NEW RESOURCES

Google Blog: Brush up on Chinese modern art with Google Arts & Culture. “For the last century, the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing has been the preeminent school of art education in China. Some of the most renowned masters of Chinese modern art trained at this hallowed institution and many of their works are stored in the CAFA Art Museum. For CAFA’s 100th anniversary, Google Arts & Culture is taking the masterpieces in its museum to the world, for a new generation of art aficionados to enjoy.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

University of Iowa: Walt Whitman Archive Awarded NHPRC Grant!. “The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) has awarded a grant of $105,002 to the University of Iowa to support the Walt Whitman Archive’s project, ‘Fame and Infamy: Walt Whitman’s Correspondence, 1888-1892.’ The correspondence project aims to collect, transcribe, edit, and publish letters that the nineteenth-century American poet sent and received during the final years of his life.”

ECNS: China’s nationwide property database comes into effect . “China’s long-expected national property database has started to connect information stations across the country, according to Ministry of Natural Resources. There have been 3,001 property registration stations in 335 cities and 2,853 counties serving more than 300,000 enterprises and individuals averagely each day, according to latest statistics.”

Ubergizmo: Dropbox Update Lets Users Preview More Files Types. “The file explorers on our computers let us preview files before we open them. For example users can open a ZIP file to look inside its contents without having to extract all of it. This is something that we’re sure Dropbox users will appreciate the good news is that Dropbox has since expanded the files preview feature to include more file types.” EPUB and AutoCAD, among others? Nice.

Axios: Google launches Android app for podcasts. “Google has launched a new Google Podcasts app on Android, available globally in the Google Play Store, with the goal of driving adoption of podcasts among Android’s two billion users worldwide.”

USEFUL STUFF

PC World: Best web browsers 2018: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera go head-to-head. “Let’s take a look at the four major (and modern) browsers to see how they stack up in mid-2018. A few things have changed since we looked at the top browsers just a few short months ago. Microsoft released the April 2018 Update in April, and in our tests it seemed to have a significant impact on browser results.”

Poynter: The best tools and tech to create a podcast in 2018 . “Anyone who has ever launched a podcast can tell you it’s harder than it sounds. From conceiving an idea that hasn’t been done before, to recording something that doesn’t sound like it came from an abandoned parking garage, to cutting out the awkward bits using uncooperative editing tools, podcasting is a test of patience, creativity and technique. It’s also something I think I would have stuck with if I had access to today’s technology.” A quick roundup on top of an interesting news digest.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Scroll: Cheeky Spanish reporter uses Google Translate to go around French press conference rules. “In order to avoid questions on rumours about being transferred to another club, French footballer Antoine Griezmann — who played last season for Spanish team Atletico Madrid — refused to answer questions in languages other than French at a press conference. Getting the reporters to ask the questions in French was also an attempt at keeping the conversation focussed on France’s pursuit of the World Cup 2018. A Spanish journalist came up with a smart way to bypass the rule.” SPOILER: it didn’t work. But I give him points for creativity.

Slate: Why Don’t You Like Us?. “Beginning on June 6, I spent 10 days not logging onto Facebook…. It was easily the longest amount of time I had logged out of Facebook since I joined in 2006, and the team in Menlo Park did not let me forget it. The network sent me a series of bewildering emails—17 messages in nine days—to tell me exactly what I was missing. In the process, Facebook made a better argument for its own irrelevance than I ever could.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: Here’s some phish-AI research: Machine-learning code crafts phishing URLs that dodge auto-detection . “Blacklists and algorithms – intelligent or otherwise – can be used to automatically identify and block links to phishing pages. Humans should be able to spot that the web links are dodgy, but not everyone is so savvy. Using the Phishtank database, a group of computer scientists from Cyxtera Technologies, a cybersecurity biz based in Florida, USA, have built DeepPhish, which is machine-learning software that, allegedly, generates phishing URLs that beat these defense mechanisms.” Lovely.

RESEARCH & OPINION

Zee Business: Google to help govt in flood management across the country. “The government will team up with the global technology major Google for effective flood management in India. Union Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Nitin Gadkari said that collaboration with Google will help in better flood management in the country. Central Water Commission (CWC), India’s apex technical organisation in the field of Water Resources, has entered into a collaboration agreement with Google. CWC would use state-of-the-art advances made by Google in the in the field of Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and geo-spatial mapping for effective management of water resources particularly in the field of flood forecast and dissemination of flood-related information to the masses, a Water Resources ministry statement said.”

New York Times: Asteroids and Adversaries: Challenging What NASA Knows About Space Rocks. “For the last couple of years, Nathan P. Myhrvold, a former chief technologist at Microsoft with a physics doctorate from Princeton, has roiled the small, congenial community of asteroid scientists by saying they know less than they think about these near-Earth objects. He argues that a trove of data from NASA they rely on is flawed and unreliable.”

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