NEW RESOURCES

POGO: A New Tool for Looking at Federal Cybersecurity Spending. “…a new tool from nonpartisan watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense provides perhaps the most comprehensive analysis of federal cybersecurity spending. Last week, Taxpayers released a new database and visualization tool that breaks down unclassified federal spending on cybersecurity over the past decade—giving the public a peek at how each major federal agency is devoting resources toward protecting computer systems.”

British Library: Illuminated manuscripts for polyglots. “Here at the British Library we have just completed our latest digitisation project, with over 100 manuscripts added to our website between January 2016 and July this year. The project, funded by a private donor, has focused on collection items in French and other European vernacular languages that are notable either for their illuminations or for texts of particular interest. A list of the manuscripts digitised in this project is available at online: Download French and Vernacular Illuminated project digitisation list.”

Fort Hayes State University: Fort Hays State’s Reveille yearbook archive is reborn. “Complete issues of Fort Hays State University’s Reveille yearbooks – from the first in 1914 to the last in 2003 – are now online, freely available to the public in clean, crisp, fast-loading and searchable digital versions in Forsyth Library’s FHSU Scholars Repository.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Instagram will let you invite friends onto your livestream. “Instagram is looking to make live videos a lot more chatty by letting broadcasters add a guest to a livestream. The feature, announced Tuesday, will let people using it add someone by tapping a new icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen and hitting an ‘Add’ button. Anyone who is watching the stream is eligible to be invited on, and when they do the screen will split in two. The host will be on top while the guest broadcasting from their own phone will appear on the bottom.”

USEFUL STUFF

CDM: Perform these cool music tech search engine tricks, with DuckDuckGo. “While we normally think of personalization as a good thing, with search, there’s some advantage to seeing generic results, not weighted to your own previous searches. It can create a filter bubble and prevent you from seeing new information. But, okay, that’s not a whole lot of fun. So let’s instead try some tricks with DuckDuckGo that make it really useful for electronic musicians. Some of this is possible with Google, to be sure, but part of what makes DuckDuckGo a unique alternative is its community engagement. There are tools for creating custom integrations, clever original content pages, resources for developers, and even open source-licensed access to some of the code that makes the search engine work.”

Berkeley: Megamovie app makes photographing total eclipse a snap. “When downloaded and installed, the app walks users through a simple process to point your smart phone at the sun using an appropriate filter to protect the camera’s sensors. Once protected and pointed properly, the camera determines where you are and automatically starts taking photos of the sun 15 seconds before totality at your location, snaps periodic shots throughout the total eclipse – which will last a maximum of 2 minutes, 40 seconds, depending on where you are – and takes a series of photos during the 15 seconds after the total eclipse has ended to capture the ‘diamond ring’ effect.”

USA Today: How to photograph time-lapses of Total Eclipse. “For most of us, getting photos of the sun with our tiny smartphones just won’t cut it. But you know what will? A cool time-lapse of the scene, as we watch the sun slip briefly behind the moon, and day becomes night and then day again. How to get a great time-lapse shot? You’ve come to the right spot. Especially if you’re interested in doing it on a smartphone or with the tiny GoPro camera. ”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

National Library of New Zealand: Collecting social media a bite at a time. “New Zealanders are discussing important issues on social media. We want to ensure that the issues that are important to us today are documented and preserved for the future.” Interesting series.

TechCrunch: Alphabet expands in Africa. “Google is expanding its Africa initiatives, on the back of CEO Sundar Pichai’s recent trip to Nigeria.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Guardian: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap. “More than 60 current and former Google employees are considering bringing a class-action lawsuit alleging sexism and pay disparities against women, as the technology giant wrestles with a deepening crisis over alleged discrimination.” I do not want to turn ResearchBuzz solely into an outlet for reporting on this story/controversy/whatever you want to call it. But it has with disquieting suddenness blown up into a massive issue for Google and I think its context is important for understanding the company right now.

Consumerist: Man Who Suggested Complicated, Always Changing Passwords Now Has Regrets. “The Wall Street Journal reports that the man who wrote an eight-page primer on how to keep online accounts safe back in 2003 now believes that some of his advice on how to set passwords — which has been adopted by government agencies, corporations, and others — wasn’t entirely correct. In fact, Bill Burr, who was working as a midlevel manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology when he penned the advice, says he now regrets much of what he wrote.” Now he tells us.

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Next Web: Study: Your Instagram posts can reveal if you’re clinically depressed. “One research paper, published in EPJ Data Science by academics Andrew G Reece and Christopher M Danforth, looks at if Instagram usage patterns can be indicative of depression. Reece and Danforth used machine learning tools to analyze almost 44,000 Instagram posts from 166 individuals, paying close attention to color usage, metadata components, and face detection.” Good morning, Internet…

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