NEW RESOURCES

Galway Daily: Amazing new database with pics of 18th and 19th Century Ireland launched. “How was Ireland depicted in illustrations produced by travellers from 1680 to 1860? A new database of images drawn from travel accounts answers this question. Based on years of research by a group of investigators at NUI Galway led by Professor Jane Conroy, Ireland Illustrated is now available to view online.”

Oregon Live: New tool allows Oregon residents to map wildfire risk to their exact location. “The tool, part of the Oregon Explorer website, uses a variety of data to calculate how high that risk is for any given location, Teresa Alcock, an analyst for the state, said in a statement. ‘Using the Explorer, homeowners can see where and how likely wildfires are to occur in their area,’ Alcock said. ‘This is based on historical wildfire data, local vegetation and weather.'”

VPR: ‘Mediafugees’: New Website Invites Refugees From All Over To Share Their Own Stories. “The plights of people forced from their homes have been reported all over the world, but one journalist in Montreal has decided to tell these stories by creating a platform for the refugees to tell the stories themselves. ‘We are really into, you know, displaying stories from all around the world because we believe the refugee issue is a global issue,’ said journalist Camille Teste, co-founder of the new website Mediafugees.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

State Archives of North Carolina: New Additions to North Carolina in World War I Digital Collection. “As part of the statewide World War I commemoration, we have digitized 60 additional materials from the Military Collections and Private Collections of the State Archives of North Carolina. Most of the additions to the World War I digital collection are selections from the collections listed below.”

WJLA: Twitter to add special labels to political candidates in US. “Twitter says it’s adding special labels to tweets from some U.S. political candidates ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Twitter says the move is to provide users with ‘authentic information’ and prevent spoofed and fake accounts from fooling users. The labels will include what office a person is running for and where.”

Google Blog: More tools for homeschoolers . “Our goal at Google is to make technology that works for everyone. Last year we made Classroom available to more students and teachers, including homeschoolers, and today we’re also updating the eligibility guidelines for G Suite for Education so homeschool co-ops in the U.S. can collaborate using G Suite for Education. We’ve worked closely with several organizations to make this happen, including National Black Home Educators and Home School Legal Defense Association. Today’s guest author Darren Jones shares more about why this matters.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Digiday: ‘A fun adventure, not a business’: The Weather Channel stopped publishing video on Facebook. “The Weather Channel was part of Facebook’s funding program for live and on-demand news feed videos and also produced three shows for Facebook Watch last fall. The Weather Channel’s deal to produce live and on-demand news feed videos for Facebook, for which [Neil] Katz said it received a seven-figure fee, shined a light on how difficult it is to make money on Facebook. Paid to produce a predetermined number of minutes per month, The Weather Channel found it was only making $28 per minute of video produced. For comparison, Katz pointed out how the CBS reality show ‘Survivor’ cost $45,000 per minute to make in 2009. Even during big weather events such as Hurricane Harvey, when The Weather Channel would cut and distribute hundreds of videos on Facebook and capture a lot of views, Katz said revenue was close to negligible.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ZDNet: T-Mobile bug let anyone see any customer’s account details. “A bug in T-Mobile’s website let anyone access the personal account details of any customer with just their cell phone number. The flaw, since fixed, could have been exploited by anyone who knew where to look — a little-known T-Mobile subdomain that staff use as a customer care portal to access the company’s internal tools. The subdomain — promotool.t-mobile.com, which can be easily found on search engines — contained a hidden API that would return T-Mobile customer data simply by adding the customer’s cell phone number to the end of the web address.”

The Hindu: Complaint filed against Google, Facebook under new GDPR laws. “A data protection rights group has accused Instagram and WhatsApp as well over the way they obtain users’ consent. A group that campaigns for data protection rights in Europe has filed legal complaints against Google, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp over the way they obtain users’ consent under new EU privacy rules.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Taipei Times: ‘Frozen ark’ to preserve species. “Taiwanese researchers are contributing to a global initiative to identify, document and preserve the world’s species and biodiversity by developing cryobanking, DNA barcoding and online database programs, officials from the Forestry Bureau and the Academia Sinica’s Biodiversity Research Center told a news conference in Taipei on Thursday.”

EurekAlert: Hey Alexa: Amazon’s virtual assistant becomes a personal assistant to software developers . “Researchers said it was more than just a matter of teaching Alexa some key phrases and mapping different commands to the work, they also had to figure out common multi-step tasks engineers were performing and build a system that could automate those tasks. They then asked 21 engineers from local Vancouver software companies to test out their system and evaluate it. While the engineers found the tool useful and provided lots of positive feedback, there was one challenge.”

PR Newswire: Formal Social Media Evaluations are Latest Job Disqualifier (PRESS RELEASE). “Drug testing, background or credit checks used to be factors that could disqualify an otherwise great candidate. Now companies are adding formal social media evaluations to the list, according to new data from the 2018 MRINetwork Reputation Management Study. Gone are the days of employers casually reviewing social media to assess prospective hires, and candidates are catching on.” Good morning, Internet…

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