TWEAKS & UPDATES

Google Image Search has added colored filter buttons. “If you go to Google Image Search and search for any query, you should see a carousel of colored buttons across the top of the search results page.”

Looks like video ads are headed to Pinterest. “Video ads have been a consideration for the company for almost a year, with the launch of Cinematic Pins in May of 2015. Digiday reports that a small group of users are being given the ability to test video ads on the image-sharing platform. The company is also testing the video ad product internally.”

USEFUL STUFF

For all your English majors: a new Web app highlights syntax like it’s code to make it easier to identify all the parts of speech. “You can copy a tranche of text into the box, hit tab, and the secrets of our peculiar language are illuminated before your very eyes.”

Oh, this is good: Why search is not a solved (by google) problem, and why Universities Should Care: Ophir Frieder’s Talk Overview, abstract, and slides. “Ophir Frieder, who holds the Robert L. McDevitt, K.S.G., K.C.H.S. and Catherine H. McDevitt L.C.H.S. Chair in Computer Science and Information Processing at Georgetown University and is Professor of Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, and Biomathematics at the Georgetown University Medical Center, gave this talk on Searching in Harsh Environments as part of the Program on Information Science Brown Bag Series.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

From eSchool News: Google’s virtual reality viewer comes to the classroom. “[Melinda] Lamm controlled the screens of the smartphones with a tablet enabling her to take the students on a virtual field trip. As the students moved their heads from side to side and up and down, more of the landscape emerged. They were able to conclude they were on Mars because the landscape was barren, red and rocky.”

Quora now has 100 million users a month. I rarely go there deliberately, but those digest e-mails Quora sends are addictive. 90% of the time I end up going to the site and devouring all the other answers. “As per the official record of the company, it is seeing 100 million monthly unique visitors to its Q&A social network, an increase of 22 percent from January when it acknowledged having 80 million.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

JD Supra Business Advisor has an article about the Wayback Machine (part of the Internet Archive being used for inter partes research. “One source of prior art commonly relied on in inter partes review proceedings is the ‘Wayback Machine.’ The Wayback Machine is an internet archive of webpages that are browsed by crawler programs and then stored and preserved as of the date that the pages are originally browsed by the crawlers. The Wayback Machine has been a source of prior art relied on by the Board in numerous IPR proceedings.”

TelsaCrypt Ransomware: now scarier than ever! “It’s just a year since the first version of TeslaCrypt appeared on the scene, and it’s gone through various updates and iterations over the ensuing months. Now it’s hit version 4 and as well as continuing to threaten victims with sharing their files online, it also boasts what is being referred to as ‘unbreakable encryption’.”

Lord & Taylor has settled with the FTC over deceptive Instagram practices. “The complaint alleges that Lord & Taylor placed a Lord & Taylor-edited paid article in Nylon, a pop culture and fashion publication. Nylon also posted a photo of the retailer’s Design Lab Paisley Asymmetrical Dress on Nylon’s Instagram site, along with a caption that Lord & Taylor had reviewed and approved. The Instagram post and article gave no indication to consumers that they were paid advertising placed by Lord & Taylor.”

A guy in Russia is suing Yandex for making his hair fall out. “Roman Maslennikov argues that the overwhelming number of stories featuring bad news on the aggregator and search engine, known as the Google of Russia, caused him to go bald, his lawyer Vladimir Zhiganov told RIA Novosti.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Ah, the question people have been asking for decades: How big is the Internet, really? “To come to an estimate, the researchers sent a batch of 50 common words to be searched by Google and Bing. (Yahoo Search and Ask.com used to be included but are not anymore because they no longer show the total results.) The researchers knew how frequently these words have appeared in print in general, allowing them to extrapolate the total number of pages out there based on how many contain the reference words. Search engines overlap in the pages they index, so the method also requires estimating and subtracting the likely overlap.

The Register takes a look at the relationship between Google and the US State Department. “Aside from the fact it is persistently one of the biggest lobbyists in DC, there has also been: the last-minute change made to net neutrality rules solely because of a letter received from Google; the unusual dropping of anti-trust investigations into the search giant; the curious “non prosecution agreement” it reached with the FBI over drug ads; and the fact that a review of logs showed that Google execs meet with White House officials on average once a week. In the latest release of emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server – ostensibly over the sacking of the US embassy in Benghazi – it’s clear that Google also has its fingers in the US government’s foreign policy department.” Good morning, Internet…

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