Google is offering help resources for people impacted by the earthquakes in Japan and Ecuador.

NEW RESOURCES

Smithsonian Magazine has an article on a new archive of Mexican-American journalism. “The new archive brings the headlines of the past into the present, spanning 149 years of significant Mexican and Mexican-American publications. The periodicals, which were published between the mid-19th century and the 2000s in Sonora, Mexico, Tucson, El Paso, Los Angeles and San Francisco serve as written testaments to the interests, cultural uniqueness and struggles of the Mexican and Mexican-American community.”

The state of Arizona is getting a new site to track donations to Arizona politicians. “[Arizona Secretary of State Michele] Reagan said there is dark money in campaigns, but the majority of campaign donations are not dark. She said state law requires her office to collect data about campaign donations made to candidates, but her office has struggled in the past to get the word out about those donations.”

The National Archives of Ireland have launched a new database of monetary compensation claims made after the 1916 Easter Rising. “The site contains more than 6,500 compensation claims, which were submitted to the Property Losses (Ireland) Committee in relation to the damage caused to property and personal belongings during the intense fighting of Easter Week 1916.”

The Stratford Festival wants to make it easier for you to learn Shakespeare. They’re starting with King Lear. “A matinee performance of King Lear, which appeared on the Stratford stage during the 2014 season, was filmed and in 2015, shown in theatres. That same film now appears on the Performance Plus website alongside the script from the play.” Follow the bouncing skull of Yorick, I suppose… the addition of more plays is planned.

TWEAKS & UPDATES

Ubuntu 16.04 (LTS) is formally released today (PRESS RELEASE). “Ubuntu 16.04 LTS introduces a new application format, the ‘snap,’ which can be installed alongside traditional deb packages. These two packaging formats live quite comfortably next to one another and enable Ubuntu to maintain its existing processes for development and updates.”

Merriam-Webster has added a slew of new words. Some of these are to be expected — dox, microlending, bitcoin — but is this really the first time cold case and cold turkey have been added to MW?

Wow, Opera is adding a VPN to its browser? “You don’t even need to sign up for an account. Once you’ve turned it on in the Settings menu, you can switch between virtual locations. The developer release that’s available today offers three options: US, Canada and Germany. Opera says it will add more countries in the browser’s stable version.”

Facebook Messenger has added group calling. “Today, Facebook announced a group-calling feature for its Messenger app, letting you dial up to 50 friends concurrently over the internet. The feature is coming to iOS and Android over the next 24 hours, according to Messenger chief David Marcus, and it should show up as a phone icon in group chats.” This is not video calling.

Holy cow, the Google News blog has an update! It’s an announcement of more AMP support by Google News. “So – what’s new? At the top of the page, there is a new AMP carousel filled with important headlines and stories of the day. Users can browse up to 14 headlines there quickly, and click any article to jump into the viewer, which is optimized for fast-loading AMP articles. In the viewer, people can also swipe to continue reading other stories from the carousel. Within the regular News stream, AMPlified articles are labelled with the AMP lightning bolt icon. That way, users can know these will be fast even before they click.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Want a shift in your career? How about tweeting for the Queen of England? “It seems the queen of England simply doesn’t have the time to get to grips with this newfangled thing called social media. Like most of the irritating chores around Buckingham Palace, the British monarchy is now on the hunt for someone to manage its Twitter accounts.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

More lawsuits against the US government: the EFF has sued the Justice Department. “The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit today against the Justice Department to shed light on whether the government has ever used secret court orders to force technology companies to decrypt their customers’ private communications, a practice that could undermine the safety and security of devices used by millions of people.” Good morning, Internet…

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