NEW RESOURCES

Hyperallergic: New Open-Source Platform Maps the Provenances of Artworks. “Launched by Boston University professor Jodi Cranston, Mapping Paintings is an open-source, searchable platform for compiling provenance data for individual artworks (not just paintings, despite its name), from owners to past locations to details of sales or transactions. It allows you to select artworks of interest and visualize their records across time and space, as plotted on a map.”

Wesleyan University: Slobin’s Afghanistan Music Recordings, Field Notes Archived Online. “Between 1967-1972, ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin was one of only four Western ethnomusicologists who managed to complete research in Afghanistan before the subsequent Soviet invasion, civil war, and anti-music Taliban regime. During these five years, Slobin, who retired from Wesleyan 2016 as the Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music, completed a comprehensive documentation of music, culture, language and society in the Afghan North. Given the region’s volatile unrest, no further musical—and by extension cultural—studies have been undertaken since.”

Stanford: Thousands of Rome’s historical images digitized with help of Stanford researchers. “A team including Stanford researchers created a new digital archive to study Rome’s transformation over the centuries. The exhibit, which went online in the spring, consists of almost 4,000 digitized drawings, prints, photographs and sketches of historic Rome from the 16th to 20th centuries. The pieces were collected by renowned Roman archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani, who sought to document the entire history of Rome’s archeology up to the end of the 19th century.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The government shutdown of Maine means the Maine State Library has shut down. “All services of the Maine State Library will be unavailable until further notice. Books borrowed prior to the shutdown can be returned without penalties when the library reopens OR can be returned to the library book drop in front of the Maine State Library entrance.”

TechCrunch: Facebook is rolling out its ‘Find Wi-Fi’ feature worldwide. “Facebook is expanding one of its newer features designed to help mobile users find accessible Wi-Fi networks. The company had begun testing a ‘Find Wi-Fi’ option last year on mobile, which highlighted free, public Wi-Fi networks nearby. At the time, the option was only available on iOS in select countries, as something of a test. Today, Facebook announced users worldwide on both iOS and Android devices will soon gain access to ‘Find Wi-Fi.'”

VentureBeat: Google’s AI-powered video analyzer hits public beta. “The Video Intelligence API is designed to let users upload a video and get information back about what objects are in it, using a system called label detection. With this release, the company also added support for detecting pornographic content, making it possible to use the service to spot videos that would be inappropriate to share with an audience that isn’t looking for that sort of content.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Next Web: Milanote is the Evernote for creatives. “Like Google Keep, Milanote lets you arrange your notes in a bulletin board sort of approach. Where it differs, however, is in allowing the user to move notes to any location within the board — including off the screen. Pin an item here, add a text note there, drop in a link, a YouTube video, and connect them in whatever way you see fit using lines, arrows, or whitespace.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Washington Post: Twitter is looking for ways to let users flag fake news, offensive content. “Twitter is exploring adding a feature that would let users flag tweets that contain misleading, false or harmful information, according to two people familiar with the company’s projects. The feature, which is still in a prototype phase and may never be released, is part of the company’s uphill battle against rampant abuse on its platform. It could look like a tiny tab appearing in a drop-down menu alongside tweets, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release details of the effort.”

New York Times: Yelp’s Six-Year Grudge Against Google. “Jeremy Stoppelman, chief executive of Yelp, the local search and reviewing site, would like this article to be focused on his company’s growth, or on how its reviews help independent businesses, or on pretty much anything besides what it is about: how Yelp became Google’s most tenacious pest.”

Recode: How do teens really use Instagram, Snapchat and other apps?. “On most episodes of Too Embarrassed to Ask, Kara Swisher and Lauren Goode answer your questions about consumer tech with an expert guest in tow. This week, they brought in two experts to talk about teens and tech: The Verge’s Casey Newton, plus actual-teen/Kara’s actual older son, Louie Swisher.” Not sure why “actual-teen” made me laugh…

SECURITY & LEGAL

Mashable: A new tool will check if you’re vulnerable to the hack that brought down computers across the globe. “WannaCry paralyzed hospitals. NotPeya crashed banks. But how to know if you’re vulnerable to the stolen National Security Agency exploit that fueled two major cyber attacks and helped bring down computers across the globe? Thankfully, a new tool has your back. ”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

Gamasutra: Dev builds a classic text adventure out of Wikipedia entries. “Freelance game designer Kevan Davis has published something interesting this month: Wikipedia: The Text Adventure, a browser-based game that pulls assets directly from Wikipedia and presents them to the player in the guise of a vintage text adventure.” If you ever played Zork the home page is gonna look really familiar… Good morning, 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!