afternoonbuzz

Job Boards, Arabic Manuscripts, Twitter, More: Wednesday Afternoon Buzz, June 8, 2016

NEW RESOURCES

Now available: a directory of job boards focused on the United States (PRESS RELEASE). “This new directory contains links to over 1,000 job boards for every country, niche and state in the United States. In addition, the directory lists online resume tools that help you create a resume online, many of which are free.”

In development: a digital archive of historical Arabic manuscripts. “St. Catherine’s Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site that’s located on rugged terrain at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt, houses the oldest continually operating library in the world, containing ancient and medieval manuscripts second only to those held by the Vatican Library. These remarkable manuscripts, which delve into subjects ranging from history and philosophy to medicine and spirituality, were never easily accessed by scholars and students… That will all be changing, thanks to a major grant from the Ahmanson Foundation to the UCLA Library. The grant will fund key aspects of the Sinai Library Digitization Project to create digital copies of some 1,100 rare and unique Syriac and Arabic manuscripts dating from the fourth to the 17th centuries.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Neat: you can now easily embed Twitter timelines in your Web site. “Available at Twitter’s Publisher site, the feature lets you add the URL of a Twitter feed (like The Next Web) to get an embeddable code for your Website. All you have to do is paste that code into your HTML, and you’re good to go.”

Google Street View is headed to British Columbia. “In need of a respite with nature? The latest terrain to be mapped and captured by Google Street View will allow city folk stuck in urban jungles to drop in on the ancient forests and mountain trails of Northern British Columbia, Canada. Between June and September, team members from tourism offices at Destination BC and Northern BC Tourism will be loaned two Google Street View Trekkers and set out to capture the west coast wilderness.”

Okay, so Google Street view has parks, and airports, and Olympic venues, and.. car dealerships? “Two of Hyundai Canada’s dealerships are now accessible via Google Street View including Hyundai Val-Bélair in Quebec and River City Hyundai in Alberta.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

I have mentioned this before but I think it’s worth mentioning again: the town that runs on Twitter. “For the town’s residents, more than half of whom have Twitter accounts, their main way to communicate with local government officials is now the social network. Need to see the local doctor? Send a quick Twitter message to book an appointment. See something suspicious? Let Jun’s policeman know with a tweet.” Twitter could be an Internet platform as essential as the Web, but unfortunately it’s not being developed that way…

Residents are fighting back against Waze as it sends huge amounts of traffic through streets in residential neighborhoods. “When the traffic on Timothy Connor’s quiet Maryland street suddenly jumped by several hundred cars an hour, he knew who was partly to blame: the disembodied female voice he could hear through the occasional open window saying, “Continue on Elm Avenue . . . .’ The marked detour around a months-long road repair was several blocks away. But plenty of drivers were finding a shortcut past Connor’s Takoma Park house, slaloming around dog walkers and curbside basketball hoops, thanks to Waze and other navigation apps.”

Facebook and game company Blizzard are teaming up. “Facebook integrated its Facebook Login and Live applications programming interface into Blizzard’s Battle.net online game service and its Overwatch game, which reached more than 7 million players in its first week. Facebook has made a big push to make its livestreaming video more popular in competition with Amazon’s Twitch and Google’s YouTube livestreamed videos.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

I thought Ransomware was the big security thing for 2016. I really do not want it to be ransomware and DDOS attacks. “There were 19 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that exceeded 100 Gbps during the first three months of the year, almost four times more than in the previous quarter. Even more concerning is that these mega attacks, which few companies can withstand on their own, were launched using so-called booter or stresser botnets that are common and cheap to rent. This means that more criminals can now afford to launch such crippling attacks.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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