Google, Amazon, Internet, Florida, More: Quick Friday Morning Buzz, March 29, 2013
Good catch on the menu item: is Google rethinking shutting down Google Reader? I doubt it but it’s interesting reading.
More Google: The FBI wants more real-time GMail spying power.
Nice one from Lifehacker: the best ways to be sure that your use of online photos is legal.
More from Lifehacker: Dropproxy lets you hide your user name when sharing public files.
The Smithsonian Libraries has an excellent blog post: Finding Current Research Using Free Online Sources.
Ooopsie: thousands of Amazon S3 data stores are configured incorrectly and have been left open.
Apparently a giant DDoS attack
caused Internet disruption and widespread wonkiness yesterday. Did you notice any problems?
Lisnews pointed me to this awesome article about the digitizing of parish records in Florida — parish records that go back to the 1500s.
Woo! An RPG built entirely in a spreadsheet. I love this, but I am a huge nerd. Good morning, Internet…
Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, More: Brief Wednesday Morning Buzz, March 27, 2013
Google Reader: Digg is leaving some tantalizing hints about what its Reader replacement will do. Yahoo is getting in on the action, having acquired the Summly news aggregator. Meanwhile Ed Bott at ZDNet wrote an article thoroughly documenting how Google destroyed the RSS reader space before pulling the plug on Reader.
It starts off as an article about an odd/silly Twitter tool which finds tweets of people publicly complaining about how they hate their jobs. But there are some interesting statistics in here about those kinds of Twitter accounts and how they compare to people who tweet positively about their jobs.
Interesting: predicting the spread of lung cancer using an algorithm similar to Google’s PageRank. “The study is part of a relatively new movement to involve physical sciences in oncology research. Mathematics probability models that interpret data from specific patient populations offer a new alternative to the established approach of relying on broader clinical trends to predict where, and how fast, cancer will spread.”
More Google: Phil Bradley goes to Google, gets six results on a page, and goes off.
Even MORE Google: Visually has a new tool that shows your Google Analytics data as an infographic.
LinkedIn has a new search engine.
TIME kicks in on its 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2013. Hey, there’s Glenn! Good morning, Internet…
Google, LOC, Quilters, Instagram, More: Tuesday Morning Buzz, March 26, 2013
More Google Reader alternatives: an assistant professor at Rice has turned GMail into an RSS reader by using rss2email. If the instructions for doing that scare you, you can use IFTTT instead.
The Library of Congress has announced a new free resource – an e-book called “Perspectives on Personal Digital Archiving”. Useful for you genealogists out there.
QUILTERS IN ARIZONA! (I know there are at least a few quilters who read ResearchBuzz) — The Arizona Quilters Hall of Fame needs quilts and quilt information for its online database.
The Monday Note (which I have not read before but that’s changing right now) has a thoughtful breakdown on Marissa Mayer’s edict of no work from home. I didn’t agree with that policy (I thought she should have just identified the slackers and fired them) but this article may have changed my mind. Very interesting.
Phil Bradley takes a quick look at Zoom, a freemium Web conferencing service.
Google has announced Google Capture for Hangouts.
More Google: it has apparently officially discontinued the Blocked Sites feature. Wow.
Do you miss Instagram pix in your Twitter feeds? Now you can get them back with a Chrome extension.
Heh: this site lets you fake like you’re on Wikipedia. Good morning, Internet…
Star Trek, Amazon, WWII Newspapers, Quora, More: Sunday Morning Buzz, March 24, 2013
Nerd out! Hulu has made almost 700 episodes of various Star Trek franchises free to watch until the end of March.
Good grief, just about everything gets in an infographic these days — including the NCAA tourney.
Posterous refugees, you have a new option: Posthaven has launched in public beta.
Amazon has launched a new “Send to Kindle” feature that publishers can install on their own Web sites. Looks interesting but I’m really happy with Pocket.
10th Mountain Division newspapers from WWII are now available online. “Dennis Hagen, 10th Mountain Division Archivist at the Denver Public Library added, ‘The 10th Mountain Division’s incredible accomplishments during World War II have been well documented in countless books and articles. The extensive and intensive mountain and winter warfare training that prepared the Division for battle is much less well-known. The Camp Hale Ski-Zette and The Blizzard provide a valuable window into what life was like for young military men preparing to go to war and a unique perspective on brief moment in Colorado’s history that is probably not available anywhere else.’”
Genealogy search engine Mocavo has announced a learning center for genealogists who want more guidance in researching their family history.
Oh look, you can finally do full-text search on Quora! About time!
OHAI! Google Image Search now lets you find animated GIFs.
Nice: safety data for vehicles, now available as an API.
