NEW RESOURCES

The Government Printing Office (GPO) has released the Mobile Member Guide app for the 114th Congress. “The mobile Web app provides the public with quick, easy access to information on Members of the 114th Congress; the features include their picture, party affiliation, hometown, home state, and length of service. The app allows users to browse for Members of Congress by last name, state, chamber, or party.”

The state of Texas has launched a new Web site providing information for parents of special-needs children (PRESS RELEASE). “NavigateLifeTexas.org was built for anyone who needs to find relevant, comprehensive, and accurate information about services in Texas for children with disabilities and special health care needs. The site was designed by parents, for parents, but it’s a valuable resource for caregivers, clinicians, professionals, and support groups as well. A Spanish version of the site is at AvancemosJuntosTexas.org…. Categories on the website include ‘Diagnosis and Healthcare,’ ‘Insurance and Financial Help,’ ‘Family Support,’ ‘Education and Schools,’ and ‘Transition to Adulthood.’ Visitors can enter their ZIP code to search for support groups, services, and events that are specific to their region. The data provided on the site has been vetted by parents, physicians, parent organizations, subject matter experts, and state agencies.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bing has done a big upgrade to Bing Maps. “Available today for those who opt-in*, the Bing Maps Preview reflects this feedback. The new Bing Maps is designed so you can search, view and share multiple places at one time, see trusted reviews and photos from partners such as Yelp, get access to a rich set of visuals and information on the places you plan to visit, make it easy to plan your travel times and more.” Check out that asterisk, though, Bing Maps isn’t available to everyone just yet. US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, and a few other places. One feature, “Along the route,” is currently available only in the US.

Instagram will start storing bigger pictures. “Just over a week ago, I wrote plaintively about Instagram’s archaic 640 x 640 resolution and the need to move with the times and give users the ability to upload larger images. This past Friday, it appears, Instagram has started addressing that very issue, as photos sent to the popular image sharing app are now being stored in a higher 1080 x 1080 size.”

Twitter wants to know your birthday. Yeah, no. “To add your birth date to your Twitter profile, choose the “Edit profile” option on Twitter.com. Your birth date is a completely optional part of your profile and you have full control over who can see it. The visibility setting for your birth year is separate from the setting for your birth month and day, giving you the flexibility to share as much (or as little) as you want. Check out our Help Center for more information about your birth date on Twitter.”

USEFUL STUFF

Handy article from Ed Bott: How to turn your Windows 10 upgrade files into an ISO disk image — “One question I’ve been asked more than any other in recent weeks is whether Microsoft will release Windows 10 in ISO format. No one outside Redmond knows yet, but in the meantime there’s an option: Make your own ISO files. Here’s how. [Updated with product keys for Preview builds 10158 and 10159]”

A Chrome extension lets you mute mentions of the 2016 US elections. “The aptly-named ‘I haven’t got time for the ‘Paign’ is basic, but effective: it automatically scrubs popular news sites like the New York Times, Slate and The Atlantic of campaign news and tells you how many articles were hidden.”

Useful to me because I’m a language nerd (and language is ridiculously important in search) – a map of metaphors. “Experts have now created the world’s first online Metaphor Map, which contains more than 14,000 metaphorical connections sourced from 4m pieces of lexical data, some of which date back to 700AD.” Read the help guide.

Good stuff from How-To Geek: How to Create Geographic Event Triggers with Your Smartphone and IFTTT. I need to create one to remind me when I go to Sheetz: “Those Wisconsin cheddar bites will do you no good.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Blogging site Medium wants you to be able to log in without a password. “Instead, users will be able to enter in an email address, then click a link sent to them in order to sign in to the site. Previously, the company allowed its users to sign in using their Twitter or Facebook credentials, but it received feedback from many who said they wanted an option to use Medium without having to authenticate with their social networking credentials. Or, in some cases, users said they didn’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, and didn’t want to create one just to use Medium.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

This is interesting. Go

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

ogle is getting into ride-sharing, via Waze. “Google-owned online mapping company Waze is launching a carpooling pilot program in Israel where commuters pay fellow drivers a small fee for a ride to and from work.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Michael Zimmer has a really good article at First Monday: The Twitter Archive at the Library of Congress: Challenges for Information Practice and Information Policy. “In April 2010, the U.S. Library of Congress and the popular micro-blogging company Twitter announced that every public tweet, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library and made available to researchers. The Library of Congress’ planned digital archive of all public tweets holds great promise for the research community, yet, over five years since its announcement, the archive remains unavailable. This paper explores the challenges faced by the Library that have prevented the timely realization of this valuable archive, divided into two categories: challenges involving practice, such as how to organize the tweets, how to provide useful means of retrieval, how to physically store them; and challenges involving policy, such as the creation of access controls to the archive, whether any information should be censored or restricted, and the broader ethical considerations of the very existence of such an archive, especially privacy and user control.” Happily there is a font size control on the right column of the First Monday site (good heavens, what is that initially, six point sans serif?) and I admit, I laughed at the “LOC, you nimrods” quote. Good morning, Internet…

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