NEW RESOURCES

What appears to be a new blog (the oldest entry I could find was late November) focuses on Malaysian Films. From the About page: “Welcome to the Independent Malaysian Film Archive that is specially constructed to help film researchers, students, communities and aficionados to learn about Malaysian films and its industry. The main objective of this archive is to keep and make related materials available for free for research and creative references. This archive will accept personal contributions. Feel free to add, comment and make suggestions.”

CityLab has created a map of 30 years’ worth of pipeline accidents. “Over the last thirty years, just under 9,000 significant pipeline-related incidents have taken place nationwide, according to data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. (Not counted in this total are thousands of less ‘significant’ pipeline-related malfunctions.) To better understand the extent of this damage, CityLab mapped out all significant pipeline accidents between 1986 and 2016, based on data compiled by Richard Stover, an environmental advocate and former research astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.”

In development: a database of human-induced earthquakes. (From fracking, mining, damming, etc.) “How many earthquakes have human processes induced? Probably many more than we think, scientists indicated last week at American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Calif. Just in the United States, the number of earthquakes per year in the center of the country has jumped dramatically since the early 2000s. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), each year between 1973 and 2008, the central United States experienced about 21 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or higher. This number grew to almost 100 per year between 2009 and 2013. In 2014 alone, the region experienced more than 400 earthquakes.”

Sioux City Iowa’s public museum has created a new online gallery. “Sioux City’s Public Museum is beginning an effort to show its extensive collection of artifacts and photos online…. The website currently showcases 203 objects, about half from the permanent gallery and half from storage.” Early days yet.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Snapchat is getting games. “Snapchat wants you to play with your face, not just take pictures of it. New Selfie Lens filter games are starting to appear to users, creating an addicting new Snapchat feature that also inspires competition between friends and could become a powerful ad revenue driver. Snapchat confirms this is the launch of a new, native games feature.”

Ruth Porat apparently thinks it’s okay: Google is getting into smartwatches. “Google will be launching two new flagship smartwatches in the first quarter of next year, according to Jeff Chang, product manager of Android Wear at Google. In an exclusive interview with The Verge, Chang said that the new watches will be the flagship Android Wear 2.0 devices and will be the first ones to launch with the new platform.”

Is YouTube viewership dropping? “For months, YouTubers have complained that their view counts are down. New data from the third-party stat tracker SocialBlade confirms what YouTubers fear: viewership is lower ‘across the board.'” YouTube’s search is terrible and its suggested videos are just as bad. Thank you for suggesting I watch a video I have already watched at least three times. Yay.

USEFUL STUFF

My friend Jeff has put together a nifty list of business movies. I noticed my favorite business movie was not in here (Rocket Singh, Salesman of the Year) and he added it in straightaway! “A high school business teacher recently asked other teachers for recommendations on business movies or documentaries that she could show her students as a treat at the end of the semester. That got us to thinking about our favorite business movies and documentaries, and we decided to create this ultimate list business movies and documentaries.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Heh. From Preservica: How Not to Build a Digital Archive: Lessons from the Dark Side of the Force. “Fans of the latest Star Wars saga Rogue One will notice that Digital Archiving forms a prominent part in the new film. This is good news for all of us in the industry, as we can use it as an example of how we are working every day to ensure the durability and security of our content…. However, all is not perfect with the Empire’s choice of archiving technology, and we couldn’t help but notice the following flaws in their Digital Preservation policy…”

The Guardian: Mark Zuckerberg appears to finally admit Facebook is a media company. “Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, appears to have finally conceded that the social network is a media company, just not a ‘traditional media company’.” This is, as the kids say, a bit of weak sauce.

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Groupon customers are complaining after losing money to fraudsters. “Groupon is under pressure to crack down on fraudsters after scores of customers reported that thousands of pounds had been taken from their bank accounts when cyber criminals placed orders in their name. The scammers allegedly used login details retrieved elsewhere to hack into individual Groupon users’ accounts and make expensive orders, one of which amounted to over £2,420.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

PLOS One: Twitter Predicts Citation Rates of Ecological Research. “The relationship between traditional metrics of research impact (e.g., number of citations) and alternative metrics (altmetrics) such as Twitter activity are of great interest, but remain imprecisely quantified. We used generalized linear mixed modeling to estimate the relative effects of Twitter activity, journal impact factor, and time since publication on Web of Science citation rates of 1,599 primary research articles from 20 ecology journals published from 2012–2014. We found a strong positive relationship between Twitter activity (i.e., the number of unique tweets about an article) and number of citations. Twitter activity was a more important predictor of citation rates than 5-year journal impact factor.” Good morning, Internet…

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