NEW RESOURCES

USA Today has launched a database of lawsuits by and against Donald Trump and his business holdings. “Nailing down the number of legal battles involving Donald Trump and his businesses is a moving target, and the USA TODAY Network’s ongoing review of his empire’s litigation continues surfacing new cases. In early June, the analysis had found at least 3,500 cases — a figure that has now surpassed 4,000 — and today we’re releasing a new interactive tool that lets you explore more than three decades of court actions by and against Trump and his companies.” And in an attempt to ward off the hate mail: I do not support Trump or Clinton, I dislike both candidacies for various reasons.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

I don’t know how I missed this one, but apparently Angie’s List is now free. “The recent move simply means that any consumer will now be able to surf the website at no cost and more easily choose a service provider, whether it’s an electrician, a painter or a plumber. And just like Yelp, you will also be able to submit your review at no cost.”

Looks like the Internet Archive is making an effort to archive Coursera course content.

Huh. Quartz has created its own economic index tool. “Quartz Index is a collection of eight numerical indicators, from drone registrations and SpaceX launches to Hong Kong retail sales and retirement fund investment decisions. These indicators will be updated regularly on the Quartz Index homepage. Quartz’s editorial team will also provide regular coverage of topics related to each indicator in accompanying stories on qz.com and a weekly email roundup of key changes.”

Google is expanding Google Posts. “Google is continuing the slow rollout of a feature called Google Posts which allows certain entities to publish directly to the front page of search results. Google first began testing this feature with political figures earlier in the election season. This past March, Google was confirmed to have been rolling Google Posts out to small businesses, while mentioning that in the future public figures and organizations would get to use Google Posts as well.”

USEFUL STUFF

From Hongkiat: 10 Tools to Build your Own Chatbots

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

From Search Engine Land: SEO is as dirty as ever. “As much as the SEO industry wants to grow up and shed the shady reputation it had in the past, it seems many don’t want to change and still cast a shadow over the industry. For every company doing things right, it seems there are many more who have not updated their practices or still want to take shortcuts.”

Rumors: is Snapchat working on its own version of Google Glass? I started rolling my eyes, then thought of all the Pokemon Go news I read about all weekend and wondered if they were on to something, if they were going to focus on AR.

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

North Carolina State University has suffered a data breach. “North Carolina State University officials said Friday that an email account containing personal information of about 38,000 people was illegally accessed several weeks ago.” I can’t find any indication if this was students, teachers, staff, or what. The leaked data did include social security numbers.

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Good grief! I had no idea that Google Scholar was being targeted by porn spammers. “In this article, we take a closer look at a problem within the Google Scholar parsing engine that has been lightly touched upon by the authors cited above but does not seem to be taken very seriously by the the Google Scholar team. Now seems like a good time to take a look at it since Google Scholar is not only indexing predatory publishers, or false journals that create empty articles to make themselves look like a journal, instead Google Scholar is being targeted by bad players in the porn industry. Something that they seem to be getting pretty good at.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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