NEW RESOURCES

Now available: the Canadian National Digital Heritage Index (CNDHI, pronounced “Candy”). “Libraries, archives and other memory institutions across Canada take the preservation of our national digital heritage very seriously with the goal of preserving both hard-copy and digital materials for present and future generations. CNDHI complements these activities by providing a single point of reference for every digitized collection in Canada that includes relevant metadata and information needed to access the various collections, all with the goal of increasing awareness of and access to these collections.”

Interested in chat bots? Check out this new store from Kik. “Kik has taken its first step into developing that potential after it opened a bot store inside its app, alongside the tools to allow any developer or brand to create their own bot. Users can access the bot store on the tab where they create new chats, while developers are able to go ahead and get started at dev.kik.com. (Kik is also working with developer shops that can help get bots off the ground.)”

TWEAKS & UPDATES

This’ll be useful: Google Calendar on the Web is getting reminders.

Twitter is making it easier to share tweets via direct message. “Every day, millions of people send Direct Messages to communicate privately with friends, family, experts, brands, and anyone else they find interesting on Twitter. In fact, we’ve seen the number of messages sent grow over 60% in 2015. And the number of Tweets shared privately has grown even faster, at 200% in just the second half of last year.”

USEFUL STUFF

Y’all know one of my favorite bloggers is Amit Agarwal. I’ve linked to plenty of his articles but I had no idea he had a YouTube channel! He just posted a tutorial on making Twitter ‘bots.

MakeUseOf: The five best alternatives to Google Authenticator.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Facebook is putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to livestreaming. “In recent weeks Facebook has been pushing influential media properties and celebrities to use its Facebook Live product, which makes it easy to stream live video from your phone. Facebook has a lot of rewards for people who do what Facebook likes, and one of them is cash.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

There are a lot of weird things you can say about 2016, but to me this takes the weird cake: People buy and sell guided missiles on Facebook. “A terrorist hoping to buy an antiaircraft weapon in recent years needed to look no further than Facebook, which has been hosting sprawling online arms bazaars, offering weapons ranging from handguns and grenades to heavy machine guns and guided missiles.” Hey Facebook — more going after this sort of thing, less shutting down the accounts of 175-year-old pubs because they have a name Beavis would smirk at. Okay?

Hey! Marketing Land did an analysis of 4,700 tweets to see if longer tweets are better. “To peek at how long tweets typically are, Marketing Land looked at 300 of the most popular brand, celebrity and media Twitter accounts, as listed by social analytics firm Socialbakers. Those accounts are already running up against Twitter’s 140-character limit, most commonly sending tweets with between 130 and 140 characters. Conceivably, they’d fill up any extra character space Twitter would have given them.”

According to research, there’s a lot of fibbing going on on Facebook. “Less than 20 per cent of people portray themselves truthfully on social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter, a new UK-based study has found. According to the survey of 2,000 Britons, just 18 per cent represent themselves accurately, while the huge majority only post content which makes their lives look more interesting to their friends and family.” I promise, my life is every bit as boring as I describe it on Facebook. Good afternoon, Internet…

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