USEFUL STUFF

I can’t believe I’m linking to BuzzFeed twice in a week, but this is a good list of 25 YouTube tips.

How-To Geek: How to work with PDF files in Windows.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Yahoo is expanding its video captioning (PRESS RELEASE). “Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) is advancing digital accessibility by captioning thousands of videos every month, which can be viewed on the company’s websites and through the Yahoo Screen mobile app for iOS and Android. Yahoo now offers captions on videos from a variety of partners, including: The New York Times, the Associated Press on Yahoo News, Reuters, CNBC and many others. Yahoo also provides captioned movie trailers, a service long-desired by deaf and hard-of-hearing moviegoers.”

The state of Mississippi has updated its Web site (PRESS RELEASE). “Furthering engagement and customization on ms.gov is the addition of MyMS, a new service for Mississippi citizens. MyMS encourages users to set and receive reminders and alerts for services important to them, opening communication channels between the state and its citizens. Along with important personalized reminders, MyMS gives users the ability to elect to receive alerts, including amber, silver, and important weather alerts.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Apparently Barack Obama’s Twitter account set a new world record. “President Barack Obama shattered the actor’s world record for fastest time to 1 million followers after launching his account Monday afternoon.” He broke the previous record held by Robert Downey Jr. I still love you, Robert.

Speaking of that, have you thought about tweeting Mr. Obama? Watch your keyboard, all the tweets to that account are being immediately archived. I can’t quote from the article because of all the nasty. It includes a lot of tweets that are way beyond the pale. The cat has fainted and I’m scraping my eyebrows off the ceiling. Follow the link at your own risk.

Belgium’s privacy watchdog tore Facebook a new one recently. “Belgium’s privacy watchdog ripped into Facebook Inc. for treating the personal data of Internet users ‘with contempt’ and failing to cooperate with its inquiries, stoking a dispute between the company and European regulators that could result in heavy fines and orders to change its business practices.”

Interesting: a story about a town which uses Twitter for communication between residents and government. “Jun, home to 3,500 people, is believed to be the first town worldwide to adopt Twitter as the dominant method of communication between local government and residents. For the past four years, it has acted as the town’s community noticeboard: sharing obituaries, news, school-dinner menus. Residents use the social-networking site to report crime, problems with civic services and to book doctors’ appointments.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

A study of political Facebook unfriending. “After being politely told by a Facebook research department still reeling from the emotional contagion experiment fallout that, no, they wouldn’t be able to collaborate with me on this (at least that’s my explanation), I realized I would have to collect the data myself. And so, one week after the final ceasefire, I surveyed 1,013 Jewish-Israeli Facebook users and asked them whether they had unfriended or unfollowed anyone during the period of fighting for reasons that were to do with the fighting and the politics around it.” Good morning, Internet….

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