NEW RESOURCES

New York Times: Alan Lomax Recordings Are Digitized in a New Online Collection. “Alan Lomax made it his lifelong mission to archive and share traditional music from around the world. He spent decades in the field, recording heralded artists like Muddy Waters and Woody Guthrie, as well as far more obscure musicians, from the British Isles to Haiti. He also created systems to classify this music and explore the links between cultures. Lomax died in 2002, but the organization he founded, the Association for Cultural Equity (ACE), is hoping to further his research with the Global Jukebox, a new online database.”

Lawfare: The Enigma Sanctions Tracker: A New Tool to Visualize US Sanctions Programs. “Motivated by recent front-page news on the future of U.S. sanctions programs concerning Russia, North Korea and Iran, Enigma has brought together data from the Specially Designated Nationals and the Sectoral Sanctions Identifications lists to ground both news and speculation in historical context. The new Enigma Labs Sanctions Tracker is the first (and only) tracker available to visualize and contextualize changes to U.S. sanctions programs.”

UC Merced: UC Merced Library to Digitize AIDS Archive through NEH Award. “‘The San Francisco Bay Area’s Response to the AIDS Epidemic: Digitizing, Reuniting, and Providing Universal Access to Historical AIDS Records’ project will begin on July 1, 2017. The materials to be digitized range from handwritten correspondence and notebooks to typed reports and agency records and printed magazines, as well as photographic prints, negatives, transparencies, and posters.”

Poynter: U.S. Press Freedom Tracker will keep tabs on the safety of journalists in America. “A coalition of advocacy organizations including the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Index on Censorship have settled on a name for their forthcoming press freedom website, and a journalist to lead it. Peter Sterne, who has covered digital and print media for Politico since 2014, will spearhead U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a site dedicated to compiling and maintaining a database of press freedom incidents in the United States. Friday is his last day at Politico.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Next Web: Tumblr has a new social video watching app called Cabana. “In its persistent quest to make the world a more distracting place, technology has blessed us with a perfect way to waste time: Cabana, Tumblr’s first standalone app.”

Gizmodo: Snapchat’s Dumb New ‘World Lenses’ Feel Like Magic. “Snapchat is about to get way more [redacted] adorable. The company just launched a major update today introducing its highly anticipated “World Lenses” feature, giving people the ability to drop digital 3D objects into real world scenes. Although the feature is undoubtedly augmented reality (AR), Snapchat curiously does not mention the phrase in its official announcement.” Removed an f-bomb.

Variety: A Closer Look at Facebook Spaces, the Company’s First Social VR App. “Facebook unveiled its first foray into social VR at its F8 developer conference in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, giving users of the company’s Oculus Rift VR headset a new way to interact with each other through avatar-based chats and shared media experiences. Spaces, which launched in beta for Oculus Rift on Tuesday, lets users design their own avatars, and then meet with up to three of their friends in a virtual space of their choosing.”

Neowin: Twitch may offer $9.99 and $24.99 subscription tiers for partnered channels. “One available method of supporting streamers on Twitch is via subscription, where viewers can opt in to pay $4.99 per month for a Twitch partnered streamer’s channel to support them, while also gaining some bonuses such as emotes and chat priority in the process. However, according to an email reportedly sent to partnered streamers, seen below, the Amazon-owned live streaming platform may introduce larger subscription tiers in the future.”

USEFUL STUFF

Bleeping Computer: User-Made Patch Lets Owners of Next-Gen CPUs Install Updates on Windows 7 & 8.1. “GitHub user Zeffy has created a patch that removes a limitation that Microsoft imposed on users of 7th generation processors, a limit that prevents users from receiving Windows updates if they still use Windows 7 and 8.1.” The patch is open-sourced so you can review it, but you still want to do a full backup before you try using it. Patches that try to rectify artificial blocks by an operating system have a big uphill battle.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Forbes: Saving Endangered Data From Ancient Rome To Trump’s America. “From San Francisco to New York City, groups of scientists, librarians, researchers and concerned Americans have rushed to preserve federal data and citations that have begun to disappear from government websites. Such efforts have culminated in a series of independently organized events across the country dubbed Endangered Data Week. Believe it or not, this isn’t a new problem. Even in Ancient Rome, political leaders were fond of destroying records and documents that painted a picture of a reality they couldn’t accept.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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