NEW RESOURCES

MassisPost: Armenia’s Geological Information Database Digitized. “About 80 percent of the geological information available at the Republican Geological Fund of Armenia has already been digitized, the Press Service of the Ministry of Energy Infrastructures and Natural Resources reports. According to the ministry source, the entire database will be available online by the end of the current year.”

Tribune Democrat: SFU database tracks occupational licensing. “The Center for the Study of Occupational Regulation at St. Francis University launched a national database on Thursday that will document and track the occupational licensing regulations of thousands of professions across the nation. The database, which is free and now open to the public, has collected regulatory information that effects multiple medical professionals including physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, massage therapists and physical therapists, among many others.”

BusinessWire: Fordham Law School Launches 25th Amendment Archive (PRESS RELEASE). “The archive offers an interactive timeline of the history and events that prompted Congress to create the amendment, which provides legal mechanisms for handling presidential inabilities and filling vice presidential vacancies. In addition, the archive provides access to the legal and scholarly discourse on the 25th Amendment since its ratification on February 10, 1967. Materials also include law review and scholarly articles, books, congressional reports, executive branch documents, conference and symposium videos, photographs, and think-tank reports. All items in the archive may be viewed or downloaded. The repository will continue to grow in size and scope as additional materials are added.”

Chronicle of Higher Education: New Venture Will Offer Free Courses That Students Can Take for College Credit. “The venture, being formally unveiled on Wednesday [This was last Wednesday -TJC], includes a catalog of online courses in more than 40 subjects that were developed by academics affiliated with major universities across the country. Leaders of the Modern States Education Alliance, the New York City philanthropy behind the project, call it an “on ramp” to college. The courses are free to anyone who wants to use them, but were designed especially for students who can use this alternative approach to earn traditional academic credits through the Advanced Placement or College Level Examination Program exams, administered by the College Board.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Advertising Age: Facebook Cracks Down on ‘Fat-Finger’ Accidental Ad Clicks. “Facebook wants to fix the pile-up of ‘fat fingers’ and hair-trigger mobile ads that lead to unintended clicks. The company has decided to stop charging advertisers in its Facebook Audience Network if a person clicks on a mobile ad but backtracks within two seconds. That’s a telltale sign of an accidental click, according to Brett Vogel, Facebook’s product marketing manager.”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Trends: Play Any Video On Any Device With The Best Free Video Converters
. “What good is having a super-compressed MPEG4 video if you can’t watch it on whatever device you choose? Sure, that movie may look phenomenal in high-definition on your desktop — especially if you’ve opted for one of the best 4K monitors available — but it can be a pain to watch on your home console, tablet, or smartphone. Luckily, quality video converters have been around for several years, allowing users to convert their precious video footage into a number of desirable formats. Best of all, most of them are completely free.”

Lifehacker: Detect Plagiarism With the Help of This Friendly AI Bot. “The next literary hit to bear the same name as Jane Austen’s 200-year-old masterpiece Emma isn’t a book at all, but a thoroughly modern AI. This Emma — formally Emma Identity — the creation of computer science professor Aleksandr Marchenko, is the world’s first publicly available authorship identification web app. Give her at least 5,000 words of a written piece, and she’ll use more than 50 math parameters to figure out who wrote the lines.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Next Web: The music industry uses your social data to predict it’s next big artists. “Fifteen years ago, Steve Jobs introduced the iPod. Since then, most music fans have understood this has radically changed how they listen to music. Less understood are the ways that raw information – accumulated via downloads, apps and online searches – is influencing not only what songs are marketed and sold, but which songs become hits.”

Quartz: Students are now being told whether they got into university through Snapchat. “Snapchat is no longer a mere photo-messaging platform for idle teenagers; it’s a powerful marketing tool for retailers, a strategic branding method for celebrities, a megaphone for messaging for politicians and startups. And Snapchat’s latest adoption base? Colleges.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PC World: 4 reasons why I switched from Google to Bing. “Three years ago, I switched from Google search to Bing. There, I said it. No longer do I Google something; I Bing it. And I haven’t looked back since. Maybe you’re considering doing the same, either over ire about the recent diversity-memo controversy, or some other aspect of the search giant that has rubbed you the wrong way. Here are some points to consider.”

The Verge: How to spot a Twitter bot. “Bot accounts are a persistent problem on Twitter, where they can be used to spam out favorable news stories and influence politics more broadly. But as companies and third-party groups have tried to push back against bot campaigns, simply identifying the accounts has proven remarkably difficult. A new system called the Botometer, built by researchers at Indiana University and Northeastern University, is the perfect example of why.” I’m putting this in “Research & Opinion” and not “Useful Stuff” because it rated me 56% possible bot. And I’m not a bot, though I do schedule my ResearchBuzz tweets. Use your salt with this resource. Good morning, Internet…

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