NEW RESOURCES

Cornell: Online trade card exhibit sheds light on Victorian food and wares. “A new online exhibition from Cornell University Library offers insights into life in the Victorian era through illustrated trade cards. These small, colorful advertisements, hawking everything from agricultural equipment to housewares, became valued novelties in an era when most printing was limited to black and white. The cards were avidly collected, traded and frequently mounted in albums, and today they provide information about the food, trends, habits and fads of the late 19th century.”

Taipei Times: ‘Treasure’ online archive of US documents opens. “The Taiwan National Treasure initiative, which aims to create an online archive of official US documents about Taiwan, is up and running. The materials obtained from the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) construct a history of Taiwan from a US perspective, project coleader Lin Yu-cheng (林育正) said on Tuesday.”

China.org.cn: English edition of Digital Dunhuang officially launched . “The goal of Digital Dunhuang is to pool massive amounts of data related to the Dunhuang Caves, famous for their grottoes with ancient wall paintings, that have already been available or will be in the near future, including images, videos, and archaeological and protection materials. Based on more than 20 years of arduous work in digitalizing the artworks, Digital Dunhuang is a large and integrated digital resource and service platform for Dunhuang wall paintings and research results.” Strangely the story does not link to the new resource. I believe it’s at http://www.e-dunhuang.com/index.htm . Please correct me in the comments if I’m wrong.

Library of Congress: Library Launches labs.loc.gov. “The Library of Congress today launched labs.loc.gov, a new online space that will host a changing selection of experiments, projects, events and resources designed to encourage creative use of the Library’s digital collections. To help demonstrate the exciting discoveries that are possible, the new site will also feature a gallery of projects from data challenge winners and innovators-in-residence and blog posts and video presentations from leaders in the field.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Online Journalism Blog: The new edition of the Online Journalism Handbook is now out!. “The second edition of the Online Journalism Handbook has just been published. It’s an almost complete rewrite from the first edition — and 50,000 words longer to boot. Among the changes are new chapters on writing for social media and chat apps, liveblogging and mobile journalism, and finding leads and sources online.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: How to Add and Update Table of Contents in Google Docs. “When you’re writing a document in Google Docs, you may want to add a table of contents. Thankfully, a lot of word processors understand the value of automatically-generated tables of contents, and Google Docs is no different. This saves you the effort of manually making your own table by typing in page numbers and chapter names. Fortunately, it’s very simple to create and update a table of contents in Google Docs.”

MakeUseOf: Folks, It’s Time to Delete the Facebook News Feed. “It’s time to get rid of your News Feed. Facebook is a sum of many parts, including Messenger, Events, Games, and a whole lot more. The News Feed is more a distraction than anything else. Here’s how (and why) you can delete it.” The comments make it clear that some folks were not impressed with this article, but I liked it, if only because it got into a lot of heavy lifting.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

AllAfrica: Tanzania: Govt Tightens Noose On Social Media. “The government has drafted sweeping regulations to tighten its grip on online content producers and users across popular social media platforms. The Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) will have unfettered powers to police the web. It will also licence all content providers, including bloggers.”

The Next Web: China: all your WeChat data are belong to us!. “WeChat is the most popular messaging service in China, it’s the local equivalent to WhatsApp or Messenger. It proposes an alternative to the mainstream messaging service regularly blocked in the country. The terms indicate the app will now expose personal information such as name, contacts, email address and even location if users have chosen to share it with the service.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Salon: Russian hackers exploited a Google flaw the company has refused to fix. “A hacking team reportedly linked to the Russian government has been utilizing a security flaw in a Google service to launch attacks on investigative journalists. The web giant has known about the vulnerability since November of last year but has still failed to fix it.”

Washington Post: Facebook, Google and Twitter face proposed bill targeting shadowy political ads. “Democratic lawmakers are pushing for new legislation that would require greater disclosure of political ads that run on Internet platforms, despite a pledge by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg that the company will voluntarily pull back the curtain on political advertising on the social network. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Mark R. Warner (Va.) urged colleagues Thursday to support a bill that would create new transparency requirements for platforms that run political ads online akin to those already in place for TV stations, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Digital Trends: How The CDC Uses Google, AI, And Even Twitter To Forecast Flu Outbreaks. “As summer gives way to fall, flu season is about to be upon us. Proper preparation is essential if there’s to be enough medical professionals and vaccinations to go around. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention play a huge role in making sure practices and hospitals around the country know what to expect.” Good morning, Internet…

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