TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Armenian Studies program at Fresno State has joined the Flickr Commons. “The historical photography collection of the Armenian Studies Program contains hundreds of images donated from the local Armenian community, ranging in date from the mid 19th century to the present. The collection reflects the history of the local Armenian community: from 19th-century Anatolian villages to diasporan life in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, to life in the Central Valley of California in the early 20th century.”

Fagan Finder, a search tools Web site from wayyyyy back, has gotten its first update in over six years! (We missed you, Michael!) Both the video search page and the groups search page have been overhauled. These are excellent sites for reference or when you need a quick overview of what’s available in a particular search space.

USEFUL STUFF

How-to Geek: How to Record Your Desktop and Create a Screencast on Windows. “The Game DVR feature in Windows 10 can create a video of your desktop. Technically it was just designed for capturing gameplay, and other software does a much better job—but it’ll work in a pinch if you need it. If you want something more powerful, Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) is a good free program that will do everything you need, but you’ll need a few minutes to learn its interface.”

The Daring Librarian: 12 Insta Easy Instagram Library & Literacy Promotion Ideas. “What’s the point of Instagram and why should you spend your precious time and money on it? Well, don’t worry about the cost, because it’s FREE! So, all you really need is creativity and a few minutes a day to make meaningful, fun, and lasting connections with your community. And with Instagram you get a twofer! ”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Lifehacker: Top 10 Services Google Killed Off. “Google has a long history of introducing, then forgetting about, and finally officially killing off its products. Most recently, that included Google Spaces, a service that most of us never knew existed to begin with. Let’s take a tour of some of our favorite services Google’s killed off over the years.” Number #1 is Google Reader, of course, and one of the reasons I’m not letting myself get too excited about how well Google Keep and Google Docs work together.

From News24 in South Africa: Social media in SA could be regulated, says Mahlobo. “The regulation of social media, in light of issues including the spread of fake news and scams, is being considered, says Minister of State Security David Mahlobo.”

Digital Trends: Facebook Will Reportedly “Spotlight” Original Shows in New and Improved Video Tab. “More details are emerging about Facebook’s grand strategy for original programming. The company rolled out a video app for Samsung Smart TVs and Apple TV last week, but for now it remains limited to content already available on users’ News Feeds. But that could all change in the immediate future.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Courthouse News: Facebook Agrees to Cut Back on Its Snooping. “Facebook has agreed to stop reading its users’ private messages for targeted ads, to settle a class action that claims it broke federal and state laws by doing so without consent. Class counsel on Wednesday filed a motion for preliminary approval of the settlement, to which the parties agreed in December after six months of negotiations.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

eWeek: Google Makes Progress on Teaching Computers to Diagnose Cancer. “Google researchers say they are using deep learning algorithms to enable computers to examine slide images of tissue samples and diagnose cancer relatively reliably.”

MIT News: Artificial data give the same results as real data — without compromising privacy. “In a paper presented at the IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics, members of the Data to AI Lab at the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) Kalyan Veeramachaneni, principal research scientist in LIDS and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) and co-authors Neha Patki and Roy Wedge describe a machine learning system that automatically creates synthetic data — with the goal of enabling data science efforts that, due to a lack of access to real data, may have otherwise not left the ground. While the use of authentic data can cause significant privacy concerns, this synthetic data is completely different from that produced by real users — but can still be used to develop and test data science algorithms and models.” We’re definitely in explody-head territory. Good afternoon, Internet…

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