NEW RESOURCES

A new online exhibit explores the Underground Railroad in Fall River, Massachusetts. “A few clicks tell the stories of Sarah Anna Lewis, who beat the odds to become a school teacher in Fall River around 1870, only to lose her position to gender inequality once she was married; and of Henry Box Brown, a well-known fugitive who was a guest in a Fall River abolitionist’s home some years after he shipped himself in a wooden crate from Richmond, Virginia, to Philadelphia in 1849 after his wife and children were sold into slavery, plus many more.”

A new Web site aims to be a Wikipedia-like resource for women’s health around the world. “The concept of Gynopedia is simple: It’s an online, open-source, nonprofit health care database in the style of Wikipedia that offers women free information on a range of issues as they relate to different locations across the globe. You can search by city—say, Los Angeles, or Mumbai—and get specific pages with details on where to go for gynecological exams, emergency contraception, STI tests, and where to find abortion clinics.”

MarketWatch: Threeding and Artec 3D Digitize Unique Private Paleontology Collection (PRESS RELEASE). ” Threeding.com, a leading 3D printing marketplace and community, and Artec 3D, a top-tier developer and manufacturer of 3D hardware and software, today announce its latest digitization project. The two companies are now working together in the field of paleontology by digitally capturing a private paleontology collection, curated and owned by Radoslav Trayanov, one of the largest private collectors in Central and Eastern Europe. The pieces from the collection, which consist of animal remnants, impressions and traces, primarily date back to the Pliocene, Miocene and Paleocene epochs. The printable 3D models are now available for public consumption and can be purchased on Threeding.com.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

USA Today: How to get paid from Facebook to go live. “This week the company said it will begin opening up paid live broadcasting to the general public. That is, folks who have over 2,000 followers and can get at least 300 people to watch one of their live broadcasts concurrently. Facebook will share 55% of the ad revenues with live broadcasters.”

Ooopsie. From CNET: Google issue accidentally crashed Google Wifi, OnHub devices. “If you own a Google Wifi or OnHub router, you may have to do set it up all over again. After investigating reports of faulty devices, Google released a statement to customers Thursday saying an issue with Google Accounts caused many Google Wifi and OnHub routers to reset themselves.”

USEFUL STUFF

Kris Shaffer: Mining Twitter data with R, TidyText, and TAGS. “One of the best places to get your feet wet with text mining is Twitter data. Though not as open as it used to be for developers, the Twitter API makes it incredibly easy to download large swaths of text from its public users, accompanied by substantial metadata. A treasure trove for data miners that is relatively easy to parse. It’s also a great source of data for those studying the distribution of (mis)information via digital media.”

WIRED: How to Shoot a 360 Video. “UNLIKE TRADITIONAL VIDEO cameras, which capture whatever is happening in front of them, 360 cameras capture everything happening in every direction, offering a full spherical view of the surroundings.” This is a great overview if you have a good idea of what 360 cameras are, but want more detail about how they work and how to use them.

From Peg Fitzpatrick: How to Use Hashtags on Instagram . “Hashtags on Instagram? Use them or bag it? That’s the question that Instagrammers face each time they post a photo on Instagram. Maybe you want to use hashtags on Instagram but you’re not sure why or how to use them? This article will help with those questions and give you a solid plan to move forward using hashtags on Instagram.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TechCrunch: How Pinterest’s visual search went from a moonlight project to a real-world search engine. “Pinterest’s goal was to emulate the service’s core user experience: that sort of putzing around and discovering new products or concepts on Pinterest. Just getting the literal results like you might expect from a Google visual search wasn’t enough to extend the Pinterest experience beyond its typical search — with keywords and concepts — to what you’re doing with your camera. There are other ways to get to that result, like literally reading the label on a bottle or asking someone what kind of shoes they are wearing.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Naked Security: Twitter users, do you know who’s spying on your web-surfing habits?. “If you weren’t already worried about the privacy dangers of online ad tracking, now would be a good time to start. Researchers have found a way to de-anonymise web surfing records, putting a recent US privacy ruling in jeopardy.”

UGH. From The Economic Times: No legal obligation to weed out objectionable content: Google tells SC . “Internet search engine Google on Wednesday told the Supreme Court it was under ‘no legal obligation’ to scan and weed out videos containing objectionable sexual content on its own in the absence of any specific complaint amid allegations that videos of the alleged rape of a Malayalam actress recently were doing the rounds on the social media.” This is in India. I wonder if this would be the same in the US.

RESEARCH AND OPINION

From SAS, via PR Newswire: SAS enables visually impaired to ‘visualize’ data (PRESS RELEASE). “People with visual impairments are often shut out from hot careers in STEM fields, including analytics and data science. Why? Because the technology is not accessible. That is changing, thanks to SAS® Graphics Accelerator. The software provides unparalleled access to data visualization and data science for people with visual impairments. Until today, students and professionals with visual impairments have suffered from digital data visualization famine. No surprise, since most charts and graphs are created exclusively for visual consumption. SAS Graphics Accelerator dynamically generates alternative presentations of SAS data visualizations, including verbal descriptions, tabular data and interactive sonification.” Good morning, 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!