morningbuzz

Google, ANU, Firefox, More: Wednesday Morning Buzz, April 30, 2014

The Washington Post takes a look at Congressional Republicans vs. Democrats on social media. “Republicans may dominate the upper echelons of Facebook friendom, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Another helpful metric is Facebook’s “people talking about this,” which tracks the number of times people have commented on or shared a post from a Congress member’s Facebook page, or mentioned one in their own posts. On this measure, there’s more party parity at the top.”

The state of Texas has launched a new Web site to provide details on the cost of public school construction. “This is the first publicly accessible database containing Texas public school construction data. To provide greater transparency on new school construction costs, the Comptroller’s office submitted a public information request to every Texas public school district and charter operator to gather data on schools built from 2007 through 2013.”

Australian National University is launching the first Hindi-English MOOC. “The 10-week course, Engaging India, is a partnership between the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific and the global MOOC provider edX, which was founded by American universities Harvard and MIT.”

The LA Times takes a look at the changes in the new Firefox 29.

More than 100,000 K-12 students came up with Google Doodles, and now Google wants you to vote on the best ones.

More Google: you can now use Chromecast to share your Google Drive presentations. “As spotted by Android Police, Google has quietly added an option within Drive that lets you push your Presentation to Chromecast. We looked into it ourselves and can confirm that said feature is indeed there, via the ‘Present on another device’ menu.”

More More Google: Does Google have a secret “Translate” service?

3x More Google: An alleged former Google employee is claiming that Google is scamming publishers out of AdSense earnings. I doubt it; why would they bother? It isn’t even couch cushion money to Google. It’s ashtray money.

The NSA has admitted that it does not disclose all security flaws it finds. “For the most part, the government discloses vulnerabilities, [Michael] Daniel said. But there are times, he said, when it’s beneficial to withhold knowledge of certain flaws. Those instances include collecting intelligence that could ‘thwart a terrorist attack’ or ‘stop the theft of our nation’s intellectual property.'”

The United States Copyright Office is changing its fee structure.

Genealogists! There’s a new Web site available of pre-1901 Irish census information — and it’s free!

Which social media outlet gets the most interaction? Why, it’s Instagram! I’m still trying to get Instagram. You can find me there, ResearchBuzz, with the mighty one picture of my cats. If you know any good accounts to follow please recommend. Good morning, Internet…

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