NEW RESOURCES

New to me: National Geographic has a cool story about an online collection of Japanese military maps. “The maps covered much of Asia, and they went far beyond the local topography. They included detailed notes on climate, transportation systems, and the local people. It’s the kind of information that could be used to plan an invasion or an occupation, and some of it was gathered by spies operating behind enemy lines. To the Japanese, these maps are known as gaihōzu—maps of outer lands.

A new Web site focuses on Chicago restaurants owned by African-Americans. Seems like it would be a short list? Creator Toure Muhammad has already found 125 restaurants, and the site doesn’t officially open until August 12th!

A new Web site maps over 150,000 images of London. Wowzers. “This huge task has now made reimagining old London easier than ever. Simply choose a location across the city and a few clicks will lead you directly to tens of thousands of photos, paintings, drawings and historic posters. It’s the ideal visual counterpart to an ancient city where, even in recently built areas, you can often feel like you’re treading on ghosts. Think of the London Picture Map as a dream chest opening up views to not just what once was, but to what could have been.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Twitter wants to help you follow the Olympics.”Twitter is about to embark on a 17 day-long test where it will insert curated Olympics-related tweets into people’s timelines, if they opt in. The experiment is a more ambitious iteration of Twitter’s temporary follow function in Moments, a tab that highlights the platform’s most compelling content and offers a temporary follow option for certain topics and events from time to time. Twitter clearly likes what it’s seeing from the feature, which proved valuable during big news events like Brexit and last month’s political conventions, and is investing more energy into it.”

The California State Archives has a new Facebook page.

Firefox has gotten an update. “Today we’re proud to announce the initial rollout of multi-process Firefox for Desktop to our general audience. With this, we’re taking a major step forward in improving Firefox for Desktop. Users should experience a Firefox that is less susceptible to freezing and is generally more responsive to input, while retaining the experience and features that users love.”

I’m not sure you can say this any other way besides this: Instagram has apparently ripped off Snapchat. “On Tuesday, Instagram introduced Instagram Stories, which lets people share photos and videos that have a life span of no more than 24 hours with friends who follow them. The service bears a striking resemblance — some might say it is a carbon copy — to Snapchat Stories, a photo- and video-sharing format where the stories also disappear after no more than 24 hours.”

You knew this was going to happen: Facebook Live broadcasts are getting commercial breaks. “Facebook Live streams from the platform’s biggest publishers are about to be invaded by commercial breaks. The move marks the first time ever that ads will be interjected into videos on the social network. “We’re running a small test where a group of publishers have the option to insert a short ad break in their Facebook Live videos,” Facebook confirmed to Adage.”

USEFUL STUFF

The New England Historic Genealogical Society wants to make your August a little more Irish with free access to genealogy resources. “During the Irish Resources FREE Access promotion from NEHGS—beginning Tuesday, August 2, and effective through midnight (EST) on Tuesday, August 9—Guest Users on AmericanAncestors.org can browse and use a wide variety of Irish records, articles, subject guides, and webinars.”

From the terrific Jack Schofield: Here’s why you and your business should use reverse image search. “Reverse image search involves choosing an image and using a search engine to find the same image on other web sites. It’s a feature I use almost every day, and I’m confident that more people would do it if they knew what they were missing.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Facebook is getting local pushback over its expansion plans. “What do Menlo Park’s neighbors think about Facebook’s expansion plans? East Palo Alto, Palo Alto and Atherton have all written letters to Menlo Park, raising questions about the draft environmental impact report for the expansion project and asserting that the draft may not include sufficient analysis of how such changes could impact their cities. Facebook plans to add 6,500 employees and build two office buildings totaling 962,400 square feet, plus a 200-room hotel in eastern Menlo Park.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Huh: Did Yahoo get hacked? If it did it wasn’t any time recently. “According to a sample of the data, it contains usernames, hashed passwords (created with md5 algorithm), dates of birth, and in some cases back-up email addresses. The data is being sold for 3 bitcoins, or around $1,860, and supposedly contains 200 million records from ‘2012 most likely,’ according to Peace. Until Yahoo confirms a breach, however, or the full dataset is released for verification, it is possible that the data is collated and repackaged from other major data leaks.” 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!