State Archives of North Carolina are doing an “Introduction to African American Genealogy” event TODAY at 9am EST. I knew about the event before now but I didn’t find out until this writing that it is being livestreamed. You can get more details on the event page at Facebook. Description: “Join the North Carolina Government & Heritage Library for an introduction to resources for finding African American ancestors. During this presentation learn tips and tricks unique to African American family history research.”

NEW RESOURCES

The National: New digital portal encourages visitors to explore hidden Abu Dhabi. “Did you know that the Saluki comes from a breed of dogs called greyhounds? Or that Delma Island helped quench Abu Dhabi city’s thirst for water in the 20th century? A landmark new digital portal that answers these questions and showcases the cultural riches of the emirate has been launched. It also shines a light on some of the hidden gems and takes users off the beaten track outside of the major attractions of the capital. Encompassing a new website, smartphone app and social media platforms, Abu Dhabi Culture is a one-stop guide for arts, culture and heritage.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: Updating our “right to be forgotten” Transparency Report. “Today, we’re expanding the scope of our transparency reporting about the ‘right to be forgotten’ and adding new data going back to January 2016 when our reviewers started manually annotating each URL submitted to us with additional information…”

TIME: Review: Google’s Tiny New Camera Uses AI to Become Your Personal Photographer. “The latest smartphones have gotten much better at focusing quickly on subjects, making it easier for anyone to capture the perfect picture. But even the most advanced smartphone cameras still need a person to press the shutter button. That’s not so with Google Clips, a miniature camera that uses artificial intelligence to learn exactly when to snap a photo.”

USEFUL STUFF

Social Media Examiner: How to Use Facebook Collections to Manage Curated Content. “Do you save content and ads on Facebook? Wondering how to organize the Facebook posts and ads you’ve saved? In this article, you’ll learn how to use Facebook Collections to curate and organize saved content for easy access and sharing.”

Internet Archive: Mass downloading 78rpm record transfers. “To preserve or discover interesting 78rpm records you can download them to your own machine (rather than using our collection pages). You can download lots on to a mac/linux machine by using a command line utility.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New Zealand Herald: El Salvador’s military not opening archives for missing kids. “More than 25 years after the end of its civil war, families in El Salvador are still searching for an estimated 3,000 children who disappeared in the fighting. The country’s military has so far refused to open its archives from that period to allow an investigation into the whereabouts of children separated from their families during combat between guerrillas and government forces.”

WUSF: USF Alum Builds Bridges With The ‘Un-Facebook’ . “While social media platforms like Facebook use algorithms to push users towards people and groups that share the same ideas and beliefs, a new platform co-created by a University of South Florida alum encourages communication between people of different mindsets. ‘It’s breaks you out of that echo chamber, that bubble,’ said Will Cohen, one of the brains behind the website Bridges. ‘You’re actually able to connect with others and experience other different forms of opinions and ideologies.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Salon: Senator Amy Klobuchar: Social media sites should be fined if they can’t discard bots. “Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., appeared on NBC’s ‘Meet The Press’ this weekend to support the Honest Ads Act — a bill to ensure transparency in online political advertising — and said that social media companies like Facebook and Twitter should be fined if they can’t get rid of automated bots.”

The Times: Businessman sues Google to have his crime forgotten. “The claimant was convicted of conspiracy to account falsely in the late 1990s and wants the search engine to remove results that mention his case. He is ‘treated as a pariah in his personal, business and social life’ and has been “’unable to form any new friendships or personal relationships’ because of online newspaper articles about his conviction, according to court papers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Phys.org: State of the art: Museum takes hi-tech look at Vermeer . “This really is state of the art research. Experts at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague are using the latest technology to take a long, hard look at one of their most prized paintings, Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” and they are inviting the public in to watch. For two weeks starting Monday, experts are pointing a battery of high-tech machines at the 17th-century masterpiece of a young woman whose enigmatic gaze has earned her the nickname of the Dutch Mona Lisa.”

Federal Times: Feds, allow social media to self-regulate. “We’re seeing efforts in government to overcome some of the hurdles that agencies have long faced when trying to enable progress from within. Those efforts, if successful, just might help rid government of its reputation as a bureaucratic, stuffy institution that doesn’t understand the needs of the very people that it serves. So should we now take away or manipulate a tool from the toolbox that could help accomplish that mission?” Remember, just because I include an editorial in RB doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with it. But I’m always here for a cogent point of view. Good morning, Internet…

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