The latest social software application (so-soap?) to come to my notice is Twitter. I’m no fan of these things — my friends and I stay in touch by phone or email and by exchanging shouts at the pub from time to time — but I can see that even for the not-young, some so-soaps might have practical applications. And in the case of Twitter, that application would be reporting on your location or status to those who have a need to know.

A Twitter account let’s you send a simple line or two to a website or to certain . . . [more]

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So here’s what I’d like: a way to write multi-ended links with simple indirection, and a reasonable way for users to display them in whatever browser they’re using.

The author of the Search, John Battelle, has made 14 predictions about developments in search-enging technology in 2007.

I agree with the challenge to Google’s perceived dominance, and to some of the possible corporate mergers, but much of the rest seems to be speculative. . . . [more]

There’s been a lot of talk about phishing recently, and there’s always a low level growl about those spam emails that pass themselves off as some missive from work. It’s just a fact of life: people lie. At least some people do, and when there’s money in it, the lies get as big as the Brooklyn Bridge. But of course, we’d never lie. At least not like that.

We might adopt a transparent untruth, however. Just for fun. Such as a Super Hero Cycling Jersey. Svelte Slawers (try to say that six time quick) could choose between the Spider . . . [more]

Most of you are familiar with, WestlaweCARSWELL’s Litagor service. Until recently, those of us in the academic setting were able to use it and found it very useful from a number of different perspectives. Students taking part in moot court competitions, civil procedure study and paper writing all found Litigator to be an excellent tool for use in their research and learning experience. Faculty members were also finding it most useful as an access point for material that was not otherwise readily abundant. I’ve used the past tense in describing Litigator’s use in the academic context, because it is no . . . [more]

Thanks to Steve Matthews for clearing up some misconceptions over at Vancouver Law Librarian Blog.

In his post RSS and Viruses? he clarifies:

Are RSS feeds a virus risk for law firms? or any other company? I’ve had this question before, so let’s clear this up. The answer is NO!

RSS is an xml file, which by definition is an ASCII text file with mark up. It is an interpreted file. By itself, it cannot execute a virus. The only potential risk would be within the feed’s description field, which can carry html data. Viruses can be embedded within

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The latest issue of the Lewis & Clark Law Review is devoted to the implications of open access publication for legal scholarship, for law reviews and for access to legal information.

Serious issues which we might well consider exploring more fully in future posts on Slaw.

SYMPOSIUM: OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING AND THE FUTURE OF LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP

Foreword: Why Open Access to Scholarship Matters

Joseph Scott Miller

10 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 733 (2006)

The Movement for Open Access Law

Michael W. Carroll

10 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 741 (2006)

Access to primary and secondary legal materials is a . . . [more]

For those of you who are the administrators/facilitators of a group wiki:

The DARwiki has some hints and tips for improving and promoting participation in community-based wikis. Some DOs and DON’Ts that are mentioned include:
-DON’T create empty pages
-DON’T do it all yourself
-DON’T over organize
-DO initiate a wiki project (focus on a specific page or set of pages for a limited time period)
-DO design a good FAQ for the wiki

Also check out Meredith Farkas’ (“Queen of Wikis”) comments on these tips. . . . [more]

Robert Ambrogi nous annonce dans un billet sur Law.com intitulé Blogging Scooter que:

For the first time in federal court, two coveted media seats are reserved for bloggers. Not only that but the court is providing WiFi to permit them to blog live.

En effet, 2 bloggers auront des siègent réserver dans le cadre de la sélection des jurés pour le procès pour parjure d’I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby qui est accusé d’avoir menti aux enquêteur chargés de faire la lumière sur la fuite dans les médias du nom d’une agente secrète de la CIA, Valerie Plame. . . . [more]

Justia, a legal technology firm released BlawgSearch.com, a search engine and directory of legal blogs, and Blawgs.fm, a search engine and directory of legal podcastsWe discussed this briefly, earlier this month, but now it’s launched..

BlawgSearch.com includes a directory of over 1,000 editorially selected legal blogs, which are categorized by subject matter and locality. The BlawgSearch.com search engine enables sorting of results by relevance and posting date, and allows subscriptions to RSS feeds of the searches. BlawgSearch.com also includes daily, weekly, monthly and all time legal blog popularity rankings.

Slaw ended up as fifth highest ranked in the . . . [more]

Jim Milles, director of the Law Library at the University of Buffalo Law School, is teaching a course this spring entitled Teaching Legal Research.

The lecture for his first class was yesterday and is available in the form of a podcast.

Milles will be podcasting all of his lectures in the class.

On their own, I don’t think podcasts make for effective teaching tools because a large part of the learning experience involves interaction, reading, etc.

It appears though that the intention is for the site to include links to teaching materials in other formats such as PDF. I . . . [more]