NEW RESOURCES

Are you going trick or treating this year? Google wants to help you find your costume with Frightgeist. “The page taps Google’s Trends data to show you the relative popularity of different outfits depending on your location – provided you live in the US – based on the 500 most popular searches.” This was kind of hit and miss. Pizza Rat, for example, was not on there. However, if you want to dress as Finn the Human you’ll probably be okay.

Teachers, you might love this: The Iliad, read in its entirety, by 66 actors. “Scottish film and stage star Brian Cox is one of the readers, along with Simon Russell Beale, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Mariah Gale, and others, all British theater-trained actors who deliver stirring, often thrilling, readings of the Robert Fagles translation, the report concludes.” It’s 68 separate videos. It’ll be available until September 21, 2016.

TWEAKS & UPDATES

Google has launched a people finder for those impacted by the Hindu Kush earthquake. This article also mentions a similar offering from Facebook.

USEFUL STUFF

From Roberto Blake on Medium: 100 Tips for Growing a YouTube channel. “There are probably 1000 things I’ve learned in growing a YouTube channel from 0 to 50,000+ subscribers over the past 2 years.” In most “top 100” lists, there’s a little junk as people have to stretch. This one is surprisingly solid.

From Ubergizmo: the top 5 legal MP3 download sites. I had heard of two of these. I used to be on MP3.com constantly back in the day.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

From Nieman Lab, some early feedback on Facebook’s Instant Articles. “Now that millions of people are seeing Instant Articles in their feeds, it seemed like a good time to talk with Michael Reckhow, the product manager for Instant Articles, about early usage patterns, publisher feedback, and international expansion — as well as concerns that publishers who use Instant Articles are giving Facebook too much power.”

Google’s stock buyback comes with a mathy easter egg. “The exact number Google chose for its buyback is precise: $5,099,019,513.59. That number happens to be the square root of 26 times a billion— as several math-savvy Twitter users first noticed.”

Yahoo has a new Chief Information Security Officer – Bob Lord (PRESS RELEASE). “Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) announced today that Bob Lord will join as the Company’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Lord brings more than twenty years of significant experience in the information security space, including most recently as the CISO-in-Residence at Rapid 7. Prior to that, Lord led Twitter’s information security program and held positions in product and information security at companies like Red Hat, AOL, and Netscape.”

Slate: Facebook’s ‘Trending’ Is the Worst Place on the Internet. I am always embarrassed by what I see under trending, celebrities and stuff, people I don’t know getting divorces – it all feels like a conversation I shouldn’t be overhearing.

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Are you using Joomla? Better patch. “Millions of websites used in e-commerce and other sensitive industries are vulnerable to remote take-over hacks made possible by a critical vulnerability that has affected the Joomla content management system for almost two years. The SQL-injection vulnerability was patched by Joomla on Thursday with the release of version 3.4.5. The vulnerability, which allows attackers to execute malicious code on servers running Joomla, was first introduced in version 3.2 released in early November 2013. Joomla is used by an estimated 2.8 million websites.”

The EU is going after Googlebet. “European Union regulators will actively pursue Google parent Alphabet Inc. on multiple fronts ranging from its contracts with advertisers to its Android mobile-operating system, the bloc’s antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said, in the clearest sign yet that the U.S. search giant is likely to face fresh competition charges in Brussels.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Interesting article from The Scientist: an algorithm for discovering and studying negative citations. “During the course of their careers, many scientists criticize the work of others—pointing out flaws, inconsistencies, or contradictions—in the literature. This is part of scientific progress. A proof-of-concept study now describes a research tool for recognizing these so-called negative citations, making it possible to contextualize and study them on a larger scale than possible before.” Good morning, Internet…

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