There's no doubt the Santorum ad is quoting from the original Apple endeavor. It features marching people wearing gray while authority figures bark slogans in the background and Romney's talking head glitches out like Max Headroom.

Instead of a woman in short-shorts with a big hammer, you get a woman hauling a "Santorum for President" political sign that she flips over to display a video of Santorum sharing his conservative views.

Santorum does manage to squeeze in a quick clip of some baby-hugging near the end. This is a political ad, after all.… Read more

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

Facebook is expected to launch an upgrade next week to its premium ads program that will target the friends of advertisers' fans.

The new ads, which will launch February 29, will be created from content posted organically to pages, according to a purportedly leaked document (see below) obtained by GigaOm.

"Anything you can post to on your page, you can turn into an ad," the document says. "Upgraded ads can be targeted to anyone you want."

When the users seeing the ad are friends with fans of the page, Facebook will automatically expand the ad and … Read more