Category Archives: morningbuzz

I haven’t seen Google’s new Knowledge Graph yet. Writeup when I do.

Personalized search: another step forward. ” With little more than basic information about Web users’ behavior – that is, the hyperlinks they click on daily and the content at those sites – Susan Gauch can build a better search engine.” (By the way, I rarely make comments on someone’s appearance, but I love the picture of Susan Gauch on this page. Most academic pictures I see look supercasual or superformal — Ms. Gauch looks like she’s about to kick butt.)

The British Olympics / Olympians — now in digital archive format. “More than a century of British official agonising over the Olympics – from how to approach the 1936 Games being held in Berlin amid the rise of Nazism, to a doomed project to build an Olympic park in London’s then derelict Docklands in the 1980s – have been revealed on a website created by the National Archives at Kew.”

Speaking of history, Yale’s medical history is now a Facebook timeline. (There’s a Twitter account, too.)

Genealogy search engine Mocavo has landed $4M in VC capital.

The North Carolina Digital Library has revamped its Web site.

Twitter and NASCAR are teaming up.

Napoleon’s Post Mortem. ‘Nuf said. Okay, probably not… “Napoleon’s post mortem and a letter from Kipling are among recently discovered documents which feature in a new online archive. The historical items have been found in the collection of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.”

Hey! Sydney’s on HistoryPin! Good afternoon, Internet…

Have you seen Google Docs’ new research pane?

Check out this new search engine from Dublin: Yokie.

Twitter is now doing a weekly digest in your e-mail. Not sure how well this is going to work considering that I follow over 500 people on Twitter. I realize that’s chicken feed next to some of those folks who follow tens of thousands of people. Sigh. I miss Listimonkey.

Ooo, James Joyce getting into a digital archive!

The state of Alabama has revamped its Web site.

As has the state of Maine. Must be that time of year…

In private beta now… WhoGotFunded. Just what it sounds like, tracking which companies have gotten funding. “Once it comes out of beta, WhoGotFunded will offer tailored email alerts to let users know when a particular company closes funding, or when financing deals happen in a specific region or industry.” WAY surprising: “While there’s always the opportunity to create value-added features on top of the platform, which many people would likely pay for, there are no plans for monetization right now…”

A new milestone for The Encyclopedia of Life. “Profiles of more than one million species are now available at the click of a mouse, thanks to a splurge of images and other data provided by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.”

Need to pee? Charmin’s revamped “SitOrSquat” app now lists 119,000 restrooms in the US. Wow. Good morning, Internet…

Scott Thompson is gone, which you have probably heard, at Yahoo. Here’s a quick roundup on who’s in charge now. (Yahoo is a mess.)

Geofeedia: search social media by geographical location. Sounds like a great tool; unfortunately it’s got a pretty huge price tag.

Arizona State University is going to digitize its insect collection. “For the first time, the National Science Foundation (NSF) will provide funding to the university and nine other institutions to help digitize and network images and label data of 750,000 arthropod specimens.”

Two history professors are building a database of runaway slave advertisements. This looks like it’ll start with Mississippi and then expand outward. I hope they have an intern who’s searching the already extant digitized papers; there’s a wealth of information there.

LOVE projects like this. Indonesian street art — the digital archive.

The state of Tenneseee has a new jobs database.

More local newspapers being digitized. “Partnering 142 years of local newspapering with a year’s worth of new, state-of-the-art digital technology, the resulting “Digitizing Greencastle: Newspapers 1837-1979″ project was unveiled to the public Wednesday evening at the Putnam County Public Library.”

I’m not sure what the “real cost” of law school is, but there’s a new database available to help you calculate it. “Law School Transparency has unveiled a comprehensive database detailing a broad range of information designed to guide prospective law students about what they might be getting into — including school-by-school statistics about post-graduation employment and salaries; tuition rates; and student debt loads.” Good afternoon, Internet…

Have you heard about Bing’s upcoming changes to its search page? here’s an overview. I kind of vaguely like the idea of seeing what my LinkedIn contacts like…

Twitter has updated its mobile site.

A new database to monitor Africa investments: “United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has launched an online database to track the volume of investments into various parts of Africa and the reasons behind the trends. The database will enable investors to map out which countries are getting high foreign investments and why and which sectors of every country are the most attractive.”

The Toronto Star has launched a digital archive of Ernest Hemingway columns.

Wants to see how animals and plants are distributed around the world? Map of Life. “The demonstration version allows users to map the known global distribution of almost 25,000 species of terrestrial vertebrate animals, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and North American freshwater fish.”

A new Web site for information about the brain — BrainFacts.org.

Look at you, St. Louis Fed, making with the digital archives!

