TWEAKS AND UPDATES

ProPublica: New in Nonprofit Explorer: People Search. “Today we’re launching a new feature in our Nonprofit Explorer database. You can now search for board members and key employees who work at nonprofit organizations by name. The database includes everyone listed on nonprofit tax returns filed electronically between 2014 and 2017. The data includes each person’s reported title and base compensation.”

CNET: Facebook bans Trump-linked campaign data firm. “Facebook said late Friday that a data analytics firm that was affiliated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been suspended from its service, following allegations it mishandled data obtained from hundreds of thousands of users.”

Federal News Radio: Amid congressional mandate to open source DoD’s software code, Code.mil serves as guidepost . “As part of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, the Defense Department has until June to start moving much of its custom-developed software source code to a central repository and begin managing and licensing it via open source methods. The mandate might prove daunting for an organization in which open source practices are relatively scarce, especially considering that, until recently, there was no established open source playbook for the federal government. That’s begun to change, however, with the Office of Management and Budget’s code.gov, and its DoD corollary, code.mil, run by the Defense Digital Service (DDS).”

BetaNews: Data-saving Facebook Lite is now available in the US. “Originally designed for countries with slower mobile internet connections, Facebook’s cut-down and data-light Facebook Lite app is making its way to the US.”

USEFUL STUFF

B.L. Berry: What GDPR Means For Authors And Bloggers. “On May 25, 2018 there are some major changes coming through the pipelines under a new law called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It’s being implemented to protect your constituents (aka readers, fans, i.e. bookish friends you have any type of data on) in the European Union (EU). Now before you mentally go shutting down and closing your browser thinking this doesn’t pertain to you because you don’t live in Europe or because you’re not a ‘marquee author’ or ‘big blogger’ … there is a damn good chance it does. So grab your coffee and listen up!”

Digital Trends: From grit to sparkle: How to clean up your Instagram account. “Sometimes, Instagram can turn into Instaregret. Maybe you wish you had never posted those drunken-stupor selfies from your college days — fun and seemingly innocent at the time. Thankfully, Instagram photos aren’t permanent fixtures, and there are several built-in tools that allow you to clean up your Instagram account.”

NeverEnding Search: Loom: Screencasting and sharing so simplified!. “I am thrilled to discover Loom, a free screencasting tool available as a handy Chrome extension. Loom offers three recording options: screen and camera, screen only and camera only.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Ars Technica: How a Norwegian comment section turned chaos into order—with a simple quiz. “The five-person team behind a simple WordPress plugin, which took three hours to code, never expected to receive worldwide attention as a result. But NRKbeta, the tech-testing group at Norway’s largest national media organization, tapped into a meaty vein with the unveiling of last February’s Know2Comment, an open source plugin that can attach to any WordPress site’s comment section.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Malta Independent: IT Law Association extremely concerned over court judgements being deleted from online database. “The Malta IT Law Association (MITLA) has said that it is ‘extremely concerned’ about recent reports that private individuals have successfully requested that court cases decided against them be deleted from online court databases, ‘without having in place clear rules as to how the right to be forgotten is being exercised with respect to public registers.'”

BetaNews: Privacy: Hotspot Shield, PureVPN, and ZenMate found to leak sensitive data. “VPN tools have been in the headlines recently. Firstly, Facebook’s Onavo VPN was found to be gathering user data, and then McAfee snapped up VPN firm TunnelBear. Now for users of Hotspot Shield, PureVPN and ZenMate, there’s a warning: sensitive data such as your real IP address may be leaked.”

District Dispatch: Long-awaited FDLP Modernization Act would strengthen public access to government information. “The bipartisan FDLP Modernization Act of 2018 (H.R. 5305) was introduced on March 15 following months of effort by the Committee on House Administration. The bill would modernize the Federal Depository Library Program and related programs that provide public access to government information…. While earlier, unintroduced drafts of the legislation dealt with a wide range of topics related to the Government Publishing Office (GPO) and government printing, the FDLP Modernization Act focuses solely on the FDLP and the Superintendent of Documents’ programs that provide public access to government information.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

UCLA: Tapping Twitter to Understand Crowd Behavior and Protests. “[Zachary] Steinert-Threlkeld created a guide for acquiring and working with data sets culled from Twitter, which has more than 320 million global accounts generating more than half a billion messages every day. His efforts culminated this year with the publication of ‘Twitter as Data,’ the first guide in Cambridge University Press’ new Elements series on Quantitative and Computational Methods for Social Science. The series provides short introductions and hands-on tutorials to new and innovative research methodologies that may not yet appear in textbooks.” The book is free online “for a limited time”. Good morning, Internet…

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