NEW RESOURCES

Wondering about all the flavors in your food? You can now check the Flavor Ingredient Library. “The free resource provides information on more than 2,800 ingredients that are generally recognized as safe (GRAS) after review by a FEMA panel of expert researchers and doctors….The website will host links to publications and safety reviews on individual flavor ingredients.” I searched for pepper and got over a dozen results. Clicking on ERYTHRO AND THREO-3-MERCAPTO-2-METHYLBUTAN-1-OL | 3993 took me to an information page and a couple of reference links.

The City of Chicago has launched an online exhibit of Civil War in art. “Civilwarinart.org makes nearly 130 works of art from seven Chicago cultural organizations accessible to teachers, parents, and students around the world.” It’s a small exhibit but has a wide variety of images. Warning: there’s at least one battlefield/corpse photograph.

The United Arab Emirates is going to get a national digital library. “Sheikh Hamdan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, has issued instructions to establish a national digital library for graduate theses and scientific research, in line with the strategic vision of the UAE to build a knowledge-based society and a high-quality education system that supports innovation.”

Want your own news-writing bot? Here ya go. “Today Automated Insights has launched a beta version of its new free service based on Wordsmith, the technology it uses to generate stories for companies like the AP. Typically, Automated Insights, much like its competitor Narrative Science, works with large customers to create the templates that the Wordsmith software fills in. This new service allows anyone to create their own templates and dump data into them on their own.”

TWEAKS & UPDATES

The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) has updated its online foodborne outbreak database. “Originally launched in 2009, the redesigned Foodborne Outbreak Online Database Tool (FOOD Tool) contains two decades of outbreak data reported to the CDC and can be broken down by year, state, food or ingredient and pathogen or other cause–confirmed or suspected.”

Facebook will now warn you if it believes a government is attempting to hack your account. “The security of people’s accounts is paramount at Facebook, which is why we constantly monitor for potentially malicious activity and offer many options to proactively secure your account. Starting today, we will notify you if we believe your account has been targeted or compromised by an attacker suspected of working on behalf of a nation-state.”

Hey! Google is offering a beta version of its Google search app. Feels like 2002. Only with smartphones.

More Google: it has dropped ‘Ok Google’ support for the desktop. “Those who use Chromebooks — which are based on Chrome — still have this feature for their laptops. It also does not impact Chrome for mobile. VentureBeat says it was removed due to lack of use.”

USEFUL STUFF

Giphy has launched a new online GIF maker. “While there are a number of online GIF creation tools out there that let you assemble nice looking GIFs for your email, chat room or social media pages — Imgur’s new video to GIF converter and Gifs.com come to mind as immediate examples — GIF Maker fits into Giphy’s broader vision of being a complete GIF resource accompanying its website, Chrome browser extension, camera, Facebook Messenger integration and other initiatives.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Google is requiring full encryption on Android 6.0 devices. “New phones shipping with Android 6.0 Marshmallow software and meeting a certain performance standard must be encrypted by default.”

Forbes: the six things everybody should do to secure their Facebook account. Good morning, Internet…

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