SEARCH GIZMO OF THE DAY: Biography Buckets
I spoke to Apra Wisconsin last week, and one of the participants asked about a tool to do a general biographical search when you have various types of information. It was a great question so I made Biography Buckets. It organizes time-labeled events into date-based searches for one of seven different search resources.

NEW RESOURCES

NHK World-Japan: New website features collection of films documenting Japan in early 20th century. “Archivists in Japan have launched a website featuring a collection of news and documentary films from the early 20th century. The National Film Archive of Japan and the National Institute of Informatics opened the website on Friday. ‘Film IS a Document: NFAJ Historic Film Portal’ offers a lineup of 87 films produced from 1904 to 1937.” I was not able to find the site directly but it looks like the video is being uploaded to YouTube.

Jewish News Syndicate: National Library of Israel expands Sephardic heritage, Spanish-language offerings. “NLI has launched a webpage dedicated to the Jewish Expulsion from Spain. The site presents items from its collection of pre-and post-expulsion Sephardic manuscripts, early printed books, Ladino materials, poetry and prayer, and other oral documentation.”

EVENTS

Library of Congress: Library of Congress Launches Transcription Campaign for Rarely Seen Post-Civil War Petition from Black South Carolina Residents Seeking Equal Rights. “The Library of Congress hosted a special display and press conference to announce a new transcription campaign seeking to learn more about the signers of a rarely seen 1865 petition by Black residents in South Carolina calling for equal rights.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 5 of the Best Steganography Tools in Linux. “Steganography is the art and process of putting one type of information inside another in an attempt to hide it. This is often done in situations where an individual wants to preserve secret information inside normal objects. This guide shows five of the best steganography tools currently available in Linux. It also shows you how you can hide your first message using these utilities.”

Digital Inspiration: Automating the Creation of Multiple Folders in Google Drive. “A teacher may want to create folders in Google Drive for each of their students and share those folders with the students. This can be a tedious task if you have a large number of students but there’s a way to automate the process – you may either use an add-on or write an Apps Script to generate the folder structure.”

MakeUseOf: 6 Best Sites for Cheat Sheets, Shortcuts, and Quick Reference Cards. “The internet loves making cheat sheets for everything from programming languages to recipes and cooking ratios. These websites create their own from scratch or collect the best of the internet’s advice to give you easy access to shortcuts and quick reference cards.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Indian Express: Ignored Dutch archives hold key to understanding colonial history of Kerala . “The Cosmos Malabaricus, which in Latin means the Malabar world, and is a spinoff from the Hortus Malabaricus, a 17th century Indo-Dutch treatise on the flora of the Malabar region, promises to continue with the tradition of training Indian historians to access the Dutch archives.”

WIRED: Review: We Put ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Bard to the Test. “For the past three decades, when we’ve browsed the web or used a search engine, we’ve typed in bits of data and received mostly static answers in response. It’s been a fairly reliable relationship of input-output, one that’s grown more complex as advanced artificial intelligence—and data monetization schemes—have entered the chat. Now, the next wave of generative AI is enabling a new paradigm: computer interactions that feel more like human chats.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: ‘Thousands of Dollars for Something I Didn’t Do’. “Because of a bad facial recognition match and other hidden technology, Randal Reid spent nearly a week in jail, falsely accused of stealing purses in a state he said he had never even visited.”

CNN: Arkansas sues TikTok, ByteDance and Meta over mental health claims. “The state of Arkansas has sued TikTok, its parent ByteDance, and Facebook-parent Meta over claims the companies’ products are harmful to users, in the latest effort by public officials to take social media companies to court over mental-health and privacy concerns.”

Carnegie Mellon University: New tool helps mobile app developers create more accurate iOS privacy labels. “After installing the tool, developers are asked to load their apps’ static code. The code remains on their machine and is never shared with anyone. Privacy Label Wiz then analyzes the code to identify likely data collection and use practices… The wizard also looks at whether sensitive data is shared with third parties such as advertisers or marketing companies, and more generally looks for other practices developers need to disclose in their iOS privacy labels.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University at Buffalo: UB receives $500,000 Mellon Foundation grant to develop Haudenosaunee Archive, Resource and Knowledge Portal. “The University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences has received a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support the implementation of an indispensable community-driven digital resource for the collection, preservation and dissemination of Indigenous research, teaching and learning.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Check out Search Gizmos when you have a minute. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you.