NEW RESOURCES

The UK is planning a national missing persons database. “The Home Office has announced plans for a National Missing Persons Register, expected to go live in 2018. It will give police access to information about adults and children who have disappeared wherever they are in the country.”

Hong Kong is getting a new online legislation database. “A new electronic legislation database known as Hong Kong e-Legislation (HKeL) will be launched by the Department of Justice on Friday to offer free public access to the laws of Hong Kong.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Want to buy Snapchat Spectacles? Are you in the US? then you’re in luck. “The $130 glasses, which allow wearers to take circular videos and post them to their Snapchat accounts, are now available on Spectacles.com. Before, the glasses were sold through vending machines which popped up in major metro areas around the country, as well as a store in Manhattan.”

Google is deprecating several features in its Custom Search product. “Custom Search Engine (CSE) is a great way to build custom search experiences for your website visitors. The search space is evolving rapidly and we want to make sure that CSE continues to evolve to meet the needs of your users, whether they are visiting from desktop or mobile devices. In order for us to achieve this, we first need to clean up some older access points that cannot support the improvements we will be adding.”

The Guardian: Google and Bing to deprecate piracy websites. “Internet users will find it harder to search for pirated films and music and illegally streamed live football matches under a new plan to crackdown on piracy websites. Search engine companies Google and Bing have signed up to a voluntary code of practice aimed at preventing users from visiting disreputable content providers.”

USEFUL STUFF

The RootsTech Session videos for 2017 are now available online. I clicked on a few at random and they all seem to be freely available.

TorrentFreak: Brave: A Privacy Focused Browser With Built-in Torrent Streaming. “Brave is a new privacy and security focused web browser with built-in support for torrent downloading and streaming. The browser allows seasoned downloaders and complete novices to get their torrent fix instantly, without any hassle.” It’s important to remember that plenty of legal content is distributed via Torrent, and that torrented content is not inherently pirated, etc.

Terry White has an extensive look at his setup for livestreaming from the desktop. “I setup a dedicated live streaming studio in my home. Being a photographer I’ve setup a few photography studios and no matter how you equip your studio you can always find more gear that you want and ways to improve it. I’ve been building out this live streaming studio since May 2016. I have everything I ‘need’ to do my streams, but I’m always looking out for ways to improve upon what I have.”

Liberian Geek has a fun roundup: 10 Free and Fun Filler Text Generators. “It’s a standard practice to use the old Latin Lorem Ipsum… text as a placeholder for actual test in a preliminary design or product, so why not spice it up a bit? What follows is a list of fun and free text generators that are sure to put a smile on the face of anyone who comes across them.” Cheese Ipsum?

PC Magazine: 23 Must-Have Alexa Skills for Your Small Business “Companies and developers are building more Alexa skills by the day. Setting up an Echo or other connected Alexa device in your office can already start paying dividends for everything from scheduling and productivity to email marketing and website monitoring. Below, we’ve combed through the current skills catalog and compiled a list of 23 must-have Alexa skills you can enable today for your SMB.” This is one of those articles that just made me go “wow… wow….wow!”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

WIRED: Old-Guard Archivists Keep Federal Data Safer Than You Think. “Since election night, hundreds of people have come to events across the country to log data they feared would get disappeared by government agencies in the Trump administration—because of connections to climate change, or gun violence, or any number of other subjects. Coordinated by groups like DataRefuge and the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, every 404 error on a government website has made these would-be archivists suspicious. But not every 404 error is evidence that some critical dataset got tossed. The webpages might be the same; it’s the world around them that changed.” I think the activist archivists are doing something important and I’m a bit upset that this article seems to belittle it. But there’s important background information here.

RESEARCH AND OPINION

NPR: Facebook Wants Great Power, But What About Responsibility? “The chief of Facebook made an ambitious announcement last week, though it would have been easy to miss. It came Thursday afternoon — about the same time that President Trump held his news conference. While the reality-TV icon is a genius at capturing our attention, the technology leader’s words may prove to be more relevant to our lives, and more radical.” Good morning, Internet…

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