TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Feeling nostalgic for the Yahoo homepage? There’s an app for that. “There was a time when the Yahoo homepage was one of the most important pieces of real estate on the internet. Verizon hopes to relive that prominence. The carrier, now Yahoo’s owner, said Wednesday it’s launching a new Yahoo app as a one-stop shop for all sorts of info, be it email, sports scores and finance. There’s a lot of old-web stuff there too, like weather, horoscopes and popular news.” Oh, you mean, like, a PORTAL?? Good heavens. Get off my lawn.

Search Engine Journal: Google Launches New Tool That Grades A Site’s SEO Implementation. “Google has launched a new tool that measures many aspects of a website, including how well it follows SEO best practices.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Find a Book Without Knowing the Title or Author. “Tracking down that long-lost book is like a treasure hunt. In the old days, you could have asked the librarian. Today, search engines like Google have the librarian beat. Here are some tips to help you find a book without knowing the title or author.” “Have the librarian beat”…I don’t know about THAT… but there are a lot of tools here.

Entomology Today: How to Make Your Bug Info Invasive (on Social Media). “You’ve built a spiffy website about your insect research, or written a new extension bulletin about the latest pest. But for some reason, it looks weird on Facebook, and never shows up in Google Search. Why not? The reason may lie behind the scenes, in the code of your website. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a code-wonk to fix this problem! There are a few simple changes you can make to spiffy up your presence on the web.” There is nothing earth-shattering here but in this quick article Dr. Gwen Pearson beautifully lays out why you should care about things like metadata. One of those articles you send to friends with the note “When I said x this is what I meant.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Quartz: An algorithm could decide a US congressional race in Maine. “On Nov. 6, Maine became the first US state to deploy ranked-choice voting in a general election. That system allows voters to essentially spread their vote across all candidates in races of three or more by ranking them in their order of preference. If the winning candidate fails to get more than 50% of the first-choice votes, an algorithm is used to reassign the votes of people whose first choice lost to their second choice.”

STAT News: As social media ‘influencers,’ patients are getting a voice. And pharma is ready to pay up. “Anne Marie Ciccarella is not a doctor, though she spends a great deal of time with them. She’s not a researcher, though she routinely pores over scientific papers on cancer. And even though she spent most of her career at an accounting firm, she’s getting paid by drug companies for her opinions. Ciccarella is one of a growing number of people who have leveraged their experiences as patients and the loyal followings they’ve built on social media into a career, no matter how small their audience.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: 1-877-KARS4KIDS had a data breach. “The New Jersey-based charity has plagued the American airwaves for years with the ‘most hated’ jingle to try to get consumers to trade in their car — for the kids! In return, you get to write-off the donation from your taxes, and you’re given a ‘holiday voucher’ to sweeten the deal. But a security lapse left thousands of those donation records exposed for anyone to find.” Since the information was just left on an open server, I think this is more of a leak than a breach.

Neowin: Google’s G Suite account on Twitter hacked to promote Bitcoin scam. “A Bitcoin scam that’s been making the rounds on Twitter hit the official account for Google’s G Suite productivity apps.”

Krebs on Security: That Domain You Forgot to Renew? Yeah, it’s Now Stealing Credit Cards. “If you own a domain name that gets decent traffic and you fail to pay its annual renewal fee, chances are this mistake will be costly for you and for others. Lately, neglected domains have been getting scooped up by crooks who use them to set up fake e-commerce sites that steal credit card details from unwary shoppers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Michigan State University: Using Social Media To Weaken Wrath Of Terrorist Attacks. “Governments and police forces around the world need to beware of the harm caused by mass and social media following terror events. In a new report, leading counter-terrorism experts from around the world – including Michigan State University faculty – offer guidance to authorities to better manage the impacts of terror attacks by harnessing media communication.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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