NEW RESOURCES

Citizens of South Korea have a new tool to find dormant bank accounts. “Just four days after its launch on Dec. 9, nearly one million people had visited the site. A total of 900,000 dormant accounts were terminated and nearly 5.7 billion won ($4.81 million) was collected by users. Excluding the 200,000 dormant accounts with zero balances, each account had an average balance of 6,500 won.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The North Carolina State Parks Collection has gotten a lot of new material. “In honor of the centennial anniversary of North Carolina’s State Parks in 2016, hundreds of folders of historical documents from the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation records collection at the State Archives have been digitized and added to the North Carolina State Parks digital collection at North Carolina Digital Collections.”

Google Drive wants to make it easier for you to switch from iPhone to Android. “Getting people to leave behind their iPhones and move to Android is something Google has focused on more heavily in recent months. For example, its new Pixel smartphones ship with a ‘Quick Switch’ adapter that let you easily transfer data between your iPhone and your new Pixel phone. For everyone else, Google has just released a tool that turns Google Drive into a useful utility for backing up data to Google’s cloud before switching devices.”

Google Home has added a bunch of partners. “Other new Google Home partners include Netflix for movie streaming, WebMD for medical information, Tender for mixed-drink advice, Chill for Netflix movie recommendations and the Food Network for recipes. And starting in early 2017, Mercedes-Benz car owners will be able to use Google Home to send navigation destinations to their cars, pick the right cabin temperature, check fuel and electric charge levels, find out if the its doors are locked and lock them remotely.”

TechCrunch: Kickstarter is open sourcing the code for its Android and iOS apps. “Kickstarter is pulling back the curtain on its app development process. This morning, the crowdfunding platform is taking to its engineering blog to announce that it will be open sourcing the code for its native Android and iOS apps, in keeping with the company’s goal of giving startups a bit of a leg up.”

Google is apparently going to revamp and relaunch Google Contributor. “Google Contributor, the subscription service that allowed users to see fewer advertisements on publisher sites for a fee, will close in January and reopen in early 2017 with a new version. The service allowed site visitors to pay fractions of pennies to see fewer Google-served display advertisements when visiting publisher Web sites, but insiders said getting users to pay for a subscription was slow going.” I never did understand how that would work – why pay Google money when you could just use an ad blocker? (I’m not saying that’s the right thing to do, I’m just saying that’s one argument against it.)

Twitch has launched a new IRL category. “IRL is an acronym that stands for ‘in real life’, and it’ll show exactly that. Twitch’s constituency of streamers will broadcast their everyday happenings, allowing them to engage with their audience without it being centered around video games.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

From Creative Commons: Reviving archives through remix: How a Dutch archival project is reinvigorating electronic music. “What does it mean to listen to the past through a truly modern lens? This is the question the Dutch project re:vive seeks to answer. Working with renowned electronic and experimental musicians such as Lakker, Roly Porter, and Bas Mooy, the project from the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision draws on global archives and museums to encourage legal, creative reuse of historic sounds.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Warns: Automated Queries On Google Is Against The Terms Of Service. And if you put in queries too fast even as a searching human, it will slow you down by making you enter a CAPTCHA. Do not ask me how I know this. “Everyone knows that tools that scrap and do automated queries are against Google’s terms of service. In fact, Google has blocked tools in the past from doing them. But many many tools continue to do it. Why? Well, Google ditched their search API years ago and they have really no other safe way to automate the process.”

In case you’ve forgotten about Yahoo’s traditional revolving door for CEOs, NBC News has a debriefing. “The job of Yahoo CEO might as well be cursed. Marissa Mayer tried, but overall had a tough time revitalizing the internet company during her four-year tenure. But Mayer isn’t the first CEO to have difficulty steering the ship. Before she was appointed in 2012, the company went through a grand total of five CEOs in as many years.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

The EFF has updated Privacy Badger. “Third-party tracking—that is, when advertisers and websites track your browsing activity across the web without your knowledge, control, or consent—is an alarmingly widespread practice in online advertising. Privacy Badger spots and then blocks third-party domains that seem to be tracking your browsing habits (e.g. by setting cookies that could be used for tracking, or by fingerprinting your browser). If the same third-party domain appears to be tracking you on three or more different websites, Privacy Badger will conclude that the third party domain is a tracker and block future connections to it.”

The government of India is asking Yahoo and other tech companies to up their security game. “The government information and technology department has asked email service providers Google and Yahoo, and social networking platforms Facebook and Twitter to strengthen security systems to safeguard Indian users in wake of the recent incidents of cyber-hacking.” Good morning, Internet…

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