TWEAKS & UPDATES

One little tweak has never made me so happy: You can how resize the formula bar in Google Sheets. “Only have view or comment access to a spreadsheet? Previously, it was difficult to read the entire content of a cell containing a large amount of text. With this launch, you can simply click the bottom of the function bar and drag it up or down to make it big enough to see everything within it.”

The code name of Ubuntu 16.10 is Yakkety Yak. Of COURSE it is.

USEFUL STUFF

Do you think that mass shooters get too much attention in the media? There’s an extension for that. “In the wake of mass shootings, the family and friends of many victims have advocated for the media to withhold names and photos of shooting suspects to keep the focus on those injured and killed, and to avoid giving shooters their 15 minutes of fame. Now, a new Chrome extension called Zero Minutes of Fame aims to do just that.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

A heartbreaking story from ArtsHub: Major cultural institutions can’t afford to do their job. “Workers in major national institutions including the National Gallery of Australia, National Museum and National Library report declining staff and cuts to services have now reached a point where they are unable to fulfill their statutory role of ‘developing, maintaining and providing access to Australia’s cultural heritage’.”

Great stuff from Code4Lib: How to Party Like it’s 1999: Emulation for Everyone. “Emulated access of complex media has long been discussed, but there are very few instances in which complex, interactive, born-digital emulations are available to researchers. New York Public Library has made 1980-90’s era video games from 5.25″ floppy disks in the Timothy Leary Papers accessible via a DosBox emulator. These games appear in various stages of development and display the work of at least four of Leary’s collaborators on the games. 56 disk images from the Leary Papers are currently emulated in the reading room.”

Wow, it’s apparently official now that page reach for Facebook pages is zero. ” Travel Lead at Facebook, Kelly Frailey Covato presented on the future of Tourism Marketing on Facebook and Instagram to a small group of influential Destination Marketers from across the US….Then she dropped the bomb. One that I am sure will happen at other small conferences and meetings with CMO’s and agencies over the coming months. ‘There is zero organic reach, we are now a media platform.’ She followed up with ‘Don’t bother with any posts to your pages if they are not driving a call to action, and are part of a paid advertising campaign.'” I don’t think that’s entirely correct – photos and statuses seem to do fine in my experience. They don’t reach everybody, but they have some reach. But external links? ResearchBuzz News has 3,604 likes on Facebook at this writing. A link I posted about 22 hours ago reached 36 people. Yay. That’s why last year I asked people not to like that page. It’s also why abandoning your Web site and posting just to a Facebook page is a really horrible idea.

Starboard is now on the Google Board. “Yahoo, the embattled Internet giant, has reached a deal with the activist hedge fund Starboard Value to give it four seats on the Yahoo board, including one for Starboard’s chief executive, Jeffrey C. Smith, the company announced early Wednesday.”

Contrary to other recent tech companies, Facebook had great Q1 results. “Facebook continued its winning streak as other tech companies floundered, reaching 1.65 billion monthly users and surpassing estimates in its Q1 2016 earnings report with $5.38 billion in revenue and $0.77 earnings per share. Facebook’s share price climbed over 8% in the moments after earnings were announced, reaching over $117 in after-hours trading.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Seems like people have gotten the message about running Windows updates, but not necessarily making sure other programs are patches. “More Microsoft Windows users are installing patches, but the Oracle Java and Apple QuickTime problems are even worse than they were last year, according to Secunia reports on this year’s first quarter. People may think their PCs are secure because they are running Windows Update, but most are still at risk because of vulnerabilities in third-party applications.”

Google has told India that it has not earned any revenue from content uploaded to YouTube by its government. “Google Inc told the Delhi high court on Wednesday it has not earned any revenue out of an agreement with the government or any other monetary benefit from content uploaded on YouTube under a deal. The company told a bench of justices, Badar Durrez Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva, that petitioner KN Govindacharya has ‘failed to establish that content provided by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting under the agreement has been monetised by Google Inc’.” I really want to know how they came to that conclusion…

RESEARCH AND OPINION

The Snowden revelations have apparently put a chill effect on some Web browsing. “Internet traffic to Wikipedia pages summarizing knowledge about terror groups and their tools plunged nearly 30 percent after revelations of widespread Web monitoring by the U.S. National Security Agency, suggesting that concerns about government snooping are hurting the ordinary pursuit of information.”

From Andy Kessler at the WSJ: Buying Yahoo Without Coming Off as One. “The bids to buy Yahoo’s operating business, rumored to be between $4 billion and $8 billion, are in—and my guess is that they are all high. Think back to 2008, when Yahoo turned down a $44.6 billion hostile bid by Microsoft, which wanted control of a very robust online business combining search, finance and sports.” Good morning, Internet…

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