NEW RESOURCES

The Washington Post has writeup / interview about a new resource for visualizing campaign finance data. “My New York University colleague Meredith Broussard recently debuted a new website, Campaign-finance.org, that provides tools for visualizing campaign finance data related to the 2016 U.S. election campaign. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of an email conversation we had regarding the website, her motivation for building it, what’s being done with it so far, and more general challenges facing the field of data journalism…”

This 2016 election season is crazy enough for us here in the United States. Do you ever wonder how it looks to the rest of the world? “[Gabriele] Rossi, along with Giorgia Lupi of Dear Data and the rest of the Accurat team, partnered with Google News Lab to bring this data to life through a project called World Potus. Using data from Google Trends Index over the last 24 hours, Accurat created an interactive web and desktop application that looks at how countries outside the US are searching Google for issues related to the election.”

Manhattan Editing Workshop (MEW) has launched a YouTube Channel with a ton of videos (PRESS RELEASE and the formatting is a bit wonky.) “MEWTube also boasts a series of how-to videos, providing concise instructions and troubleshooting for a range of programs and equipment including Avid Media Composer, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, and DSLR cameras. Other exclusive content includes a rich archive of videos from of ACE’s EditFest NY event, excerpts from “Inside The Cutting Room with Bobbie O’Steen,” a co-produced event series with host and acclaimed author and historian Bobbie O’Steen, and clips from the “Critical Ends” series, featuring short interviews on the editing aesthetics from MEWShop’s Artist in Residence program.” (This quote has been slightly altered by me, in two instances replacing ? with ” to correct what I believe to be formatting errors.)

New to me: a registry for home movies. From the About page: “The Home Movie Registry is an online portal that aggregates the catalog records and digitized files of amateur film and video in one central location. The Registry is a curated search engine for amateur films. It doesn’t replace the efforts of film archives and their online presence but is a new way to show researchers and site visitors the home movies these collecting institutions have.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Facebook will let Pages (verified Pages, anyway) schedule their live streams. “In addition those who can see the post can also opt to receive a one-time reminder notification when the event is about to begin. They can then join a pre-broadcast lobby in which they can interact with other users who are also waiting for the event to start, kind of like if you were at an event in person.” Sounds better than randomly hanging out and waiting for a Page you like to broadcast.

Google has open-sourced its domain registry platform. “Nomulus is the platform it uses to manage all the registration data for domains that fall under its TLDs (think blog.google). Among other things, this platform handles all of the requests to buy, renew and transfer domains. While you may be buying a domain name from GoDaddy, for example, you’re really just using GoDaddy as an intermediary between you and the TLD’s owner.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Walt Mossberg digs Google’s new phone. “After testing the historic phone since last week, I can say that the Pixel is very, very good. In its first try, Google has landed itself in the same class as Apple’s iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S7 (that company’s non-exploding model). Like those formidable competitors, it’s comfortable and practical; fast and fluid; takes very good pictures; and is connected to a strong ecosystem.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Just in time for Halloween, a Facebook privacy hoax has come back from the dead and is shuffling all over your news feeds like a particularly persistent, annoying zombie. “A note is doing the Facebook rounds, claiming — yet again — that you need to post a legal gobbledygook to your status or you’ll lose copyright control of your pictures and other content you share with your family and friends.”

Bloomberg: We’re Afraid of Getting Hacked, But We’re Not Doing Much About It. “…while large numbers of Americans appreciate the threat of getting hacked, they don’t seem to be changing their behaviors in any appreciable way. That’s a key finding of a new poll of views of online privacy, funded by Craig Newmark, the founder of classified-ad website Craigslist. The poll, overseen by Rad Campaign, a creative agency, and Lincoln Park Strategies, a research firm, found that trust in social networks has declined over the past two years, even as people use those same networks in greater numbers.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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