“The text-only internet tool Textise is a new way of looking at the Web. It’s an internet tool that removes everything from a web page except for its text. In practice, this means that images, forms, scripts, pretty fonts, they all go, leaving plain text. What’s really cool, though, is th… How to use this… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: July 2017
GPO’s beta website research update for July 2017
July 6, 2017 – Links to related bills on Congressional Record details pages, RSS notifications, link service “Highlights from this release include links from Congressional Record Details pages to related bills, a variety of enhancements based on feedback from users, thumbnails in search results, pagination for optimized browsing, in-context help information, new developer tools including… Continue Reading
Paper – Crowdsourcing E-Book Accessibility Information and Impact on Staff Development
Crowdsourcing E-Book Accessibility Information and the Impact on Staff Development. Victoria Dobson, Leeds Beckett University; Alistair McNaught, JISC. Insights: the UKSG journal. Vol. 30, No. 2 (July 2017) “For students with print impairments, e-books offer great potential to remove barriers to information. However, for various reasons, not all e-books are fully accessible. Significant variability exists… Continue Reading
IG Audit of OPM IT Systems – Follow on to massive breach of employee data
Follow up to previous posting of November 2016 – Audit of OPM Security Systems Shows Continued Material Weakness – an update via NextGov: “More than two years after suffering a massive data beach [of over 20 million current and past federal employee personal data], the Office of Personnel Management still isn’t sufficiently vetting many of… Continue Reading
Critics Blocked from President’s Twitter Account File Suit
Knight First Amendment Institute: “Joined by seven individuals from across the country, the Knight First Amendment Institute filed suit in the Southern District of New York today contending that President Trump and his communications team are violating the First Amendment by blocking individuals from the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account because they criticized the president or his… Continue Reading
New Report Reveals Google’s Extensive Financial Support for Academia
News release: [July 11, 2017] Campaign for Accountability released a new report, Google Academics Inc., revealing Google’s extensive financial support for academics and policy experts. CfA identified 329 research papers published between 2005 and 2017 on public policy matters of interest to Google that were in some way funded by the company. Read the report… Continue Reading
FOIA Requests to Office of Government Ethics to date
The Office of Government Ethics has received 406 FOIA requests to date during Fiscal Year 2017. FY 17/406 Search for the status of all requests to date – https://extapps2.oge.gov/FOIAStatus/FOIAInfo.nsf/SearchByFOIANumber?OpenForm&FOIANumber= Continue Reading
Collaborative investigative report on rollback of federal regulations
The Deep Industry Ties of Trump’s Deregulation Teams – “In February, President Trump ordered federal agencies to form task forces charged with finding regulations to weaken or eliminate. While the names of appointees to executive-agency task forces are typically made public, some agencies are refusing to reveal who is on their panels. The New York… Continue Reading
Pew survey – Online Harassment 2017
“This study measures the prevalence and patterns of online harassment by examining six broad categories of abusive behavior (see “Defining online harassment” in the accompanying box). These categories are identical to those used in Pew Research Center’s 2014 examination of online harassment. They are designed to capture a broad range of experiences – not just… Continue Reading
Making PowerPoint Work for You – in 29 Bullet Points!
Russell Davies originally submitted this online essay to Wired – here it is unedited or abbreviated – a succinct [yes well it is 29 points but they are good mind you], instructive and insightful guide to on how you too can use PowerPoint a kind of ‘bicycle for the mind.’ Read it carefully as his… Continue Reading
Study – 100 fossil fuel producers responsible for 71% of global emissions
The Carbon Majors Database – CDP Carbon Majors Report 2017 – 100 fossil fuel producers and nearly 1 trillion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions “The Carbon Majors Database stores greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data on the largest company-related sources of all time. CDP’s Carbon Majors Report 2017 is the first in an ongoing series of… Continue Reading
Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency: Sixth Edition
The National Academies: “Publicly available statistics from government agencies that are credible, relevant, accurate, and timely are essential for policy makers, individuals, households, businesses, academic institutions, and other organizations to make informed decisions. Even more, the effective operation of a democratic system of government depends on the unhindered flow of statistical information to its citizens.… Continue Reading
