NEW RESOURCES

PR Newswire: Journal of Biomedical Optics and Neurophotonics to become fully open access journals (PRESS RELEASE). “SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, has announced that its Journal of Biomedical Optics and Neurophotonics will become fully open access journals in January 2019. The Journal of Biomedical Optics (JBO) has been published since 1996 and is edited by Lihong Wang of California Institute of Technology. Brian Pogue of Dartmouth College will assume the JBO editorship starting in January 2018. JBO publishes peer-reviewed papers on the use of modern optical technology for improved health care and biomedical research. Neurophotonics, edited by David Boas of Boston University, was launched by SPIE in 2014, and covers optical technologies applicable to study of the brain and their impact on the basic and clinical neuroscience applications.”

Jakarta Post: Foundation documents culinary heritage via smartphone app. “The Sobat Budaya Foundation held an event on Wednesday to promote a smartphone app that allows people living across the archipelago to contribute data about Indonesia’s culinary tradition….Through the mobile app, the foundation has so far collected 1.458 sets of culinary data from around the archipelago, which is stored at the Indonesian Culture Digital Library….” I did not see an English version of the Indonesian Culture Digital Library, but Google Translate worked fine.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: NBA mixes it up with Twitch partnership. “Here’s one for basketball fans who’ve grown tired of the same old game presentation that’s been used for decades. In hopes of appealing to younger fans, the NBA is experimenting with the broadcast format by streaming 2017-2018 season minor league games on Twitch, the Amazon-owned social video service better known to the gaming community.”

TechCrunch: Google kills its Tango augmented reality platform, shifting focus to ARCore. “Google announced today that it’s shutting down its high-end smartphone augmented reality platform, Tango, in order to focus on the more mass market ARCore product. The company had already confirmed this much to us when they announced ARCore in August, but now we have an official timeline for Tango’s demise.”

Ars Technica: Google Maps finally gets step-by-step transit navigation. “Google Maps is an awesome app for getting you where you need to go, but lately the app has treated transit directions like a second-class citizen. For years, driving, walking, and biking directions have had a ‘navigation’ mode, which shows you live map and gives you turn-by-turn directions. Transit has doesn’t have a ‘navigate’ mode, though—it only ever shows a flat list of directions. Today, Google is finally adding an actionable navigation mode to transit directions.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Vanity Fair: Some Ex-Employees Plan To Wrestle Peter Thiel For The Ghost Of Gawker Past. “More recently, as Gawker’s bankruptcy winds down, it’s been reportedthat Thiel himself is interested in purchasing its remaining assets, mainly the name and its online archive. Last month, Thiel’s lawyers filed a motion in court, challenging a provision that kept Thiel from buying Gawker.com’s assets. This could set a plan in motion for Thiel to buy Gawker.com; the domain still hasn’t been sold, and a buyer would not only be able to purchase the domain but all of the Web site’s archives, and be able to do with them whatever they wish. ‘The idea of an anonymous group trying to buy a defunct media company would have made a great Gawker story,’ one former Gawker editor told me. Still, they added, ‘There’s nothing worse than the alternative—even if we have reservations, there’s literally nothing that could be worse’ than Thiel buying the archives.”

The Verge: New Twitter ads admit it’s too hard to use. “New Twitter ads were revealed today that take a jab at one of the service’s core problems. No, not Nazis, but that new users struggle to understand how to even use the platform. The two commercials show comedian Romesh Ranganathan, representing Twitter, intervening to help befuddled new users who can’t figure out how to make a profile, learn what the hell Discover is, and decide who to follow.”

Phys.org: Companies turn your Facebook friends into a sales force. “Unsolicited calls and face-to-face pitches once defined multilevel marketing—a $35-billion industry that recruits an ever expanding network of independent distributors to sell their products rather than rely on bricks-and-mortar stores. Instead, today’s generation of multilevel marketing brands including Rodan + Fields, Stella & Dot and LipSense are often discovered on social media platforms such as Facebook, which gives distributors instant access to a vast network of potential customers and recruits with the swipe of a finger.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Global News: Russian website streaming hundreds of cameras in Canada, experts warn your connected devices could be at risk. “The Toronto-area dental office didn’t know it but the security camera in its waiting room was being streamed live on the Internet. Anyone could log on to the website and watch as patients came and went. Front-desk staff answering phones and working on their computers entering patient information. It could be a serious breach of patient privacy. But it’s more than that – unsecured cameras also leave the entire network open for virtual intruders.”

IPWatchdog: Photo Sharing on Social Media & Copyright Infringement: What You Need to Know. “Do you share images in your personal social media or in social marketing? Wondering if you’re violating copyright laws? With some education, you can learn to protect yourself and your business from a copyright infringement lawsuit.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Indiana University Scholarworks: Archiving Archaeological Research Data – On Requirements, Objectives and First Experiences from a German Respectively Saxon Point of View. “Preserving digital data over long times is an ambitious task. While most analogue documents are best stored without touching them, digital data need permanent care and curation. Regarding some differences between analogue and digital data – lifecycle, complexity, functionality and so on – it can be realized, that digital archiving is a new challenge. This paper will deal with requirements and objectives on archiving archaeological research data, as discussed in a working group of the Association of State Archaeologists in Germany (Verband der Landesarchäologen in Deutschland – VLA). Interesting themes of that discussions were “Archive Objectives”, “Worthiness of Archiving”, “Suitability of Archiving” and “Future Use Scenarios”. This paper will also deal with first experiences in building up a digital archive for archaeological research data in Saxony.”

Pacific Standard: Social Media Use Is Linked To A Fear Of Crime. “It has long been established that people who watch a lot of television tend to be more afraid of crime. Hours of watching police procedurals, courtroom dramas, and violence-heavy local news can lead one to conclude we live in a very scary world. A recently published, first-of-its-kind study updates this equation for the digital age. It reports that, for many people, time spent on social media appears to similarly heighten fears of being a crime victim.” Good morning, Internet…

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