NEW RESOURCES

PR Newswire: The Princess and The Platypus Foundation Presents The Princess Diana Museum (PRESS RELEASE). “The largest collection of Princess Diana’s personal historical items in the world currently on display, online 24/7. The only Diana online museum that contains over 1,700 carefully curated iconic, personal and historical artifacts spanning Diana’s lifetime from early childhood through her tragic death. Displayed in a 3D interactive environment, the artifacts depict her incredible life and reveal her enduring legacy.”

Released last month but I missed it. From the US Forest Service: USDA Forest Service Releases Community Wildfire Risk Website. “For the first time, community wildfire risk has been mapped nationwide to help community leaders mitigate risk. The USDA Forest Service today announced the free, interactive, easy-to-use website, Wildfire Risk to Communities. This website is designed to help community leaders nationwide understand how wildfire risk varies across a state, region, or county and allow them to prioritize actions to protect their communities.”

News Medical: New database of 14,000 known macrolactones could support drug discovery and research. “Researchers from North Carolina State University and Collaborations Pharmaceuticals have created a free-to-use database of 14,000 known macrolactones – large molecules used in drug development – which contains information about the molecular characteristics, chemical diversity and biological activities of this structural class.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechRadar: Forget Google Docs – Microsoft Word’s new re-writing feature is a game-changer. “Smart Compose is a tool for Google Docs that predicts which words and phrases you’ll type and offers to finish them off for you. It’s handy, and can be a real time-saver as it ‘learns’ your writing habits, but Microsoft has now gone one better with a feature for Microsoft Word that can re-write whole sentences for you.”

Google Blog: Four new Google Duo features to help you stay connected. “For the past few weeks, even though I haven’t seen many of my loved ones in person, we’re still keeping in touch. Daily catch-ups with mom, weekend happy hours with friends, a birthday party with people who live all over the country. And it’s all happening on Google Duo, our video calling product. That’s the case for many people these days–in fact, every week, over 10 million new people are signing up for Duo, and in many countries, call minutes have increased by more than ten-fold. Here are a few new features to help you feel close to friends and family even when you’re apart.”

AdWeek: Facebook: Here’s How to Create Your Avatar. “Facebook rolled out Avatars, its take on Bitmoji, in the U.S. this week. This feature allows users to create an avatar of themselves that will be featured in stickers that they can then share in Facebook Stories, comments and more. Our guide will show you how to create your Avatar in the Facebook mobile application.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Berkeley Libraries: Fiat Blocks: Students use Minecraft to build UC Berkeley (and its libraries) in stunning detail. “Imagine a place where social distancing isn’t necessary — where you can gather with friends and resume life as normal, as if COVID-19 and the chaos it has wrought were but a distant memory. Such a place actually exists — and, no, it’s not Georgia. Enter Blockeley University, a student-led effort to build, one block at a time, the UC Berkeley campus on Minecraft, the wildly imaginative (and massively popular) video game. In the expertly crafted virtual world, you can walk through Sather Gate, gaze upon the iconic Campanile, encounter campus’s ubiquitous Kiwibots, and spot Berkeley’s famed peregrine falcons. And, even amid the closures, you can soak in the architectural glory of the campus’s libraries.”

The Scotsman: Unlocking the treasures that tell the story of the Highlands. “Highland Objects has been launched to open up the collections of the small independent museums in the Highlands, which are now facing a very uncertain future given the impact of the pandemic and the loss of vistitors from around the world this year. Running online, museums in the Highlands have been asked to put forward their favourite objects with the public to vote on their most loved out of a group of six.

Reuters: Exclusive: Facebook agreed to censor posts after Vietnam slowed traffic – sources. “Facebook’s local servers in Vietnam were taken offline early this year, slowing local traffic to a crawl until it agreed to significantly increase the censorship of ‘anti-state’ posts for local users, two sources at the company told Reuters on Tuesday.”

Greek Reporter: First-Ever Collection Of Cyclades Island Music Compiled by Greek Professor. “A Greek professor is compiling an enormous online archive of historic Cycladic Island music, representing the first-ever systematic study of all the songs known to have been played on these Aegean islands.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Vice: Viacom Forced Internet Archive to Remove Hundreds of Hours of MTV Broadcasts. “Archivists have uploaded hundreds of hours of MTV VHS recordings from the 1980s and early 1990s to the Internet Archive. The videos have caught the attention of Viacom, which has attempted to have them taken offline.”

MarketWatch: Justice Department, state attorneys general poised to hit Google with antitrust lawsuits: report. “The Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general may file antitrust lawsuits against Alphabet Inc.’s Google as soon as this summer, according to a Wall Street Journal report that published Friday afternoon and cited people familiar with the matter.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!