NEW RESOURCES

The Southern Voice Newspaper collection is now available in the Digital Library of Georgia. “We are excited to announce the availability the Southern Voice newspaper collection, 1988-1995 thanks to our partners at Kennesaw State University (KSU) Archives. The Southern Voice newspaper, also known as SOVO, was an alternative news source for lesbians and gay men in the greater Atlanta area and Southeast for over 20 years.”

Now available: an online archive of vintage Madagascar photographs. “The website went live on July 27, 2015, and offers a glimpse of everyday lives in Madagascar from 1850 to 1960. The collections is organized in four major periods: Pre-colonial Period, Colonial Period, Major Constructions, Everyday Life and Independence.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

This should be fun! IFTTT now has a Spotify channel.

USEFUL STUFF

From the always-interesting Preston Gralla: 5 great free apps for powering up Google Drive.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Twitter is asserting copyright to delete stolen jokes. Um… “Let’s face it: coming up with a grade-A tweet isn’t easy. That’s why some people just copy good tweets from other people and act like they came up with the 140-character witticism on their own. This has been going on since the beginning of Twitter. It now appears Twitter is using its legal authority to crack down on these tweet-stealers. A number of tweets have been deleted on copyright grounds for apparently stealing a bad joke.” Because Twitter has no other issues with content and user interaction that it should consider a higher priority. Nope nope nope.

The amount of stuff being uploaded to YouTube is getting scarier and scarier. It’s up to 400 hours a minute. You heard me. “YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki dropped a big data bomb at VidCon. On July 23, 2015 at her closing keynote speech for the annual online video event’s industry track, Wojcicki revealed Google’s online video site now claims over 400 hours of content uploaded every single minute. It was only in December 2014 when YouTube claimed 300 hours of content uploaded every minute, as per a report from ReelSEO. The publication noted those 300 hours per minute were the equivalent of about 49 years’ worth of content per day. Based on the most recent stats, 400 hours of content comes out to 24,000 days’ worth of content uploaded to YouTube every minute and 65.7 years’ worth of content uploaded every day.”

Science fiction fans raised almost $2000 to help digitize the Hevelin collection at the University of Iowa archives. “Rusty Hevelin was a science fiction fan, pulp collector, fanzine creator, huckster (a dealer at conventions), and voracious reader for most of his 89 years. He was also involved with the Iowa Science Fiction conventions ICON and Demicon from the time of their founding. After his death in 2011, his collections came to the University of Iowa Special Collections where a recent unprecedented initiative to digitize around 10,000 of the earliest fanzines from roughly 1930s-1950s has begun.”

The Smithsonian’s foray into Kickstarter is going really well. “That Kickstarter, dubbed ‘Reboot the Suit’ paid off, hitting its goal in 5 days. While large philanthropic organizations ask for thousands in private donations, the majority of backers donated $100 or less to this project.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Ewww. There is a really nasty Android bug out there. “It’s like something from a bad movie: eager to learn the details of the bad guy’s dastardly plot, the good guys hack his phone armed with little more than knowledge of his phone number. No physical access to the phone, no tricking him into opening some shady application; just a quick message sent to his phone, and bam — they’re in. Alas, that’s essentially how a new Android hack works, according to researchers… and the vast majority of Android devices are vulnerable.”

Facebook has been ordered by a German privacy watchdog to allow pseudonyms. “Facebook may not unilaterally change such accounts to the real names of users and may not block them, Johannes Caspar, Hamburg’s data regulator, said in an e-mailed statement. The company, whose European headquarters are in Ireland, can’t argue it’s only subject to that country’s law, he said.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Does Facebook lead young women to dangerous diets? “The study included 128 college-aged women who completed an online survey about their eating habits and their emotional connection to Facebook — such as how much time they spent on the social networking site and number of Facebook friends — and whether they compared their bodies to friends’ bodies in online photos.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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