NEW RESOURCES

DigitalNC: Two decades of yearbooks from newest partner Johnston Community College. “Yearbooks from Johnston Community College are now available on DigitalNC. These yearbooks date from 1972-1992 and follow the school’s shift in focus from a technical institute to a community college. Johnston Community College, first called Johnston County Technical Institute, was established in 1969 and became a community college in 1987. JCC is located 30 miles east of Raleigh and offers a range of degrees and certificates in fields such as health science, business, and education.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Pennsylvania Historic Preservation: Datasets on PA Historical Markers and Agriculture Now Online. “The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) is pleased to announce the recent addition of two datasets to OpenDataPA: Pennsylvania Historical Markers and the 1850 Agricultural Production in Pennsylvania. Wondering what datasets and open data have to do with the PA SHPO? Lots, apparently.”

TechCrunch: Twitch’s new extensions let streamers customize their channel, make money from Amazon sales. “Twitch today is introducing a suite of tools called Twitch Extensions that will allow its streamers to customize their channel pages with interactive features, including polls, leaderboards, tickers, schedules, overlays and even virtual pets, among other things. Beyond simply personalizing their channel to make it more engaging to fans, the extensions in some cases will help streamers generate additional revenue.”

USEFUL STUFF

Online Journalism Blog: Anchor just created a great audio-to-social-video tool – here are 5 other ways you can create social video from audio. “The social audio app Anchor this month launched the latest – and possibly most powerful – addition to its toolset: the ability to convert audio clips into social media-ready videos. Its incorporation of speech recognition and multiple output formats make it particularly useful – but it isn’t the only tool you can use to create social audio. Here, then, are 5 other ways to achieve similar effects, from options hidden in dedicated audio recorders to animation tools…”

MakeUseOf: How to Archive Evernote Notes and Free Up Notebook Clutter. Quick article. “…if you’re still using Evernote, you’ll no doubt be aware of one missing feature — a glaring omission for a supposedly full-featured note-taking app. I am, of course, talking about archiving. Why isn’t there a simple, native way to archive your old stacks for posterity? Even the paid tiers don’t offer this feature. Luckily, there are a couple of workarounds.”

MakeUseOf: Everything You Didn’t Know About Instagram’s New Face Filters. “Instagram debuted in 2010 as an internet-based photo sharing application. At first, users could only post one image at a time, and video length could only be 15 seconds. But after numerous updates over the years, users are now able to upload multiple photos and videos in a single post and videos can be up to 60 seconds in length. On top of many updates and improvements, Instagram began to copy popular features from Snapchat, making these fun tools available for non-Snapchat people. Prime examples of the copying include the Stories feature, and now the new Face Filters.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Bloomberg: Pro-Russian Bots Sharpen Online Attacks for 2018 U.S. Vote. “After violent protests rocked Charlottesville, Virginia last month, Republican Senator John McCain took to Twitter to condemn hatred and bigotry and urge President Donald Trump to speak out more forcefully. Then pro-Russian bots got activated on social media.”

Post Tech: Want to understand how dominant tech companies have become? Look at the number of issues they lobby on.. “A Washington Post analysis shows just how broad tech companies’ interests have become in the nation’s capital. According to corporate disclosures that were submitted to the Senate Office of Public Records and screened by the Center for Responsive Politics, some of these tech giants are regularly setting records in their spending on lobbying and are pushing as many as 100 issues — or more — every year. The proliferation of issues in Silicon Valley’s lobbying portfolio helps illustrate the industry’s growing influence on everyday consumer life.”

Arc: How Russian & Alt-Right Twitter Accounts Worked Together to Skew the Narrative About Berkeley. “The narrative surrounding last weekend’s protests in Berkeley took shape on social media and was picked up, at least in part, by mainstream news outlets. The result was a skewed presentation of events that was almost entirely devoid of the context in which they took place. Even more troubling: that narrative was influenced by pro-Russian social media networks, including state-sponsored propaganda outlets, botnets, cyborgs, and individual users.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Naked Security: People-rating app Sarahah slurps up contacts for feature that doesn’t exist. “Sarahah claims that on iOS it uses contact data to show users who in their address books are using the app. But according to Zachary Julian, a senior security analyst at Bishop Fox, the app is sucking up contacts without handing over the goods.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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