This sounds awesome! A Chrome extension lets you mute mentions of the 2016 US elections. “The aptly-named ‘I haven’t got time for the ‘Paign’ is basic, but effective: it automatically scrubs popular news sites like the New York Times, Slate and The Atlantic of campaign news and tells you how many articles were hidden.”
Twitter wants to know your birthday. Yeah, no. “To add your birth date to your Twitter profile, choose the “Edit profile” option on Twitter.com. Your birth date is a completely optional part of your profile and you have full control over who can see it. The visibility setting for your birth year is separate from the setting for your birth month and day, giving you the flexibility to share as much (or as little) as you want. Check out our Help Center for more information about your birth date on Twitter.”
The Government Printing Office (GPO) has released the Mobile Member Guide app for the 114th Congress. “The mobile Web app provides the public with quick, easy access to information on Members of the 114th Congress; the features include their picture, party affiliation, hometown, home state, and length of service. The app allows users to browse for Members of Congress by last name, state, chamber, or party.”
Handy article from Ed Bott: How to turn your Windows 10 upgrade files into an ISO disk image — “One question I’ve been asked more than any other in recent weeks is whether Microsoft will release Windows 10 in ISO format. No one outside Redmond knows yet, but in the meantime there’s an option: Make your own ISO files. Here’s how. [Updated with product keys for Preview builds 10158 and 10159]”
Instagram will start storing bigger pictures. “Just over a week ago, I wrote plaintively about Instagram’s archaic 640 x 640 resolution and the need to move with the times and give users the ability to upload larger images. This past Friday, it appears, Instagram has started addressing that very issue, as photos sent to the popular image sharing app are now being stored in a higher 1080 x 1080 size.”
Bing has done a big upgrade to Bing Maps. “Available today for those who opt-in*, the Bing Maps Preview reflects this feedback. The new Bing Maps is designed so you can search, view and share multiple places at one time, see trusted reviews and photos from partners such as Yelp, get access to a rich set of visuals and information on the places you plan to visit, make it easy to plan your travel times and more.” Check out that asterisk, though, Bing Maps isn’t available to everyone just yet. US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, and a few other places. One feature, “Along the route,” is currently available only in the US.
This is interesting. Google is getting into ride-sharing, via Waze. “Google-owned online mapping company Waze is launching a carpooling pilot program in Israel where commuters pay fellow drivers a small fee for a ride to and from work.”
Michael Zimmer has a really good article at First Monday: The Twitter Archive at the Library of Congress: Challenges for Information Practice and Information Policy. “In April 2010, the U.S. Library of Congress and the popular micro-blogging company Twitter announced that every public tweet, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library and made available to researchers. The Library of Congress’ planned digital archive of all public tweets holds great promise for the research community, yet, over five years since its announcement, the archive remains unavailable. This paper explores the challenges faced by the Library that have prevented the timely realization of this valuable archive, divided into two categories: challenges involving practice, such as how to organize the tweets, how to provide useful means of retrieval, how to physically store them; and challenges involving policy, such as the creation of access controls to the archive, […]
Maybe you’ll find this useful. I will definitely find it useful: How to take a screenshot on a Chromebook.
How-To Geek did a review of Google Cardboard. Not really interested in vertigo and nausea.
Useful-for-a-given-value-of-useful: Google made a tool that trippified photos, then it open sourced that tool. Now thanks to Zain Shah you can try to “Deep Dream” tool for yourself. Note this article warns that the site is very, very slow in responding. I had the same experience; I suspect it’s getting a lot of traffic.
From Ubergizmo: How to download your Facebook photos. “Fortunately, Facebook makes it quite easy to download photos. You can easily download a single photo or all of your photos right from your Facebook profile. However, there is always some space for improvement and with the help of Third-party tools you can gain some great control over what you can download. In this tutorial, we are going to show you how you can download a single photo, an Album or all of your Facebook photos.”
Hey hey hey! Gigablast has hooked up with the Internet Archive (PRESS RELEASE). “Shortly after releasing its web search engine as open source and available for free download, Gigablast, Inc. has inked a deal with the Internet Archive. Gigablast has agreed to provide search for the archive’s 400+ billion web documents. After conducting tests, the Internet Archive found that its users prefer the quality of Gigablast’s search results over the leading open source search engine solutions.”
From TheNextWeb: Why I switched from Google to DuckDuckGo. “While its main draw is privacy, DuckDuckGo has another killer feature you may not have heard of. In fact, it should cause you to consider ditching your existing search engine for DuckDuckGo — yes, even Google. I’m talking about bangs.” No, not like hair.
From The Guardian: a fascinating story technology, old newspapers, and the race for preservation.. “In the dark void of the National Newspaper Building, the robots are afoot. Towering 20 metres high and stretching far into the distance is an imposing expanse of racks, heaving with trays bearing volume upon volume of newspapers, laid flat and strapped between metal sheets. Suddenly, an enormous autonomous crane zooms forwards, stops abruptly and, with a hydraulic gasp, shoots out an arm. Lifting a large metal tray off the scaffold, it deposits it on a conveyor belt and races into the dark. One of three poised for action, it lurks in the gloom, awaiting a command – robots, after all, don’t need the lights on. The tray and its heavy load are whisked away, making a swift right angle at a turntable, and exit through an airlock. A driverless shuttle car then speeds it to […]
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