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Marketing, Canada, FDA, More: Saturday Buzz, September 5th, 2015

NEW RESOURCES

Wow! There is a search engine for e-mail marketing campaigns. “[Michael] Johnston calls Notablist a search engine with a twist, as it indexes email newsletter campaigns versus Web links. ‘The results you’ll see are from a pool of over four million campaigns from nearly 400,000 publishers, both of which grow daily,’ says Johnston, ‘They’ll include images of the campaigns, their subjects, the URL and Alexa rank of their publisher, when they were sent.'”

Now available: a database of Inuktut language learning materials. Inuktut is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. “ITK officially launched the website Katiqsugat: Inuit Early Learning Resources Sept. 2, a central database that is home to a number of games, songs, craft ideas, research, child care policy and other resources for parents.”

OpenFDA is getting an API. “OpenFDA’s Application Programming Interface (API) expands on the previous openFDA resources concerning medical device-related adverse events and recalls by incorporating information from the medical device product life cycle. This includes current data on device classification (6,000 records), 24,000 registrations of device companies and establishments, and the companies’ listings of more than 100,000 devices.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Census Bureau has updated its World Population Clock (PRESS RELEASE).
“The U.S. Census Bureau recently updated its popular World Population Clock Web tool with features and information for 228 countries. In addition to featuring the 10 most populous countries, already available in the clock, it now includes country profiles with trade and population statistics, such as total population, population per square kilometer, and goods exported from and imported to the United States. Additional features include graphics on population projections and top exported goods by U.S. state or territory.”

Google Now has gotten some updates. “Yesterday, Google announced a new logo. While that wasn’t a big deal, the company also started rolling out a new version of Google Now last night. This one is a lot different. For the better.”

Google is planning to provide a lot more health content in its search results. “Google announced they are more than doubling their health conditions database, so that when you search for health or medical topics in Google, you are more likely to find factual medical data on that condition. Google launched medical content in search back in February with about 400 conditions. Over the next few weeks, you should see more than 900 conditions listed.”

Google’s search has gotten some fun new tweaks (and I apologize that today’s Buzz seems to be particularly Googly.) “The search engine recently added a few new tools, including ‘I’m feeling curious’ for the weirdest trivia from its database, ‘I’m feeling puzzled,’ when you want a little intellectual stimulation, and ‘I’m feeling trendy’ to see trending topics.”

USEFUL STUFF

From Hongkiat: 11 Ways to Speed Up Google Chrome. Be careful, some of these are definitely in experimental territory. And you know what happens with experiments: sometimes you’re successful and sometimes you blow up the lab.

Romping around in text files? Nelson’s Log has a quick roundup of CSV tools.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Looks like Google is headed back to mainland China. “Looking for a toehold in the world’s largest smartphone market, Google hopes to return to mainland China as early as this fall in what would mark a major detente in the Internet giant’s fraught dealings with the Chinese government…. As part of the deal Google is looking to strike, Google would follow the country’s laws and block apps that the government objects to, one person told The Information.” I wonder how this will impact the Google investigations currently going on in India and the EU.

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Oh dear. Looks like Uber trip data was leaked into Google search results. “Dozens of trips taken using private car service Uber have been cached by Google, making them available to anyone with a simple search term. By site-searching “trip.uber.com” in Google, a list of past trips appear in the search results.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Indiana University Bloomington is using Instagram to make predictions about the next top model. Fashion model. Not train model or anything like that. “Researchers at Indiana University have predicted the popularity of new faces to the world of modeling with over 80 percent accuracy using advanced computational methods and data from Instagram. To conduct their analysis, IU scientists gathered statistics on 400 fashion models from the Fashion Model Directory, a major database of professional female fashion models, tracking hair and eye color; height; hip, waist, dress and shoes size; modeling agency; and runways walked.” Good morning, Internet…

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