An evening issue because my Pocket queue is getting out of hand.

NEW RESOURCES

University of Wisconsin-Madison: New online tools to instruct and assess English learners with significant cognitive disabilities. “Now, due to work by a team of education professionals and researchers — and a grant from the U.S. Department of Education — groundbreaking instructional materials and guides are available to help educators understand alternate English language development and assessment for students who have diverse needs related to language and disability. The comprehensive series of nearly 30 reports, briefs, tools, presentations and other resources is available online and by mail at no charge.”

Google Blog: Art Zoom: Masterpieces up close through the eyes of famous musicians. “What if you could see art through an artist’s eyes? On the occasion of the 130th anniversary of Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night,’ Google Arts & Culture is introducing Art Zoom, a new way to discover details of iconic works of art. Produced by musical experience creators La Blogothèque, the video series introduces you to visual masterpieces through the eyes of your favorite musicians.”

ABA Journal: New tool by Harvard Law lets people explore language usage in caselaw. “Parsing 6.7 million federal and state cases and 12 billion words, a new tool allows the public to explore the use of language over 360 years of caselaw. Released Wednesday, ‘Historical Trends’ was built by the Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab and is free to use.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Apple recalls older generation 15-inch MacBook Pro over fire risk. “The voluntary recall, which is for 15-inch Pros sold between September 2015 and February 2017, appears to be limited to the older generation of the MacBook Pro, not the recent models that have USB-C or a Touch Bar.”

Mashable: Instagram tests ‘Suggestions For You’ panel under posts sent via DM . “Instagram is sliding into our DMs to encourage us to follow more people Under some posts sent through Instagram direct messaging, a ‘Suggestions for You’ panel will load featuring related accounts, Instagram confirmed to Mashable.”

USEFUL STUFF

PC World: Who owns that shady website? These tools provide the details. “Have you ever visited a website and wondered where that site and its owners are located? Shopping sites are particularly of interest, because most people want to know who the seller is and where the seller is located. Casual online browsers may also find themselves on sites that dump malware onto unsuspecting PCs, plant malicious pop-up ads, or phish for private information. Others may stumble upon sites that push conspiracy theories, hate rhetoric, or violence, which they may want to avoid or expose. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a service that revealed this information? Well, there is, and here’s how to use it.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

ABC News (Australia): Decades of history could be ‘erased from Australia’s memory’ as tape machines disappear, archivists warn. “Australia’s memory institutions are racing to digitise their magnetic tape collections before the year 2025, when archivists around the world expect it will become almost impossible to find working tape playback machines.”

NBC News: Facebook’s new rapid response team has a crucial task: Avoid fueling another genocide. “Steps away from the glass-enclosed office suite of Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s No. 2 executive, a team of employees has been taking shape with a mission that’s become critical to the tech giant’s future: avoid contributing to another genocide.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Wired: A Plan to Stop Breaches With Dead Simple Database Encryption. “Data breaches and exposures have become so common these days, it’s difficult to keep track of them all, much less step back to mull a solution. But, perhaps out of necessity, researchers from the database giant MongoDB have spent the past two years developing a new database encryption scheme aimed squarely at reducing these damaging incidents. Their secret weapon? Radical simplicity.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Virginia Tech: Design and Development of a Metadata-Driven Search Tool for use with Digital Recordings. “It is becoming more common for researchers to use existing recordings as a source for data rather than to generate new media for research. Prior to the examination of recordings, data must be extracted from the recordings and the recordings must be described with metadata to allow users to search for the recordings and to search information within the recordings. The purpose of this small-scale study was to develop a web based search tool that will permit a comprehensive search of spoken information within a collection of existing digital recordings archived in an open-access digital repository.” Doctoral dissertation! Good evening, Internet…

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