Mashable takes a look at Mention as a replacement for Google Alerts. It’s okay for non-Web stuff, but it’s missing Web things.
Snark and data, they go together like peanut butter and jelly. When should we expect Google to shut down Google Keep? Good morning, Internet…
Google, Beaches, NASA, LOC, More: Saturday Morning Buzz, March 23, 2013
Google Reader: Om Malik pitches in two cents about Google Keep — mainly that he’s not going to use it. The comments are interesting to read, too, but the ones along the lines of “Google starting new products encourages competition!” just make me roar in frustration. No. Google is too big for that. Google does not encourage competition, at its very best it doesn’t discourage it. And it when it does things like enter a market, wipe out the competitors, and then yank or stop supporting its own products, it pees on the ecosystem. And I’m not talking about just Google Reader – there have been many posts and stories over the last few weeks about issues with Google Alerts. Has anyone seen any kind of substantive response from Google? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Google things: So Google is apparently getting rid of the print version of Frommer’s Travel Guides? Because the Internet is instantly, cheaply, and easily accessible from anywhere in the world, and electronic gadgets never run out of power. Google has also opened its Universal Analytics into public beta.
More Google Things: If you’re doing Google+ searches, you can now filter for photos only.
With this cold cold weather I need to feel a little summer-y, so I’m happy to pass on the news that the National Weather Service has launched a Beach Hazards and Safety Web site.
Wow, the NASA Technical Reports Database has gone dark. (I think I found out about this via Shirl, thanks Shirl.)
The Library of Congress looks back at six months of Congress.gov. In other LOC news, the 2012 National Recording Registry has been announced.
Looking for MOOCs? Check out
http://www.class-central.com/
.
Whew: Apple’s huge AppleID security hole has apparently been fixed.Good thing Apple is now offering two-step verification. (I wish Amazon would offer two-step verification.) Good morning, Internet…
Google, MIT, Fashion, Twitter, More: Friday Morning Buzz, March 22, 2013
Google Reader: Will RSS be replaced by Twitter? This article actually links to two different view points which is a good thing, because the idea of Twitter being functional enough to replace RSS makes me foam at the mouth. The only time that Twitter came even close to being as useful as RSS was when the late, much lamented ListiMonkey was in play. So Twitter is not as useful as RSS now, and who knows how Twitter TOS changes will make it even worse?
More Google: Google has introduced Google Keep. It’s described like this: “To solve this problem we’ve created Google Keep. With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand.” After Google cancelled Reader, you know what reading about Google Keep makes me want to do? IT MAKES ME WANT TO GO GIVE EVERNOTE A BIG HUG.
More More G: Google apparently blocked a 64-year-old lady for allegedly using automated queries. I have occasionally tripped Google’s “You are a robot” accuse-o-meter for running queries too quickly, but never been blocked. Meanwhile, Google Flight search now offers information for flights around the world.
From MIT: a very cool tool for tracking memes across television news.
Fashion designer Zandra Rhodes is getting a digital archive.
YouTube, now with over one billion users a month.
A new open source, Web-based office suite is on the way.
Happy 7th birthday to Twitter.
Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail, FINALLY something I can spell) has had its beta 1 release. Good morning, Internet…
Archives, Twitter, A New Spreadsheet, More: Thursday Morning Buzz, March 21, 2013
Google Reader Roundup: Looking for a more specialized reader? Check out Bibliogo, which is described here as a free reader devoted to science and technology. Meanwhile The Next Web asserts that Google is straying from its original purpose, using an NCAA bracket as an example.
More Google: here’s another complaint about the current state of Google Alerts, which is really, really bad. And apparently there isn’t much response from Google. Meanwhile, there aren’t that many good alert services available anymore because most of them were wiped out by Google Alerts. So far I’m not very impressed with Mention. The Facebook mentions are okay but the Web mentions are really, really thin.
Also, Google has launched Google Drive Realtime API.
Archives.com has started free weekly livestream videos to provide information on genealogy topics.
Hmm. The Washington Post is going to raise a paywall — at least if you read over 20 articles a month.
Tools: A big pile of Power Point alternatives on EdCanvas. (Thanks Joyce.)
Here are Nine tools to improve social media productivity. I use two of these.
TechCrunch has an article about new online spreadsheet Fivetran. “Most people, for better or worse, use their spreadsheets as databases…” Guilty as charged.
Interesting: How to find the right Twitter user in a crisis. This article doesn’t address the topic so much as it outlines a recently-written paper that addresses the topic. (The paper is available online.)
Cool, I didn’t know about most of these: 20 Essential Keyboard Shortcuts for Twitter Power Users.
Fast Company notes some hidden gems in Flickr’s archives. Warning: timesink. Good morning, Internet…
