NEW RESOURCES

Now available: a database of Black-owned media companies in South Africa. “South African marketers can now access a master list of black-owned, and black women-owned, media companies and suppliers to service the marketing and communications sector. The Independent Agency Search and Selection Company (IAS) now has over 50 agencies that have signed up to be part of its ‘A list’.”

TWEAKS & UPDATES

Yikes! The BBC is getting rid of its recipe Web site. But the UK Web Archive team is on the case. “We have today instigated a further crawl of the BBC website with the specific aim of ensuring that we save the recipes from the food pages. We can also report that the Internet Archive, Library of Alexandria and the National Library of Iceland have also captured these pages so their future is assured.”

Bleh: Instagram has begun rolling out its new algorithmic feed. “In the meantime if you’d rather not miss out on posts from accounts that you do follow, then head on over to their profiles and enable notifications for them, meaning that if and when they post a new photo you will be notified, instead of having it buried under Instagram’s new feed.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf has a story about Cub Linux, which was designed to replicate the Chrome OS experience. Interesting. I’ve seen a Linux distribution designed to imitate Windows XP (Zorin) but not Chrome OS.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Wired has an update on social media site Ello. “…since the site has fallen out of the spotlight, it’s grown to serve a different purpose: a place for digital artists and designers to share their work and give feedback to peers, without the commercialized aspects that discourage them from other social networks.”

The Church of England is getting questioned for its ownership of Google/Alphabet stock. “Alphabet Inc is listed as the most valuable equity holding of the church’s £7 billion (8.9 billion euros, $10 billion) investment fund in 2015, although its exact value was not revealed. Google is among a number of multinational companies which have been criticised for failing to pay enough tax, a practice that has been condemned in general by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.”

Over at Quartz, an overview of Google’s I/O developer conference.

Google is hiring people to help test its self-driving cars. “Google is offering these new recruits $20 per hour to drive its vehicles for six to eight hours a day. They will have to sign a 12-24 month contract and provide written and oral feedback to the company’s engineers. Google will require the drivers to have a bachelor’s degree, a typing speed of over 40 words per minute and both a clean driving and criminal record. All of the work that they do with the company will also have to remain confidential and there will be a number of in- and out-of-car training courses to pass as well.” Well, that’s me out – no degree –

Self-driving cars? What about self-driving trucks? “Otto, led by 15 former Google engineers, including major figures from the search company’s self-driving car and maps projects, is aiming at the long-haul freeway driving that is the bread and butter of the commercial trucking industry.

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Emsisoft has launched a page for all their ransomware decrypter products. Looks like there are over a dozen at the moment, and they’re all available free of charge.

Iran is apparently having a social media crackdown. “Eight members of a modelling network were arrested and accused of publishing photos of women without the obligatory hijab headscarf on the picture-sharing application Instagram, Tasnim news agency said on Sunday.”

eWeek’s got an update on the Oracle/Google copyright trial. Good morning, Internet…

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