NEW RESOURCES

University of Arkansas at Little Rock: UA Little Rock Class Creates Digital Archive Of Long-lost Phillips County Death Certificates. “A history class at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has created a new digital index of Phillips County death certificates from 1917 to 1922. Dr. Brian Mitchell’s American Urban History Class created the index during the fall 2017 semester and donated the archive to the Arkansas History Commission so it can be made available for public use.”

FDLP: 2016 End of Term Presidential Web Archive Now Available. “Between fall 2016 and spring 2017, End of Term (EOT) Web Archive partners conducted outreach and archiving efforts to preserve and document the U.S. Government web presence at the end of the Obama Presidential term. Due to an increased public interest in preserving U.S. Government web content and press regarding the project, the EOT Nomination Tool saw almost 11,400 nominated.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

SEO Roundtable: Google Wants To Get Date Timestamps Accurate In Search Results. “Last night, when people were searching about the horrible news in Florida, some noticed that some of the recent articles covering the news were labeled by Google has being written days before the event. Obviously, something that happened hours ago, written potentially minutes ago, should not be labeled in the Google search results as being written 2 or 3 days ago. Danny Sullivan at Google was doing some damage control for Google explaining that sometimes getting the date right, can be hard.” I’m really glad someone is working on this, as it’s been a problem for a LONG time. It’s not just Google either – look at RSS feeds for Bing News search results.

IFTTT Blog: “Hey Cortana,” welcome to IFTTT. “Today, we are thrilled to announce that Microsoft’s Cortana is now on IFTTT and to welcome new communities of voice users to the flexibility of Applets. Available as a mobile app, Windows 10 app, and speaker — Cortana is ready to help wherever you go.”

Forbes: Facebook Now Includes Organizations and Businesses In Crisis Help. “In 2014 Facebook introduced Safety Check so that people in or near disaster areas could check in to let their friends know if they’re OK….That same year, Facebook also launched its Crisis Response center where people could find out more during a crisis, post information, offer help and raise money for victims…. Today, Facebook announced that it has expanded its crisis response to include postings from companies and organizations.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Armchair Genealogist: Free How-To Irish Genealogy Video – Limited Time!. “Irish Genealogical Research Society (IGRS) has recently released three how-to videos to help you understand and read Irish documents. These videos are only available for free viewing until Sunday, February 18, 2018, so be quick about it.”

Abundant Genealogy: Newspaper Clippings – Using Reverse Search to Cite Sources and Save Your Sanity. “A well-meaning relative sends you a packet of newspaper clippings about your ancestors. Or you receive several obituaries pasted to 3×5 inch index cards. Or you are given a scrapbook created in the 1920s or 1930s with a variety of news articles clipped from newspapers and magazines. Of course, when clipped there is no date, no newspaper masthead or header with the name, volume number, page number etc. Your relative (or someone) may have handwritten the date or other information along the margins, but rarely do they include everything you need as a researcher. So how do you track down the original source and cite it properly?” nicely done!

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BuzzFeed: How I Cracked Facebook’s New Algorithm And Tortured My Friends. “Last Saturday — 12 days ago now — I shared a cringeworthy video on Facebook: a 6-minute clip of a twentysomething white woman showing off her small, blandly decorated Brooklyn apartment. Sort of the pumpkin spice latte version of MTV Cribs — innocuous, but annoying. Ever since, this video has been waging a reign of terror over my friends and family, showing up at the top of their feeds every single day, over and over and over. They are complaining to me on Facebook. They are complaining to me in real life. They are tweeting me about it and emailing me. Begging me to remove this cursed video that greets them each time they open Facebook.”

Ars Technica: Internet rages after Google removes “view image” button, bowing to Getty. “Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, announced the change on Twitter yesterday, saying it would ‘help connect users and useful websites.’ Later Sullivan admitted that ‘these changes came about in part due to our settlement with Getty Images this week’ and that ‘they are designed to strike a balance between serving user needs and publisher concerns, both stakeholders we value.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Search Engine Land: Federal Election Commission proposal toughens political ads disclosure rules. “The nature of political advertising is manipulation and deception. This was taken to extremes in 2016 as fake news and ads from outside actors and extremist groups sought to manipulate public opinion and influence the presidential election. Now, with Russia expected to meddle in the 2018 midterm elections, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is considering additional rules and disclosure requirements for online political ads.” We can only hope.

Phys .org: Belgian court orders Facebook to stop collecting data. “Belgian media say a Brussels court has ordered Facebook to stop collecting data about citizens in the country or face fines for every day it fails to comply. The daily De Standaard reported Friday that the court upheld a Belgian privacy commission finding that Facebook is collecting data without users’ consent.”

NewsBTC: CoinHoarder Steals Over $50 Million in Cryptocurrencies Using Google Ads. “According to a report published Wednesday, February 14th by Cisco’s Talos Intelligence Group, a team of Ukrainian hackers dubbed CoinHoarder has stolen more than $50 million in cryptocurrency from users who were under the impression they were accessing Blockchain.info, one of the most popular providers of virtual currency wallets.” 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!