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]

Shifd is a nice little program that just might prove handy for some folks. Created by two guys from the New York Times R&D department in a 22-hour hack at a London contest, the app lets you file snippets of data that interest you and retrieve them from any computer or your cell phone. (The feature involving mobile phones is currently only for the U.S. but they’re working on Canada, we’re told.) There’s also a desktop version running on Adobe Air that syncs your notes with the Times server.

You’re invited to file data in one of three modes: notes, . . . [more]

After an article published earlier this year in the New Atlantis, the discussion has flared up again about the negative effects that distractions and multi-tasking can have on productivity.

In response to the New Atlantic article, others have been chiming in. Nicholas Carr, whose blog we have mentioned here in the past, wrote “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” for the Atlantic Monthly. The Sunday Times this week published an article called “Stoooopid …. why the Google generation isn’t as smart as it thinks.” All of these articles complain that the way we access information is harming . . . [more]

Some time back we posted about Google’s wisdom of the crowds encyclopedia knol, the idea being that it would be useful to have experts write about what they know and authenticate the pieces by attaching their names and info to them. Google now tells us that the experimental phase is over and you, too, can contribute to the store of the world’s knowledge by either writing your own knol or by making suggestions to those of others, suggestions they’re free to accept or not, of course (a process Google has called “moderated collaboration”).

I have to say that thus . . . [more]

Roxer

Remember that name – it’s a great site that permits drag and drop web site construction. You can build a website without knowing one character of HTML.

It’s the brainchild of Lex Arquette and Jeremiah Grossman, whom Slaw readers will know from WhiteHat Security.

Roxer for free has its limitations. The beta pricing for the subscribed version is $7 per month. . . . [more]

When a shift away from law is wanted, you might take a look at Robbins Library Notes, a blog by Jason Pannone, Librarian at Robbins Library, Department of Philosophy, Harvard University.

Incidentally, his is one of the many blogs facilitated by the Berkman Center‘s offer of a free blog to anyone with a Harvard or Radcliffe email address. I haven’t been able to find a decent listing of all such blogs, but there is a page setting out the 40 most recently updated Harvard blogs, if you want to see what Crimson is up to. . . . [more]

Interesting answers to the question posed to Ask MetaFilter today.

Of course, it begs the question of whether in fact “so many lawyers” actually do use WordPerfect. Do you or folks at your firm? If so, why? . . . [more]

BBC is reporting the imminent demise of the computer mouse as a peripheral input device. The prediction is made by Gartner’s Stephen Prentice.

As one commentator called it: “Idiots Want to Replace Computer Mouse with Expensive New Gadgets …” . . . [more]

Here are links to a couple of American posts, which set out good practical advice about whether your next case is the one that would be right to deploy technology in the courtroom and dazzle the judge ((Being American pieces they’re focused on convincing the jury)).

Larry Cohan’s Using Technology at Trial, or Not, and Gregory P. Joseph’s A Simplified Approach to Computer Generated Evidence and Animations . . . [more]

Last year in May Steve Matthews mooted the idea of a virtual law firm and sparked interesting comments, a couple from folks who were in such practices. Now big hitter Craig Johnson has teamed up with some others to make a big splash with their Virtual Law Partners, based in San Francisco. From the bouncy (but effective) website, it seems that they’re aiming at individuals, families and perhaps small businesses.

Law.com has a piece on the startup, which will fill you in on the fees, the predictions, etc. — but not on who else is doing the virtual . . . [more]

Something that we haven’t mentioned here on Slaw is the new law blog monitoring website Lexmonitor. The site was developed by Kevin O’Keefe and Lexblog, who are normally in the business of building lawyer blogs, and now expanding into the world of aggregations & web publishing. If you subscribe to the make your own media approach, which I frequently do, then a monitor tool aligned with the company product makes a lot of business sense.

When I noted the launch of Lexmonitor a couple weeks back, the concept I thought the most of was the threaded discussion . . . [more]

While we have mentioned situations where important provisions have been dropped into miscellaneous statutes, the NYT, Volokh and the ZDNet blog is reporting a quite extraordinary case where the litigants and the US Supreme Court appear to have completely overlooked a relevant statutory provision¹, for a couple of reasons:

it got dropped into an elephantine budget measure for military appropriations
the major legal databases apparently scant the relevance of military law

Both sides and the Judges involved in a recent U.S. Supreme Court judgment missed the applicability of an explicitly on-topic Act of Congress: the military justice provisions