TWEAKS AND UPDATES
Slashgear: Google Photos’ 2000 image limit for albums is gone. “If you’re a heavy Google Photos user, good news: it appears the 2,000 image limit for albums on the service has been eradicated, or at least reduced to some degree. Users are reporting the ability to add more (in some cases, considerably more) photos to albums that have hit the previous 2,000 limit, indicating Google has silently eliminated the restriction.”
Tubefilter: YouTube To Provide VR Coverage Of Japan’s Fuji Rock Music Festival. “For the first time this year, YouTube will boast a presence at the Fuji Rock Festival — the biggest rock music event in all of Japan, which is slated to host 200 artists and 120,000 fans at its 20th gathering to date.”
USEFUL STUFF
Digital Trends: Edit, Sign, Append, And Save With 9 Of The Best PDF Editors . “PDFs are a common file type, one that’s popular among businesses and individuals who are attempting to go green and save on paper. PDFs essentially cost nothing to produce and assure that documents will appear the same to anyone, anytime and anywhere. PDFs are also interactive, if desired, and can be partially or completely edited by peers. As more people switch to using PDFs, the desire to edit and create them also grows, and so having access to the best PDF editors and readers is as crucial as printers used to be. … However, like anything available online, the number of choices is confounding. Lucky for you, we’ve taken the time to find some of the better PDF editors in existence, whether you’re looking for a premium piece of software or a free alternative.”
How-To Geek: How to Find or Create an RSS Feed for Any Website. “If you’re still a dedicated RSS user, you’ve no doubt noticed some sites no longer go out of their way to cater to you. Where once an RSS logo would be prominently displayed, now it’s nowhere to be found. How are you supposed to find RSS feeds? Before you try one of the below options, try contacting the people behind your favorite sites: often they’ll get back to your with a URL. But when that fails, you need to take matters into your own hands. Here’s how to find, or even create, an RSS feed for any site, even when one isn’t prominently offered.”
Lifehacker: How to Deal With Your Facebook Addiction . “Facebook recently surpassed two billion users. Many of those people cross the line into overuse, where we like it for what it offers, but also hate how we’ve been sucked into a time-wasting vortex where it pulls us away from more important and more enjoyable pursuits, and even engage in activities on Facebook we don’t enjoy, such as arguing. Are we addicted to social media? In some extreme cases, the answer is yes. But for most, it’s less dire.”
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
Daily Nation (Kenya): Twitter traffic soars over approaching poll, debate fallout. “Kenyans on Twitter are now critically examining what various political candidates and parties have to offer, with tweets related to elections in the past week more than doubling to a total of 257,920 from 102,787.”
Global Voices: Is Free Basics Really Bringing More Africans Online? A Case Study From Ghana . “In an effort to better understand the impact of the Free Basics app and its role within the broader spectrum of global internet access development initiatives, a group of Global Voices contributors tested the Free Basics app in six countries across the globe this spring. We conducted a case studies in Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Pakistan and the Philippines, along with a review of research, criticism and public documentation about the app’s use and utility.”
Computerworld UK: How the Bolshoi Theatre Museum built its massive online archive of historic documents. “The Bolshoi Theatre Museum has completed a major project to digitise a range of historical documents, with the aim of making the information publicly accessible and searchable via its website.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
NLTimes: Dutch Police Launch Database With Hacked Email Addresses. “The police launched a special database on which citizens can check whether their email address or other login details have been hacked or stolen. The database contains the email addresses the police found during cybercrime investigations, RTL Nieuws reports.”
Engadget: Congress looks into government agencies’ deals with Kaspersky. “Kaspersky has a long and difficult path ahead if it wants to clear its name. The US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology has just asked 22 government agencies for all the documents and communications they have about Kaspersky Lab products, staring from January 1st, 2013 until today. It wants to see their internal risk assessments, the lists of all the systems they’re using loaded with Kaspersky products and the lists of their contractors and subcontractors that use the cyber security company’s offerings.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
Harvard: Gauging street change over time. “In joint work with Edward L. Glaeser, the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard, and César A. Hidalgo and Ramesh Raskar, associate professors at the MIT Media Lab, Kominers, an associate professor in the entrepreneurial management unit at Harvard Business School (HBS) and the department of economics, and Naik, a Prize Fellow in economics, history, and politics, authored a study that uses computer vision algorithms to examine millions of Google Street View images to measure how urban areas are changing.”
Ubergizmo: Researchers Believe They Know Why ‘Gangnam Style’ Became Viral. “Psy’s “Gangnam Style” is a worldwide phenomenon where upon its release, it spread like wildfire to the point where even YouTube’s view counter could not keep up. It was also the first YouTube video to hit the 1 billion mark, but given that Psy has been in the music business for a while prior to the release of “Gangnam Style”, why or how did the song become as viral as it did? This is something that researchers were curious about and that’s what Zsofia Kallus and team at the Eotvos University in Budapest set out to find out, and apparently they have since managed to figure it out.” Good morning, Internet…
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