NEW RESOURCES

Spotted on Mastodon! The Ooh! Directory, at https://ooh.directory/. It’s a searchable subject index of blogs. From the About page: “ooh.directory is a place to find blogs that interest you. Explore the categories, search blog details, flip through random blogs, or keep visiting the most recently-updated blogs to see who’s talking about what right now.” Subject directories might be old fashioned but this one includes the blog’s most recent post (all included blogs must have an RSS feed) and each entry notes when the blog was last updated. There are 898 blogs at this writing. Great work.

Eurasianet: New website tracks Chinese investments in Kazakhstan. “Back in 2015, Kazakhstan and China signed 52 investment deals valued at more than $21 billion…. Seven years on, fewer than half of the projects have been completed and 17 are still under consideration, according to the latest information published by state firm Kazakh Invest. Now, a new website called Eco China Info aims to track these projects with a focus on their ‘social and environmental consequences.'”

Chicago Sun-Times: Chicago design studio has MAPPED out local community-based resources. “MAPPED, a project of Design Trust Chicago, was started because the three founders of the trust realized there was a lack of accessible information about community design programs…. The public site, launched last spring, documents a range of design projects around Chicago. The database allows different designers to submit businesses, organizations, initiatives and spaces to the project, so other designers can view other projects’ cost, funders and partners, [Clio] Lyons said.”

New-to-me, from The Digital Orientalist: The Toyo Bunko Archive: a source of joy and torment. “I hope that sharing my experience with the website will make your life using it a bit easier. But let me preface this post by saying that Toyo Bunko is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Buddhist art and archeology, as well as Central and South Asian Studies, and is worth using extensively. I highly recommend it, despite the navigation issues.”

University of Manitoba: New website a valuable resource on livestock production research. “The new site offers researchers, students, industry, governments and consumers access to an extensive library of research projects and resources examining the role of Canadian livestock production systems as an integral component of an adaptive and enduring food system in Canada.”

National Archives: New National Archives Catalog Debuts. ” A new, modernized National Archives Catalog launched online today. The new Catalog’s focus on scalability will allow the agency to reach its goal to get 500 million digitized pages in the Catalog by September 2026. The fully redesigned online public access Catalog makes accessing the agency’s holdings more intuitive for the user and improves the search experience by generating faster results.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Stuff New Zealand: Archives New Zealand services worst in decades, say experts. “Last week the Government’s record-keeping authority removed public access to its widely used online collections search tool – which had only been live since February – due to a potential privacy and security breach, after restricted files became visible. Late on Tuesday Archives reinstated access to the search tool, with chief archivist Anahera Morehu saying she was satisfied there was no breach.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: The Spooky Quest to Build a Google Maps for Graveyards. “[Atlantic Geomatics] has now taken on the task of mapping every churchyard and municipal burial ground in England—a total of more than 18,000—to create a Google Street View of graveyards in which descendants, genealogists, and conservationists can click on a map and see who was buried there and when.”

Hong Kong Free Press: Hong Kong asks search engine to place correct national anthem info in top results following rugby row. “It came after ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ – a tune popular among the city’s pro-democracy protesters in 2019 – was heard at South Korea’s Rugby Sevens instead of the Chinese national anthem ‘March of the Volunteers.’… The organiser had reportedly downloaded the top song listed when when searching online for the ‘Hong Kong national anthem.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Brussels Times: Influencer advertising on social media to include ‘trust label’ in Belgium. “On Friday, the Belgian e-commerce federation BeCommerce launched a trust label for online safety certifications that are specific to online advertising undertaken by influencers. Influencers will have to comply with European directives and those of the FPS Economy to obtain it.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New Yorker: Why I Quit Elon Musk’s Twitter. “It seems likely that this experiment will conclude with bankruptcy and Twitter falling into the hands of creditors who will have their own ideas of what it should be and whom it should serve. But at least in the interim it’s worth keeping in mind that some battles are simply not worth fighting, some battles must be fought, but none are worth fighting on terms set by those who win by having the conflict drag on endlessly.”

Delft University of Technology: A navigation system with 10 centimeter accuracy. “Researchers of Delft University of Technology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and VSL have developed an alternative positioning system that is more robust and accurate than GPS, especially in urban settings. The working prototype that demonstrated this new mobile network infrastructure achieved an accuracy of 10 centimeter.” Tip o’ the nib to Map Room Blog for the pointer. Good morning, Internet…

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