TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Facebook Messenger’s ‘Your Emoji’ status tells friends what’s up. “Want to let friends know you’re trying to party, hit the gym, focus on work or grab a drink? That’s the idea behind a powerful new feature Facebook Messenger is testing called Your Emoji. Akin to offline meetup app Down to Lunch, it lets you overlay a chosen emoji on your Messenger profile pic for 24 hours as a way to spur conversation and hang outs, or just let people know what you’re up to without a dramatic post or Story. It’s a bit like AOL Instant Messenger’s old away messages.”

The Verge: Twitter is removing face-swapped AI porn from its platform, too. “Twitter has become the latest platform to ban AI-generated fake porn, otherwise known as ‘deepfakes.’ As first reported by Motherboard and confirmed to The Verge, the company will suspend any account sharing the content, which uses machine learning algorithms to swap the faces of celebrities onto porn stars.”

Slate: Twitter Made a Small Change to How It Shows Retweets. That’s Bad News for Bots.. “Without any fanfare, Twitter rolled out a new feature globally on Tuesday that changes the way tweets look when embedded on other websites, like in news stories. Now, instead of showing how many times a tweet has been retweeted, the company is displaying a new metric that includes a combination of replies and retweets that shows how many ‘people are talking about this.’ It’s a change the company confirmed to Slate on Tuesday evening, but has not yet announced publicly.”

The Guardian: Brazil’s biggest newspaper pulls content from Facebook after algorithm change. “Brazil’s biggest newspaper, the Folha de S Paulo, has announced that it will no longer publish content on its Facebook page, accusing the social media giant of encouraging fake news with an overhaul of its news feed algorithm.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Globe and Mail: Free app turns your phone into a 3D scanner. This is a video that’s a little under two minutes long, and it is video-only. I dislike linking to videos without transcripts, but the technology in the video and the fact that the app is free (unless you want to print a scanned item) made me break my own informal rule.

Hannah Hethmon: Every Museum Podcast in One Big List. “My own podcast about Icelandic museums, Museums in Strange Places, has given me the chance to see ‘behind-the-curtain’ in so many amazing museums, and if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that museums are leaving so many of their most human and compelling stories untold. Since it’s through podcasting that I’ve discovered these stories, I started to wonder how museums around the world were using podcasting to have a more intimate platform for telling stories and engaging their audience. To that end, I scoured all the podcasting platforms and reached out to the Twitterverse and Facebook groups to compile the most complete list of podcasts by museums on the internet.” Oh, WOW.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Greek Reporter: Greek Military Building DNA Database to ID Fallen WWII Troops. “Greece’s military is setting up a DNA database to help identify the remains of Greek WWII soldiers who died and were buried in Albania. The Hellenic National Defence General Staff announced on Wednesday the establishment of the database with samples from living relatives to help the authorities identify sets of remains currently being exhumed in Albania.”

RTE: Digital project to recreate public record office destroyed by fire. “A project is under way to digitally recreate the building and contents of the Public Record Office of Ireland, which were destroyed by an explosion and fire at Dublin’s Four Courts in 1922. The six-storey Victorian building went up in flames on 30 June 1922 during the Civil War.”

Yahoo News: 15,000 Eggs Delivered To Norwegian Olympic Team After Google Translate Error. “Google Translate can sometimes get scrambled, as the chefs for the Norwegian Winter Olympics team learned the hard way this week. Needing some eggs to feed their athletes while in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the chefs told Norway’s Aftenposten newspaper that they’d turned to the online translation tool to help them draft an order for a local grocery store.”

Refinery: Can’t Watch The Olympics? Snapchat May Be Your Best Bet. “Keeping up with the Olympics can feel like an up-slope battle. The most popular events are usually saved for primetime, meaning that evening work events and cocktail hours with friends can easily derail your opportunity to watch the best of the skiing and figure skating live. Sure, you can record NBC at home, but you do so at the risk of hearing spoilers ahead of time. For this year’s Winter Olympics, which officially kicks off with this Friday’s Opening Ceremony in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Snapchat is presenting a promising solution to your viewing struggles.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Seattle Times: India’s anti-trust regulator fines Google for ‘search bias’. “India’s antitrust watchdog said Thursday that Google abused its position as the dominant search engine in the country to create a search bias in favor of its own services and those of its partners.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Search Engine Land: What 3,000 voice search queries tell us about the ‘Voice Search Revolution’. “Do you think voice search is the next ‘big thing’ digital marketers need to watch for? Contributor Bryson Meunier isn’t so sure and feels there are limited marketing opportunities, based on his research.” Good morning, Internet…

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