NEW RESOURCES

Hyperallergic: The New York Public Library Has a “Digital Time-Travel Service” for Its Historical Maps. “The New York Public Library’s new NYC Space/Time Directory is imagined as a “digital time-travel service,” a two-year project engaging the library’s collections of maps and geospatial data through interactive tools. The first such tool, Maps by Decade, was launched this month, plotting 5,000 digitized New York City street maps across the five boroughs, organized by decade from 1850 to 1950.”

ABC (Australia): Coral-bleaching database puts Australia second worst in the world. “Scientists have compiled a new global database of coral reef mass-bleaching events that shows the likelihood of bleaching increased eight-fold from the late 1990s. The new database includes 80 per cent more reports of coral bleaching than the existing databank, with Australia having the second-worst record.”

Poynter: A new game puts the public into public radio archives. “The game, called Fix It, was launched by the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a collaboration between the Library of Congress and the WGBH Educational Foundation. It asks the public for help in identifying and correcting errors in public media transcripts — which improves both the searchability and accessibility of archival material from the collection.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: About.com, the general interest site even its own CEO doesn’t care for, is going away. “Before Google became the de facto search engine of the internet, the late ‘90s offered myriad of options for when you just wanted more information on stuff: Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, Answers.com. There’s a good chance you haven’t thought of these websites recently, and that’s okay because until he was the CEO of About.com, Neil Vogel hadn’t thought much about his own website either.” I remember Scott Kurnit when he started this company – it was then called The Mining Company. Hasn’t been relevant in years and I remember I quit visiting when the sections I was interested in got really stale. RIP.

Congratulations to Florida Memory for reaching its 200,000-photograph milestone!. “All photographs available on Florida Memory are now offered under the Public Domain Mark Creative Commons license. Members of the public are encouraged to download and share the digitized archival images, provided they credit the State Archives of Florida.”

Search Engine Land: Google Home now helps you cook over 5 million recipes. “Google announced today that the Google Home device is now able to talk you through cooking more than five million recipes. Google partnered with Bon Appetit, The New York Times, Food Network and other recipe databases to bring the best recipes right to your Google Home device.”

USEFUL STUFF

ComputerWorld: How to create an automatically updating Google spreadsheet. “Tired of finding, copying and pasting data into spreadsheets? With just a few lines of code, you can set up a self-updating spreadsheet in Google Docs that fetches and stores data for you.” For some goofy reason, they made this a slide show.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Marketing Land: What marketers should know about Twitter’s Q1 2017 earnings. “In the first quarter of 2017, Twitter’s overall revenue declined year over year for the first time ever, and its advertising revenue declined for the second straight quarter. That’s bad, right? Apparently not to Wall Street investors. Despite the revenue declines, Twitter’s stock price was up by more than 10 percent after the company released its quarterly earnings report on Wednesday. What gives?”

New York Times: Why Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook. “Instagram is now substantially changing the daily experience of using the service at a speed that would ordinarily feel reckless for a network of its size. But rather than alienating existing users, its confident moves seem to be paying off.”

Reuters: Russia’s Yandex ups revenue forecast after Google settlement. “Russia’s largest internet group Yandex (YNDX.O) on Thursday raised its sales outlook for the year after settling a dispute with Google (GOOGL.O) over product distribution on the U.S. company’s Android operating system.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Artnet News: Company Launches Tool for Weeding Out Fake Artworks Sold on the Dark Web. “As online sales grow, so too do the chances of being conned. But fraudsters beware: a new tool launched by the Washington, DC-based consultancy Art Fraud Insights has been developed to spot fake artworks sold on the dark web, as well as identify those behind the spurious transactions.”

TechCrunch: Air Force launches bug bounty program. “The Air Force bug bounty will be the first federal government program that invites hackers from outside the United States to participate — the challenge will be open to hackers based in the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as those based in the U.S. Like other federal bug bounties before it, the Air Force program will be administered by HackerOne and will allow military members to participate too (although they’re not allowed to earn rewards).” Good morning, Internet…

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