NEW RESOURCES

Now available: a free genealogy app for kids. “Yellow Fork Technologies LLC has just released a major update to their app, Little Family Tree, making it FREE to download through the mobile app stores. Little Family Tree is an app that teaches children about their family history through interactive games and activities with information obtained from an online family tree.”

The University of North Carolina has launched an online t-shirt archive. “This digital collection of Carolina T-shirts past and present provides a unique window into all aspects of student life at UNC. The website is available now, but it’s far from complete: for that, we need your help.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

If you’re still having trouble with your Windows 10 updates, Microsoft is working on a fix. “It would seem that Microsoft will be rolling out a ‘clean-up script’ to fix the issue the prevents the upgrade from completing. In the support forum topic, many people have come up with different workarounds to complete the upgrade, but almost all require registry editing or having to reinstall Windows 10 over the failing update.”

Smart move: YouTube has launched a new feature for video creators to disclose paid/sponsored videos. “While there are a variety of ways creators can disclose paid promotions, today we are launching a new, optional video feature that adds visible text on the video for the first few seconds a viewer watches, informing viewers of a paid promotion. Creators can also choose to add this text disclosure to any existing video without losing their view count or other video metrics.”

USEFUL STUFF

Amit IS ON FIAH! His latest: How to Make YouTube Playlists with a Google Spreadsheet. “A couple of YouTube videos, some simple Google formulas and a Google Spreadsheet – that’s all you need to quickly create a YouTube playlist. It will be an anonymous playlist, not connected to your YouTube channel, and may be a good way to bunch together multiple videos for easy sharing on WhatsApp, Twitter or an email newsletter.”

Cool roundup from Make Tech Easier: 6 of the Best Chrome Extensions for Students. “Students rely on information available on the Internet to complete projects. This involves using a browser, and to browse efficiently they will need some reliable extensions. If browsing on Chrome, then there are many Chrome extensions for students that will help with research and completing projects. In this article we will list the best Chrome extensions that every student should have.” “Memorize!” looks very cool.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Vice has a writeup about a newer player in the visual search world. “When you have a photo and want to find a higher resolution copy online, you can use tools like Google Image Search and TinEye. They work in a very specific way extracting specific patterns and how they contrast with their surroundings. That works well for finding alternate copies of the same image, but it’s not so great if you try to go deeper. Enter Clarifai, which creator Matthew Zeiler claims improves upon the techniques used by Google and Tineye by way of superior artificial intelligence.”

Quartz: Facebook is interpreting your likes a bit too literally “To the outside world, I’m a 20-something journalist, newly-employed at Quartz, who lives in Brooklyn. In Facebook’s eyes—or at least in the way the social media company sells my profile to advertisers—I’m a ‘new job’ ‘millennial’ living in a ‘housemate-based household’ who uses Chrome and recently switched from Android to iPhone. I’m also apparently interested in Quartz, the hard white or colorless mineral often found in igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary rocks.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Do you think the default passwords that ship with computer components are fine? Please read this article. “A botnet responsible for a massive DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attack was created thanks to weak default usernames and passwords found in internet-connected cameras and DVRs. The Mirai botnet grabbed headlines last month for taking down the website of cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs with a huge DDOS attack. Unlike most botnets, which rely on infected PCs, this one used IoT devices to target its victims.”

Kaspersky is concerned about the security of Facebook Marketplace. “As the parents of relatively young children, my wife and I have used local yard sale groups on Facebook extensively to sell items the kids have outgrown as well as buy items that we really did not want to buy brand new. To us it was like mixing the value of eBay with the convenience of not having to wait for things to come in the mail — not to mention, no shipping charges. If Marketplace improves or streamlines the process of buying and selling through those local groups, that sounds great. With that said, using Marketplace means buying something from a stranger online and meeting in person to exchange currency for goods.” According to a Business Insider article, there’s already some sketchiness going on. Good afternoon, Internet…

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