NEW RESOURCES

Microsoft has launched its own project management tool. “Planner lets you organize projects, share files, assign tasks, and chat with other collaborators—all within Office 365. As shown in the video above, the app uses Cards and Boards to organize everything (something you’re probably familiar with if you’ve used Trello or Asana), and those Boards can even be organized into larger projects or columns called ‘Buckets.'”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Minneapolis Labor Review has updated its digital archive. “The Labor Review is the official publication of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation and captures more than a century of worker history, including organizing drives, the historic 1934 truckers strike and numerous people and events. The archive allows visitors to search the text of all 109 years of the newspaper by name, date or topic. Users see the image of the newspaper page as it actually appeared in print and can download a pdf file of the page.” Access to the archive is free.

Twitter has started an “insiders” program. “Twitter has recently launched a new program called ‘Twitter Insiders’ in the U.S., a community consisting of selected users that will play a ‘leading role in making the platform better for brands.'” I think focusing on making the platform better for brands and not developers and users is 90% of the problem…

USEFUL STUFF

Genealogists doing Irish research: RootsIreland now has a one-day subscription option. “And, if you find the website just chock full of information and want to extend your subscription, the amount paid for the 1 day option will be deducted from the purchase of a 1, 6 or 12-month subscription as long as you upgrade your subscription within 30 days of the original purchase.” A one-day subscription is $11.

I’m a nerd about SBCs — Single Board Computers. You know, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, etc. If you’ve ever wanted an overview of what’s available, here ya go – a PDF of 81 SBCs, compared.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Nice: digital museum guides for people with autism. “As part of National Access Awareness Week, Toronto-based Magnusmode has partnered with the Royal Ontario Museum and Easter Seals Canada to launch digital museum guides for visitors with autism. The guides are built off of the company’s Magnuscards platform, which provides step-by-step illustrated guides for people with cognitive special needs to navigate through daily tasks like doing laundry.”

Algeria now has a “Facebook Addiction” clinic. Apparently it’s the third one in the world. “The clinic is the first of its kind in the region, and the third in the world after China and South Korea, and opened in May in the eastern city of Constantine. Human development scientist Raouf Boqafa is director of the clinic, and is working with a group of psychiatrists to address other addictions such as drugs, alcohol and smoking.”

Has Google/Alphabet been promoting whatever the hardware equivalent of “Vaporware” is? “Google made some big promises about how it would cure what ails us, but now it looks like we may never get those diabetes-detecting contact lenses or that FitBit-like cancer-detection wearable. Former employees of the GoogleX biotech division, called Verily Life Sciences, tell Stat that these projects are examples of ‘Silicon Valley arrogance’ and, well, failing. One even called the contact lens idea ‘slideware,’ meaning that it’s n exciting project that looks great on PowerPoint and hasn’t gotten beyond that point. ”

Looks like Verizon is a front runner in a bid for Yahoo. “Verizon Communications will be bidding about US$3 billion for the Internet assets of ailing Yahoo, according to a newspaper report. The communications company will try to beat other potential bidders such as private-equity firm TPG with a deal that would likely aim to combine Yahoo Web properties, with over 1 billion users a month, with Verizon’s growing business in online ads, the Wall Street Journal reported late Monday.” That seems high, but on the other hand it’s less than Verizon paid for AOL.

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

If you get an e-mail from a large Web site telling you you have to reset your password, don’t be too surprised. “Cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs says some big companies, including the streaming service and the social network, tend to go through data from other websites’ security breaches to look for log-ins that match their users’. They then force those users to change the passwords they reused to keep them safe.”

Yuck: Facebook Messenger had a bad security flaw. “The vulnerability allows a malicious user to change conversation thread in the Facebook Online Chat & Messenger App. By abusing this vulnerability, it is possible to modify or remove any sent message, photo, file, link, and much more. The Vulnerability was fully disclosed to the Facebook Security team earlier this month. Facebook immediately responded, and after a joint effort, the vulnerability was patched.”

We’re in the “exploring the boundaries of new tech” phase: a student was caught using Facebook Live to stream a movie from inside a theater. Despite what the headline says at this writing, he was not arrested. “Taking recording equipment into a cinema with the intention of grabbing a copy of the latest movie is a very risky occupation in the United States. Thanks to the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act 2005, doing so is a criminal offense.” Good morning, Internet…

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