NEW RESOURCES

Washington Post: A massive new effort to name millions sold into bondage during the transatlantic slave trade. “Enslaved: Peoples of the Historic Slave Trade, a free, public clearinghouse that launched Tuesday with seven smaller, searchable databases, will for the first time allow anyone from academic historians to amateur family genealogists to search for individual enslaved people around the globe in one central online location.”

The Spokesman-Review: Eat Local First Collaborative launches Washington Food & Farm Finder. “The Eat Local First Collaborative recently launched a mobile-friendly searchable database of more than 1,700 organic farms, food businesses and farmers markets in the state. The Washington Food & Farm Finder allows customers to search for markets based on location, product type and whether purveyors offer online ordering, curbside service or home delivery, among other things.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Neowin: WhatsApp brings theme-aware chat backgrounds, new stickers, and more. “WhatsApp is rolling out an update to mobile users that brings with it a bunch of new customization improvements and updated stickers. The customization improvements include new images for chat backgrounds, the ability to set a custom background for individual chats, and more. There are also enhancements to the sticker search feature and new stickers as well.”

TechRadar: Users left distraught as Google Cloud Print set to bite the dust. “Google Cloud Print will be no longer be supported from the end of the year. In an easily-missed update, Google announced that the service would be deprecated on December 31, 2020, which could come as a significant blow to Chrome OS users.”

BBC: Slack sold to business software giant for $27.7bn. “Salesforce has agreed to buy workplace messaging app Slack for $27.7bn (£20bn) in what would be one of the biggest tech mergers in recent years. Marc Benioff, boss of the business software giant, called the deal a ‘match made in heaven’.”

USEFUL STUFF

State Historical Society of North Dakota: Producing Facebook Live Streams: Where The Magic Happens. “Overseeing social media for both the agency and North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum’s pages, I’m always on the lookout for future or trending hashtags. When I saw upcoming national #AskACurator and #AskAnArchivist days, I knew we needed to participate with our staff experts in those areas. But how? My first thought was to do a Facebook Live session, but with some staff working from home and social distancing in the office, I wasn’t sure how that would work. Since Microsoft Teams has worked well for our meetings, I wondered if there was some way that we could do a Facebook Live stream via Teams. That’s when I turned to my best friend Google for help.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Variety: The Life and Death of the Instagram Influencer Who Never Was. “Instagram is full of wannabes, but there was only one Sylvia. Describing herself as a ‘coffee-operated robot living her best life,’ Sylvia was born in May 2020, made her online debut on July 4 at the age of 30, and passed away last week at the grand old age of 80.”

Orient XXI: France. The Inaccessible Archives of the Algerian War. “The French law dated 7 Thermidor Year II (25 July 1794) stipulates that every citizen should be able to be informed of whatever had been done in their name. This was the origin of the public service of the National Archives of France, a body created four years earlier by the Constituent Assembly. But while this principle of transparency was thus officially enacted, the raison d’Etat did not easily accommodate it. The disappearance of Maurice Audin, an activist in the cause of Algerian independence and the bloody repression in and around Paris of the 17 October 1961 protest called by the National Liberation Front are two emblematic instances of information retention on the quiet.”

TechCrunch: Facebook’s latest ad tool fail puts another dent in its reputation. “Reset yer counters: Facebook has had to ‘fess up to yet another major ad reporting fail. This one looks like it could be costly for the tech giant to put right — not least because it’s another dent in its reputation for self-reporting. (For past Facebook ad metric errors check out our reports from 2016 here, here, here and here.)”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Patients of a Vermont Hospital Are Left ‘in the Dark’ After a Cyberattack. “Cyberattacks on America’s health systems have become their own kind of pandemic over the past year as Russian cybercriminals have shut down clinical trials and treatment studies for the coronavirus vaccine and cut off hospitals’ access to patient records, demanding multimillion-dollar ransoms for their return. Complicating the response, President Trump last week fired Christopher Krebs, the director of CISA, the cybersecurity agency responsible for defending critical systems, including hospitals and elections, against cyberattacks, after Mr. Krebs disputed Mr. Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud.”

Atlas Obscura: How German Librarians Finally Caught an Elusive Book Thief. “On the afternoon of February 21, 2006, Norbert Schild sat down at a desk in the reading room of the City Library of Trier, in western Germany, and opened a 400-year-old book on European geography. Working quickly, Schild laid a piece of blank white paper on top of the book, took a boxcutter from his lap, and discreetly sliced out a map of Alsace from pages 375 and 376.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BBC: Puerto Rico: Iconic Arecibo Observatory telescope collapses. “A huge radio telescope in Puerto Rico has collapsed after decades of astronomical discoveries. The US National Science Foundation (NSF) said the telescope’s 900-ton instrument platform fell onto a reflector dish some 450ft (137m) below. It came just weeks after officials announced that the telescope would be dismantled amid safety fears, following damage to its support system.” Good morning, Internet…

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