The state of Indiana has launched a new online tool for finding child care options.

So there’s this guy, Brian Ellis, and he’s putting together what sounds like an amazing Audobon site. “The website contains biographical information and time lines regarding Audubon, who lived between 1785 and 1851. Research papers about Audubon, authored by college professors, are posted.” Ellis apparently performs as John Audubon. Some pictures on the site.

Hey, the Colorado music scene has a digital archive! Good morning, Internet…

GREAT NEWS from the 1940 U.S. Census Community Project! “The 1940 U.S. Census Community Project announced today the availability of a free, searchable index of 1940 U.S. census records for six U.S. states, including Delaware, Colorado, Kansas, Oregon, Virginia and New Hampshire. Records for these states are now searchable by name, location and family relations thanks to the efforts of more than 100,000 volunteers nationwide.”

Pretty smart! A site (a few sites actually) for finding fitness classes while you’re travelling.

An IMDB for creative content and people? Sounds like fun. “So say you’re watching a video online and want to know who created it without having to go to their page, then click on the username, find their original web site/blog or Twitter handle etc etc. That’s where Credictive comes in. In a similar manner to the way Pinterest will tell you where an image was re-pinned from, that’s what Credictive wants to do.”

I’m loving Kickstarter. Check out this project to archive newspaper Web site front pages and make them searchable.

Google Hangouts is now available to everyone. Kind of shocked at how much traction this isn’t getting.

More online records in Utah. “As part of an overall effort by the Utah Department of Commerce to improve citizen access to information, the Utah Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing (DOPL) launched an upgraded database that provides scanned copies of disciplinary and non-disciplinary orders levied on licensees. The online records are accessible back to 2005.”

Hotel search engine Room Key has left beta.

TPM on the Google/Safari drama: “Google is reportedly in talks with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the amount of a fine the agency may give the search company for evading the default privacy protections on Apple’s Safari browser, the default Web browser found on all of Apple’s products, from Mac computers to the iPad and iPhone.”

Speaking of Google, last week it mapped Lynn University.

Ever want to learn how to play Fire and Rain? Want James Taylor to teach you? Here you go. Good afternoon, Internet…

So apparently Bing is rolling out a redesigned search results page to give an impression of “overload” on the Google search results page. I swear y’all, this is giving me Altavista/Google flashbacks.

North Carolina Central University Founder James E. Shepard will be the subject of a new digital archive. “The new collection includes Shepard’s correspondence with W.E.B. Du Bois, John Hope Franklin, and other leading Black scholars of the first half of the 20th century.”

Are open SSIDs in decline? I sure hope so…

Twitter is planning to do more with the Discover tab.

Idaho dam debates, now in yummy digital archive flavor.

Ooooo! I can’t wait to get into this archive of New York photographs! Sounds fun.

So apparently Twitter isn’t great at predicting elections. Every time I read a story about using social networks to predict events I remember the thing about how observation changes the item being observed.

IndyCar races… now on YouTube. (There’s also over 40 clips of crashes.)

Want to do some digging? Check out this search engine for seriously obscure adults. This sounds like a cool idea if they can keep it from being spammy. Good morning, Internet…

The city of St. Augustine, Florida is going to get an online historical database of materials dating back to the 16th century. “Materials will include maps and overlays of the city, architectural drawings of historic structures and related government documents from Government House; Spanish documents, transcriptions and English language translations from the St. Augustine Historical Society…”

In case you missed it: Google announced Google Drive last week.

There’s a new tool available for managing invasive plants common to the midwest US.

Oooh, Google Lit Trips! This sounds fun. “Google Lit Trips are free downloadable files that mark the journeys of characters from famous literature on the surface of Google Earth.”

Pinterest now has a Flickr attribution tool. Hopefully more will follow…

The state of Oklahoma has redesigned its Web portal.

John Peel’s record collection has started its online release. Lots of buzz about this one.

A new tool for analyzing words, URLs, hashtags, etc in Twitter — TweetCharts. I gave it a quick try. Looked interesting.

The FCC is going to require TV stations to require posting information about political advertising spending online. “The Federal Communications Commission voted on Friday to require local television stations to put detailed information about political advertising including the cost of specific commercials on their websites.”

Very interesting… a new archive that documents Chinese immigrants in the northwest US. “This document collection includes names, dates and places where the remains of Chinese immigrant workers were systematically dug up across Oregon. This actually was a custom across the American West decades ago. Mostly bachelor Chinese laborers wished for their remains to be returned and reburied in their home villages.”

Gmail now has automatic message translation.

Fascinating… an archive of contemporary wax cylinders. Good morning, Internet…