NEW RESOURCES

Interesting: an Instagram hashtag curating tool for photographers. Wonder if they could make one of these for archives, museums, etc. “The premise is quite simple. Choose the style of photography you’re capturing and the location where you’re shooting from a predefined list and a curated collection of hashtags will be presented for you to copy and paste into place.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Remember that resource I linked to that showed deleted posts from verified Twitter users? Yep, it’s already gone. “We created the website postghost.com to provide the public with a more accurate history of public statements made by the most influential public figures on Twitter. We believe PostGhost provides a fairer and more transparent way of allowing individuals to hold public figures accountable than Politwoops, a website that Twitter has recently reauthorized to publish certain deleted tweets.”

Hey, Chromebook users can use Skype now! Um… sort of. “Head to the Skype for Web website, sign in with your Skype account, and click the voice call button for one of your Skype contacts. Chrome will ask if you want to share your microphone with Skype. Agree and the call will happen normally, just like it would via the Skype client application on a desktop PC or phone. It now uses standards-based web technologies instead of the plugin it initially required on Windows.” Looks like video calls aren’t working yet.

Facebook is clarifying its graphic content policy. “Facebook … insists that the video of Philando Castile’s death was temporarily unavailable due to a technical glitch that was Facebook’s fault. That contradicts theories that the video disappeared due to Facebook waffling on whether it should stay up, a high volume of reports of it containing violent content, a deletion by police who’d taken possession of Castile’s girlfriend’s phone and Facebook account or a request from police to remove it. However, Facebook refused to detail exactly what caused the glitch, such as a traffic spike. It did release this statement, however.”

Is Twitter going to get even more sporty? “Twitter wants to stream more TV-like live video around major sporting events, so it’s approaching the folks who control those rights to cut a deal. The company is in talks with the NBA, Major League Soccer and cable network Turner about acquiring digital streaming rights for content related to live sports and events, according to several sources familiar with the discussions.”

Google has purchased Anvato. “Google’s Cloud Platform unit said this week that Anvato would be folded into its team. Anvato makes a software platform that ‘fully automates the encoding, editing, publishing and secure distribution of video content across multiple platforms,’ the Cloud Platform team said in a blog post.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Make the Most of Google Calendar with 7+ New Tools . Mostly business/productivity oriented.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Chinese search engine Baidu is the subject of criticism again, this time for its map reports. “Follow the search results for hospitals on the mapping service of Chinese search engine Baidu.com, and you might get into trouble, Chengdu Economic Daily reported on Tuesday. The newspaper said a search for ‘The Second People’s Hospital of Chengdu City’ on Baidu Map produced 10 results on the first webpage, but none were the one located on the city’s Qingyun South Road.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

A police officer in Nashville, Tennessee has been decommissioned and is under investigation after making what he says was a “sarcastic” comment on a Facebook post. “Chief Steve Anderson this afternoon directed that Hermitage Precinct midnight shift Officer Anthony Venable be immediately decommissioned pending the results of an internal investigation into a post he made from his personal Facebook account referencing the police-involved shooting in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.”

President of Russia Vladamir Putin has required that all encryption in that country be “backdoored” in two weeks. “A few weeks ago, we wrote about the push by the Russian Duma to pass a massive new surveillance bill that would mandate backdoors to encryption as well as massive data retention requirements for service providers … apparently to prove that he’s serious about all of this, Putin has also signed an executive order telling the FSB (the modern version of the KGB) to make sure it gets encryption keys to unlock everything within the next two weeks.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

From The Journal of International Technology and Information
Management: Facebook Use Among African American and Hispanic Students: An Exploratory Investigation of Perceived Academic Impact. “Facebook is one of the world’s leading social networking sites. It is pervasive in students’ lives and can impact their academic careers in a variety of ways. However, little research exists evaluating the use of Facebook in minority academic settings. An early step in this direction is to gain an understanding of how different student demographic groups use Facebook. An interest in further assessment of Facebook’s role in diverse segments of academia motivates the collection and analysis of Facebook-related data from minority serving institutions such as Historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). This study presents the results of a comparative examination of African American students at an HBCU and Hispanic students at an HSI regarding their perceptions of Facebook use for academics.”

Archivists, especially archivists who work with documents, MIT is doing some research that should make you very happy. “When the team of researchers investigating a 17th-century postal trunk full of undelivered letters presented at MIT in April, the audience was taken aback — not by the content of the 2,600 letters from all over Europe, but by the team’s approach. The 600 letters that were not only undelivered but unopened — truly a motherlode for early modern historians — would remain unopened. Why not just open the letters very, very carefully in order to read them? It’s a question that came up repeatedly when the Signed, Sealed, and Undelivered (SSU) project team spoke at the MIT Libraries for Preservation Week.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!