ARR MATEYS! HAPPY TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY.

NEW RESOURCES

The Library of Congress has put online a selection of recordings from its Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape collection. “Writers from the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, the Caribbean and U.S. Hispanics/Latinos have been recorded. Available as streamed audio, 50 recordings are currently available at http://www.loc.gov/collections/archive-of-hispanic-literature-on-tape/about-this-collection/. Additional material from the collection will be added on a monthly basis.” The collection includes Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Twitter and Bloomberg are teaming up (more). “Bloomberg (@Bloomberg) was the first financial software platform to integrate Tweets for its customers, beginning in April 2013. Today, they are significantly increasing the amount of Twitter data available on their platform @TheTerminal, improving the alerts provided through the Bloomberg Social Velocity tool. Twitter data plays a crucial role in helping watch for unexpected jumps in conversation volume, which can be a critical indicator for traders.”

Bing Maps Preview has gotten a lot of tweaks and updates.

Google is now putting consitutions in search results. “If you type in ‘constitution’ on Google search, a box will show up with the Preamble of the US constitution, along with a drop-down menu to select any other parts of it you may want to read.” A dozen more constitutions are available, with more coming soon.

USEFUL STUFF

From How-To Geek: How to break up with Facebook permanently (or just have a trial separation). There are also some tips here for making Facebook more useful/pleasant, though if you’re more interested in doing that Robert Scoble has a terrific list.

From The Library of Congress: How to Locate an Unpublished Congressional Hearing: A Beginner’s Guide. “Our previous post discussed how to locate a Published Congressional Hearing. In this guide, we will show you how to locate unpublished congressional hearings, which can often pose more of a challenge to researchers new to the area. Congressional hearings have not always been consistently published. In fact, the transcription of congressional committee hearings was not required until the passage of the Legislative Reorganization Act in 1946.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Google Glass has a new name. “Project Aura”? If development for medical and industrial applications was continuing, why not just Google Glass?

MIT Technology Review takes a look at Facebook’s new virtual assistant, M.

FamilySearch is crowdfunding to save records from the War of 1812. “Due to high usage at the National Archives, these records are rapidly deteriorating. Efforts to preserve them through digitization must move forward as quickly as possible to prevent the loss of valuable pension records. Once digitized, these records will be made available to the public for free on the fold3 website. To date, over 50% of the pensions have been digitized. The pensions are being digitized in alphabetical order. Surnames from A through L are complete and the M’s are rapidly going online nearly every day. Still, there is a lot of work left to make sure this priceless collection of military pension records is preserved.”

Looks like a new Chromecast is in the wings. “According to [9to5Google], the updated device may come in a new form factor (which sort of looks like a balloon…and raises concerns about the veracity of this report, but still…) and will include support for the 802.11ac band. The original Chromecast only supported 802.11b/g/n.”

Looks like Facebook might launch Facebook at Work later this year. “Already, over 100 companies subscribe to the Facebook at Work beta, which continues to increase in its install base. And, of course, Facebook plans to make money from the new endeavor, but interestingly isn’t opting for ad-based monetization this time around. Instead, like with Slack, a free version will be made available with additional features being issued at a fee, though disinctions between free and paid features are still being defined.” I have a team of about 22 people in 3 different locations who I’d like to communicate, but they’re not necessarily tech-savvy. They all know Facebook, however. I’ll be trying this when it’s available.

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

The latest version of Android has a very silly security flaw. “A security flaw in Android that lets people bypass the lock screen on a mobile device has been discovered by researchers at the University of Texas. They found that trying to unlock the phone or tablet with an abnormally long password caused the lock screen to crash in certain conditions.” Good morning, Internet…

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