NEW RESOURCES

A new project hopes to crowdsource the history of Jews in London during World War I. “It is estimated 40-50,000 British Jews served in Britain’s armed forces in the First World War, while thousands more were involved in war work and support roles near to the battlefields and on the home front. We Were There Too is a new website where Jewish families can log their family records, including letters, photographs, medals and more, to contribute to a database on London’s Jewish history from 1914-1918.”

A new database provides information on the income and assets of Ukrainian officials. “Tens of thousands of Ukrainian officials and lawmakers have disclosed their incomes and assets in a publicly available database for the first time. Late Sunday was the deadline by which all Ukrainian officials were due to declare expensive possessions and assets held in their own and their families’ names in what is commonly known in Ukraine as an e-declaration. Some Ukrainian politicians complained about filling in the elaborate forms for hours, and several lawmakers didn’t meet the deadline.”

A new set of Google Expeditions lets you explore the Salem Witch Trials. “The new Expeditions invite you to explore the landmarks from the Trials including the Witch House, the home of Witch Trials Judge Jonathan Corwin, and The House of Seven Gables, which tells the story of the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne and his connection to the events of the Salem Witch Trials. This Halloween, students everywhere can take part in learning about this chapter of history.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Hey! Microsoft has made Flow available to all. Gotta carve out some time to play with it. “PowerApps and Flow join Microsoft Power BI to create what we on the team refer to as the power trio. Collectively they allow ‘power users’ (read: non-developers) to get done what would have in the past required programming skills, with each playing a specific role…”

It looks like Twitter may be offering a “muted words” feature soon. “A new feature appears to let Twitter users create a list of ‘muted words,’ which seemed to be a way to exclude tweets with particular words or phrases from their timelines. The setting was spotted by The Next Web’s Matt Navarra Friday and by several users of the Twitter iOS app users Sunday, but has since been removed, according to the report.”

Interesting: Coursera is offering a monthly subscription model. “Edtech giant Coursera has launched a monthly subscription payment option in the hope that learners on its platform can be enticed into ongoing educational activity, rather than a more piecemeal pay-per-course-bundle option. The new payment model applies to users enrolling in any of the platform’s so-called Specializations: aka a bundle of six to eight courses that cover a particular topic. ”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

SEO Roundtable’s got the Halloween search engine roundup. Doesn’t look like Yahoo did anything. Aww.

Google is (or was, I didn’t play) offering free Drive space if you would review things on Google Maps, upload pictures, etc. Who doesn’t want free Drive space? So students at Brigham Young University started reviewing bike racks. “[Elias] Flores joined in on the fun and wrote a review for the JKB bike rack. He gave the bike rack three stars and wrote, ‘Cool bike rack. Not as chill as the Talmage Building bike rack. TBBR has more chill.’… BYU marketing senior Preston Tiegs also wrote a review for the JKB bike rack. He wrote, ‘The second-best covered bicycle rack on campus. (The LSB has the best one).'”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Google is calling out Microsoft for a serious Windows vulnerability. “Recently, Google’s Threat Analysis Group discovered a set of zero-day vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash and the Microsoft Windows kernel that were already being actively used by malware attacks against the Chrome browser. Google alerted both Adobe and Microsoft of the discovery on October 21, and Adobe issued a critical fix to patch its vulnerability last Friday. But Microsoft has yet to patch a critical bug in the Windows kernel that allows these attacks to work—which prompted Google to publicly announce the vulnerabilities today.”

Firefox is still out there, developing and growing and stomping bugs. “Mozilla has shuttered more than 130 serious vulnerabilities reported by community hackers this year. The browser-backing outfit announced the statistics in a post covering its bug bounty program and broader information security efforts.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

From the Herald-Zimbabwe: Preserving Indigenous Knowledge Systems. “Librarians play a significant role in the acquisition, preservation and dissemination of indigenous knowledge (IK). However, in order to execute this more efficiently, there is need for a coordinated approach of IK management at a national level among Government authorities, IK holders, collecting institutions, researchers, and libraries. Working together would enable the establishment of a database which is usable by people with limited experience of computers. The database would provide access to different types of users governed by different access rights to ensure that community engagement programmes are carried out.” So much to think about in this article.

UC San Diego: Live Long and… Facebook? . “Is social media good for you, or bad? Well, it’s complicated. A study of 12 million Facebook users suggests that using Facebook is associated with living longer – when it serves to maintain and enhance your real-world social ties. Oh and you can relax and stop watching how many ‘likes’ you get: That doesn’t seem to correlate at all.” Good morning, Internet…

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