NEW RESOURCES

The state of Ohio has published an online archive of annual treasurer’s reports. “As part of Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel’s mission to create a more open and transparent government, the Ohio Treasurer’s office is pleased to announce a partnership with the State Library of Ohio to present an online compilation of Annual Reports published by the Treasurer’s office since the early 1800s.”

FamilySearch has added over 19 million records. “Notable collection updates include the 7,120,120 indexed records and 6,113,876 images from the United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980–2014 collection; the 4,835,296 indexed records from the Puerto Rico, Civil Registration, 1805–2001 collection; and the 314,770 indexed records and 314,770 images from the US, BillionGraves Index collection.”

The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library has announced a digitizing project. “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson Digital Edition will be accomplished in two phases. Phase One will focus on digitizing Arthur S. Link’s The Papers of Woodrow Wilson. The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library plans to collaborate with the University of Virginia Press in outsourcing the digitization and transcription of the 69 volumes, having an employee of the University of Virginia Press supervise quality control of the finished product in consultation with the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library as needed. This phase is expected to take 18 months to complete. Phase Two would be directed by the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and include compiling the additional Woodrow Wilson papers that were not included in Link’s The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, digitizing them, and then publishing them in additional volumes through Rotunda and Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library’s digital library. This phase is expected to take between five and six years, and could be conducted concurrently with Phase One as funding permits. ”

USEFUL STUFF

Hmm. How to create GIFs of live events in seconds. This is mostly about an OS X tool called GIFGrabber, though there is a mention of a free Windows tool called Licecap.

From PC World (Warning! PC World!): How to automatically save GMail attachments to DropBox.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Lenovo has promised that upcoming computers will be free of extra software (which is often known as “bloatware” or “crapware”.) “We are starting immediately, and by the time we launch our Windows 10 products, our standard image will only include the operating system and related software, software required to make hardware work well (for example, when we include unique hardware in our devices, like a 3D camera), security software and Lenovo applications.” This is nice, but I don’t trust Lenovo any more and will not be buying any more Lenovo computers. (I’m actually typing this on a Lenovo computer right now. Fortunately the first thing I did after I purchased it was install Linux.)

Google has reversed its Blogger pornography ban. “After coming under fire over the introduction of a retroactive change that would ban sexually explicit images and video and also required owners to delete older content, the search giant has told users that it will crack down harder on the publishing of commercial porn instead.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Yahoo is celebrating its 20th anniversary by ringing the Nasdaq opening bell on Monday.

Google has paid $25 million for the entire top-level .app domain. Apparently that’s the most paid in an ICANN auction so far.

Canada is getting a new open access policy. “The Honourable Ed Holder, Minister of State (Science and Technology), today unveiled the new policy as part of a wide-ranging speech on the government’s updated Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy in a speech to the Economic Club in Toronto. The harmonized Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications requires all peer-reviewed journal publications funded by one of the three federal granting agencies to be freely available online within 12 months. Canada’s three federal granting agencies are: the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The policy will require NSERC and SSHRC funded researchers to comply with the policy for all grants awarded May 1, 2015 and onward. The policy will not change current compliance requirements for CIHR funded researchers since a similar policy with the same requirements has been in effect since 2008. ”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

How much is a tweet worth to a movie’s box office revenue? “At Networked Insights, we analyzed over 400 movies since 2012 to measure the dollar impact these tweets have on weekend box office revenue. In our models, we controlled for movie genre, competitors that weekend and number of theaters. We found that, on average, one tweet adds $560 to weekend box office revenue between one and five weeks prior to the release. The timing of a tweet is especially important to its value. The farther in advance of the movie release date a tweet is posted, the more revenue the post drives.”

MarketingProfs breaks down a recent study about what Twitter content Google is indexing. “The vast majority of tweets are still not making it into search results, with only 7.4% of the sample tweets getting indexed by Google, the analysis found. However, tweets from accounts with 1M+ followers have a much higher likelihood of getting indexed, with 21% of such messages appearing in search results. … As for tweet type, tweets with images are the most likely to be indexed (12% of the sample appeared in search results). Tweets that include hashtags are also more likely to be indexed.” Good morning, Internet…

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