NEW RESOURCES

Somebody on Reddit made a Google Custom Search engine that searches only Google Photos albums. Some of these I’m not sure they should be public. It’s interesting to search for things like knitting patterns or scanned books, though.

Queen’s University Belfast: Queen’s University Launches the Visual Voices of the Prisons Memory Archive. “Queen’s University in partnership with the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), and the Prison Memory Archive (PMA) Management Group, will today (Wednesday 29 March) launch The Visual Voices of the Prison Memory Archive project. The Prison Memory Archive is a collection of 175 filmed walk-and-talk recordings with those who had a connection with Armagh Gaol and the Maze and Long Kesh Prison during the conflict in Northern Ireland. The unique recordings were filmed during 2006 and 2007 with prison officers, prisoners, and probation officers, discussing at length their experiences of the prison. A diverse range of other participants include relatives, teachers, chaplains, lawyers, doctors, and maintenance workers.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PRNewswire: ProQuest Helps Libraries Meet Demand for Chinese-language Resources (PRESS RELEASE). “ProQuest is collaborating with Asian Studies scholars, librarians and Chinese-language publishers to offer a selection of Chinese- language ebooks, enabling libraries to provide resources demanded by researchers. The growing collection spans thousands of titles available on the Ebook Central®, ebrary® and EBL platforms. The platforms’ multi-language interfaces accommodate readers of traditional and simplified Chinese, and other languages.”

Digital Trends: Twitch Improves Its Streaming Options, Now Supports 1080P and 60FPS. “If you’re a Twitch game streamer, then you will want to go check your internet connection and see how fast your upload speeds can get. The streaming service upped its game significantly, offering 1080P and 60fps streaming support, and so it’s not just your download speed that you will want to pay attention to.”

USEFUL STUFF

CNET: How to set the volume for alarms and timers on Google Home. “Earlier this month, Google added a much-needed feature to its Google Home speaker: volume controls specifically for alarms and timers. Previously, all playback — including music, responses and alarm tones — from Google Home were the same volume. Now you can control alarms and timers independently. Here’s how.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Conversation: How Facebook – the Wal-Mart of the internet – dismantled online subcultures. “For those who value feeling as if going online is a physical meeting point, easy and fleeting connectivity can be perceived as a bad thing, trading convenience for commitment. BME’s community was built up through sustained and regular participation. It’s the difference between grabbing a Dunkin Donuts coffee on the way to work and being a regular at a neighborhood bar. Becoming part of a community involves hanging out, messing around and committing to local rules for participation.”

Last one and I’m done for the year: TechCrunch has a roundup of April Fool pranks. There are 23 at this writing and go way beyond Google.

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Scripting News: Is Feedburner being hacked? “Over the last few days I’ve noticed feeds coming through Feedburner that appear to have been hijacked. For example, here’s a feed that used to carry content from New York Magazine. Here’s a screen shot of what shows up from that feed in my river. The home page of the site it’s pointing to follows the pattern of all the hijackings in the last few days. A bunch of essays or student papers.” ResearchBuzz has a Feedburner feed, but I just checked it and it seems fine.

Bahrain News Agency: Social media instigator arrested. “The General Director of Anti-corruption and Economic and Electronic Security General Directorate said that an individual who posted illegal content and promoted instigative messages on social media has been identified and arrested.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ars Technica: Government funding’s impact three times larger than we thought. “In recent years, funding for research provided by the National Institutes of Health has struggled to keep up with inflation. A recent paper published in Science suggests this could mean bad things for the overall economy. Ana analysis of 27 years of NIH grants shows that 10 percent of them were acknowledged directly in new patents, and the research they funded showed up three times more often.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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