NEW RESOURCES

Digital Library of Georgia: Walker County Newspaper Added to Georgia Historic Newspapers Site. “Georgia HomePLACE and the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) are pleased to announce the addition of over 16,000 pages of the Walker County Messenger dating from 1880-1924 to the Georgia Historic Newspapers (GHN) website. Consisting of over 2,100 searchable issues, the Walker County Messenger archive provides historical images that are both full-text searchable and can be browsed by date.”

Smart Cities Dive: Australia launches database for evaluating its largest cities. “The government of Australia has launched its first database, the National Cities Performance Framework, to track the productivity and progress of its 21 largest cities.”

New York Times: Gabriel García Márquez’s Archive Freely Available Online. “When Gabriel García Márquez’s archive was sold to the University of Texas two years ago, some decried the fact that the literary remains of Latin America’s foremost novelist — and a fierce critic of American imperialism — had come to rest in the United States. But now, the university’s Harry Ransom Center has digitized and made freely available about half of the collection, making some 27,000 page scans and other images visible to anyone in the world with an internet connection.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Next Web: Facebook is testing ‘private comments’ to save you from idiots. “Facebook is experimenting with privacy settings that apply to individual comments. This means that you could write a reply to a thread, but only pre-approved individuals can see it. ”

USEFUL STUFF

CNET: How to take your best portrait photos on your iPhone. “Taking your phone portrait photography from casual Facebook snaps to frame-worthy art is simple, you just need to follow these easy tips. While I shot my pictures on the iPhone X …most of these examples will apply to any phone camera.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Daily Beast: Shadowy Facebook Ads That Pushed Trump Are Back in Alabama. “Yvonne Trosclair doesn’t know who’s behind America First Action—which keeps running pro-Roy Moore ads here on television and on Facebook ahead of the U.S. Senate election on Tuesday—but she knows they’re not from Alabama.”

Salon: Can virtual reality change minds on social issues?. “In 2004, Cathy Hackl may have watched more violent videos than anyone in America. While working in video production at CNN, part of Hackl’s job was to watch the raw video coming in from the Iraq War and flag sensitive material so that the cable channel’s local partners could warn viewers before they saw something graphic. In order to put this protection in place for viewers, Hackl had to immerse herself in such images and scenes for hours at a time. She sifted through beheadings, the bodies of soldiers being dragged, anything that might set off cable’s red flags. It was exhausting and traumatizing, but Hackl was most disturbed by how it began to change her.”

Fast Co Design: Pinterest Sees The Future. “It all started 16 months ago with an avocado. (This is California, after all.) This particular avocado was set on a boardroom table in Pinterest’s San Francisco headquarters. Surrounded by half a dozen colleagues, Albert Pereta approached the fruit and carefully aimed his phone. The creative director from Pinterest was testing the company’s latest invention, a feature called Lens, which–if it performed correctly–would not only identify the fruit but also search through billions of photos that had been uploaded to the service for the past seven years to find similar images.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Techradar: Users warned over wi-fi security . “Mobile phone users should be wary of logging into wi-fi, even though it’s a more convenient way of accessing data. The warning has been issued by mobile security company Wandera who found a variety of security holes and has published a report that details some of the problems that users of mobile devices could encounter.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Phys.org: Scientists pioneer new way to analyze ancient artwork . “Scientists from UCLA and the National Gallery of Art have used a combination of three advanced imaging techniques to produce a highly detailed analysis of a second century Egyptian painting. They are the first to use the specific combination—which they termed “macroscale multimodal chemical imaging”—to examine an ancient work of art. The new technique enabled them to learn about the raw materials the artist used, and the order in which they were applied to the painting, and it uncovered insights about the painting’s connections to other work from the same era.”

TechZim: Government, you need social media!. “Just a little over a week ago, Techzim wrote about how the army boss had expressed some concerns over how our Zimbabwean culture was being eroded by social media and all. I know this is not a new story, we’ve heard it all before. And of course, I totally get it, if you’re not a millennial your interpretation of social media would be a bunch of sexually perverted people doing nothing but hit on each other, being vocal on things that don’t matter and probably spreading fake news. However, because we (the millennials) know what social media is really about, we’re not too bothered by this, but here’s the problem…”

Notre Dame: Major life events shared on social media revive dormant connections, study shows. “Online social networking has revolutionized the way people communicate and interact with one another, despite idiosyncrasies we all love to hate — think top-10 lists of the most annoying people and habits on social media. However, there are specific advantages to using social media, beyond the simple joys — and occasional annoyances — of reconnecting and gossiping with old friends about babies, birthdays and baptisms.” Good morning, Internet…

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