NEW RESOURCES

Hey! The Internet Archive’s software emulation now apparently includes Amiga! There are already over 1000 items in the collection – looks like mostly (but not exclusively) games.

New-to-me, but doesn’t look like it’s been up that long — a crowdsourcing project for us over-21 types: transcribing wine labels. “The Amerine wine label collection provides a meaningful window into the history of both winemaking and winemakers during a pivotal time in the industry. Our goal is to make these labels, and this history, searchable and accessible to wine lovers everywhere. To accomplish this, we need help marking, transcribing and describing the labels to create a searchable database. That’s where you come in! Help us uncork a piece of history.”

In development: a database of tigers. “India is set to launch its first tiger database that will contain footage from camera traps, DNA samples and tiger stripe information from across the country, reported The Times of India. The Wildlife Institute of India signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Tiger Conservation Authority on Saturday to this effect. Senior scientists YV Jhala and Qamar Qureshi will head the cell.”

New-to-me: remember that map of streetcar lines I mentioned recently? How about a map of all the rail lines that ever existed in the UK and Ireland? “Base layers can be toggled between Google Maps, satellite, OpenStreetMap and old Ordnance Survey maps.” According to the link, the site is still under development.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Are you having problems with your computer after upgrading to the Windows 10 anniversary update? you’re not alone. “The Windows 10 Anniversary Update started rolling out just a few days ago, and while the response from users has been generally positive, many are reporting that their updated PCs have started to freeze randomly. Many users have been citing the same issue on a Reddit thread, and have been unable to reach a universal solution.” The OP on Reddit is doing a heroic job of keeping the original post updated.

It looks like Instagram isn’t the only Facebook property to start looking more like Snapchat. “Now Facebook (which owns Instagram) is testing an instant selfie filter that lets you add layers and filters in real time – very Snapchat-esque, if you ask us. The feature is only live in Canada and Brazil for now, reports TechCrunch, and is tied in with the Olympics.”

USEFUL STUFF

Google wants to help you keep up with the Olympics. “The 2016 Rio Olympics have kicked off this weekend. If you want to stay totally up to date on all the breaking news, Google’s giving you a few new ways to do that.”

Do you ever have to open a giant text file? BetaNews has a writeup on what sounds like a very useful app. “LogViewer is an open-source tool which is built to handle massive log files, and it’s seriously fast, opening our test file [46 MB] in around half a second — around 40 to 50 times faster than Notepad.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The government of Zimbabwe is preparing to crack down on social media abuse. “The Zimbabwean government is drafting a law to penalise the ‘abusive’ usage of social media with five-year jail terms in its latest measures to regulate cyber space law and order, officials said on Sunday.” On Friday the price of Internet access in Zimbabwe apparently jumped.

Feeling old? the first Web site went only 25 years ago. “The internet just marked another major milestone. The first website, Tim Berners-Lee’s description of the World Wide Web project, went public 25 years ago on August 6th, 1991. The launch was unceremonious — Berners-Lee announced the project on a Usenet group, and it wasn’t until after August 23rd that new users visited the site. However, the launch effectively marked the start of the web as a widely available tool.”

From The New York Times Magazine: How an Archive of the Internet Could Change History. “In theory, the internet already functions as a kind of archive: Any document, video or photo can in principle remain there indefinitely, available to be viewed by anyone with a connection. But in reality, things disappear constantly. Search engines like Google continually trawl for pages to organize and index for retrieval, but they can’t catch everything. And as the web evolves, it becomes harder to preserve. It is estimated that 75 percent of all websites are inactive, and domains are abandoned every day. Links can rot when sites disappear, images vanish when servers go offline and fluctuations in economic tides and social trends can wipe out entire ecosystems. (Look up a blog post from a decade ago and see how many of the images, media or links still work.) Tumblr and even Twitter may eventually end up ancient internet history because of their financial instability.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Researchers have created a very scary Twitter phishing bot. “Black Hat researchers have created a Twitter bot that reads your tweets and sends you a message catered to your interests — along with a shortened URL leading to hacktown.” According to the article, the bot had a TWO-THIRDS success rate for link-clicking. Good morning, Internet…

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