NEW RESOURCES

Google Blog: How Indonesia helped spice up the world. “Spice Up The World, a new destination on Google Arts & Culture, is a collaboration with the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism & Creative Economy and Indonesia Gastronomy Network. It features 45 immersive digital stories that dive into Indonesia’s 1,000-year history of spices and give you a taste of the delicious dishes that make up Indonesian gastronomy.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Washington Post: Facebook to testify on kids’ safety as lawmakers probe a whistleblower’s revelations. “The Journal’s ‘Facebook Files’ series — which covers the company’s handling of online trafficking, medical information and more — has ignited a firestorm of criticism of the tech giant on Capitol Hill. But it’s the findings about Instagram’s effect on teens that has struck a nerve. The whistleblower purportedly behind the leaks, meanwhile, is turning over documents to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and has indicated they plan to soon go public, according to a senator who’s said to be in contact with them.”

Royal Central: Thousands of Prince Albert’s Papers Online for the First Time. “There are over 22,000 items now available on the site, including photographs, prints, and archival documents. The Royal Collection, along with the Royal Archives and the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, have all contributed items. The new 5,000 items focus on Albert in a handful of key areas: his role as a father, as a husband, as a reformer of the Royal Household, as a visionary, and a patron of photography.

Bloomberg: Google Worker Unrest Rises After Removal of Russia Voting App. ” Google employees have joined the slew of politicians and activists blasting the internet giant for pulling a voting app from Russia’s opposition leader, a move critics say showed the company was caving in to the Kremlin.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Wired: Apple and Google Go Further Than Ever to Appease Russia. “As the tech industry grapples with how to address a host of complicated human rights and safety issues, the incident underscored the uncomfortable compromises that many tech companies strike in order to operate in certain regions, as well as the increasingly brazen demands of authoritarian governments.” I know I’m mentioning this a lot but I’m worried about where it leads. Google and Apple fold to Russia. What’s next? Turkey? Vietnam? India? Iran? China?

TechCrunch: Happaning aims to be a ‘Google Street View’ for video. “A new startup called Happaning wants to make video a more immersive experience by allowing people to watch the same event from multiple perspectives. Or, as co-founder and CEO Andrew Eniwumide likes to say, it’s ‘Google Street View, but with video.’ The company believes its unique technology offering these multi-vantage-point videos could ultimately do more than just introduce a new user experience for video — it could solve other issues with misinformation or deep fakes, for example, as there would be other, verified perspectives of the same scene that could be used to fact check any attempts at misleading others through video edits.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

FYI Music News: Metadata: A Solution Without A Universal Protocol. “Secure digital audio transfer platform Byta recently commissioned music journalist Shawn Reynaldo to write a three-part series that looks into the state of music sharing, when it comes to working with audio files: music metadata, music storage, music sharing. What follows is part one dealing with embedding the compete metadata that assigns rights and ownership in tracks so that compensation to creators and rights owners can be correctly assigned. As it stands today, there is no standard for metadata and because of inconsistencies it is estimated that billions of dollars remain on the table as assignment of payments has proved elusive.” A nice deep dive that will resonate with anyone who’s ever had to work with missing/incomplete metadata.

New York Times: Those Fancy Cars He Flaunted on YouTube? A $30 Million Fraud Scheme Paid for Them, U.S. Says. “On Wednesday, federal prosecutors said that they had charged Omi, whose real name is Bill Omar Carrasquillo, and two of his associates, in a scheme that involved illegally selling copyrighted video content to thousands of subscribers on Mr. Carrasquillo’s own online service, which was called, at various times, Reboot, Gears TV, Reloaded and Gears Reloaded.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: Facebook, Twitter still the leading social media sites where people get news. “Roughly half of US adults say they get news from social media sites ‘sometimes’ or ‘often,’ according to a new poll from Pew Research Center. Though that number (48%) is slightly lower than it was last year, it could generate concern given social media’s vulnerability to misinformation.”

Mashable: 8 online experiences linked to suicide in kids and teens. “When a child or teenager attempts or dies by suicide, it sets off a desperate search to understand why. While that’s the case with many suicide attempts or deaths regardless of the person’s age, a child’s vulnerability and relative innocence creates a particularly heartbreaking contrast with their feelings of hopelessness. A new study aims to better understand one set of risk factors for youth: their online experiences.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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