morningbuzz

Ancestry, Maps, EFF, More: Morning Buzz, July 3, 2014

Ancestry is offering free Census searches through July 6.

Overenthusiastic filters are blocking a variety of Web sites in the UK. “Nearly one in five of the most visited sites on the internet are being blocked by the adult content filters installed on Britain’s broadband and mobile networks.”

Yahoo Voices and the Yahoo Contributor Network are both shutting down. “Content that Yahoo published via the Voices site and other Yahoo properties like Yahoo News or Yahoo Sports will be removed from the web. Yahoo says some of the ‘work for hire’ content that’s part of these services may remain on the web.”

I love finding articles on using Google in ways I would never use Google. Example: How to use Google to match unmatchable clothing.

IFTTT lets no grass grow under its feet! It now has an Android Wear channel.

Citylab.com has an extensive story on a new topographic map explorer from the USGS. “With the help of ESRI, the new site gives users access to more than 178,000 of the USGS’s maps dating back to 1884, also making them easily searchable by city.”

The EFF has sued the NSA for details on how the government discloses security flaws. “In the wake of the Heartbleed fiasco, and pointed reports that the NSA both knew about the vulnerability and had exploited it, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) denied any prior knowledge of the bug. As the EFF quotes in its lawsuit, the ODNI stated that a policy in place called the ‘Vulnerabilities Equities Process’ is used to decide when to disclose security flaws that it uncovers.”

Facebook has acquired LiveRail.

600,000 Canadian life stories have been added to the Lives of the First World War Web site. “Imperial War Museums (IWM) and Library and Archives Canada (LAC) announced today that the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) databases and attestation papers will now be available through Lives of the First World War, following Canada Day, 1 July.”

The New York Times has an article looking at Twitter’s recent struggles. “While Mr. Noto is respected on Wall Street, he probably will not be much help with Twitter’s fundamental problem: how to make a niche service, with its quirky abbreviations like RT and MT and endless flow of 140-character text messages, into something that appeals to the masses.” Dear Twitter: Stop trying to be a destination, start trying to be a platform, open up your API, and let the uses develop themselves.

The Guardian notes that articles are vanishing from Google.co.uk, and offers a couple of workaround.

More Google: have you seen Google’s new music cube? Good morning, Internet…

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