NEW RESOURCES

Harvard Gazette: Thoreau’s 200th birthday brings gift for botanists. “Henry David Thoreau wandered the forests and fields around his home in Concord, making the observations that brought him fame. He also collected specimens of the plants he found there, preserving about 820 for identification and study…. In honor of Thoreau’s 200th birthday, on July 12, hundreds of new images of his specimens, along with the data associated with them, will be posted online, part of a larger effort to digitize and open to the public the 5.5 million dried plant specimens in the Herbaria’s collection.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy has launched a YouTube channel. “Currently, the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG) channel does house several promotional videos produced for SLIG 2018. Released this week, several entertaining shorts entitled SLIG is An Institute, SLIG is Unique, and SLIG is Quality are available for viewing on the channel. Another short featuring Judy Russell will be introduced Friday, July 7.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: A Guide to Snapchat’s Snap Map for Parents Who Are Freaking Out . “I wanted to create a primer for parents about Snap Map, as there seems to be a lot of confusion, misconceptions and sensationalism surrounding it. Here are answers to some questions you might have about the new feature, and ways you can help your kids stay safe.”

MakeUseOf: 3 Places to Find Excellent Royalty-Free Video Clips. “Finding high-quality video clips that you can use for free is a challenge. After all, ‘You get what you pay for’ is a cliche for a reason. That said, within the Creative Commons world, there are some sites striving to provide awesome free content, even for use in commercial projects.”

How-To Geek: How to Mute Tweets with Specific Words on Twitter. “…by muting specific words from your timeline, you can get one without the other: you can get the books reviews without the politics, the awesome art without the recipes, and even the tech takes without the hockey.”

KnowTechie: How to deblur photos online with ease. “Photos, this very word contains an ocean of feelings, memories and valuable information. In this era when social media has become an integral part of one’s life, clicking photos wherever you go out, with whoever you meet has become a trend. But sometimes it may happen that you click photos, come home and then open the camera roll only to find some of them are indistinct and blur.” This is more an annotated list of available tools than a walkthrough.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Quartz: However strange your search, chances are Google has seen it before. ” Trillions of queries are posed to Google every year. Alongside the mundane searches for recipes and random trivia are private questions too mortifying to pose directly to another human. People come to Google with desires, fears, and curiosities they can’t discuss anywhere else, but still must know: does anyone else think this way? The answer , it turns out, is very likely yes. Only 15% of the billions of estimated searches per day are queries the service hasn’t seen before, according to Google.”

New York Times: As Elites Switch to Texting, Watchdogs Fear Loss of Transparency. “Secure messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal and Confide are making inroads among lawmakers, corporate executives and other prominent communicators. Spooked by surveillance and wary of being exposed by hackers, they are switching from phone calls and emails to apps that allow them to send encrypted and self-destructing texts. These apps have obvious benefits, but their use is causing problems in heavily regulated industries, where careful record-keeping is standard procedure.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TorrentFreak: Google Removed 2.5 Billion ‘Pirate’ Search Results. “Google has just reached a new landmark after removing 2.5 billion ‘pirate’ URLs from its search results. The staggering number is the result of increased efforts from copyright holders to remove links to copyright infringing material from the web. Despite this massive takedown effort by Google, not all rightsholders are pleased.”

TechCrunch: Waymo drops most patent claims in Uber self-driving car lawsuit . “There were a few big breaks in the case between Waymo and Uber over self-driving car technology today. As a result, the scope of the case is starting to come into focus as both companies prepare for a trial set to begin in October. First of all, Waymo has narrowed its case, dropping three out of four patent claims it originally made against Uber.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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