NEW RESOURCES

Ancestry has launched Ancestry Academy. “We are excited to announce the launch of Ancestry Academy, a new educational website that offers exclusive, high-quality video courses taught by genealogy and family history experts. Ancestry Academy courses cover a wide range of relevant family history topics and offer something for genealogists of all levels.” This is a pay resource.

Genealogy site HistoryLines has launched. HistoryLines is “… a site that helps you create personalized life stories for your ancestors with historical context, photos and an interactive map…”

All of a sudden livestreaming is a thing. And it’s a big thing! In fact, here comes another livestreaming app. “For one, no plugins or software downloads are necessary for Rhinobird — you can use the Android app, Chrome, Firefox or other WebRTC-enabled browser on PC, Mac, or Linux to access the service (an iPhone app is slated to release later this year). It also claims to be the fastest live video app in the market: Mere seconds after recording on Rhinobird, you’ll have a permalink to a video that can be downloaded and embedded on a website, blog or elsewhere. Rhinobird works across Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp, and best of all, promises great quality even when a lot of people are watching a livestream on the same network.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Web reading app Pocket has launched a new site design. I love Pocket except I wish that the number of items I had to read were numbered. Though that probably means just depressing myself unnecessarily.

The latest place on Google Street View? Why, it’s Loch Ness.

Dropbox has launched a bug bounty program. “In fact, Dropbox has decided to retroactively reward hackers who responsibly reported critical bugs in its applications. More specifically, the company is paying out $10,475 to 24 security researchers today (the largest payout was $4,913).”

FamilySearch has done another update. “Notable collection updates include 700,220 indexed records from the US, Alabama, County Marriages, 1809–1950 collection; 461,167 indexed records from the US, Montana, Cascade County Records, 1880–2009 collection; and 380,334 indexed records from the Brazil, São Paulo, Immigration Cards, 1902–1980 collection.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

YouTube is now available for browsing in 15 new languages. “The new languages on offer are: Albanian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Georgian, Kazak, Khmer, Kirghiz, Lao, Macedonian, Mongolian, Myanmar, Nepali, Punjabi, Sinhala and Uzbek.”

This new Rolodex tool at the Dallas Morning News sounds great. “… an open source tool that lets reporters contribute to a newsroom system of contacts. But the app can also serve as the backend to news apps that surface contact information or show the strength of networks. Think of it like this: Morning News reporters can use Rolodex to create a database of emails and phone number for, say, records officials across Dallas County — but they can also show how those people and organizations are interconnected.”

The Gadgeteer reviews Google Keep.

The Atlantic is doing some really nice writing about the Internet. Check out this article on Google’s efforts to eliminate its own biases.

Google Wallet funds are now FDIC insured.

Google has done an extensive update for Android Wear.

Wow: apparently Google might have bought Tesla in 2013.

RESEARCH AND OPINION

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: using Twitter to teach introductory statistics. “I require my students to open a new Twitter account for the course so their focus can be professional. They must find and follow 10 new organizations a week (until they have 50) that use statistics prominently in their Twitter feeds. Students must post seven statistical tweets a week. Every week I assign different topics to study and tweet about. By the end of the semester, students have produced an account with more than 50 statistical entities and around 100 statistical tweets.” Good morning, Internet…

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