FindMyPast is making its military records free to access all weekend. ” In honor of Remembrance Day, from November 10th to the 13th, you can explore Findmypast’s entire collection of over 70 million military records covering some of modern history’s most significant conflicts free of charge.”

NEW RESOURCES

Flickr’s got a new collection: Charles Booth’s Poverty Maps and images from The Women’s Library now available on Flickr: “Two albums of our photographs have been uploaded to Flickr at full size and without any restrictions on re-use. These images are taken from our collection of Charles Booth’s inquiry into poverty, industry and religious influences in London that ran from 1886 – 1903, and from The Women’s Library collection. All of these images were reviewed and deemed to be out of copyright. We have therefore decided to release them into the Flickr Commons so that anyone can download the best versions we have and use them in their projects, whatever they may be.”

There is a new digital archive of World War I stories from Europe. “The Europeana 1914 1918 project has brought together resources from three major European projects – each dealing with different types of First World War material. The result is an archive that allows the national collections of libraries to sit beside personal stories and treasures and important films.”

A new Web site aims to provide resources to Virginia veterans (PRESS RELEASE). “As the ‘Founding Partner’ of VeteransNavigator, Dominion Resources provided funding to develop and launch the website through its philanthropic arm, the Dominion Foundation. Content and features focus on meeting key needs of both pre- and post-9/11 veterans, including job training and employment, veterans and military family benefits, housing and homelessness, behavioral health, long-term care, peer support, family caregiver support, social and recreational opportunities.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Facebook will partially disable “ethnic affinity” ad targeting. (And remember, just because Facebook is guessing doesn’t mean it’s right. I just checked and Facebook still has my affinity as “African American” even though I’m pasty pink.) “To be clear, Facebook isn’t abandoning ‘ethnic affinity’ targeting. Instead, it says it’s building tools that will automatically disable the targeting for ads that involve housing, employment or credit.” Because all Facebook’s other automatic tools are doing a fantastic job!

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

A new campaign has been started to call out the lousy auto-captions on YouTube. “A new campaign dubbed #NoMoreCraptions is calling out “crappy” captions on YouTube, where creators are asking each other to make their content more accessible by writing their own captions on their videos. YouTuber Rikki Poynter started the campaign in late September to close out Deaf Awareness Month, saying terrible, auto-generated captions needlessly restrict YouTube’s accessibility.”

Twitter is doing awards for some reason. “Saying that we’re happy to announce the winners of the first #TwitterAwards is a huge understatement. These awards recognize the marketers, the idea people, the innovators and the creators all over the world who work tirelessly to create ingenious campaigns. The winners taking home trophies are simply the best of the best.” This really comes off – wrong? Tin-eared? – to me.

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Why am I so concerned about the way Facebook handles trending news and its completely opaque algorithms? Why do I hope that Twitter somehow manages to survive? Because this. “Compared to last year’s report, daily Facebook use is up from 70 to 76 percent: ‘Nearly eight-in-ten online Americans (79 percent) now use Facebook, more than double the share that uses Twitter (24 percent), Pinterest (31 percent), Instagram (32 percent) or LinkedIn (29 percent). On a total population basis (accounting for Americans who do not use the internet at all), that means that 68 percent of all U.S. adults are Facebook users.'” Good afternoon, 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!