NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, and looks fairly recent. From Geoawesomeness: This web tool will let you find and analyze any satellite imagery in under 10 seconds. “The service is called Land Viewer and offers free, on-the-fly, real-time imagery processing and analytics packed with features. It’s cool and insanely fast. It gives you access to imagery from Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 satellites with more to come soon.” I haven’t done too much with satellite images but this is pretty amazing.

PRNewswire: New Memorial Database Lists Georgians Who Died in World War I (PRESS RELEASE). ” Georgians who died in service during World War I are being commemorated in a unique way as part of the centennial observance of the ‘Great War.’ In a project sponsored by the Georgia World War I Centennial Commission, retired state librarian Dr. Lamar Veatch is compiling an on-line database that, when complete, will be the most comprehensive listing of Georgia service personnel who died in service during that war 100 years ago. The names and information for some 1,300 soldiers and sailors are now on the Centennial Commission’s website and others are being added as they are confirmed.” The press release goes on to note that while the initial information from the database comes from a 1921 book, the racism of the time meant that African-American soldiers were not included. This online database will correct that and does include African-American soldiers.

Brian Pfeiffer: Vermont’s New Damselfly and Dragonfly Atlas. “For the better part of the past two decades, I’ve fallen hard for insects. Birding friends here in Vermont and across the continent know this well. ‘We’ve lost him to the bugs,’ some of them would say. Not entirely. (Heck, I’ve been birding nearly every day for the past week or so: two Fox Sparrows and four raging kinglets at North Branch Nature Center here in Montpelier yesterday.) For those of you who wonder what I’ve been up to out there with an insect net, I bring you the Vermont Damselfly and Dragonfly Atlas. We launched it today, another project of the amazing Vermont Center for Ecostudies, where I’m a research associate.”

Family Search Blog: New French Census Records Aid Family History Research. “How can these records help you if you have French ancestry? These census records are valuable because they provide a snapshot of families at a specific time—in this case, 1876, 1891, and 1906. As you find your family in multiple census records, you will see a more complete picture of that family over the years.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

College-oriented app Yik Yak is shutting down. “We started Yik Yak in 2013 because we wanted to help you connect with the people right around you on campus, whether you knew them or not. And from the University of North Florida couple who met (and later wed!) through Yik Yak, to the Rutgers community that helped reunite a lost cat with its owner, to the Warwick University Yakkers who collaborated to send a pizza to a member of the herd having a bad day, the idea of local connection was always our number one goal…. The time has come, however, for our paths to part ways, as we’ve decided to make our next moves as a company.”

Engadget: Chrome warns you when typing anything into non-secure sites. “As part of Google’s quest to compel all websites to use the more secure HTTPS protocol, Chrome 62 will flash more warnings when you visit HTTP sites. A few months ago, Chrome 56 (rightly) started labeling unencrypted sites as ‘not secure’ right next to their URLs in the address line if they’re asking for passwords and credit card details. As the Chrome Security Team’s blog post said, though, passwords and credit card numbers aren’t the only types of data worth protecting.”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Library of Georgia: CLIR Webinar Series on Best Practices for Increasing Usability of GLAM Collections Now Available. “The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has just made available a webinar series presenting techniques and best practices for increasing the visibility, usability, and sustainability of collections in the GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archive, and Museum) communities. It is now available online.” It appears this was free. I was able to access the first Webinar without being prompted for registration or payment.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Chris Brogan: You’re Going to Have to Get Good at Video. “I’ve been experimenting with making and editing video lately. I’m not doing it for my jollies or because I think I’m damned good looking (which I am). It’s because WE (humanity) have demonstrated loud and clear that we want to CONSUME video. We prefer it to text. And if that’s true, and you and I are in the business of communicating, we’re going to have to make video. Oh, and it’ll have to be good.” If you’ve thought about doing video for your library or business or whatever, and you’ve been feeling intimidated, read this. It’s both encouraging and providing advice.

Gulf News: Meet a 78 year-old social media influencer. “While being an online influencer may be the trend these days, a 78 year-old Indian expatriate in Sharjah prefers to use her knowledge and a collection of 18,000 SMSs to share useful messages with her followers on WhatsApp.”

Quartz: The only thing harder than parsing Trump now is doing it for posterity. “For traditional communications like letters and phone calls, the ambiguity around record-keeping today is minimal. But the digital age has forced archivists to constantly rethink what constitutes a federal record. In 2009, then White House director of digital strategy Macon Phillips wrote that ‘everyone agrees that [emails meet] the [PRA’s] broad definition of presidential records, and that the White House is legally required to preserve them.’ The Obama administration also preserved social media correspondence. Under president Donald Trump, social media—and in particular Twitter—has become an even bigger question.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Engadget: Home Depot left customers’ unprotected personal data online. “It’s been awhile since hackers broke into Home Depot’s servers and stole 56 million customers’ credit card information back in 2014. But recently, a tipster pointed business watchdog site Consumerist to a web address under the HomeDepot.com domain. The unprotected page stored photos of various home improvement projects…and 13 Excel spreadsheets filled with customer data.”

BetaNews: 34 percent of US government agencies have had data breaches in the last year. “According to a new report from systems security specialist Thales e-Security and 451 Research, US federal agencies are facing threats caused by legacy systems, spending and staffing issues. 65 percent have experienced a data breach at some stage in the past with 34 percent having one in the last year. Almost all agencies (96 percent) consider themselves ‘vulnerable’, with half (48 percent) stating they are ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ vulnerable.” Good morning, Internet…

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