Inspired by the map that "Mr. Peabody" made of law firm locations in Manhattan, I've started to map the location of Canadian law firms, starting here at (my) home, Toronto. Thus far I've only got 30 or so mapped. If anyone spots a mistake, please let me know. If your firm is missing… read on.

I've opened the project to anyone who wishes to collaborate with me on this. Think of it like doodling: nothing much to do at that meeting? add a firm or two. It's actually easy to do, and if you find yourself having difficulties, . . . [more]

The next time you're in N.Y. on business you might find it helpful to have a link to this Google map on your PDA. Someone with the nom de net of Mr Peabody (a character in one of the all time great cartoon shows on TV – q.v.) has located approximately a hundred law firms in New York city on a Google map. He's also provided addresses, phone numbers and websites as well. (Some are marked with blue buttons, others with red — I have no idea what the difference, if any, might be… Political leaning?) . . . [more]

We are all publishers now, but are bloggers journalists? Frankly, I don't think so, and I don't pretend to be a journalist (even though I have been writing a weekly newspaper column for several years) – although the issue has been subject to some debate.

Wikipedia defines a journalist as: "a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people." – although it defines journalism as "the profession of writing or communicating, formally employed by publications and broadcasters, for the benefit of a particular community of people."

Bloggers are often treated as . . . [more]

I am an Olympics fan-girl, and have been absorbing as much television coverage as possible. What I find new this Olympics are all the references by reporters to blogs written by athletes. I was a bit surprised that the athletes would be into blogging, but in a CBC interview following his Olympic competition this weekend, Kyle Shewfelt said that he likes to write and he finds writing about his day of training to be a good way to unwind and "let it all out".

And write he does! I had a look at his personal blog, simply called Kyle Shewfelt . . . [more]

It had to happen. . . . [more]

Fascinating real-life stuff.

New York Post photojournalist Steven Hirsch writes a blog called Courthouse Confessions.

It is all based on his encounters in front of the Manhattan Criminal Court with criminal defendants leaving the building.

He snaps their pictures and asks them a few questions.

[Source: New York Times, August 3rd, 2008]

Cross-posted to Library Boy. . . . [more]

That great Canadian blogger Rob Hyndman has a good piece on the sad news that William Patry is closing down his copyright blog. Patry has two reasons: first, because he can't get people to treat what he says as personal, as having no connection to his work as Google's copyright counsel; and second, more unhappy, because the current state of copyright law is truly depressing. Rob notes that Larry Lessig abandoned the field because of a "corruption" of the political process.

Read both entries. . . . [more]

I've just released a new blog watch website over at Stem; this time tracking 54 different law blogs on the topic of DUI law.

A while ago here on Slaw I published a Yahoo pipes tutorial, and tried to show how we can take a set of authoritative feeds for a particular topic and mix them together as a current awareness tool. This new site is a good example of a subject-based feed mix. It's also a good example of how feed mixing might help for the development internal collections; not simply because it pulls together like subject . . . [more]

It's been a while since I made any use of Google Notebook — mostly, I think, because I'm not much of a note-taker unless I have a project in the works, and then I'll probably use a desktop app. But I may revisit the online application because the Official Google Notebook Blog tells us they've added an export function that lets you:

• Export this notebook to Google Docs.
• View this notebook as a web page.
• Get updates from this notebook in Google Reader.
• Get updates from this notebook as an RSS feed.
• Save this notebook as an Atom document. This

. . . [more]

Google is rolling out a new feature that will use some of your data to "improve your search experience." According to the Official Google Blog, we can expect to see a notation appearing in the upper right hand corner of search results pages that state "Customized for the [your city] area." Using the location of your ISP, Google will give prominence to results that come closest to that location. You will have the ability, apparently, to dictate which address is used for the location customization.

What is not made clear is whether you will be able to turn this . . . [more]

Out-Googling Google.

by David J. Bilinsky

July 29, 2008.

♫ I tried my best to let you know
That I'm not trying to test you
It's just so hard to let you go
When I have nothing against you…♫

Words and music by Midtown

It was just a matter of time. It isn't that I have anything against you, Google, indeed I have learned so much from you, but in time, all things must end. Alas, I have found another.

Cuil (pronounced cool) is the new well, Cool search engine in town. And she is big – very big . . . [more]

I've just discovered that Google offers a way of stripping style sheets (and images, if you like) from any website, with the effect that you're left with simply the text and fundamental html formatting. The advantage is that this can make reading the text of sites much easier on the small screens of various mobile devices.

The Google URL is http://www.google.com/gwt/n, which offers you an ultra simple screen:

I'm glad to say that Slaw works well when fed through this device. The following link will take you to Slaw with all style and images removed:

http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slaw.ca&_gwt_noimg=1

If you're able . . . [more]