NEW RESOURCES

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: More than 100 years of African American funeral programs now online. “The Digital Library of Georgia recently added more than 3,000 African American funeral home programs from Atlanta and throughout the Southeast to its vast collection of online sources. The programs span from 1886 to 2019 and can be great sources of information for genealogists. The materials that were digitized were contributed by the Auburn Avenue Research Library of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, the Wesley Chapel Genealogy Group and the Metro-Atlanta Chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society. Funding came from Georgia HomePlace, a program of the Georgia Public Library Service.”

ArtNet: Now You Can See Long-Faded Details in Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ Thanks to Google and the Royal Academy in London. “The Royal Academy of Arts in London (RA) is the latest institution to partner with Google Arts and Culture, the tech giant’s platform for the digitalization of the world’s most famous artworks….Twenty of the works are specially presented in Gigapixel clarity, an ultra high resolution made possible by a proprietary Google camera. But one artwork in particular stands out: a copy of The Last Supper made by Italian artist (and pupil of Leonardo da Vinci) Giampietrino.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Google now highlights search results directly on webpages. “Google is trying to make it easier to find the information you’re looking for on external websites by highlighting relevant sections in yellow, SearchEngineLand reports. The functionality works with Google’s Featured Snippets — the standalone boxes that appear at the top of search results that attempt to give you answers without having to visit a website beyond Google.”

CNBC: TikTok is the new place to learn about managing your money. “TikTok recently announced a new initiative, #LearnOnTikTok. The program will fund various educational videos in order to provide learning opportunities during the Covid-19 lockdown. The content is being funded through TikTok’s $50 million creative learning fund, which is apart of its broader $250 million commitment to assisting with the impacts of the pandemic.”

USEFUL STUFF

Yes, this article is from Awario, and the first tool suggested IS Awario, but the writeups for the rest of the resources are decent. So, from Awario: 7 best Google Alerts alternatives. “For the past… many years, mentions on social media have been getting a lot of attention. Communication between people and brands happens on social media all the time, and social media users often discuss brands without tagging the said brands. Of course, if you care about what the Internet says about you, ignoring social media is just not an option. So now we arrived at the most obvious conclusion the world has ever seen. If you care about your online presence, you need a Google Alert alternative. This is a list of such tools.” Let me add though while Google Alerts can be tedious and annoying, the last thing they are is useless.

Komando: Always wanted to learn Morse code? This app makes it easy. “To make Morse code easier for anyone to learn, Google has developed an input method for its wildly popular Gboard keyboard, which can be installed on your smartphone. The app includes a tutorial function, keyboard integration and several games for users to practice with. Gboard is already cool enough on its own, with features like emoji fusion and highly-intelligent auto-suggestions. But the Morse code extension actually goes deeper and teaches new users the actual letter and number meanings behind those dashes and dots.”

The Quint: Lockdown Productivity: Top 5 Google Certifications for Free. “The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the entire world to a halt and a lot of us have suddenly have a lot of spare time. Searching ways to be productive during these times is a constant habit for everyone staying at home. Fortunately, Google recently rolled out a lot of free courses for beginners and professionals to help people acquire new skills and also improve existing ones. Whether you have a background in IT, management or even want to start a new business, Google has provided courses and certifications for all subsets. Here are the top 5 Google certifications available for free on the learning platforms Coursera and Udemy.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Lion’s Roar: 84000 Buddhist translation initiative launches “Save Wisdom Now” video campaign. “84000, a non-profit global initiative to translate the words of the Buddha into modern languages, has marked their tenth anniversary with a new video campaign titled ‘Save Wisdom Now’ that tells the story of the project. The organization is working to preserve the Tibetan Buddhist Canon, the world’s largest and oldest collections of writings with 230,000 pages ‘locked within the fading Classical Tibetan language.'”

Business Insider India: Chinese social media deletes Modi’s remarks on border row. “Known for government control and censorship, Chinese social media has now removed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech and India’s official statements on the border row.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

University of Massachusetts Amherst: Researchers Call for New Federal Authority to Regulate Facial Recognition Tech. “A group of artificial intelligence experts, including computer vision researcher and lead author Erik Learned-Miller of the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s College of Information and Computer Sciences, recently proposed a new model for managing facial recognition technologies at the federal level. In a white paper titled, ‘Facial Recognition Technologies in the Wild: A Call for a Federal Office,’ the authors propose an FDA-inspired model that categorizes these technologies by degrees of risk and would institute corresponding controls.” Good evening, Internet…

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

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