NEW RESOURCES

The Internet Archive is going to have a 2016 political ad tracker. “We will be capturing all TV programming in select 2016 primary election locales, front-loaded to reflect early-state candidate winnowing. We hope to apply lessons learned during the primaries, to key general election battleground states in the fall. In addition to our regular TV news research library interface, we’ll be creating an online reference page for each unique-content political ad. These pages will present journalist fact-checking and other analysis. Accompanying these assessments will be information about ad sponsors, campaign financial transparency data as well as dynamically updated tracking on each ad’s plays, including frequency, locale, etc.”

More political ad stuff: UW-Madison Professor Young Mie Kim is developing a tool to track targeted political ads. “Kim, in partnership with the Office for Creative Research in New York City, is developing an online tool called Floodwatch Elections. The project was one of 22 chosen from more than 1,000 applicants in the Knight News Challenge. Floodwatch Elections is a Web tool that will track online political ads that are personally customized to an individual voter. Such advertising activity is called ‘microtargeting’ because it is specifically customized to a person based on personal data such as browsing history.”

Twitter’s getting a “safety center”.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google+ Photos is shutting down on August 1. I can’t say I’m sorry about this. Google+ Photos was a bit of a mess and I really missed Picasa. “The shutdown of Google+ Photos will start on August 1. According to Google, the Android version will go first; shortly thereafter, the web and iOS versions will go dark. Your photos hosted on Google+ will automatically migrate over to photos.google.com, their new home. Alternatively, you’ll also be able to grab all your photos via Google Takeout if you just want out all together.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

A bunch of MongoDB data has been exposed on the Internet. “A total of 595.2 terabytes (TB) of data is exposed on the internet via publicly accessible MongoDB instances that don’t require any form of authentication. That is the claim of blogger and Shodan developer John Matherly, following an investigation. Shodan is a search engine designed to expose online devices.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

And now for a bit of silly: What Google Autocomplete tells us about the 2016 presidential candidates. Or what people are searching for in reference to the candidates.

So apparently Twitter had a “frat party”?. Seriously? Is Bluto Blutarsky going to be the next CEO? Good grief.

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Politico: Library of Congress’ Twitter archive is a huge #FAIL. “The archive’s fate is yet another example of the difficulty of safeguarding the historical records of an era when people communicate using easily deletable emails, websites that can be taken down in seconds and transient tweets, Vines and Snaps. But the library’s critics also see it as a cautionary tale from the 28-year tenure of retiring Librarian of Congress James Billington. During Billington’s time in office, say critics, the library has espoused grand technological ambitions but didn’t back them up with the planning, budget or nuts-and-bolts needed to turn them from buzzy news releases to tangible accomplishments.” Good evening, Internet…

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

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