NEW RESOURCES

Nursing Times: Nursing from the past recorded on new local history website. “Photographs of nursing staff taken at Christmas time during the 1920s and 1930s are among those featured in a new digital archive of the history of healthcare services in Salisbury. The new website has been launched by the Salisbury District Hospital ArtCare team to give an insight into the development of health services in and around Salisbury over the last 250 years.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Telegraph: Facebook apologises after investigation exposes string of mistakes by moderators . “Facebook has apologised after an investigation found moderators failed to make the right decision almost half the time that deeply offensive posts were reported. The social network admitted to several discrepancies in how it censored posts, after they were brought to light by a ProPublica investigation.”

BetaNews: This is your last chance to get Windows 10 for free. “Although Microsoft officially ended the free Windows 10 upgrade offer last year, it is still possible to get the new operating system completely free of charge by using a simple trick. The software giant provides Windows 10 for free to anyone using assistive technologies, and doesn’t require you to prove you have any kind of disability in order to make use of this upgrade offer. However, all good things must come to an end, and Microsoft is set to close this free upgrade route on December 31, 2017.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: Can’t Upload Files to Google Drive? Here are a Few Fixes. “Google Drive is definitely a reliable backup and sync solution with a bunch of handy features to make your life easier. However, Google Drive is notorious for upload issues, whether it is extremely slow upload speed or files not uploading at all. Countless times I’ve been slapped with an error while uploading files to Google Drive, although I have always managed to fix the issue with a little tinkering. If you also seem to be having issues uploading files to Google Drive, then keep reading, and I’ll share all the solutions that usually help me out.”

MakeUseOf: 9 Alternative Chromium Browsers That Beat Chrome at Its Own Game . “Google Chrome seems ubiquitous these days, thanks to its robust set of features. Its vast collection of extensions and its sheer simplicity make it really hard to give up on Chrome. Though, it has its own share of problems like being heavy on system resources and draining battery life. What if you could switch to a different lightweight browser? And retain the technology that runs Chrome?”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TechCrunch: A digitizing David takes on photo-scanning Goliath. “Mitch Goldstone loves photo scanning. His business, ScanMyPhotos, does what it says on the tin: you send photos to the company and, using high speed scanners and special software, his team digitizes your photos, sticks them onto a USB key or online, and sends them back. He is proud of his business. Thanks to his scanners he’s helped users save their photos from tornadoes, floods, and theft. When the California wildfires rushed through homes he and his team, when they could, were able to recreate photo collections and restore entire photo libraries. That made him feel good.”

BuzzFeed: These Are 50 Of The Biggest Fake News Hits On Facebook In 2017. “Facebook’s major effort to stop the spread of false articles on its platform did not result in less engagement for the most viral hoaxes in 2017, according to an analysis by BuzzFeed News. In fact, the analysis found that the 50 most viral fake news stories of 2017 generated more total shares, reactions, and comments than the top 50 hoaxes of 2016.”

A good read for us old people: How Hotmail changed Microsoft (and email) forever. “Twenty years ago this week, on December 29, 1997, Bill Gates bought Microsoft a $450 million late Christmas present: a Sunnyvale-based outfit called Hotmail. With the buy—the largest all-cash Internet startup purchase of its day—Microsoft plunged into the nascent world of Web-based email. Originally launched in 1996 by Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia as ‘HoTMaiL’ (referencing HTML, the language of the World Wide Web), Hotmail was initially folded into Microsoft’s MSN online service. Mistakes were made. Many dollars were spent. Branding was changed. Spam became legion. Many, many horrendous email signatures were spawned.”

Financial Express: Modi government mulls launching navigation platform on lines of Google Maps, MapmyIndia. “Narendra Modi government is planning to launch commercial mapping and navigation platform on lines of Google Maps, MapmyIndia. This comes after Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had received suggestions from companies to create a national policy for all roads to be properly mapped given that some major private players have still been unable to invest in creating digitised maps of nearly 30 per cent of Indian roads.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Techdirt: New York State Eyes Its Own Net Neutrality Law. ” In ISP lobbying land, stopping states from writing protectionist law is an assault on ‘states rights,’ but when states actually try to help consumers you’ll note the concern for states rights magically disappears. Regardless, New York State, California and Washington have all indicated that they will attempt to test the FCC’s state preemption authority on this front in the new year by crafting their own net neutrality legislation. You’ll recall that the FCC already had its wrist slapped by the courts for over-reach when it tried to preempt states from passing anti-community broadband laws, quite literally written by large ISPs, intended to hamstring creative solutions (including public/private partnerships) for the telecom industry’s broadband competition logjam.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

A thesis from George Mason University: The Spatial Distribution Of Health Narratives In Twitter And The Relationship To Corresponding Cancer Rates Across The United States: A Case Study Of Cancer-related Communications. “National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM) and Movember health campaigns in Twitter from the years 2015 and 2016 were studied to understand how tweets formed around these campaigns relate to cancer incidence ground truth data. Geolocated tweets were collected to characterize the spatial distribution at the state level of breast and prostate cancer related tweets, and comparisons were made between tweets and cancer incidence data to assess the relationship between tweet rate and state cancer incidence rates in the United States. It was hypothesized that states which participate the most in these cancer campaigns would exhibit higher cancer incidence rates; contrariwise, there was no correlation found between tweet rate and state cancer incidence rate for all four campaigns studied, indicating that these two variables did not exhibit a relationship in this study.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

I know this is a bit outside my remit, but I love it. “HEEEEEYYY GOO GOO”. From Mashable: When an 85-year-old grandmother learns to use Google Home, an angel gets its wings. “If you missed your grandmother this year, this video will probably make you feel a little better. YouTuber Ben Actis uploaded a video Wednesday of his 85-year-old Italian grandma trying to get acquainted with a new Google Home. Sure, her accent might get in the way, but she seems to have a difficult time understand the exact protocol when conversing with our new voice-activated assistants/overlords.” I am fortunate enough to still have my Granny, but she’s not into the Internet except when I show her funny dog videos. Good morning, Internet…

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