NEW RESOURCES

TechCrunch: TechCrunch: Videoblocks launches its stock photo service and changes its name to Storyblocks. “Stock imagery service Videoblocks made its name thanks to its flat-rate, unlimited video library and a marketplace that paid photographers a 100 percent commission. Over time, the service started branching out beyond video, though, and the company first announced its plans for a stock photo service earlier this year. Now — after having gathered and indexed millions of images from its first crop of photographers — the service is opening up to the public.”

New-to-me: Israel National News: Epic quest to document ‘miracle’ of Hebrew language. “Called the Historical Dictionary Project at Israel’s Academy of the Hebrew Language, it will serve as an invaluable resource for scholars, writers and linguists. But it will also act as an anchor for Hebrew, the ancient language revived in spoken form in the 19th century after some 1,700 years. Work completed so far is already available to the public online.” More information about the project is available at http://en.hebrew-academy.org.il/historical-dictionary-project/ .

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: Where to Find More Diverse Stock Photos. “It’s easy to find stock photos of slim white people doing stereotypical activities—women laughing alone with salad and that sort of thing. If that’s not what you’re looking for, may we suggest some of these sites that break the mold?” Only three sites unfortunately, but two of them I’d never heard of. Hopefully the Lifehacker comments will add more suggestions.

MakeUseOf: Get to Inbox Zero in Gmail With These Strategies. “Maintaining a clean inbox is a real challenge. You can put a ton of effort into cleaning it up, reaching close to inbox zero, and just finding yourself back where you started in a month. The key to getting to inbox zero is automating as much of the process as you can and rethinking your approach to email.”

Business Insider: An anonymous app for positive feedback just reached the top of the App Store — here’s how to use it. “Most apps that let you message people anonymously head down a similar path: Users take advantage of the anonymous features to spew racism, threats, and bullying. A new app called tbh is hoping to change that — and it just reached the top of the App Store’s free apps chart.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Reuters: Exclusive: Google offers to treat rivals equally via auction – sources. “Google has already been fined a record 2.4 billion euros ($2.9 bln) by the European Commission for favoring its own service, and could face millions of euros in fresh fines if it fails to treat rivals and its own service equally. In its proposal submitted to the European Commission on Aug. 29, the company said it would allow competitors to bid for any spot in its shopping section known as Product Listing Ads, the sources said.” I was so taken aback at this proposed “solution” that I started wondering if Google was trying to troll the entire EU.

New York Times: How the Internet Kept Humming During 2 Hurricanes. “For all their seeming immateriality, the internet and the cloud rely on a vast industrial infrastructure consisting of data centers linked through a sprawling network of fiber optics. The facilities are stacked with servers — boxlike computers that crunch the data for everything from hospitals, law enforcement agencies and banks to news websites, email and weather reports — that cannot be without electricity and cooling for even a fraction of a second. Yet even as millions of people lost power across Florida, and thousands of homes and businesses were flooded out in Miami and Texas, the heavy digital machinery at the heart of the internet and the cloud held firm.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BetaNews: Security warning: Hackers compromised CCleaner and installed a backdoor. “Users of cleanup, privacy and optimization tool CCleaner are being warned to update their software after it emerged the tool was compromised by hackers. Security researchers at Cisco Talos say that there are a ‘vast number of machines at risk.’ CCleaner is produced by Piriform, now a subsidiary of security firm Avast, making the compromise not only serious, but also embarrassing.”

AP News: Governments turn tables by suing public records requesters. “An Oregon parent wanted details about school employees getting paid to stay home. A retired educator sought data about student performance in Louisiana. And college journalists in Kentucky requested documents about the investigations of employees accused of sexual misconduct. Instead, they got something else: sued by the agencies they had asked for public records.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Northeastern: When It Comes To Social Media, Consumers Trust Each Other, Not Big Brands. “In a paper published online in the Journal of Marketing, Northeastern marketing professor Koen Pauwels and his research colleagues describe the impact of social media on stock market performance via three consumer mindset metrics: brand awareness, purchase intent, and consumer satisfaction. What they found is that all social media posts are not created equal.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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