TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google is making some improvements to its hurricane alerts. “As the U.S. enters hurricane season again, Katrina remains a stark reminder of the devastation a storm like that can cause. We want to be as prepared and as helpful as possible for the next one—no matter where it hits, or how big it is. So we’re always working to improve our Crisis Response efforts to help people stay safe and informed during these events.” Now when you do searches you may see safety tips, forecasted hurricane tracks, etc.

Google’s Inbox has gotten an update. ” Google has recently announced that they have made some changes to the service and it will now be able to offer up better text formatting options. This includes the ability to create numbered or bulleted lists, write text that is bold, underlined, or in italics, and they will also be able to create links.” I must say this does not make me want to drop everything and try Inbox.

USEFUL STUFF

Phil Bradley, who is lovely, has make a Google Custom Search for UK newspapers. There’s one for national newspapers and one for 384 local newspapers.

Useful from Ubergizmo: strategies for quickly finding a song. “There are online web based service and applications as well that will help you identify a song with the simplest clue. Most of these apps/services are free to use, but some may offer a premium paid version with extra features. In this tutorial, we are going to list down apps/services that will let you identify a song using different factors.”

Lifehacker looks at Balloon, which lets people add files to your Dropbox without having a Dropbox account. “Essentially, when you create a link in Balloon, it gives people access to a folder where they can drop in files, but can’t browse the rest of the contents. It’s handy when you’re collecting together a group of files from various people.”

Amit Agarwal, who is always on the case, has a writeup on Email Autoresponder, a Chrome add-on I’m pretty sure he put together. GMail has canned responses but they do have limitations. This new add-on is an attempt to address those limitations and make a more powerful tool. I’ll have to take a look – I’m constantly frustrated by GMail’s limitations after years and years of using Eudora.

From Ditch That Textbook: 12 ways to use Google Classroom’s newest features.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The UK Medical Heritage Libraries Project has reached 8 million pages digitized. Way to go y’all!
“Our goal is to reach 15 million pages in early 2016. Each of the 10 partner institutions has contributed books and pamphlets from a wide range of medical and health-related areas, but each has a slightly different emphasis – University College London contributed a large number of ophthalmology books and pamphlets, while the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine naturally focuses on public health and tropical diseases. Military medicine is a top subject from both the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and the Royal College of Physicians of London, while cholera is well represented from Glasgow University Library and others.”

Twitter is turning into a Hollywood negotiation tool. “Twitter has long been part of the Hollywood swirl. Celebrities routinely use the messaging service as a marketing device. Then there are the VIPs who sometimes make news by tweeting out a random thought that proves offensive — Ashton Kutcher, we’re looking at you. But now Hollywood talent is finding an innovative new use for Twitter: as a tool in high-stakes negotiations. In particular, it can serve as a way for an aggrieved actor or director to take his or her case directly to the fans for the purpose of teasing out some more leverage in talks with a powerful studio.”

Google is shutting down autoplay video in Chrome (yay!) “In a post on Google+, Chromium evangelist François Beaufort laid out an upcoming change that should pop up in Chrome pretty soon: autoplay media will no longer autoplay unless you’re looking at the tab. If you open a new tab and there’s a video set to autoplay, it’ll load — it just won’t actually start playing until you focus on that tab.”

Google’s self-driving cars can be trolled by bikes. “The self-driving cars are notoriously careful, and tend to brake when anyone else is moving forward into the vehicle’s path. In a track stand, a rider on a fixed-gear bike may shift ever so slightly forward and back in an effort to maintain balance.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

The British Library has declined to accept a Taliban-related digital collection because of terrorism laws. “Academics have criticised the British government for creating a ‘climate of fear’ after the national library declined to store the world’s biggest collection of Taliban-related documents over concerns it could be prosecuted under terrorism laws.” Good morning, Internet…

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