NEW RESOURCES

Newark Advertiser (UK): More help needed to preserve our pictures from the past. “Thousands of images from the Advertiser’s photographic archive are now online thanks to a long-term project to safeguard them for future generations. They are working their way through thousands of old photographic negatives, some dating back to the 1940s. Because of their age, some of the negatives are becoming damaged or corroded so it is vital that they are digitalised.”

This is new-to-me and when I went to look at it I saw it hadn’t been updated in a couple of years. I was going to skip it, but most entries I looked at had extensive articles about the properties, as well as lots and lots and LOTS of photography. It’s a beautiful, nostalgic rabbit hole. I couldn’t do you the disservice of passing it over. From Arktimes: Abandoned Arkansas’s Ginger Beck wades into the ruins . “Inside the former Conway Roller Rink, a white roller skate is flopped over in front of a felt marquee board that reads “SOCKS MUST BE WORN” and “ASK ABOUT PRIVATE PARTIES” in tiny plastic letters…. We know all this because of Michael Schwarz, Eddy Sisson, James Kirkendall and Ginger Beck, the team behind Abandoned Arkansas. Together, the four volunteers identify abandoned locations, obtain permission to enter them and photograph what’s inside. They’ve been at it since 2012. We talked with Ginger Beck, Abandoned Arkansas’s new social media and communications director, about the process of exploring places that highways, urban development and economic upheaval have pushed into the margins.”

New Indian Express: Saving the past: Sajitha Madathil launches online archive on Kerala’s traditional art forms. ” Kerala has always held onto its traditional art and cultural roots with pride. But despite its significance, artisans have always feared their art was being pushed to the fringes and would die out of neglect. Understanding its relevance, theatre artist Sajitha Madathil who has served in various administrative capacities at cultural institutes in New Delhi has launched … an online archive which is a storehouse of information on all traditional art forms in Kerala.”

Lonely Planet: See California’s redwood forests for free and help protect them into the future. “Redwood State Parks contain part of the ancient coastal forest that originally spanned more than 2.2 million acres along California’s Big Sur Coast and north into Oregon. The gigantic trees were heavily hit by the demand for lumber following the 1849 Gold Rush, suffering a devastating reduction to cover only 5% of their original range. Thankfully, conservation efforts launched 100 years ago to help save the lumbering giants, which are now a huge attraction to nature-loving visitors in California.” An online guide to the 80+ redwood forest parks in California launches later this month.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

SEO Roundtable: Did Google Change The Reverse Image Search?. “Over the past few days, I have been hearing complaints on Twitter and Google Web Search Help forums about the reverse image search feature in Google not working as expected. It seems Google either intentionally made a change to how the reverse image search results work or Google has a bug with that feature.”

PR Newswire: Getty Images acquires world leader in cycling photography TDWsport (PRESS RELEASE). “Getty Images, a world leader in visual communications, today announces it has acquired TDWsport, the world’s leading cycling photography business and archive. As part of the deal, Tim de Waele – owner of TDWsport and a 27-year veteran in the industry – has joined Getty Images as a staff photographer to lead the company’s cycling coverage.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Phys.org: A look at Facebook’s changes over the years in what you see. “Facebook is once again tweaking what you see to focus more on personal connections and take the spotlight off brands and news articles…. To try to keep you glued to Facebook, it regularly updates the formula that decides what posts you see. With the latest update, the company says it’s focusing on what Facebook is for—connecting with people you know. Here’s a look at some of the ways the company has changed the posts appearing in users’ customized news feeds, which launched in 2006, as well as some of the factors it uses in deciding what makes up those feeds.”

eWeek: State of Chatbots in 2018: Rapidly Moving into the Mainstream. “By 2020, Gartner estimates that chatbots will be handling 85 percent of customer-service interactions; they are already handling about 30 percent of transactions now. When it comes to hard numbers, Juniper Research projects that by 2022, chatbots will be contributing to more $8 billion in annual cost savings for enterprises. How chatbots actually will be impacting the human workforce in the future is anybody’s guess. Maybe we someday will see chatbots hiring humans to do grunt work for them.”

BBC: Snapchat redesign is a ‘flop’ with users. “Snapchat’s redesign, which was rolled out at the end of last year, has not gone down well with users. The refreshed look pushed out in the UK, Australia and Canada has proved unpopular, with up to 83% of reviews on the App Store being negative. Many have complained that feeds are no longer chronological and are confusing.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: Russian hackers are targeting U.S. Senate email accounts. “According to a new report, the same group that hacked the Democratic National Committee actively targeted the U.S. Senate through the latter half of 2017. The revelation comes out of a new report from Trend Micro, a Japanese firm that has revealed similar phishing schemes taking aim at foreign governments in the past. As the security report details, the activity began in June 2017 and attempted to compromise a lawmaker’s credentials through a phishing site designed to look like the Senate’s internal email system.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Register: No wonder Marvin the robot was miserable: AI will make the rich richer – and the poor poorer. “Two research papers argue that the risk of AI-driven automation isn’t so much the destruction of jobs as the amplification of wealth inequality. That is to say workers in our brave new world will still have things to do, but many of them, assisting and assisted by machines, will be paid poorly while robot owners get rich.” Poor Marvin and all the painful diodes on his left side…

Library of Congress: Technology at the Library: Long-Hidden Text Is Uncovered in Alexander Hamilton Letter. “When the Library of Congress recently digitized the Alexander Hamilton Papers, that letter, unedited, with its 14 obliterated lines, became visible to all for the first time. However, the lines were still unreadable. To find out what lay beneath the scratchings-out, Fenella France, chief of the Preservation Research and Testing Division, and preservation staff Meghan Wilson and Chris Bolser used hyperspectral imaging. A noninvasive analysis that employs light at different wavelengths to capture information not visible to the eye, hyperspectral imaging can determine the composition of inks and pigments, track changes in documents over time and reveal faded, erased or covered writing.” Good morning, Internet…

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