NEW RESOURCES

Daily Leader: New MDOT site shows road and bridge data. “A new Mississippi Department of Transportation data website can tell county residents something they already know — some state maintained roads are in lousy shape. The new website, MDOT Public Accountability Transportation Hub or PATH, provides an interactive visual analysis of historical and current statewide road and bridge conditions.”

Virginia Memory: Library Makes New Batch Of Emails From Governor Timothy M. Kaine Administration Available Online. “The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce the release of 100,343 emails from the administration of Governor Timothy M. Kaine (2006-2010). This latest batch comprises emails from individuals in the offices of Kaine’s Secretary of Health and Human Resources, Secretary of Finance, Secretary of Transportation, and Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry. Included are the email boxes of Connie Biggs, Robert Bloxom, Richard ‘Ric’ Brown, Craig Burns, Heidi Dix, Nicholas Donohue, Manju Ganeriwala, Alleyn Harned, Gail Jaspen, Aryana Khalid, Barbara Reese, Marilyn Tavenner, Michael Tutor, and Jody Wagner. Since January 2014, the Library has made 283,901 emails from the Kaine administration freely available online to the public.”

Museums of the City of Paris: The “Second Canvas” app: discover the works from Paris Musées in very high resolution!. “You can see the artist’s brush strokes, wonder at the technical mastery of a work or have a closer look at a specific item in the corner of a painting that no one else seems to have noticed. With the ‘Second Canvas’ app, you can now contemplate the works of the City of Paris museums in very high resolution!” Over fifty works are now available, with more being added over time.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: Explore art and culture through a new lens. “We believe the intersection of art and technology can give everyone the opportunity to interact with culture in new ways. Over the past seven years, we’ve worked with cultural institutions to create experiments and features that help you find your art doppelganger and uncover color connections between images. Together, we created augmented reality features so everybody can dive into a virtual gallery or display life-size artworks, wherever you are. Today, you can find all of these features in one single place: a new Camera tab in the Google Arts & Culture app. ”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: The 7 Best History Apps That Make Learning History Exciting. “Thanks to interactive learning methods, smartphones can turn even the dullest subjects into enjoyable and informative experiences. History is typically a course that doesn’t attract excitement from many. But with the right apps, you can overcome its monotonous image and maybe even have some fun. Here are seven apps for people mulling to learn more about history.” That’s a rather gloomy assessment of history as a subject!

Make Tech Easier: 5 of the Best Raspberry Pi Alternatives in 2019. “While the Raspberry Pi ticks all the boxes with respect to performance, price, and usability, it leaves plenty of room for other boards to tweak that formula. Of late, the market has seen a release of a swathe of new boards with PC-like features. Before we discuss the Raspberry Pi alternatives, let’s take a look at the top specs of the Raspberry Pi 3 model B to give you a picture of how it compares with the competition.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CBC: How Omar Khadr’s name appeared in a Google search for ‘Canadian soldiers’. “Earlier this week, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer tweeted a screenshot of some curious Google search results. A search for the term ‘Canadian soldiers’ returned a photo of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr who was accused of killing a U.S. soldier in 2002.”

New York Times: Does Facebook Really Know How Many Fake Accounts It Has?. “Facebook sells advertisers on its access to real people — 2.32 billion of them, a network that exceeds the populations of North America, South America and Africa combined. But do that many people really use Facebook?”

National Post: Activists in Paris protest against Google’s tax setup. “Activists from an anti-globalization group have staged a protest at Google’s Paris headquarters to criticize the company for paying little tax. Attac members gathered at Google’s offices Thursday and set up a pulley to pass bags of fake money between the firm’s premises and a public finance centre across the street.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ZDNet: Ubuntu 18.04 needs patching. “Ubuntu is a very popular Linux distribution for servers, clouds, and the desktop. So, when parent company Canonical announces it is moving Ubuntu 18.04, the latest long term support (LTS) edition, to a new Linux kernel, it’s time to pay attention and patch.”

Reuters: Google disables iPhone app that studied users’ digital habits. “Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Wednesday it disabled an iPhone app that it had paid some users to install to study their digital habits, following a similar move late on Tuesday by social media network Facebook Inc.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PR Newswire: Majority of Regular Social Media Users Are Using It Less Compared to a Year Ago (PRESS RELEASE). “The issues surrounding social media have been front and center for the past months, but is it changing how regular social media users are actually using these platforms? Well, over half of regular users (55%) say compared to a year ago, they find themselves using social media a lot less. This number jumps to almost two-thirds of Millennials (64%) who say they are using social media a lot less this year. This is from a survey conducted by Regina Corso Consulting of 2,141 U.S. adults, 18 and older between January 15 and 18, 2019, of whom 1,837 are regular social media users (use Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and/or Snapchat at least 1-2 times a week).” Good morning, Internet…

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