NEW RESOURCES

Times of Israel: Archive of pre-state Jewish population offers glimpse of founding generation. “A new archive made public and searchable online by the Israeli State Archives and MyHeritage.com brings to light the names of over 206,000 Jews who lived in the country before the founding of the State of Israel. The archive spans 10 years, from 1937 to 1947, and is made up of about 67,000 requests for citizenship in British Mandatory Palestine. Some of the requests came from famous future Israelis like the late president Shimon Peres.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Business Wire: Watch Live as 200,000 Icelanders Set off Fireworks to Ring in 2018 (PRESS RELEASE). “Iceland Naturally invites you to take a virtual trip to Reykjavík with a Facebook Live video stream of the city’s dazzling fireworks show on New Year’s Eve. Simply head to http://www.facebook.com/icelandnaturally at 6:50 p.m. EST / 3:50 p.m. PST on December 31 to watch more than 200,000 Icelanders ring in the new year with their famous fireworks display. Since Iceland is several hours ahead of North America, you can watch the celebrations before yours even begin!”

Engadget: Snapchat Stories may be coming to the web . “Snapchat may have a new way to fight Facebook’s me-too efforts: make Stories available beyond its mobile app. A Cheddar source has claimed that Snap is working on Stories Everywhere, which (surprise) would make Stories available on the web and other apps. It’s reportedly in the early stages, but there would be an embedded web player that would encourage you to download the Snapchat app. It’s not certain when the feature would be available.” Y’all better hurry up before Facebook eats your lunch.

Search Engine Land: Negative reviews from ex-employees are finally against Google’s guidelines. “Google recently updated its review policies to clarify that reviews left by former employees are considered to be in violation of its guidelines. Columnist Joy Hawkins explains that this was (unfortunately) necessary.” Thanks for hopping on the clue bus, Google…

USEFUL STUFF

CNET: Free for all: How to find free (and legal) books and movies. “Besides being illegal — consequences can range from being cut off by your internet service provider to lawsuits and fines — content piracy also deprives the writers, filmmakers and other creative artists who actually make this stuff of the legitimate reward for all their hard work. Yes, even if most of the money goes to big media companies, it’s still not cool to be a pirate. Fortunately, there’s a lifetime’s worth of films and books available online that you can access and keep, guilt-free. Some of it is shared freely online by generous creators, but much of this work is in what’s called the ‘public domain,’ which means no one owns that particular piece of content.”

MakeUseOf: How to Compare Two Excel Files. “Need to compare two Microsoft Excel files? Here are two easy ways to do so. There are plenty of reasons why you might need to take one Excel document and compare it to another. This can be a time-consuming task that requires a lot of concentration, but there are ways to make it easier on yourself.”

How-to-Geek: How to Manage Podcasts in Google Play Music. “Hey, did you know that the Google Play Music app that comes with your Android phone can subscribe to, stream, and download podcasts? The feature works okay, though not nearly as fleshed-out as the various dedicated podcast managers out there. But if you hate having extra apps on your phone, and you’re already an avid user of Play Music, it could be the right move for you. Here’s how it works.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

NHPR: Bill Would Create Database Of N.H. Cemeteries . “There are thousands of historic cemeteries and burial grounds all over the state of New Hampshire, and a state lawmaker wants to make it easier to keep track of them. Senator David Watters of Dover has been fascinated by old gravestones and cemeteries since he was in high school – he also researched them while teaching at UNH.”

Ars Technica: License expired: The Ars Technica 2018 Deathwatch. “Wow. That’s 2017, though. Quite a year. Let’s grab a Juicero and take a moment to reflect on the utter dumpster fires that we’ve witnessed over the past 12 months. No, we’re not talking about the political scene, though that certainly factors in here somewhere. But even in times with a somewhat upward economic trajectory, there are those in the tech industry that seemed to have existed solely to be a cautionary tale to others.”

Make Tech Easier: Firefox Quantum: The Browser Made for the Future . “I am not too privacy conscious, nor do I hate Google’s ecosystem. Therefore, Firefox has never been able to win me over. However, with the introduction of Firefox Quantum, I was one of the keenest users to try it out. It promised amazing speed, new minimal design, and a bunch of changes that will make Firefox go head to head against the other browsers (or Chrome, particularly). So did Mozilla manage to fulfill the promise? Well, I’ve been using Firefox Quantum since its release, and I am pleasantly surprised by its performance, design and stability. Today, let’s see where the new Firefox stands and whether it’s worth a look or not.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: 5 New Year’s Resolutions to Protect Your Technology. “If 2017 taught you anything about personal technology, it’s that the onus is on you to protect your personal data and devices. Tech companies aren’t going to do that for you. (In fact, they are generally the ones failing you.) So why not make protecting yourself your New Year’s resolution?”

Krebs on Security: 4 Years After Target, the Little Guy is the Target. “Dec. 18 marked the fourth anniversary of this site breaking the news about a breach at Target involving some 40 million customer credit and debit cards. It has been fascinating in the years since that epic intrusion to see how organized cyber thieves have shifted from targeting big box retailers to hacking a broad swath of small to mid-sized merchants.” Good morning, Internet…

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