NEW RESOURCES

MIT has created a way to annotate livestreams. “DeepStream is like a cross between annotation sites like Genius and the Twitter sidebars embedded into some websites. Users log into the platform, now in beta, and have the option to search for livestreams or videos from a variety of platforms like YouTube Live, Facebook Live, Twitch, and Meerkat (the latter you need a login for). Choosing a video will load it in the browser, then users can add news stories, original text, tweets, and Soundcloud files. When selected, the information is added into so-called “context cards,” which stack up just to the right of the video as it plays. If you are watching a video of a Black Lives Matter protest, for example, one context card might include a link to an article defining the movement and another a tweet from activist. Taken together, the cards should provide context to what is happening in the video.”

In development: a database of Nigerian journalists. “The Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) says the process of developing a database of journalists nationwide has commenced. The NUJ president, Mr Waheed Odusile, said this when he visited Mr Bayo Onanuga, the Managing Director/Chief Executive of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in his office on Friday in Abuja.”

Now available: a CC-licensed guide to drone journalism. “With funding from The Knight Foundation, Matt Waite, a professor at the University of Nebraska, and Ben Kreimer, a beta fellow with BuzzFeed’s Open Lab for Journalism, Technology and the Arts, have put together the Drone Journalism Lab Operations Manual, a 23-page explainer on everything drone.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Local Guides can now make lists of saved places. “This new functionality is available for anyone with Local Guide Level 4 and up and allows them to sort places into groups such as ‘Favorites’, ‘Want to go,’ or any custom list they want to create. For now, the feature is only available on Android, but Google does say it’s coming to desktop and iOS users soon.”

Twitter is going to let companies sponsor Periscope livestreams. “Nothing major is changing within the Periscope app experience, except that the broadcast titles of branded videos will have to include the name of the partner. Live videos will not feature pre-roll or ads midstream, a format that Facebook is testing.” I can see a lot of opportunity for unintentional hilarity.

The National Archives is getting a new social media strategy. And published it on GitHub. ” We met with staff and asked them about their goals and needs for social media–and we asked staff what challenges they faced when using social media. We also researched social strategies of other influential institutions, we analyzed our social media and web data, and we read up on best practices. We led lightning sessions to get feedback and suggestions from other galleries, museums, archives, and libraries. Now, we need to hear from you! Your feedback is needed to make this strategy the best it can be and we want to hear what you think. We see this as a living document, so we’ve published the strategy on GitHub, a collaborative development web platform.”

USEFUL STUFF

From NoCode Webscraping: How to extract Twitter tweets data and followers to Excel. “In this tutorial,I will show you how to extract or scrape Twitter data such as tweets and followers to excel using ready made Python scripts.I will also show you how to download photos and videos by a #hashtag or search query.I will use both the REST API and the streaming API.Lastly,I will use Quintly to download tweets to Excel (no programming involved).”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

My desk is a plank of wood over two filing cabinets placed about five feet apart, and then over that a section of countertop purchased at the local Habitat place so my workspace is sufficiently wide to hold the monitor, keyboard, etc. I am nothing if not opulent. Anyway, part of the countertop is developing a dent where I headdesk it, and I think I’ll name the dent “Twitter.” Why, here comes another opportunity now. “Over the last year, you’d be hard pressed to find somebody not talking about how inconsistent and arbitrary Twitter’s ban hammer is. Swedish YouTube phenom PewDiePie found this out the hard way this week after his account — followed by 47 million Twitter users — suddenly up and disappeared briefly from the social networking service without explanation.” He made a joke about joining ISIS.

Facebook is getting some heat over what it calls a “bug” in its sticker search. “Facebook is apologizing for what it says is a ‘bug’ that caused people to see the vomit sticker when looking for something to represent ‘liberals’ or ‘feminism’ on its platform. The company attributed the blame to something in its search algorithm and acknowledged that it was fixing the problem.” That same search algorithm Facebook will resolutely not share any information on, but probably not the same algorithm that determines what posts from friends and pages you get to see. Feel better now? No? Me neither.

Facebook’s first satellite has been blown up before it could be deployed. “Ars Technica reporter Eric Berger tweeted that the explosion was the result of a launch pad anomaly, not a problem with the rocket — and that AMOS-6 was on board…”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

You’ve probably already seen this, but just in case: Dropbox got hacked. “Back in 2012, Dropbox was the victim of a security breach that caused headaches and spam for users of the service. Four years later, the full extent of the breach is now coming to light after a cache of Dropbox user credentials was discovered online. Last night, Motherboard reported that the databases making their way around the database trading community were real and comprised more than 68 million Dropbox accounts.”

I am absolutely certain all of you are way too smart to do this. But just in case you know somebody. People, Please Don’t Store Private Data in Your Address Book. “THERE’S BEEN SOME controversy over the data that Donald Trump’s campaign app collects. Though the America First app asks before accessing anything on both Android and iOS, it gathers and stores the data from smartphone address books as soon as it is granted permission. The situation probably doesn’t sound like a big deal, especially since the app requests consent, but if you store valuable private information in your contact lists—like security codes, passwords, health information, or social security numbers—it definitely poses a threat.” 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!