NEW RESOURCES
Notre Dame: Digital archive of historic Father Hesburgh works now available. “The University of Notre Dame Archives and the Hesburgh Libraries have launched a new research portal dedicated to preserving and increasing access to some of the most important works of former University President Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., including his work on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The Hesburgh Portal…assembles some of the writings and images from throughout his life and makes the assets digitally available to the public.”
Neighbor News Online: Roswell teen launches nature websites, starting Sandy Springs-based group. “Mark’s new website is devoted to informing the public about little-known waterfalls that were discovered both by him and others. He estimates there are about 300 waterfalls in Georgia, and the site was set up to serve as a state database for them, especially the lesser-known ones…. He even got to name a waterfall he discovered Angelica Falls, after his mother, to honor her.”
USDA: Child Nutrition Goes Digital: Food and Nutrition Service Launches First Food Buying Guide Mobile App. “The FBG is the essential resource for food yield information for all child nutrition programs, including the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Summer Food Service Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program. Yield information helps operators know how much food to purchase and how that food will contribute to the meal pattern requirements to ensure that children are getting proper nutrition through the programs. Program operators can also use the FBG Mobile App on-the-go to make quick purchasing decisions from mobile devices. The new app includes food yield search, comparison, and navigation features for more than 2,100 foods typically served in child nutrition program settings, and can help users create favorite foods lists.” The app is iOS only at the moment; Android will come later.
Liberty University: Longtime professor makes his life’s work available online. “The newly launched Liberty University Bible Resource Center is a worldwide online resource that includes Willmington’s S.W.O.R.D. project (Scripture Wisdom Organized and Rightly Divided). It consists of 16 major programs of study, with up to 1,000 of Willmington’s writings on subjects from both the Old and New Testaments. Information is gleaned from some of Willmington’s most popular works, such as ‘Willmington’s Guide to the Bible,’ which has sold 350,000 copies worldwide and is translated into six different languages. The site is organized by subject matter, so it is easy for all students to navigate.”
Fast Company Design: This Map Visualizes How LBGTQ-Friendly Your Next Vacation Destination Is. “A new tool released by the nonprofit PFLAG Canada and the Canadian ad agency FCB/SIX gives LGBTQ travelers a quick snapshot of how friendly any place in the world is to the community. Though PFLAG Canada aims to help families reconcile differences when it comes to LGBTQ issues, the idea for the project actually came from the ad agency, which then partnered with the nonprofit to bring the tool to life and help people learn about the laws and sentiment toward LGBTQ people in different places.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
VentureBeat: Firefox 58 arrives with smoother rendering, faster JavaScript caching, and Progressive Web Apps on Android . “Mozilla today launched Firefox 58 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The release builds on the improvements made in version 57, branded Firefox Quantum, which the company calls ‘by far the biggest update since Firefox 1.0 in 2004.’ Version 58 brings smoother graphics rendering and faster page loading, thanks to JavaScript caching improvements, and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) on Android.”
TechCrunch: Reddit adds 2-factor authentication for all. “Reddit has finally joined other major web properties in adding two-factor authentication for all users. It’s been available for mods and some testers for a while, but this is the first time the vast multitudes of redditors will have access to it.”
The Next Web: Facebook is using a more efficient way to translate languages. “Facebook today announced a new technique in in its language translation which works faster and more accurately. It also helps Facebook catch problems across all languages more quickly. The site now has multilingual word embedding, which it says is 20 to 30 times faster than the natural language processing it had been using. Up to now, Facebook says translating for a new language took almost as long as building a new application. Now it uses language vectors which group words with the same meaning together.”
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
CNN: Hundreds of newly created Twitter accounts pushed #ReleaseTheMemo. “The viral hashtag campaign #ReleaseTheMemo appears to have been driven at least in part by a swarm of Twitter accounts set up in the past week, a CNN analysis has found. More than 1,000 accounts that were set up between Thursday — when the hashtag first appeared — and Sunday night have tweeted the hashtag.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
BetaNews: Ransomware happens — get over it and be prepared. “For those of you who have already read a thousand and one rehashes of the same ‘best practices’ to prevent getting infected, here are a couple of thoughts on what to do if someone on your team is unlucky enough to become patient zero at your company.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
Medium: Why I left Google to join Grab. “Google does all sorts of things these days that leave everyone scratching their heads: Picking unwinnable fights and then trying to force their product on us (e.g. Google+), launching products that are universally panned (e.g. Allo), deprecating and turning down well-loved services (e.g. Reader, Hangouts), launching official APIs with competing and incompatible frameworks (e.g. gRPC vs. REST), launching obviously competing stacks that don’t talk to each other (e.g. Android native vs. Dart/Flutter), etc. Their attempts at innovation have been confusing and mostly unsuccessful for close to a decade. Googlers know this is happening and are as frustrated by it as you are, but their leadership is failing them.”
EurekAlert: Teenagers are sophisticated users of social media, study finds. “Teenagers are far more critical users of social media than we give them credit for, and need to be better supported in reaping the benefits social media can have. A new study published today in Sport, Education and Society sheds light upon teens’ online habits, finding that young people are not simply passive recipients of all the content available online, as commonly thought.” Good morning, Internet…
Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!
Categories: morningbuzz
RE: New UN-improved Firefox – Having used Firefox since it was Netscape, I’m now looking for a new browser. The new version is SLOWER on my machine and they really screwed up the bookmarks. Takes me on average 6 clicks to get to a bookmark that I used to get to in 2. And all the bookmarks they think are important and should be on top are ones that I only looked at once months and years ago!
Yikes! I was thinking about going back to Firefox since Google Chrome is becoming a real memory hog. Maybe I won’t now! Maybe I’ll drop WAY back and punt and start using Lynx again. 🙂
Wecome to Vivaldi both of You! Check It out.