NEW RESOURCES

Google Blog: You cannot spell Slovenia without ‘love’. “This year, to inspire people all around the world when it comes to picking their next travel destination, Google Arts & Culture partnered with the Slovenian Tourist Board and a handful of cultural partners, like the National Library of Slovenia, Beekeeping Museum Radovljica and Slovenian Alpine Association to release the project ‘Slovenian Stories’. This online exploration takes you through the country ​​in the most unexpected ways: users will meet the locals and discover the crafts of one of Europe’s most forested countries.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bing Blogs: Search local stores and more with Microsoft Bing. “Time is important and shoppers are smart. Consumers increasingly check store stock availability and choose to buy online and pick up in-store. These options save time and effort, and searching with Microsoft Bing or Bing Maps makes it even easier now to shop with convenience and certainty.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 3 Ways to Visually Organize Your Bookmarks. “Having the option to save bookmarks within your browser is fantastic. Except when you go to find the link you need, and can’t actually find it. It may have even been faster to try searching for the page again, but instead, you’re staring at a list of text and icons, determined to find it. In this article, we’ll take you through three ways to visually organize your bookmarks. This will help you locate your links faster because you’ll know exactly where everything is.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

City College of New York: CCNY’s MFA in Creative Writing creates “Archives as Muse: A Harlem Storytelling Project”. “The storytelling project, directed by Michelle Valladares, lecturer and director of the MFA in Creative Writing, aims to include symposia, interviews, online workshops and exhibits as well as a resource section with links to public archives.”

Irish Times: The social media chefs demystifying the kitchen for a new generation. “Despite me writing a recipe for feta bake in a national newspaper back in 2013, it took a 30-second video to make a version of it a viral hit last year. The TikTok platform made it easy to share and spread, creating a worldwide spike in feta cheese sales. Being shown how easy this delicious dish is to make has been key to its popularity, as well as the visual element of those bursting tomatoes and yielding soft cheese making it look so appetising.”

Washington Post: Amazon, can we have our name back?. “Alexa Morales wore her name proudly. But after Amazon launched its voice service, also called Alexa, in November 2014, people began speaking to Morales differently. She said they made jokes about her name, giving her commands or asking her questions in a robotic tone.”

The Verge: Google Pixel mail-in repairs have allegedly twice resulted in leaked pics and a privacy nightmare. “After game designer and author Jane McGonigal sent her Pixel 5a to Google for repair, someone allegedly took and hacked her device. This is at least the second report in as many weeks from someone claiming they sent a Google phone in for repair, only to have it used to leak their private data and photographs.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Complete Music Update: Google voluntarily de-lists The Pirate Bay in response to ISP-targeting web-blocking injunction. “Google has seemingly de-listed The Pirate Bay from its search engine in the Netherlands in response to a web-blocking injunction in the country against the infamous piracy site, even though it isn’t actually named on that injunction.”

Sydney Morning Herald: Next level of DNA analysis allows police to build picture of suspects . “Forensic specialists obtain a DNA sample at a crime scene. It doesn’t have any matching profiles in police databases but, using analysis of the genetic material, they deduce the gender, ancestry, eye colour and hair colour of the potential suspect in the investigation. It sounds like something you might see in a science fiction movie, but the technology is now available to law enforcement agencies like the Australian Federal Police – a powerful new tool for investigators.”

Houston Public Media: A federal judge has blocked Texas’ new social media censorship law for now . “House Bill 20, which was set to take effect Dec. 2, would have let Texas users banned by social media platforms sue for reinstatement or have the state attorney general sue on their behalf.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stanford University: Stanford physicists help create time crystals with quantum computers. “Just as a crystal’s structure repeats in space, a time crystal repeats in time and, importantly, does so infinitely and without any further input of energy – like a clock that runs forever without any batteries. The quest to realize this phase of matter has been a longstanding challenge in theory and experiment – one that has now finally come to fruition.”

Johns Hopkins University: Piecing Together Hard History. “Friday’s forum, organized by the university’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and Hopkins Retrospective, explored the complexities of archival research and scholarship around the institution of slavery and its legacies at universities. The virtual event featured panels on research methodologies, how racism and slavery continue to affect institutions, and the future of such research. Panelists included several historians from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere who are engaged in this work.” Good evening, Internet…

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