TWEAKS AND UPDATES

University of Iowa Libraries: UI Libraries collaborates to expand access to research data. “Students, faculty, and researchers across the Midwest and beyond will gain crucial access to large research datasets through a secure, cloud-based platform called CADRE (Collaborative Archive & Data Research Environment). CADRE will be developed through a large-scale partnership led by the Indiana University Libraries and the Indiana University Network Science Institute.”

Business Insider: $132 million later, Ev Williams says he is raising even more money for Medium. “Ev Williams, the Twitter cofounder who has so far raised $132 million in investment for his longform publishing platform Medium, says the company is still not profitable and he will be raising more money.”

CNET: Facebook tackles fake news with new news show on Facebook Watch. “Facebook’s latest attempt to tackle fake news is a new news show for Facebook Watch. The new show, Uncovered, will launch in 2019. Each weekly 10-minute episode, designed to be watched on mobile devices, will focus on a single topic.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: How to Move Your Photos From Flickr to Another Service . “If you don’t want to pay $50 each year for Flickr Pro—which frees you of these limitations and throws in other fun features like ad-free browsing, video uploads of up to 10 minute each, and a bevy of stats—you’re probably going to want to prune your account manually. (That, or maybe it’s time to move all your photos to another service.)”

Larry Ferlazzo: Resources On Terrible Camp Fire Near Here & How To Help Victims. “Our area of Northern California is becoming the site of regular and terrible wildfires. Last year it was tragic fire in Santa Rosa, where I had lived for over ten years, and which is an hour away from us (see The Best Resources For Teaching & Learning About The Santa Rosa Fires (& How To Help Victims)). This weekend it’s the horrible Camp Fire – again, a hour away from us.” Quick annotated list.

MakeUseOf: The Essential Ebook Converter Guide. “When it comes to ebooks there are more than a dozen common file types. And each of these has different strengths and is compatible with different ereaders. Which is why you might find yourself in need of an ebook converter. In this article, we’ll explain everything there is to know about converting ebooks.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: The Instagrammers Next Door, Plugging Brands for Peanuts (or Shampoo). “By now you have probably heard of influencers, that group of internet-famous people who have more than a million social media followers and can make big money by plugging various brands. And you may have even heard of microinfluencers, who do the same thing for a still sizable but somewhat smaller social media audience — from the tens to low hundreds of thousands. Now get ready for the nanoinfluencers.”

Quartz: Thailand wants US museums to give its art back . ” In 2014, DHS returned 554 ancient artifacts taken from the World Heritage archaeological site Ban Chiang that had been displayed in a museum in Santa Ana, California. Since then, the Thai ministry of culture has stepped up recovery efforts, and on Nov. 6 Artnet News reported that Thailand is demanding the return of 23 antiquities housed in the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, among other places.”

Economic Times: Trai seeks views on regulating communication apps like WhatsApp, Skype . “In a paper released Monday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India invited industry’s views to identify which of these apps should be regarded as providing the same services as mobile phone operators. It also wanted to look into the costs and benefits of bringing these communication apps – known as over-the-top (OTT) services – under the regulatory regime.”

Wired: Beep! Bloop! Buzz! Why Do UX Designers Often Neglect Sound?. “Most companies would never consider using an online library to select their brand logo or visual identity. Yet they frequently allow their products to go out into the world with cheaply produced or licensed sounds downloaded from a mass market sound effects library. Why this undervaluation of sound and music?”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Search Engine Journal: WP GDPR Plugin Hacked – Update Immediately. “The popular WP GDPR Compliance plugin Plugin has a serious vulnerability.Any version less than 1.4.3 is vulnerable. Hackers are actively targeting this plugin. Sites are being hacked as of this writing. It is highly recommended to update now.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Next Web: We should all worry about corporate control of data. “The information age has delivered innumerable wonders to us and continues to churn out astonishing innovations on a daily basis. The only reason that contemporary society enjoys such awesome technology and progress these days is that we can gleam so much insight from our data, particularly when we combine disparate datasets together and comb through them with analytics technology. More and more often, we’re seeing corporations begin to exploit this process, seizing as much control as possible over the data of everyday people.” Good morning, Internet…

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