NEW RESOURCES

The magazine Inside Indonesia now has a digital archive of its editions from 1983 to 2007. “In collaboration with the National Library of Australia, Inside Indonesia is pleased to announce that an archive of editions of the magazine currently only available in hardcopy form – editions 1 (1983) to 89 (2007) – are now available in digital form.” This archive is apparently free; I browsed a couple of issues with no trouble.

Now available: the world’s largest catalog of human genomic variation. “An international team of scientists from the 1000 Genomes Project Consortium has created the world’s largest catalog of genomic differences among humans, providing researchers with powerful clues to help them establish why some people are susceptible to various diseases. While most differences in peoples’ genomes — called variants — are harmless, some are beneficial, while others contribute to diseases and conditions, ranging from cognitive disabilities to susceptibilities to cancer, obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other disorders. Understanding how genomic variants contribute to disease may help clinicians develop improved diagnostics and treatments, in addition to new methods of prevention.”

The Providence Public Library has a new digitized image collection. “Created by the Providence Public Library from eight collections, it’s got nearly 5,000 items of easily searchable pieces of Rhode Island history – post cards, manuscripts, photographs – and the library is adding to it every day. It’s free, open to all, and the library encourages you to download and comment on the images.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Skype’s nifty translator feature is being rolled out to Windows users. “With live translation available for six voice languages (English, French, German, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish) and 50 messaging languages, it’s a big step in breaking down barriers in communication.”

Google has announced the Google Music Family Plan. “At its big Nexus event Tuesday, Google introduced some updates to Google Music, including a new family plan. For $14.99 a month, up to six people in a household can have unlimited access to streaming music and accessing their own Google Music libraries.”

More Google: Google Photos has gotten several updates. I still miss Picasa but this looks worth exploring.

The Medical Heritage Library now has 100,000 digitized books. Zow! ” The Medical Heritage Library (MHL) brings together a huge curated collection of digitised works related to health and medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries, drawn from some of the most important medical history libraries in North America and the United Kingdom.” The 100,000th book is an 1893 missive on massage, which includes methods for eye massage that have completely squicked me out. I didn’t want dinner anyway.

The Raspberry Pi has a new operating system: Jessie. I guess if you want to download it you’ll wish that you had Jessie’s URL. (Sorry) “Many of the changes between Wheezy and Jessie are invisible to the end-user. There are modifications to the underlying system to improve performance and flexibility, particularly as regards the control of system processes, and as with any update, there are numerous bug fixes and tweaks. And at the same time as the upgrade to Jessie, we’ve added a bunch of changes and improvements to the desktop user interface.”

Twitter is spreading its Buy Button around. “Today we’re excited to announce a number of partnerships that will make it easier for retailers of any size to sell products, digital goods, or services directly within a Tweet via Buy Now. Through these new partnerships we are integrating Buy Now with platforms that power e-commerce sites for merchants of all sizes, including Bigcommerce, Demandware, and Shopify, and enabling new retailers and brands such as Best Buy, Adidas, and PacSun. ”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Google Play has reached 1 billion users. “Google Play officially has 1 billion active monthly users. Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the platform’s milestone at Google’s Nexus event in San Francisco on Tuesday. Google Play is the company’s version of Apple’s App Store with content for Android devices.”

Google has received a patent for displaying holograms in a head-mounted display. Like Google Glass. “Today Google was granted a patent for using holograms in a head mounted display like Google Glass. It would effectively let Google create augmented reality experiences that superimpose computer-generated imagery (CGI) atop the real world. Filed in March 2014, the patent shows Google’s research into how it could merge its head mounted display technology with AR.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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