NEW RESOURCES

A new database catalogs health and wellness activities in museums. It appears to be UK-focused and you can either look at the whole list of events (over 600) or do a keyword search. A search for walk found 16 results.

Thanks to Barbara V for the heads-up about a new app for gathering family photos. “Users can upload photos either by scanning them or by taking a photo with their smartphone. They can choose whether to share them publicly or limit the images to a specified group. The duo behind the app hope that people will share at least some of their photos publicly.” My husband and his mother are in the process of digitizing and identifying photos. It’s interesting to me how difficult it has been for them to find a good place to aggregate their photos.

In development: a virtual curling museum. “The Manitoba Curling Hall of Fame and Museum (MCHFM) announced during its annual hall of fame induction ceremony on May 1 that it has begun developing an online display of its vase [sic, I think they mean vast] collection of curling artefacts.”

USEFUL STUFF

Search Engine Journal: How to find Snapchat Usernames. This is more difficult than it should be; this article is a good resource.

Good stuff as usual from Amit Agarwal: How to Copy an Entire Folder to Another Folder in Google Drive.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Not surprising, but definitely disturbing: A senator using geotargeted Facebook ads for political lobbying. “…if you were targeting a workplace with a one-mile long campus, like Facebook itself, you could be guaranteed to show an ad only to people in its buildings. But the Department of Interior takes up just one city block. So when [Alaska senator Lisa] Murkowski targeted the Interior Department’s address, she was actually targeting not just that building, but all the people and buildings in a half-mile radius….”

From Marketing Land: Should you move your blog to Medium or Facebook? The post dot-com era for content. “We are currently experiencing a content marketing upheaval, the likes of which have never been seen before. Brands are increasingly reliant on third-party platforms for their content and distribution. These are exciting times — but also uncertain ones. Is this reliance a good thing? A bad thing? Whatever it is, it’s definitely going to change how we think about the conventions of content strategy.”

It is 2016. Brands should have realized a long time ago that trying to do a hashtag-based PR campaign on Twitter is a terrible, terrible idea. Unfortunately, Comcast didn’t get the memo. “Corporate volunteer events are fairly common, and they’re usually a good way both to generate some positive PR for the business as well as to get some local projects completed with a small army of free labor — a win/win. And of course, in 2016, how else quickly to push images, video, and short statements but on social media? And naturally organizers unify the social media presence with a hashtag… something quick and easily searchable, like #ComcastCaresDay.”

Wolf Street takes a deep look at online advertising, especially in the context of Google. “In our media database, Google has been mentioned in one-hundred-thousand articles over the last two years – that’s one out of every fifteen articles. If you tried to read everything Google, you just wouldn’t have enough waking hours to keep up with the information flow. [No kidding. – TC] No wonder people stopped trying to figure out what the company is really about. During every earnings call, analysts usually focus on CPC and user acquisition costs, and a few other nice-sounding, reassuring metrics that were created by the company itself.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Reuters has an article about the discovery of a large cache of e-mail credentials. “Hundreds of millions of hacked user names and passwords for email accounts and other websites are being traded in Russia’s criminal underworld, a security expert told Reuters. The discovery of 272.3 million stolen accounts included a majority of users of Mail.ru (MAILRq.L), Russia’s most popular email service, and smaller fractions of Google (GOOGL.O), Yahoo (YHOO.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) email users, said Alex Holden, founder and chief information security officer of Hold Security.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

From the Center for Protection of Intellectual Property: Google Image Search and the Misappropriation of Copyrighted Images. “According to a study by Define Media Group, in the first year after the changes to Google Image search, image search referrals to original source websites were reduced by up to 80%. The report also provides before and after screenshots of a Google Image search and points out that before 2013, when a thumbnail was clicked, the source site appeared in the background. Not only does the source site not appear in the new version, but an extra click is required to get to the site, adding to the overall disconnect with the original content. Despite Google’s claims to the contrary, the authors of the study conclude that the new image search service is designed to keep users on the Google website.”

This is not something I needed a poll to confirm, but it’s confirmed anyway: New Poll Reveals Impact of Increasingly Hostile Social Media Environment on Open Political Expression (PRESS RELEASE). “A focus of the poll was how political expression can impact relationships and job security, with 15 percent of respondents saying they have unfriended someone on a social network because of an opinion they expressed about the 2016 election. One in five of those who call themselves very engaged did so, with Hispanics/Latinos and those under 35 the most likely to unfriend someone they disagree with politically.” Good morning, Internet…

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