NEW RESOURCES

The state of Ohio has launched a new Online Materials Marketplace and it sounds brilliant. “The new Ohio Materials Marketplace (OMM) is a free online platform allowing these organizations to connect and find solutions to material reuse and recycling needs….Examples of materials posted on OMM (and their potential re-uses) might include common items such as bulk wooden pallets (mulch base) or used bricks (building materials). Other items might reflect materials from industrial processes such as spent foundry sand (to be mixed with potting soil), or specialized items such as spent hydro-treating catalyst (metals recovery).”

Technology Decisions (Australia): Government launches national spatial database. “The federal government has launched the new Location Information Knowledge Platform (LINK) to serve as a single point of access for federal and state government spatial data. Users of the platform will be able to access verified location information without having to find the data sources divided across nine jurisdictions.”

The state of South Carolina has a new online Web site for its trails. And this is a horrible link I’m sending you to. It’s an online newsletter. You’ll have to scroll down a bit. I apologize. “The new site features an enhanced search function that allows users to search by trail use, geographic location, and difficulty using either the search engine or by navigating the site’s map. It’s all inclusive, offering information on equestrian, walking, biking, ATV and water trails.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Dictionary.com has added 300 new words. “Dictionary.com has added more than 300 new words and definitions to its online database reflecting everything from news to pop culture, which brought these words out of the darkness of the struggle bus and into the victorious expression of dabbing.” I had never heard “struggle bus”. Kind of like it.

CNET: Facebook offers Workplace, its Slack rival, for free. “In October, the social network unveiled Workplace, a paid collaboration service for the, well, workplace. On Wednesday, the company said it’s beginning to test a new free version to expand its user base. Now, the free tier is called Workplace Standard, and the paid one is Workplace Premium.”

TechCrunch: Facebook addresses revenge porn with tech to prevent people from re-sharing intimate images. “Facebook has implemented a new photo-matching technology to ensure people can’t re-share images previously reported and tagged as revenge porn — intimate photos of people shared without their consent. That means if someone tries to share a photo that Facebook has previously taken down, that person will see a pop-up saying the photo violates Facebook’s policies and that Facebook will not allow the person to share that particular photo on Facebook, Messenger or Instagram.”

USEFUL STUFF

Online Journalism Blog: 5 ways journalists can use Nuzzel with Twitter lists. “Nuzzel offers a short-cut to the most shared stories in your Twitter timeline – and is already popular with journalists. But while it’s best known for directing you to your friends’ most popular links, it has other uses. In a guest post for OJB, Andy Brightwell shows how you can use Nuzzel to burst your filter bubble, follow people in a particular location or industry, see the world from someone’s perspective, or create a niche newsletter.”

MakeUseOf: 8 Brilliant Search Tools Hidden Within Google Photos. “Google has become synonymous with search, so it’s great to know that it hasn’t neglected this feature in their products and services. We’ve always exalted Google Photos for its brilliant features, including some you’re probably overlooking, but a lesser-known feature is that its search tools have powerful algorithms that are on par with that of Google’s search engine.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Google Blog: Google invests in INDIGO undersea cable to improve cloud infrastructure in Southeast Asia. “Many people are coming online across Asia, including businesses that depend on the cloud. That’s why it’s so important to enable better internet connectivity across the region, and why Google, alongside AARNet, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel, SubPartners and Telstra, is building a new international subsea cable system in Southeast Asia, called INDIGO. The new cable system will serve Google traffic between Australia and Asia, connecting Perth, Sydney and Singapore, with a branch to Jakarta. Alcatel Submarine Networks will construct the cable, which is expected to be completed by mid-2019.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

The Drum: German government threatens Facebook, Twitter & Google with punitive £42.7m hate speech fines. “The German government has stepped up a war of words with social media giants over their perceived inaction in dealing with hate speech and fake news, by threatening to impose fines of up to £42.7m if they fail to block or remove such content within 24 hours.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stanford: Using Neural Networks to Predict Emoji Usage from Twitter Data. “As emojis have emerged as an increasingly important and standardized part of modern textual inputs, analyzing their usage patterns are becoming of great interest to any modern text system. We frame this investigation as a text classification problem, mapping input text to their most likely accompanying emoji, utilizing 1.5 million scraped Twitter tweets for our training set. Both our LSTM-RNN model and our CNN model outperform our baseline, although the CNN model surprisingly achieves much better accuracy and F1 results. We conclude the paper by proposing future works in this area.”

Campus Technology: Report: AI and IoT to Change Academic and Research Libraries in Years to Come . “In the next year or two, research data management and the valuing of the user experience will drive technology adoption in research and academic libraries. The growth of research reports through online library databases is making it easier for students, faculty and researchers to access and build upon existing ideas and work. But as libraries adopt new data formats, they must also prepare for new methods of data curation involving ‘cutting-edge technology.’ Libraries are also tapping usability principles in their digital and physical spaces to improve the quality of patrons’ interactions by making them more efficient and personalized.” Good morning, Internet…

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