NEW RESOURCES

Historic maps of Oklahoma are now available for viewing online. “The collection includes more than 15,000 maps from 1820 to the present, including the 1,900 now online. It features Oklahoma streets and highways, counties and towns, waterways, railways, American Indian populations, cemeteries, telecommunication lines, trails, borderlines and boundaries, including U.S. government agency maps, [Chad] Williams said.”

Google Street View went to Mongolia and oh, wow. “Last fall we strapped a Street View camera onto a four-wheel drive pickup truck to begin capturing 360-imagery from rugged Mongolian roads. Since then we’ve also gone off-road to capture images of the country’s most beautiful places with Ariuntuul, our Mongolian Trekker operator, who carried the 18-kg Street View Trekker into the wild expanses of Mongolia’s diverse countryside.”

Coming this summer: a nationwide map of school attendance zones. I guess I should have assumed that any collection of arbitrarily-drawn boundaries could be gerrymandered, but I never thought about it. “Understanding who goes to which area school and why may soon become a lot easier for education officials and community members alike. The U.S. Department of Education plans to release the first nationwide map of school attendance boundaries this summer. Starting in November, school districts will be able to use an online tool to draw or upload their own maps and download or tweak existing maps. In the process, districts will create the most detailed picture yet of how American schools define their communities.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

WordPress has gotten a new security update. “WordPress versions 4.2.2 and earlier are affected by a cross-site scripting vulnerability, which could allow users with the Contributor or Author role to compromise a site. This was initially reported by Jon Cave and fixed by Robert Chapin, both of the WordPress security team, and later reported by Jouko Pynnönen.”

Bing has set up a revenge porn removal form. “Detailing the move in a blog post yesterday, Microsoft’s chief online safety officer, Jacqueline Beauchere, said it will also be cutting off access to revenge porn when it is shared via its OneDrive cloud storage service or the Xbox Live games service, as well as searched for via Bing.”

Yahoo is going to start offering a daily streaming news program. “Starting today, the Yahoo News team – led by Yahoo’s Global News Anchor Katie Couric – will get you up to speed on the top headlines of the day and take you on a deep dive into the most talked about story of the day with live interviews, reporting and analysis. From the Iran nuclear deal to the latest on the 2016 campaign trail, Yahoo News Live will provide perspective on the stories that are trending around the nation, and often the world. Yahoo News Live will stream every weekday (M-F) at 1:00pm ET on Yahoo: yahoo.com/katiecouric.”

Google is continuing to back away from Google+, which is great. “…in the coming months, a Google Account will be all you’ll need to share content, communicate with contacts, create a YouTube channel and more, all across Google. YouTube will be one of the first products to make this change, and you can learn more on their blog. As always, your underlying Google Account won’t be searchable or followable, unlike public Google+ profiles. And for people who already created Google+ profiles but don’t plan to use Google+ itself, we’ll offer better options for managing and removing those public profiles.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Stephen Hawking is going to host a Reddit AMA.

Google wants to giave away patents to startups. “Back in April, Google launched a pop-up, temporary marketplace for companies to sell patents, with Google being the sole buyer. Today, the search and mobile giant is expanding that marketplace in the other direction: Google has started a program for startups to give away up to two non-organic patent families off Google, as well as potentially make offers to buy patents from it in the future. It’s tying up the offer with a requirement to join the LOT Network, a cross-company licensing push (others in the group include Dropbox, SAP and Canon) aimed at driving down the number of patent-trolling suits.”

Google is going to shut down “unverified” Google My Business listings tomorrow. And considering what an unholy mess Google Local business listings have been since they were brought under the aegis of Google+, I’m not looking forward to having to fix the problems that are no doubt going to crop up tomorrow. Good afternoon, Internet…

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