NEW RESOURCES

New-To-Me: The Next Web has a story about a tool that lets you track the deleted tweets of certain Twitter accounts. The parameters being that they are verified accounts and that they have over 10,000 followers.

Now available: a database of soil fungi. “The below-ground associations that plants form with mycorrhizal fungi is one of the most prevalent and ancient symbioses on Earth. The fungi deliver nutrients and water, in return for plant-derived sugars. But scientists know very little about the impact this relationship has on how ecosystems function and can make few broad generalizations about relationships between plants and the fungi. The new database sheds light on that, even though it deals with just 351 plant species of the 450,000 that exist in the world. The database, which includes 4,010 studies from 438 peer-reviewed articles, contains data on how various plant species behave when inoculated with the fungi compared to when they are not.”

Interesting: an archive of letters from librarians and library staff who served in World War I. “An archive of letters written by Belfast library staff who were enlisted to the Army during World War One has been published online. The letters were written to the chief librarian to fulfil a condition of their employment during the war…. More than 200 letters were exchanged between these ‘library men’ and the chief librarian between 1914 and 1919.”

More World War I: a new Web site aims to document the experience of Sikh soldiers during World War I. “The UK Punjab Heritage Association (UKPHA) launched [the site] as part of a wider three-year ‘Empire, Faith & War: The Sikhs and World War One’ project to coincide with the centenary of the Battle of Somme on July 1, 1916 – described as the bloodiest battle of the Great War.”

The state of Connecticut has launched an online public meeting calendar (PRESS RELEASE). “The new Public Meeting Calendar features an easy-to-use interface that is consistent with the look and feel of the state’s new CT.gov website. The Public Meeting Calendar utilizes a responsive design that allows the tool to function on mobile devices. The tool also features multiple calendar views, filters, and search capabilities assisting visitors with finding current, upcoming, and past public meetings associated with state agencies. Each meeting entry includes detailed information with agendas and minutes.”

Now available: a database of fisheries worldwide. “A publicly accessible fisheries database that builds on the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) statistics has been created, covering the fisheries of all maritime countries and territories of the world, from 1950 to 2010, and being regularly updated.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The entirety of the Chilcot Report has been uploaded to DocumentCloud. The linked page also has a search form if you just want to do a keyword search.

Federal agency TSA is now on Facebook Messenger. “Wondering what hours the Transportation Security Administration’s PreCheck lanes are staffed at your local airport? Or whether you can bring an obscure item through airport security? You can now get the answers to those questions and many more by asking the TSA directly through Facebook’s Messenger function.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer recently got an epic no-confidence vote. “Though Marissa Mayer was elected to Yahoo’s board of directors at the company’s shareholder meeting last week (June 30), investors made sure their qualms about the CEO were heard. Of Yahoo’s director nominees, Mayer received the fewest votes for and most votes against her board seat. In all, close to 105 million votes were cast in opposition to Mayer’s election to the board, according to an SEC filing.”

Ewwww. QZ has a story about what sounds like HR bait-and-switch. “It may fail as a travel app, but Radar may succeed as a recruiting tool. Doomed side projects are a way for some companies in Silicon Valley to get new talent through the door. While some may work, most are financial sink holes compared to the mundane task of rewriting old code or squeezing out a few more advertising dollars by optimizing websites.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

In a way, it’s kind of impressive. In a world full of Adobe and Java and whatnot, hardware manufacturer TP-Link managed to raise the bonehead bar a few notches. “In common with many other vendors, TP-Link, one of the world’s biggest sellers of Wi-Fi access points and home routers, has a domain name that owners of the hardware can use to quickly get to their router’s configuration page. Unlike most other vendors, however, it appears that TP-Link has failed to renew its registration for the domain, leaving it available for anyone to buy. Any owner of the domain could feasibly use it for fake administration pages to phish credentials or upload bogus firmware. This omission was spotted by Amitay Dan, CEO of Cybermoon, and posted to the Bugtraq mailing list last week.”

From Motherboard: Scammers Are Uploading Tutorials on How to Fool Facebook with a False ID. “As it turns out, there are several free online tutorials, and even apps, to learn how to make fake IDs on your computer. A Google search for ‘bypass facebook government ID’ turns out thousands of hits, including YouTube tutorials specifically made with the goal of circumventing Facebook’s government ID requirements.” It’s even worse than that. Make the following Google Alert and set it to monitor Video, which will monitor YouTube: intitle:”how to” intitle:(facebook | snapchat | instagram | twitter | “social media”). You will see all kinds of stuff. Good morning, Internet…

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