NEW RESOURCES

Launched in July: an online museum of model aircraft. “[David] Wendell, 48, has spent the last 25 years and thousands of dollars securing model airplanes and space shuttles, traveling across the country to get the models autographed by the pilots who flew them. Wendell’s online museum, which went live in July… features 365 autographed model airplanes and space shuttles, signed aviation and aerospace posters, paintings and various aviation and aerospace facts.”

In development: a huge digital archive of moth and butterfly specimens. “Joe McHugh, curator of the arthropod collection at the museum and professor of entomology at the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, will lead the National Science Foundation-funded effort. When LepNet-as the project is being called-is complete, it will be one of the largest databases of insect data to date, opening centuries of scientific inquiry to the new world of data analytics.”

In development: a digital archive of mountaineering photos. “A National Archive of Historic Mountaineering Images is to be launched by the British Mountaineering Council (BMC) later this year. The searchable digital collection will include images taken using glass plate photography 160 years ago.” The archive will launch in November.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google has launched Cardboard Camera. “VR photos taken with Cardboard Camera are three-dimensional panoramas that can transport you right back to the moment. Near things look near and far things look far. You can look around to explore the image in all directions, and even hear sound recorded while you took the photo to hear the moment exactly as it happened. To capture a VR photo, hold your phone vertically, tap record, then turn around as though you’re taking a panorama.”

CrunchBase is now offering a pro version. “CrunchBase Inc., the online database of the tech startup ecosystem that spun out of TechCrunch Inc. and parent company AOL/Verizon late last year, is debuting a professional version of its service with better search, filtering and notification capabilities than its free offering. The company is pitching CrunchBased Pro, which is priced at $29 per month on an annual subscription basis, at professionals searching for companies to do business with, venture capital investors and entrepreneurs looking for money.”

Instagram’s comment filtering tool has rolled out to everybody. “While the disappearance of literally thousands of snake emoji from Taylor Swift’s Instagram account prompted speculation about such a tool in July, the social media company is now offering comment moderation to everyone via a customizable keyword filter.”

USEFUL STUFF

From Hongkiat: 10 Free Photo Management Software You Should Know. Headline’s a bit awkward but it’s a good roundup of photo management software packages – desktop applications, not cloud offerings.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

A guy who got ripped off after he sold some gift cards found the scammer with a little gumshoe work on Facebook. Interesting reading. I did something similar about four years ago with equal success, only I was trying to get contact information for someone who had lost their wallet.

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Harvard Business Review: What 100,000 Tweets About the Volkswagen Scandal Tell Us About Angry Customers. “We examined more than 100,000 tweets to analyze how the public sentiment changed over time after the breakout of the scandal. Our approach to capturing themes in the evolving scandal involved sampling a few date windows; therefore, we did not examine data for every single day. The following periods were selected: September 29, 2015–October 7, 2015; October 18, 2015–October 27, 2015; January 1, 2016–January 7, 2016; and January 17, 2016–January 25, 2016. These periods align with some of the events relating to the scandal, and also represent periods during and following the scandal. We explored the daily tweets from these periods by considering all possible events that might have affected the public sentiment over Volkswagen. Entire sets of tweets including the word “Volkswagen” were in our initial data set. We made several observations about how the scandal unfolded in the public conversation…”

It should be no surprise that local advertisers are going to Facebook. “Forecaster and analyst Gordon Borrell has just published his summer survey of 7,500 local advertisers with results that manage to be alarming but at the same time not surprising. Yes, there is a strong swing to digital and social. And yes, most advertisers subtract from their legacy media budgets to increase digital spending. But particularly striking is a quick adoption of Facebook as a primary marketing focus.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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