NEW RESOURCES

Leeds University Library has launched a new online resource for illuminated manuscripts. “The resource showcases illumination found in twenty-seven medieval manuscripts held in the collections. It builds on digitisation and cataloguing work undertaken in 2008. Dr Katja Monier (who worked on the original project) has carried out extensive research into the collections. Dr. Monier has enhanced the online resource with detailed contextual information about the origins of specific manuscripts.” I have seen illuminated manuscript sites before but never one so seriously annotated.

The FEC has a new API, and The Sunlight Foundation gives us a breakdown. “Big news in the campaign finance world: The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is taking a huge step forward by making data accessible through a modern API. With the help of a team of intrepid 18F developers, the FEC is rethinking both its website and its data offerings to better serve its mission of educating the public with real-time disclosure of campaign finance information. It’s part of the larger OpenFEC project, and we think it’s a very encouraging sign that this collaboration is going to improve access to a crucial information resource. This is a beta release, but we’re really excited to see what’s been accomplished so far. What follows is meant as both an introduction to what’s available through this new resource and a critique of what’s working well, and the changes Sunlight would like to see in future releases of the API.”

Catching up: A new database of British slave holders is now available. “Historians from University College London (UCL) have catalogued the 46,000 British subjects who were compensated by the British government for losing in total 800,000 slaves as a result of abolition.”

USEFUL STUFF

Are the constant Flash security warnings driving you spare? From How-To Geek: How to Uninstall and Disable Flash in Every Web Browser.

Reddit is getting pretty much roasted in the press, but The Next Web has a potentially very useful article: 11 of the most helpful communities on Reddit. Communities here include explainlikeimfive (I could use that one constantly), buyitforlife, and apphookup.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Catching up… Facebook is letting you pick who you see first in the news feed if you’re using the iOS app. If you’re not, tough cookies. “You can adjust the new News Feed preferences, which are only in Facebook’s iOS app for now, from the ‘News Feed Preferences’ menu in the ‘more’ section of the Facebook app. The revamped preference menu has four sections: prioritize who to see first, unfollow people to hide their posts, reconnect with people you unfollowed, and discover new pages.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Google accidentally let the lid off “right to be forgotten” requests. “Less than 5% of nearly 220,000 individual requests made to Google to selectively remove links to online information concern criminals, politicians and high-profile public figures, the Guardian has learned, with more than 95% of requests coming from everyday members of the public. The Guardian has discovered new data hidden in source code on Google’s own transparency report that indicates the scale and flavour of the types of requests being dealt with by Google – information it has always refused to make public. ”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

From MIT Technology Review: The Rise of the Urban War Correspondent on Twitter. “After drug cartels intimidated many local newspapers in Mexico into silence, ordinary citizens began passing on news about drug-related violence themselves. Researchers from Microsoft decided to find out why.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

I’m sorry, I can’t stop thinking about Google’s Deep Dream toy — erm, I mean neural network tool. Yeah, that’s what I mean. Anyway, now researchers are deep-dreaming maps. “Last week, Google released the ”DeepDream” code to the public, so that anyone with some programming skills could process their own images with a psychedelic glaze. Naturally, a couple of brave mapmakers stepped in and produced some geo-visualizations—now, the hills literally have eyes.” Good morning, Internet…

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