NEW RESOURCES

Hey! A guy is trying to photograph all the pubs in London and assemble them into a database. Apparently there are thousands of pubs in London so this is going to be a big job. “For the past seven years, Ewan [Munro] has been painstakingly researching London’s pubs, both past and present, cataloguing them and taking photos before uploading details to his online database Pubology. He also posts them on Flickr where they’re available for anyone to use for free. His mission is to photograph every pub in London – although, as he tells me, it’s difficult to know just how close he is to that goal. Nevertheless, the thousands of photos he’s taken so far represent an invaluable record of an aspect of British culture which feels at an increasing risk of being lost.”

The Middle East magazine has launched a complete digital archive – but it’s for libraries and institutions only: ” The respected pan-Arab publication, The Middle East magazine, has launched a complete digital archive of every issue of the monthly magazine. TThe Middle East magazine has worked with digital publishing experts, Exact Editions, to make a searchable database of the entire 40 year backfile, with over 450 issues, and 27,000 pages of opinion pieces, interviews, reviews and case studies now available at the tap of a button….The database, exclusively available for library and institutional subscribers, can be accessed on a wide range of platforms including the Exact Editions web portal, and iOS and Android apps.”

Wow: I just heard about Git-Lit. “Git-Lit aims to parse, version control, and post each work in the British Library’s corpus of digital texts. Parsing the texts will transform the machine-readable metadata into human-readable prefatory material; version controlling the texts will allow for collaborative editing and revision of the texts, effectively crowdsourcing the correction of OCR errors; and posting the texts to GitHub will ensure the texts’ visibility to the greater community.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Keep is now available for iOS. “Like the Android and web version of the app, Keep on iOS allows you to arrange your notes into a sticky-note-like interface. Notes are synced with your Google account so you can access them across devices.”

Facebook has begun rolling out its update to Notes. “Facebook is beginning to roll out a design update for its Notes feature, that will let users add a cover photo, captions, and improved formatting. The intention appears to be aimed at encouraging people to compose more notes within the social network and potentially further facilitate a blogging platform that’s akin to Medium — basically Facebook wants to further its goal of being a place to voice your opinion.”

Google Street View: now with dragons. “Just about every community in Japan puts on a local festival in the summer, but few are as spectacular as Aomori City’s Nebuta Matsuri. For almost a solid week, gigantic floats topped by lanterns shaped like samurai and dragons are paraded through the streets, accompanied by dancers and musicians….you can get a taste of the fun with Google’s awesome Nebuta Matsuri Street View that lets you see the amazing floats even closer-up than spectators standing on the sidewalks the towering works of art are carried by.”

Pinterest has opened its API platform to everybody. “When third-party apps are ready to launch publicly, developers need to submit them to Pinterest for review and approval. Pinterest says developers have submitted more than 5,000 ideas for apps and integrations, including recipe recommendation apps, travel planning apps, gift registry integrations and publisher integrations.”

USEFUL STUFF

Do you want to watch the “Supermoon” eclipse online? Here ya go. “East coasters in the US will have the best view, since the night sky will be perfectly dark by the time the moon goes through its various stages of reddening. On the west coast, the moon will still be rising as the eclipse maxes out. But if you have less than a perfect view of the rusty orb—or are somewhere east of Europe, where the eclipse will be visible either super-late or not at all—we’ve still got you covered. Two observatories are live streaming it.”

How-To Geek: How to learn another language for free online.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Reading a lot about the ad-blocking debate? Matt Cutts wants you to try Google Contributor. Interesting collection of comments.

Is Jack Dorsey going to be permanent CEO of Twitter? Chatter chatter chatter.

Facebook unfriending was recently ruled as workplace bullying. Though there were other things that added to the decision. “Ms Roberts listed other claims of unfair treatment by Mrs Bird, who was accused of failing to say hello in the morning and of delivering photocopies and print-outs to all staff but Ms Roberts. The commission has issued an order to stop the bullying.” Good morning, Internet…

I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!