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Archive for April, 2006

The Friday Fillip

In today’s Fillip temperament is key — a whole lot of keys, as it happens, because it’s about a site that does wonders with the already marvelous Well-Tempered Clavier by J.S. Bach. The site, also called the Well-Tempered Clavier, invites you to chose (from either a scrolling list of key signatures or a keyboard) one of the 24 keys you’d like to explore with Bach. When you click on the chosen key in the list, a small window pops up and the first few bars of the selected prelude and fugue start playing. In the upper right corner of . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

QL/Lex

I attended a sneak preview of the new Quicklaw/Lexis platform earlier this week and found it to be quite interesting. A good way of describing it would be a Lexis platform with a Quicklaw feel. But make no mistake, the platform we are all so familiar with is on the clock. Lots of bells and whistles for the seasoned researcher with some newer features to come. Knowing the readership of Slaw I don’t want to go to far and get the folk at LexisNexis Canada Inc. too ticked off at me, but with the CALL conference coming up many of . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Ontario Legislative Assembly Bills Website

This announcement came out from the Legislative Library at the Ontario Legislative Assembly yesterday, and permission has been obtained from Erica Anderson to repost here:

* * * * *

In an effort to move towards one access point for all information about current Ontario Bills, the Legislative Assembly website is undergoing some changes. Most recently, current bill information has been integrated into one site.

There have been two places to find bill information: The Public Bills Index (on the “Bills” portion of the website), and the Bills Before the House pages (on the “Library” portion of the website).

For . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Law Firm Web Site Design

I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on law firm web site design and with all the scooting around the internet I do, I’ve developed some pretty solid feelings about what I like and don’t like regarding aesthetics, functionality, content, features, and so forth. It was with some interest that I perused the list of web sites (American … the international list, which includes Canada, won’t be made available until later) that received IMA (Internet Marketing Attorney) Awards for 2006/07.

Personally, I found some of the top-rated sites a little “busy” by my standards but then, reading the . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Greetings From TechShow

This is a live blog from the keynote address by G. Burgess Allison at the Twentieth ABA TechShow.

Not surprisingly, it’s a bit of a pot-pourri.

Burgess Allison has been a visionary leader of the legal tech community for more than 20 years. As Technology Editor and a columnist for Law Practice Management magazine, Burgess’ practical advice and irreverent style made his column the most popular feature in the magazine for more than 18 years. His 1996 book, The Lawyer’s Guide to the Internet, introduced us to the vision and potential downsides of what has turned out to be

. . . [more]
Posted in: Miscellaneous

The Internet Archive’s Canadian Texts

The wonderful Internet Archive that tries to preserve some of the material that evanesces from the web is also in the business of acting as a repository for files of media in the public domain. I noticed for the first time that the initial category in text files is Canadian Libraries.

(The libraries involved in depositing texts into this repository are: University of Toronto, Library and Archives Canada, Memorial University of Newfoundland, McMaster University, Ryerson University, University of Ottawa, Toronto Public Library’s Research and Reference Libraries, and, oddly enough, St.Mary’s College of California in partnership with the University of . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Canadian Travel Advisory – Mid-Western U.S.

I was surprised to hear there is currently a travel advisory cautioning Canadians about travel to Iowa, put out by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

According to CTV news this morning, a mumps outbreak has spread to nine mid-West states. It is the worst U.S. mumps outbreak since 1988. Many people who have contracted the fast-spreading disease have previously been vaccinated, putting into question whether the vaccinations are as effective as once thought or whether a more virulent strain of the mumps has developed. Most people who have contracted it are college age, between 18 and . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Corte Suprema Di Cassazione Announces Election Decision

Another top court goes live to the web. Tonight’s decision of the Corte Suprema di CassazioneWikipedia’s take on the Court is so lame one wonders why they bothered. Far better is the official account of the jurisdiction of the Italian courts on the election last weekThe centre-left coalition of Romano Prodi won the majority in both houses in the parliament with a slim margin, clearing the way for Prodi to form a government next month. is much less controversial than Gore v. Bush, but that doesn’t mean that it’s being accepted without fuss. Former Prime Minister Berlusconi is . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

University of Toronto Law Faculty Blog

I’ve only just noticed that there’s a Faculty Blog at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. It seems to be a project of four faculty members, Anver Emon, Ariel Katz, Benjamin Alarie, Lorne Sossin, and has posts in the following categories: Administrative Law, Competition Law/Antitrust, Current Events, and Intellectual Property. I have to say that the rate of posting has to go way up before this becomes a useful law blog: 4 posts in February, 1 in March, and 2 thus far in April. For those who want to track it, the feed is http://utorontolaw.typepad.com/faculty_blog/index.rdf . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

When Things Go South

I know many Slawyers read the Globe and Mail, but just in case not everyone managed to get to the Review section, let me pass on the burden of a story found on the lower left of today’s p.R1: The Canadian Almanac and Directory is going south. The Michigan company ProQuest bought Micromedia, owners of CAD, in 2002, and decided a couple of weeks ago that Canadians would no longer manage the Directory: control of that venerable and encyclopedic institution has been whistled south to Ann Arbor.

How venerable is the Canadian Almanac and Directory, of which even I . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous