afternoonbuzz

Born Digital Artworks, Crowdfunded Legal, Twitter, More: Wednesday Afternoon Buzz, May 31, 2017

NEW RESOURCES

Google Blog: Preserving digital art: How will it survive?. “For millennia, people have created art—in media ranging from paint on cave walls to metal or stone sculpture to computer-generated images, sound and motion. In recent years, many have made an effort to digitize physical art in an effort to preserve it for future generations and make it accessible to a wider audience. And many contemporary artists have produced creative works using digital media, to be experienced completely online. Yet while the cave paintings in Lascaux are an incredible 20,000 years old, it isn’t clear whether digitized images of that art—or any digital art created today—will last 20 years, let alone 20,000.”

The Verge: CrowdJustice, a Kickstarter for court cases, expands from the UK to the US. “From board games to medical bills, crowdfunding campaigns powered by online platforms have raised huge amounts of money over the last decade. CrowdJustice, a startup founded in the UK, is trying to carve out a niche for itself in the world of legal battles. Its users have taken cases to the Supreme Court in Britain and won them all. More recently it was used to raise funds to battle gerrymandering and Trump’s travel ban in the United States. Today it announced that it has raised $2 million in a round led by Venrock and First Round Capital, money it will use to expand its visibility and operations in the US.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Twitter switches MLB game streaming to Tuesdays. “Twitter’s taking its livestreaming of Major League Baseball to Tuesdays. The first matchup starts this evening and features All-Star Chris Sale of the Boston Red Sox returning to Chicago to take on his former team, the White Sox.”

TechCrunch: Twitter and the BBC partner for the first time on live video. “Twitter over the weekend announced another live streaming partnership, this time with the BBC. The new deal will bring live video and breaking news from the BBC’s U.K. election coverage to Twitter’s network.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 5 Apps and Tools to Organize Your Job Search. “There is a palpable fear among working professionals. Artificial intelligence is getting better every day, and smart technology is making human jobs redundant. What happens when robots can do all jobs? Even if you are already employed, it’s a good idea to have a backup — organize a job search before it’s too late.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Hong Kong Free Press: Facebook apologises after ‘mistakenly’ banning 1989 Tiananmen massacre profile tribute. “Facebook has apologised for ‘mistakenly’ banning the use of a temporary profile picture frame commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.”

Wow. Google Street View is ten years old. “Street View started out as Larry Page’s far-fetched idea to create a 360-degree map of the world. Today, 10 years after the first imagery was published in Street View, people can scale mountains, dive into the depths of the ocean, scout out ramen spots, and walk through museums in far corners of the world. Over the last decade, a lot has changed—the technology we use, the appearance of the planet—but the goal of Google Maps has remained the same: to help you navigate and discover new corners of the world.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

The Moscow Times: Bill Outlawing Pro-Suicide Groups on Social Media Adopted by Russian Parliament. “A bill outlining criminal liability for creating pro-suicide groups in social networks has passed its third and final reading on Friday, Russian news outlets reported. The lawmakers unanimously voted for the legislative initiative put forward by Irina Yarovaya, an ultraconservative lawmaker from the ruling United Russia party.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Georgia: Connecting the bots: Researchers uncover invisible influence on social media. “A trending story on Twitter could mean thousands of people care about an issue-or that some computers are doing their jobs. New research from the University of Georgia found that Twitter ‘bots’ can be the driving forces behind dialogue in social movements, possibly leading to journalistic attention and governmental change.”

Search Engine Land: Another study shows how featured snippets steal significant traffic from the top organic result. “A new study released today by Ahrefs shows how featured snippets have a negative impact on clicks to the first organic search result. Ahrefs analyzed two million featured snippets and found that the first organic result shows a significant drop in click-through rate when a featured snippet is present. Without a featured snippet, the first result gets a 26 percent click-through rate. With it, it only gets a 19.6 percent click-through rate, and the featured snippet gets an 8.6 percent click-through rate.” Yikes. Worth a read. Good afternoon, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!

Categories: afternoonbuzz

Leave a Reply