NEW RESOURCES

From the British Library: Chaucer hitteth the Web . “It has been a warm few days in London and at the British Library we feel that Spring has sprung. Spring is, of course, a time when it rains sweet rain and little birds stay up all night singing amorous songs. Or so Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343–1400) would have us believe. And we see no reason to doubt that this is what happens. So, to celebrate the arrival of Spring, we have digitised one of our manuscripts of Geoffrey Chaucer’s collection of pilgrims’ stories, The Canterbury Tales. ”

Vanyaland: For Show: Boston Flashpoint unveils massive archive of ’80s-era Boston music scene posters. “Boston Flashpoint, Kino Digital Video’s online archive of the city’s music scene during its 1980s heyday, has this week unveiled ‘The Art of the ’80s Boston Band and Event Poster’, a showcased collection of roughly 150 posters, flyers, and prints that range from collages to illustrations to paintings to modified photography.”

Cornell: Hip Hop Collection releases online trove on genre’s rise. “Cornell University’s Hip Hop Collection is releasing hundreds of newly digitized images that tell the story of hip-hop’s explosion into the international mainstream and shed new light on some of its biggest stars, including LL Cool J, Queen Latifah and Public Enemy.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

YouTube Blog: Get the best seat in the house and watch Coachella live exclusively on YouTube. “When you think of Coachella you think of amazing music artists, thrilling performances and nonstop fun in the middle of the desert. This year’s fest will be bigger than ever and even if you can’t make it to Coachella in person, you don’t have to miss out on a moment of the action.”

Engadget: A ‘brand new’ Google Earth will arrive April 18th. “Google just sent out invites for a pre-Earth Day event in New York City next week. In keeping with the obvious theme, the search giant is promising to take the lid off of a “brand new experience” for Google Earth.”

TechCrunch: Facebook Messenger hits 1.2 billion monthly users, up from 1B in July. “Normally adding 200 million users in 8 months to a product that already has a billion would reduce the average engagement, but most apps don’t have Facebook Messenger’s network effect. Now with 1.2 billion monthly active users, ‘we increased engagement massively in terms of number of messages sent per active user. We had double-digit growth percentage-wise’ Facebook’s head of Messenger David Marcus tells me.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The National: Exhibitions: Major Islamic art collection finds a new home in America. “One of the world’s most comprehensive collections of Islamic art will go on permanent public display for the first time at the Dallas Museum of Art in Texas next week. A new gallery dedicated to showing more than 100 objects from the Keir Collection, which was accumulated by the late Hungarian property developer Edmund de Unger from the 1950s onwards, opens on April 18…. Under the loan agreement, the Dallas museum has also promised to produce a digital archive of the collection to ensure that it is more accessible to academics and the public.”

LA Times: YouTube’s new TV service gives it a big chance to reinvent the 30-second commercial. “YouTube says its new streaming service marries the convenience of online video with the star power of broadcast and cable TV. That applies to not just shows, but also the ads.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

MIT Technology Review: The FBI Shut Down a Huge Botnet, but There Are Plenty More Left. “Last Friday, at the request of the FBI, Spanish police officers arrested Russian hacker Peter Levashov while he holidayed in Barcelona with his family. The reason: Levashov is thought to be better known as Peter Severa, a cybercriminal who controlled the Kelihos botnet. Now, the Justice Department has announced that at the time he was seized the FBI simultaneously began the task of dismantling his nefarious creation.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Kotaku: It’s Time For YouTubers And Twitch Streamers To Organize. “Unique to the digital age is the video content creation industry, one where employees are ‘users’ and employers are ‘platforms.’ In it, workers aren’t owed squat. When there are tech issues, they can visit the support page. When there are platform updates, a lot of the time, the press knows first. Full-time YouTubers and Twitch streamers, workers whose livelihoods depend on these platforms, are weed-whacking their way through the nascent industry’s first labor issues. And while it’s a new industry, there’s one old, time-tried solution to users’ grievances: organization.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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