NEW RESOURCES

Pennine Music has launched a new search engine for finding brass band music. “This new ‘Google’ of Brass Band Music visits every publisher across the globe and catalogues their titles of brass band music with the aim of helping bands quickly and easily find out if a piece of music has been published and is available to buy.” Pennine did not have any brass arrangements for Eurythmics in its own inventory, for example, but their search engine linked to an another music publisher which had a brass arrangement of Sweet Dreams Are Made of This. And now I’m giggling myself silly imagining that song arranged for tuba and French horn.

TWEAKS & UPDATES

Yahoo is shutting down Yahoo BOSS. “BOSS allowed both non-developers and developers to build a simple search service through their search tools. There were APIs and developer tools, as well as simple-to-use web interfaces to construct your own search service.” Will the last person to leave Yahoo please trigger the IFTTT recipe to turn off the lights.

USEFUL STUFF

From MakeUseOf: 4 Easy Ways to Export Wikipedia for Offline Use. I admit this one is for me; I occasionally need to grab something from Wikipedia but can’t remember my options.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Google wants its cars to be driverless. And… wireless? “What’s the point of having a self-driving car if you still have to get out to plug it in? That’s a good question, says Alphabet, Google’s parent company. With that in mind, it is testing wireless charging systems for its electric self-driving cars. Documents filed at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) suggest that Google is working toward cutting its robocars’ charger cables and beaming power to them instead.”

Kohl’s will use Periscope to stream the Oscars. “Employing the Periscope app, Kohl’s will livestream during the Academy Awards’ red-carpet ceremony and the show’s commercial breaks. Thanks to the app’s new Twitter integration, people will be able to watch Kohl’s livestream on the microblogging platform and have the option of viewing it on Perisope. They’ll also be able to peek in on Bayer’s Oscars house party during the Feb. 28 Hollywood gala.”

Apparently this year’s Super Bowl wasn’t all that on social media. “On Facebook, the level of activity worldwide for Super Bowl 50 dropped 25 percent compared with last year, according to the social giant. Twitter posts among U.S. viewers was down 49 percent, according to Nielsen figures, after record-breaking Super Bowl action on social networks last year.”

Wow, Kickstarter has funded 100,000 projects! “Lucky number 100,000 was from Argentinian photographer Adriana Groisman, who raised over $50,000 to document the stories of veterans of the Falklands/Malvinas conflict of 1982.”

The Air Force is warning airmen to watch what they say on social media when it comes to politics. “Things like campaigning for a candidate, soliciting donations to a particular campaign and even wearing a military uniform to a partisan political event have long been outlawed by the military, [Holly] Roberts-Davis says in the video. But 21st century ways of communicating have extended those same concepts to the online world. Roberts-Davis says active-duty military members are generally allowed to express political views on social media platforms, but there are several important caveats.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

The Center for Auto Safety is suing the Department of Transportation (DOT) for failing to create a database of automobile safety defects. “While the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration lists recalls, it requires consumers to use their vehicle identification number to find details about their car, and it does not provide information on service bulletins — issues that do not require a recall.”

The Register has a roundup of Windows’ latest patches. And I really hope you’re not using the Windows browser. “Microsoft has patched 41 CVE-listed security vulnerabilities in its software this month. The second … monthly update of the year brings with it fixes for security flaws in both Internet Explorer and Edge that could allow remote-code-execution attacks simply by visiting a webpage.”

Speaking of patching, guess who just issued an emergency, out-of-cycle patch? Why, it’s Oracle! And it’s a Java patch! Of course. “An Oracler called Eric Maurice is the giver of the bad news, depending on how you approach security updates, saying that application of the patch will prevent vulnerabilities with Java 6, 7 and 8 on the Windows platform.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

On Academia.edu from Brandon C. Bouchillon and Melissa R. Gotlieb: Making Them Count: Facebook Sociability for Optimizing the Accumulation of Social Capital. “In light of waning interpersonal contact in America, scholars have turned their attention to social network sites and the opportunities these provide for building and maintaining social relationships.The present study adds to this research, using national survey data from U.S. adults to examine how motivated use of Facebook for expanding and diversifying personal networks might revitalize real-world efforts of sociability for users, and returns to social capital that come by way of them. Results support our overall model relating weak-tie interactions to generalized trust.” I do not have the sociology chops to appreciate the fine details of the experiments, but the before and after discussion is well worth reading, and frankly it’s refreshing to see some optimism about social networks and social capital. Good morning, Internet…

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