NEW RESOURCES

State of Hawaii: M93 Liliʻuokalani Manuscript Collection Now Online!. “Happy Birthday Queen Liliʻuokalani! In celebration, the Public Archives of Hawaiʻi is excited to announce that her Majesty’s entire paper manuscript collection is now accessible online, for free, on the Digital Archives of Hawaiʻi. This amazing feat of digitization for access was made possible through generous funding from the Liliʻuokalani Trust. Over 20,000 digital images, in high resolution and full color, offer an unprecedented view of her life.”

Military .com: Pentagon Asks Public for Suggestions on Renaming Bases That Honor Confederate Soldiers. “The Pentagon wants your help renaming military bases that commemorate Civil War Confederate soldiers. The Defense Department’s commission created earlier this year to look into renaming bases launched a new website Monday and is asking ‘interested citizens’ for recommendations and suggestions as it faces an Oct. 1 deadline to brief Congress on its progress.”

I gave up on keeping up with the entire Web around about 1996, and I’m *still* delighted when I discover something that’s been quietly trucking along for ages doing good work. Check out Timeline of Historical Film Colors. From the About page: “This database was created in 2012 and has been developed and curated by Barbara Flueckiger, professor at the Department of Film Studies, University of Zurich to provide comprehensive information about historical film color processes invented since the end of the 19th century including specific still photography color technologies that were their conceptual predecessors.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Twitter web test lets you remove followers without blocking them. “Twitter has launched its second feature test in one day, and this one could be particularly helpful if you’ve ever been subjected to online abuse. A newly available web test lets you remove followers without blocking them. You’ll disappear from their feed without notifications that might spark harassment and threats.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

KGW: Fake review attack targets Portland businesses. “KGW Investigates learned of at least twenty pest control companies in the Portland metro area that have received dozens of fake one-star reviews on their Google business profiles over the last year. The reviews were not left by unhappy customers with a gripe — they’re fake, computer-generated and designed to hurt a company’s reputation. The fake reviews have lowered the companies’ Google ratings, cost them thousands of dollars in lost revenue and tarnished the reliability of the rating system for consumers.”

NiemanLab: “Facebook has always been where my audience was”: Meet some of the local journalists writing the first paid newsletters at Facebook. “I spent the past week talking to a handful of the local journalists who have partnered with Bulletin, and I found that while they’re aware of Facebook’s mixed history with publishers, they can’t help but be hopeful. Facebook has been responsive to their suggestions and requests, several writers told me, and the platform offers an enormous opportunity to reach local audiences where they’re already spending lots of time online.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Russian search engine delists Navalny’s tactical voting site after ban. “Russian tech firm Yandex said on Tuesday it had removed jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s tactical voting website from its search engine to comply with a government ban ahead of a parliamentary election this month.”

Dallas Morning News: Texas schools are surveilling students online, often without their knowledge or consent. “Texas schools are rapidly scaling up the use of technology that monitors email, web history and social media posts of potentially millions of students, often without their knowledge or consent, a Dallas Morning News investigation has found. Legal and privacy experts have long raised concerns about this technology and questioned its effectiveness in detecting potential threats. Despite those worries, Texas’ schools have spent millions of tax dollars on these services since 2015.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Middle East Institute: Russia and the digital Middle East: An old game made new?. “In recent years, as the use of social media grew, the information war in cyberspace became the Kremlin’s primary tool for discrediting its perceived archenemy: ‘The West.’ The Middle East, with its increasing dependence on social media for news, has also fallen prey to Moscow’s disinformation campaigns. Russia’s main disinformation narratives in the region stem from its Soviet-inherited superpower complex and its broader strategic imperatives on the international stage.”

Associated Press: 9/11 museum to retool its research rules after criticism. “Until at least Aug. 21, the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum’s website detailed ‘scholarly research rules and regulations’ for access to its collection. They required researchers to let museum staffers review their work before publication and to adopt ‘any text changes’ the museum proposed as a condition of getting the institution’s ‘consent’ to publish. The rules said the institution was entitled to pursue ‘legal remedies’ if a researcher didn’t comply, though the museum says it never did so and is now scrapping the review requirements and legal threat.”

Techdirt: Error 403: Syrians Blocked From Online Learning Platforms. “Individuals in dictatorships need more freedom not less. Syrians have for years been unable to work remotely or pay for remote services, even educational ones. Do we want to do the same now to Afghans, who are already in fear of the Taliban? Examining in detail the experiences of Syrians, can maybe lead us to a better solution.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

HuffPost: Film Archive Releases Colorized Footage Of Last Known Tasmanian Tiger. “An Australian film archive released colorized footage of the last known Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, this week ― 85 years after the species went extinct. The short video was filmed at a zoo in Hobart, Tasmania in 1933 and shows the thylacine, named Benjamin, padding around a small enclosure. Benjamin died in captivity three years later and the Tasmanian tiger was declared extinct.” Good morning, Internet…

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