NEW RESOURCES

If there’s never another issue of ResearchBuzz, you can blame this new dynamic Web archiving tool which was just released by Rhizome. “Rhizome is pleased to announce the first full release of Webrecorder, the free online tool that allows users to create their own high-fidelity archives of the dynamic web.” Oh boy, does this look like fun. Watch the YouTube video at the link for all the skinny.

Zooniverse has launched a new project: Radio Meteor Zoo. From the Web site: “With this Radio Meteor Zoo project we focus on meteor showers, which are mainly due to dust particles released on its orbit by a comet when it approaches the Sun. The Perseids around August 12 are a well-known example of a meteor shower. During a meteor shower, many radio meteor echoes display complex shapes in BRAMS data and automatic detection algorithms struggle to detect them correctly. This is where the Radio Meteor Zoo volunteers come in. You can help us a lot by identifying meteor echoes during meteor showers.”

The Internet Archive has added a bunch of hip-hop mixtapes. “The Internet Archive has been growing an interesting sub-collection of music for the past few months: Hip-Hop Mixtapes. The resulting collection still has a way to go before it’s anywhere near what is out there (limited by bandwidth and a few other technical factors), but now that it’s past 150 solid days of music on there, it’s quite enough to browse and ‘get the idea’, should you be so inclined.” Note that this is hip-hop. That means there’s probably bad language. Not for kids.

Big thanks to my Twitter buddy Steve D. for pointing out this resource: all the “listed” buildings in London in one map. “Listed” in this case means a historic property. “The map also shows the extent of our four World Heritage Sites (Greenwich, Tower, Kew and Westminster) as well as scheduled ancient monuments, historic parks and EH properties. All locations are backed up with information records.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Oh, this’ll be handy: Waze is expanding its event information. “The feature will allow events coordinators to enter in their event, pick a date and time, then select the road closures and other things that might be impacted.”

UW-Madison is joining the DPLA. “The university announced Monday that photographs, books, maps and other historical documents from more than 200 Wisconsin collections will be made available through the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). UW’s submissions will join more than 13 million records accessible through the website from about 1,900 libraries across the U.S.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hey! Google-Animated Book Display for Your Library. “Krista Welz (@kristawelz) has shared an incredible use of Google Slides to create, what she calls, “animated book displays.” This allows you to feature your school library’s new books or a specific genre collection. She has even created a template to go with it.” Very snazzy.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Washington Post: The next frontier of online activism is ‘woke’ chatbots. “These sorts of repetitive, exhausting social media tasks — rallying the community, calling for action, facing down the angry @-replies of haters and critics — have long been the undertaking of activists themselves. But there’s a growing understanding that this work takes a lot of time, not to mention a profound emotional and psychological toll. And bots, of all things, could be the ones to absorb that kind of emotional labor.”

Buzzfeed: “A Honeypot For A**holes”: Inside Twitter’s 10-Year Failure To Stop Harassment. The obscenity was censored by me. “For nearly its entire existence, Twitter has not just tolerated abuse and hate speech, it’s virtually been optimized to accommodate it. With public backlash at an all-time high and growth stagnating, what is the platform that declared itself ‘the free speech wing of the free speech party’ to do? BuzzFeed News talks to the people who’ve been trying to figure this out for a decade.”

Ah, I’m feeling old and nostalgic: the rise and fall of the Gopher protocol. “In the years that followed, the future seemed obvious. The number of Gopher users expanded at orders of magnitude more than the World Wide Web. Gopher developers held gatherings around the country, called GopherCons, and issued a Gopher T-shirt — worn by MTV veejay Adam Curry when he announced the network’s Gopher site. The White House revealed its Gopher site on Good Morning America. In the race to rule the internet, one observer noted, ‘Gopher seems to have won out.'”

Rumors: is Google working on its own operating system? “Google has never shied away from building operating systems — just look at Chrome OS and Android. The thing is, they’re both based on Linux and while it’s open-source and incredibly flexible, it might not be up to the task for Google’s future conquests. Enter ‘Fuchsia’, a new, non-Linux OS the company appears to be developing.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Chinese authorities are cracking down on Baidu again. “Beijing authorities have ordered search engine giant Baidu to improve the assessment of its advertising business and marketing service agents after it was entangled in a gambling website promotion scandal last month.” Good morning, Internet…

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