NEW RESOURCES

Reclaim the Records: Introducing The New Jersey Marriage Index, 1901-2016 . “Introducing the NEW JERSEY MARRIAGE INDEX, 1901-2016! These records are now totally digital, and totally free — forever! Now you can research anyone who got married in the Garden State right from your home, still in your pajamas. We’ve posted these images at our favorite online library, the Internet Archive (archive.org). You can skip right to any year you want and flip through all the images, or you can download the records to your hard drive as JPG’s, PDF’s, and/or other formats. Each file is listed year-by-year (or occasionally by a year range), and then the marriages are listed alphabetically by surname.” It’s not text-searchable yet, but what a great start!

Oxford Brookes University: Exclusive architecture image library by Paul Oliver to be launched . “Oxford Brookes University is launching an architectural image library comprising of over 20,000 images of celebrated art historian Professor Paul Oliver MBE. The University recently paid tribute to Paul in August when he sadly passed away aged 90. Paul, who taught at various institutions during his career including Oxford Brookes, was an expert in vernacular architecture, producing the monumental Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (Cambridge University Press), which won the Sir Bannister Fletcher Award for Art and Architecture in 1998.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Washington Post: We’ve created a Twitter bot that provides hourly updates on the situation in Puerto Rico. “On Wednesday we added a new tool: A Twitter account, @pr_recovery. Every hour, when our system checks status.pr for new data, the account will tweet an update on the efforts on the island. Each hour we’ll include numbers on power and water access; on other hours, we’ll add in other figures, too, such as the extent of phone coverage or bus service.”

A tip o’ the nib to Penny C., who tipped me to this great announcement from Boston Public Library: Boston Public Library Transfers Sound Archives Collection to Internet Archive for Digitization, Preservation, and Public Access. “Boston Public Library has approved the transfer of significant holdings from its Sound Archives Collection to the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library offering permanent access to historical collections for researchers, historians, and the general public. This project will catalog and digitize a major component of the BPL’s Sound Archives Collection, which will be available where rights allow to all for free online upon the project’s completion. The BPL Sound Archives Collection contains the Library’s collection of non-circulating commercial sound recordings in a variety of historical formats, including 78 rpms and LPs. The collection includes American popular music of many genres, including classical, pop, rock, jazz, and opera from the early 1900s on the 78 rpms and through the 1980s on the LPs. The collection has remained in its current state for several decades, in storage, uncataloged and inaccessible to the public.”

TechCrunch: Facebook plans ‘Venues’ for watching concerts, sports, movies in VR. “Facebook plans to launch a virtual reality ‘Venues’ app next year that Mark Zuckerberg says will allow people to ‘watch live concerts, and live sports, and premieres of movies and TV shows, all around the world with friends’ and other people.”

USEFUL STUFF

BetaNews: Free online service tests mobile app security and privacy. “When you download a mobile app you sometimes get more than you bargained for, Uber’s app that tracked iPhone users for example. It can be hard to know exactly what apps on your phone are up to. Now though, application security testing company High-Tech Bridge is launching a free ‘Mobile X-Ray’ service for developers that analyses native and hybrid iOS and Android apps and detects the most common weakness and vulnerabilities.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Gizmodo: Google Swears It Didn’t Nerf Giphy In Search After Exec Bragged ‘We Own Happy Birthday Now’. “On October 3rd, the founders of the GIF search engine Giphy were riding high. A cover story in Fast Company chronicled the company’s rise to power and execs were spouting off about their dominance. One claimed that Giphy’s hold on search results is so strong ‘we own happy birthday now.’ The next day, the company’s search traffic fell off a cliff.”

BuzzFeed: Facebook Says Its Fake News Label Helps Reduce The Spread Of A Fake Story By 80%. “A news story that’s been labeled false by Facebook’s third-party fact-checking partners sees its future impressions on the platform drop by 80%, according to new data contained in an email sent by a Facebook executive and obtained by BuzzFeed News. The message also said it typically takes ‘over three days’ for the label to be applied to a false story, and that Facebook wants to work with its partners to speed the process.”

ABC News (Australia): Denmark divided by social media war ahead of local government elections. “A social media war of words over Denmark’s local council elections is being called toxic, vitriolic, insulting and divisive, prompting the town’s Shire president to call for calm in the lead up to the ballot later this month. Supporters and detractors of the twelve candidates running for seats on the South Coast town’s council have bombarded local community Facebook sites, defending and attacking the candidates.” This is Denmark, Australia, not Denmark Denmark.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gizmodo: Judge Orders Limitations on Sweeping DreamHost Warrant Seeking Info on Anti-Trump Site. “A judge ordered the web hosting company DreamHost to redact identifying information about visitors to a website used to coordinate a protest during President Trump’s inauguration, imposing further limits on an extensive warrant obtained by the Justice Department that initially aimed to collect visitors’ IP addresses.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington Post: Pierre Omidyar: 6 ways social media has become a direct threat to democracy . “For all the ways this technology brings us together, the monetization and manipulation of information is swiftly tearing us apart. From foreign interference in our elections to targeted campaigns designed to confuse and divide on important social issues, groups looking for an effective way to infiltrate and influence our democracy have found generous hosts in the world of social media.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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