NEW RESOURCES

Noupe: Free for Commercial Use: Another Load of Free Stock Photos . “FFCU is the abbreviation of the new stock photo provider ‘Free for Commercial Use,’ and that name says it all. All you’ll find on FFCU are completely free to use photos. You probably already know the mind behind the service.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Genealogy’s Star: Reclaim The Records Frees The New York State Death Index. “Since our founding in 2015, we’ve won the first-ever release of tens of millions of records, which we then upload to the Internet Archive, as well as other Open Data websites. When government agencies fail to respond to our requests in a timely manner or are unwilling to comply with the law, we take them to court. We’ve won settlements in two groundbreaking lawsuits in the Supreme Court of New York, winning the release of decades of the New York City marriage license index and database, and we even won the payment of our attorneys fees from the city in the second case.”

PRNewswire: Trump Database Factba.se Raises New Round of Seed Funding, Incorporates as FactSquared (PRESS RELEASE). ” FactSquared (http://factsquared.com), parent company of the acclaimed and often-cited platform Factba.se (https://factba.se) today announced it has raised seed funding, led by serial entrepreneurs and investors Mark Walsh and Matt Koll. FactSquared will use the capital to expand its outreach in the political, corporates and media fields and continue development of its platform – which has made instantly searchable every word spoken by President Donald Trump since the 1980s.

CNET: Yahoo security chief reportedly out after merger. “After Yahoo and AOL officially join forces, Yahoo’s security chief reportedly won’t be leading the company’s cybersecurity efforts. Instead, the top job, or chief information security officer (CISO), will go to AOL’s Chris Nims, according to a report Friday by TechCrunch.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Verge: How to master Google Photos. “… there’s really no great manual or user guide for Google Photos. Google’s FAQ site is about as close as the company comes to a ‘getting started’ handbook. So I’ve compiled some how-tos and tips here and plan to update this article to keep up with any big changes that Google makes to the app.”

MakeUseOf: 5 Apps That’ll Remember Anything for You. “Much like a computer, your brain also has a limited amount of memory. You can’t possibly remember everything you come across. But when something is important, it helps to have a quick way to remember it. Smart technology is dumbing down the human race, but it’s also about how you use it. Offloading the non-important bits of your memory to a device will free up room for you to retain other information. There’s no reason for you to remember John the assistant’s birthday or your mother-in-law’s favorite color, so let one of these apps do it for you instead.” I gotta check out Reminder Team.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Search Engine Journal: Why (And How) to Buy Twitter Followers . “Growing your Twitter following is hard work. There is a lot of competition out there and without the validation of an audience, it feels like you’re shouting into the wind. So should you buy Twitter followers to give your account a boost? After all, once a business grows this following, the rewards can be significant. There are a few paths to buying Twitter followers, but each needs to be considered carefully.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Dawn (Pakistan): First death sentence handed to man for blasphemy on social media. “An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) on Saturday sentenced a man to death for sharing blasphemous content about Islam on social media, a government prosecutor said. ATC Judge Shabir Ahmed announced the sentence for the 30-year-old accused in Bahawalpur, according to Shafiq Qureshi.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

From Portland State University, a thesis: Increasing Engagement on Nonprofit Facebook Pages through Photos. “Developing effective strategies that maximize social media post engagement is beneficial in aiding organizations to achieve their marketing goals. This study focuses specifically on Facebook photo posts due to the platform’s widespread use and the high potential of visual media to provoke audience engagement, and aims to identify effective strategies for combining various text functions and types of photo content in order to maximize engagement from followers.” The author does note that the same size for the study was fairly small, but it’s an interesting (and fairly brief for a thesis) read.

Quartz: Researchers have found a way to root out identity thieves by analyzing their mouse movements with AI. “In the study, published recently in PLoS One, the researchers quizzed 40 respondents about their personal details. Half of the respondents were asked to answer the questions truthfully, but the other half were given details about fake identities they had to memorize and use in the quiz. The computer quiz kept track of the movement of each respondent’s mouse as they answered the questions, and noted how the fakes differed from the truth-tellers when they moved the cursor from the bottom of the screen to the answers at the top.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

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