NEW RESOURCES

Business Wire: LA Business Council Institute and USC Sol Price School of Public Policy Center for Economic Development Launch Groundbreaking Database of Over 31,000 Small Businesses in LA County (PRESS RELEASE). “Developed in collaboration with the University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy’s Center for Economic Development, Compete4LA aims to help level the playing field for local businesses seeking to support the region’s major sports, entertainment, and cultural events, as well as major public infrastructure projects. The online database will host and maintain over 31,000 publicly accessible, verified business profiles for Los Angeles County businesses, featuring small firms under $1 million in annual sales and fewer than 20 employees, and other refining criteria.”

News Nine: Bhasha Centre’s new digital library aims to engage with theatre community, further collaborations between playwrights. “The Drama Library is a free-for-all, open-access digital library of ‘unpublished’ Indian plays from English to Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, Arabic, Sindhi and Dakhni Arabic.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Architectural Digest: Material Bank Inks a Deal With Architizer, Continuing Its Acquisition Spree. “Less than two months ago, Material Bank completed a $175 million round of Series D funding, increasing its valuation to $1.9 billion. Now, the architectural, design, and construction materials marketplace is poised to incorporate a leading source of design ideas into its arsenal. This week, Material bank announced its acquisition of Architizer, bringing the industry’s biggest database of architectural projects into the fold. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.”

TechCrunch: Twitter to expand into long-form content with upcoming Twitter Notes feature. “In what could be one of Twitter’s more significant changes since doubling the character count from 140 to 280 characters, the company is preparing to launch a new feature that would support the direct publishing of long-form content on its platform.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Newsradio 1040: Iowa Hall of Pride Museum to Close, Transition to Online Platform. “The Iowa Hall of Pride is closing its physical location in downtown Des Moines and moving online. The Iowa High School Athletic Association says the Hall of Pride’s physical museum’s last day open to the public will be June 30th, after which its content will become exclusively available online.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Japanese man loses USB stick with entire city’s personal details. “For many, after-work drinks are a common way of relaxing after a busy week. But one worker in Japan could be nursing a protracted hangover after he lost a USB memory stick following a night out with colleagues. Why? It contained the personal details of nearly half a million people.”

Euractiv: Italian data protection authority strikes another major blow to Google Analytics. “The decision is the last in a row against Google Analytics, which data protection authorities accuse of illegally transferring data to the United States, a country that is considered not to have an adequate level of data protection since the landmark Schrems II ruling of the EU Court of Justice in July 2020.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Brown University: “Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analog World,” Brown Library’s Digital Publications Initiative’s Second Born-Digital Scholarly Monograph, Published by Stanford University Press. “Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analog World, by Professor of Italian Studies Massimo Riva, explores popular forms of entertainment used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to transport viewers to a new world, foreshadowing present-day virtual, augmented, and extended reality experiences (VR, AR, XR). Published by Stanford University Press, Shadow Plays examines themes of virtual travel, social surveillance, and utopian imagination through six case histories and eight interactive simulations.”

NewsWise: Rensselaer Announces Institute for Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Computing. “The goal of the Institute is to become the primary academic center in the country for advancing new computational paradigms, including those that are a hybrid of conventional, neuromorphic, and quantum computing — combining bits, neurons, and qubits, which will make it possible to solve problems that current computing systems cannot. The new institute will allow Rensselaer to innovate using quantum computing and edge computing for networks and cyber-physical systems, and hacker-proof quantum communications.”

Harvard Business School: All Those Zoom Meetings May Boost Connection and Curb Loneliness. “Americans are lonelier than ever—a problem the COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated. Could interactions on platforms like Zoom and Twitch come close to replicating the real-life contact people crave? New research suggests that’s more likely to happen if the virtual experiences truly engage people on screen.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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