NEW RESOURCES

Hillsboro Tribune: Oregon Historical Society launches online archives. “This new website allows online public access to a rich variety of materials from the OHS Research Library, including items from the manuscript, photograph, film and oral history collections. Behind the scenes, these files are safeguarded using a series of digital preservation workflows, systems and storage processes called the OHS Digital Vault.”

NepaliTimes: All our yesterdays. “Doug Hall was a PCV in Nepal in 1968-1969. A few years ago he digitised some of his old Nepal photos and posted them on Facebook. A few Nepalis commented that he should preserve those photos because they had historic importance. He then realised that hundreds of PCVs from the early years also had photos that should be preserved. His wife Kate Rafferty Hall was also a PCV in Nepal, and together they began a project to collect, digitise and catalog as many Nepal photos from the 1962-1975 period as possible.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Facebook seeks to foster community with more group admin tools. “At Facebook’s first Communities Summit, co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new direction for Community pages. Specifically how to run them effectively. The new direction mainly includes mod tools like insights into how and when members are active. There are also features en route for approving and rejecting member requests, scheduled posts and group-to-group linking so similar groups can see one another.”

Bloomberg: Google Now Scrubbing Private Medical Records From Search Results. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google has quietly decided to scrub an entire category of online content — personal medical records — from its search results, a departure from its typically hands-off approach to policing the web.”

Digital Trends: Live-stream Broadcasters Can Earn Cash Through Periscope’s Super Hearts. “Really like that live Periscope video? Now viewers can show their support in the form of Super Hearts, a new form of ‘liking’ that live-stream that will actually help that broadcaster earn some cash. Of course, that means Super Hearts are not just a click but are actually paid for.”

USEFUL STUFF

PC World: How to use Gmail’s Google Tasks as your daily to-do list. “Dedicated to-do apps abound, but one of the best may be right in your inbox. Google Tasks, integrated into Gmail, provides a simple way to create ordered task lists, complete with due dates, and even turn emails into action items. Here’s how to get started.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNET: Laugh it up! ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ marathon on the way. “The reboot of “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ with host Jonah Ray is available on Netflix, but now fans of the classic version of the show are in luck. On Friday, social-video platform Twitch announced plans for a six-day streaming marathon of 38 classic ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ episodes.”

Quartz: China’s crackdown on the country’s livestreaming craze is getting more intense. “On Thursday, China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT), a branch of China’s state council that oversees the media industry, published a notice (link in Chinese) that unlicensed providers of ‘audio-visual’ services must cease related activities until they obtain the required permissions. The directive singled out three internet companies, the largest of which was Weibo–the Twitter-esque social media platform, which has recently jumped on the livestreaming bandwagon to much success.”

Inverse: Duolingo is Keeping Dying Languages on Life Support. “A language goes extinct every 14 days. Globalization hasn’t been kind to local cultures or their mediums of expression, but endangered languages may find a surprising digital hero in the app Duolingo. The president of Ireland certainly thinks so. In November 2016, he publicly thanked Duolingo for helping to save the Irish language (also known as Gaelic or Irish Gaelic): While there are only 100,000 native speakers of Irish, an incredible 3 million people are using Duolingo to learn the language.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Telegraph: Police issue child safety warning over Snapchat maps update that reveals users’ locations. “Parents have been warned to turn off ‘Snap Maps’ on their children’s phones after Snapchat, which is wildly popular among teenagers, introduced the location-sharing mode this week.” The article also includes instructions on how to put yourself in “Ghost Mode”.

RESEARCH & OPINION

New Scientist: Google’s multitasking neural net can juggle eight things at once. “Deep-learning systems tend to be one-trick wonders: they’re great at the task they’ve been trained to do, but pretty awful at everything else. Now a new neural network from Google suggests that AI can be taught to multitask after all.”

University of California Merced: Researchers Eye Social Media’s Influence on Relationships, Stress. “Nearly 70 percent of Americans use some form of social media, according to a Pew Research Center survey. There is little doubt it affects our daily lives — but how? UC Merced Ph.D. graduate Holly Rus recently defended her dissertation on social media and well-being. She and her advisor, Professor Jitske Tiemensma, have published a review of 26 scholarly articles on social media and romantic relationships in the journal Computers in Human Behavior. The research they reviewed was insightful, but not yet conclusive.” Good morning, Internet…

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