NEW RESOURCES

Express Tribune: Virtual reality to showcase old and unique heritage in Lahore: WCLA. “The Walled City of Lahore Authority (WCLA) has decided to use virtual reality (VR) technology to showcase the old and unique heritage of the walled city… The authority is developing its new website that will offer VR tours of different sites of the walled city, especially historical monuments. These VR tours will enable the people to see the walled city from anywhere in the world, a spokesperson of the WCLA told The Express Tribune on Wednesday.” Lahore is a city in Pakistan with a population of over 11 million people.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Vimeo launches tools for simultaneous uploading or livestreaming to Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and others. “Video platform Vimeo is today rolling out new features designed to simplify video distribution across social networks, including one tool that allows live video to be streamed to Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and Periscope at the same time. Another allows creators to upload to both Facebook and YouTube simultaneously with one click.”

Tom’s Guide: Chrome’s New Ad Blocker: Here’s How It Works. “In a blog post today (Feb. 14), Google spelled out the rules for its Better Ads Standards policy, which will block ads ruled as especially “intrusive.” These include autoplaying video ads that include sound, large sticky ads that take over the lower-third of the screen, and ads that blanket the entire screen and require users sit through a countdown process.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BBC: YouTube and Instagram face Russian bans. “YouTube and Instagram face being blocked by Russian internet service providers as a result of a standoff between one of the country’s richest businessmen and an opposition leader. Russia’s internet censor blacklisted material on both services after a court ruled that it violated billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s privacy rights.”

New York Times: 15 Minutes of Fame Is Too Much. Try 6 Seconds. “Giphy Studios thinks it can help old-school companies like H &R Block break into private messaging with branded GIF campaigns. For a campaign for HP, a spinoff of Hewlett-Packard, Giphy brought in Matt Cutshall, a star on Instagram, and shot him holding an HP device and acting silly.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Google and Facebook could be in FTC crosshairs. “President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Trade Commission told the Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday that he’s open to investigating big tech firms like Facebook and Google, should they use their power inappropriately.”

Ars Technica: A potent botnet is exploiting a critical router bug that may never be fixed. “A fast-moving botnet that turns routers, cameras, and other types of Internet-connected devices into potent tools for theft and destruction has resurfaced again, this time by exploiting a critical vulnerability that gives attackers control over as many as 40,000 routers. Despite the high stakes, there’s no indication that the bug will be fixed any time soon, if at all.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

YaleNews: Project revives old software, preserves ‘born-digital’ data. “Digital preservationists at Yale University Library are building a shareable ’emulation as a service’ infrastructure to resurrect thousands of obsolete software programs and ensure that the information produced on them will be kept intact and made easily available for future access, study, and use.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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