NEW RESOURCES

World Trademark Review: A beer coloured trademark, Changsha IP court opens, and Kosovo registry launches digital database: news round-up. “It was formally announced this week that the Kosovo Industrial Property Office has launched an online database of its trademark and patents. At the moment the database is available only in the Albanian language, however the Google Chrome browser allows the page to be translated to a user’s local language.”

The Drum: How Animation Made Ad Land (And How Ad Land Made Animation) . “The British Film Institute’s (BFI) new archive of animated ads tells the story of two industries bound by symbiosis: while animation broke down the confines of reality for creatives, the ad industry proved a profitable playpen for the first generation of animators.” The archive will only play if you’re in the UK. I’m not going to mention anything about using a VPN to get around this.

ArtsHub: Is your arts organisation truly accessible?. “The Federal government has recently given the go-ahead for ARTfinder, a new national online database that will allow users to easily find accessible arts programs in Australia. ARTfinder will cover a range of different creative practices, including theatre, dance, visual arts, writing, comedy, media arts and music. A Victorian iteration of the database is available via Art Access Victoria.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

British Library: Polonsky Pre-1200 Project: we’re halfway there. “From illuminated Gospel-books to heavenly depictions of the constellations, from texts in Old English to works on the natural world, the first fruits of our exciting collaboration with the Bibliothèque nationale de France are ripe for the picking. The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project: Manuscripts from the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 700-1200 has reached its halfway milestone with 400 manuscripts made before 1200 now digitised, newly catalogued and available to view online.”

Motherboard: Eight Years Later, Google Fiber Is A Faint Echo Of The Disruption We Were Promised. “Google Fiber would, we were told, once and for all free the country from the iron grip of regional monopolies like Comcast, delivering ultra-fast broadband at a more reasonable $70 per month price point across huge chunks of the nation. And in initial launch cities like Kansas City, that dream appeared to be quickly coming true. But that was then, and this is now.” I’m in a city that was chosen by Google Fiber for expansion, but even if they never lay a cable they’ve done me a lot of good. Why? By scaring the competition enough that I have decent speed Internet now.

USEFUL STUFF

TorrentFreak: Which VPN Services Keep You Anonymous in 2018?. “In response to a growing threat of Internet surveillance and censorship, VPN services have surged in popularity in recent years. Encrypting one’s traffic through a VPN connection helps to keep online communications private, but what more does your VPN provider do to keep you anonymous? We take a look at the logging policies and other privacy features of dozens of VPN providers.”

Make Use Of: It’s Time to Fix Google! How to Bring Back 5 Features It Removed. “Google Search launched over 20 years ago, and in that time, it has introduced and removed several features. Here’s how to bring back some of the best ones for those users who still like them.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNBC: Facebook says it gave ‘nudges’ to children to get them to communicate using Messenger Kids. “When Facebook was testing Messenger Kids before rolling it out in December, the company found “It was hard for kids to initiate the communication,” said Tarunya Govindarajan, the manager who built the product, to an audience gathered in Washington for the company’s Global Safety Network Summit. “We wanted to give them nudges to start the conversation,” she said.” Makes me uncomfortable.

Tubefilter: Alphabet Will Not Share YouTube’s Revenue With The SEC. “Alphabet – Google’s (and therefore YouTube’s) parent company – just won a passive aggressive email war with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As a result, the digital giant won’t have to report YouTube’s financial information, at least not for now. Through months of email exchanges beginning in July 2017, the SEC asked Alphabet to clear up its foggy financial filings for Q2 last year. The SEC took a specific interest in YouTube, which it inquired about in its initial letter to Alphabet and then followed up on in a letter dated November 8, 2017.”

MSN: Saudi Arabia to create database on camels through microchip implants. “The Council of Ministers recently approved an ambitious project to create a national database for tracking camels via subcutaneous implanted rice-grain-size microchips, according to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).”

RESEARCH & OPINION

TechCrunch: Snapchat is stuck in the uncanny valley of AR glasses. “‘Timing’, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel said cryptically when asked what the greatest threat was for Snap Inc. ‘I think the big risks are always the really big product ideas that we’re investing in that are just hard to get right’ he told the Goldman Sachs conference two weeks ago.”

Nieman Lab:
New data shows just how much social sharing has decreased since 2015 (and News Feed tweaks are just one factor). “This week, analytics company BuzzSumo released a new report analyzing trends in social sharing over the past few years. The top line takeaway from its analysis of 100 million articles is that social sharing is down by 50 percent across the board compared to just a few years ago. In 2015, articles saw an average of 8 shares; today that number has dropped to 4. Only 5 percent of content gets more than 343 shares.” Good morning, Internet…

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