NEW RESOURCES

US Department of Veterans Affairs: New database provides info on VA health care providers. “‘Getting to Know You’ is a song from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, ‘The King and I.’ If you’ve ever wanted to get to know more about your VA health care providers, VA’s new ‘Our Providers’ website is the place to find out! The website… offers a directory of more than 40,000 full time and part time VA health care providers who are independently licensed to provide care to Veterans, and who may be a member of your treatment team.”

Times of Israel: British Library publishes treasure trove of Hebrew manuscripts. “The British Library last week published a new website showcasing 1,300 Hebrew manuscripts, ranging from ancient Torah scrolls and prayer books to philosophical, theological and scientific works. The new site is the library’s first bilingual online collection, allowing users to search for scans of the manuscripts in Hebrew and English.” If this is ringing a bell it’s because I mentioned it in March when the first 100 manuscripts went up. Now it’s a lot bigger…

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

DigitalNC: Two More Decades of The Carolina Indian Voice Now Available. “The Carolina Indian Voice is one of North Carolina’s oldest American Indian newspapers. It served members of the Lumbee Tribe living in Robeson County including the town of Pembroke, which is the seat of the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina, as well as the home of The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, a historically American Indian University.” The new run covers 1977-1996, and before the project had 1996-2005, so it looks like all that’s missing is the early run from 1973-1977.

The National: Take a walk in Scotland’s national park – without going outside. “Panoramic footage of off-road walks through Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park has been posted on Google Maps. It took staff a fortnight to traverse walkways around Balloch and beyond wearing a 20kg backpack bearing recording equipment.”

Motherboard: Eric Schmidt Says Google News Will ‘Engineer’ Russian Propaganda Out of the Feed. “Eric Schmidt, Executive Chariman of Alphabet, says the company is working to ferret out Russian propaganda from Google News after facing criticism that Kremlin-owned media sites had been given plum placement on the search giant’s news and advertising platforms. ‘We’re well aware of this one, and we’re working on detecting this kind of scenario you’re describing and deranking those kinds of sites,’ Schmidt said, after being asked why the world’s largest search company continued to classify the Russian sites as news.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: The Beginner’s Guide to VPNs . “In trying to puzzle out just what, exactly a virtual private network (VPN) is, it can be helpful to simply take the first word away. That leaves you with ‘private network,’ which seems pretty straightforward. A private network is one that is basically walled off from everyone who doesn’t have permission to access it. Think of your college intranet. Or the CIA servers.”

Hongkiat: 10 Best Video Tools to Make Compelling Videos Easily. “A picture speaks louder than words, but what speaks even louder than a picture is a compelling video. Whether you need to create animated videos to pitch your business or want to make a video montage to play on your friend’s wedding, there’s no need to hire a professional as long as you have some cool video creation tools available. There are tools that turn your photos and movie clips into engaging videos. In this post, I have picked the best video creation tools that are full of features and can be easily used by anyone. Come let’s give it a look.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

National Library of Australia: Why We Collect What We Collect: Both A National And Personal Issue . ” During this unprecedented postal survey Australians were asked their opinion on something affecting their family, friends, work colleagues, congregations and broader communities. For some of us, it’s even more fundamental. And although the shared collecting effort hasn’t resulted in as large a collection as we were expecting, this personal aspect and the growth of social media has resulted in this being one of our most successful collecting projects in terms of public support and engagement. For example, one of our Twitter posts requesting original copies of campaign material reached over half a million people.”

South China Morning Post: Social media posts supporting Hong Kong poll candidates can land you in jail for 3 years, but relaxation of rules in sight. “Expressing support for a Hong Kong election candidate on social media would no longer be a criminal offence in future under a government plan to relax the city’s strict rules on what constitutes an election advert.”

Ubergizmo: Honda To Use Targeted Facebook Videos To Encourage Repairs. “As you might have heard, a couple of years ago there was an issue with the Takata airbags installed in certain brands of cars, such as Toyota, Honda, and Nissan, in which they were forced to recall vehicles that have been outfitted with the airbags. Now clearly with such a dangerous defect, customers should send their vehicles in to get it looked at right away, right? Perhaps some customers have been too busy, or maybe some believe that it will never happen to them, but regardless what the reason is, there’s a good chance that there are still quite a few vehicles out there that have yet to be recalled/fixed, but Honda has a solution: the company has recently announced that they plan to use Facebook’s targeted videos to try and seek out Honda owners to encourage them to take their vehicles in for a repair.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Wired: Intel Chip Flaws Leave Millions Of Devices Exposed. “SECURITY RESEARCHERS HAVE raised the alarm for years about the Intel remote administration feature known as the Management Engine. The platform has a lot of useful features for IT managers, but it requires deep system access that offers a tempting target for attackers; compromising the Management Engine could lead to full control of a given computer. Now, after several research groups have uncovered ME bugs, Intel has confirmed that those worst-case fears may be possible.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

ABC News (Australia): Human Cell Atlas: The plan to map every cell in your body. “Our bodies are made up of least 37 trillion cells, and scientists are teaming up around the world to map every single one of them. A new project called the Human Cell Atlas hopes to discover what each of these cells do. And the plan is to put the information in an online database that any scientist can use.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

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