If you haven’t been following the web-tech circles lately, you may have missed the buzz surrounding Yahoo’s newest RSS tool – Pipes.

Pipes allows you to combine different data feeds, like RSS, into a single output. It’s similar to other feed tools, but the environment is all web based, with an interface that’s similar to visual programming applications. What makes this tool a winner though, is the logic behind the operations. You can filter, remix, and mash-up feeds to produce an incredible array of new content types.

While I think this is probably the most sophisticated RSS tool on . . . [more]

When the money went away, and the Comission went away, it looked as though all of the work went away as well. But thanks to Annette Demers (reference librarian at the University of Windsor’s law library) who pursued the matter and sends us this information, we now know that the Commission’s records and reports were stored with Library and Archives Canada in their Electronic Collection: http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/206/301/law_commission_of_canada-ef/index.html

As the Electronic Collection intro page says: “Please note, information may be out of date and some functionality lost.” You betcha. . . . [more]

Tout le monde en parle: la Société canadienne de perception de la copie privée vient de dévoiler vendredi dernier sa demande de tarif pour 2008-2009. Pourtant, il n’y a rien de bien étrange avec cela, c’est même, si je puis dire, la saison. En revanche, il est quelque peu surprenant de revoir apparaître une demande sur les enregistreurs numériques, demande qui, on le sait, a déjà été refusé tant par la Commission du droit d’auteur que par la Cour fédérale d’appel.

On peut donc se demander si la situation actuelle est vraiment différente de celle traitée par la Cour . . . [more]

I don’t often post about local Toronto matters, but I couldn’t resist this, I’m afraid. ILLEGALsigns.ca is to my way of thinking a wonderful example of the marriage of law, community action and technology — and, it would appear, no small amount of research, both street-level and legal.

According to this site half of the billboards in Toronto have been errected illegally:

[A]dvertising companies in Toronto have been obtaining illegal permits for billboards by filing false information with the Buildings Department.

These billboards require City Council approval — yet they are being granted permits without Council approval because advertising companies

Thanks to Garry Wise’s Wise Law Blog, I’ve been pointed to a nifty video about the web and text produced by cultural anthropologist, Michael Wesch, of Kansas State University. Rather than put up the YouTube window here, I’ll give you the link to the video on Wesch’s own site, Digital Ethnography. It’s one of those medium-is-the-message things that you have to see; and then as you’re watching, think about the plodding PowerPoint presentation you’re going to be making the next time you talk… I think for me this hyper-twitchy rush is more fun, but I’m not sure I’d want . . . [more]

Here is the webpage and publicity for the Leg@l.IT conference, the event of the year (look at the speakers list). Feel free to forward this post, print the add and give it to your friends and ennemies, blog about it: you have all the publishing writes!!

If you post on the web. please let me know what is the URL. Thanks in advance! Hope to see you there!

Voici la publicité du Colloque Leg@l.TI que je vous pries de faire circuler. D’ailleurs, les droits de reproduction sont à vous… Laissez-vous aller: publiez sur le Web, dans des revues, journaux, . . . [more]

Summer is miles away still, and Christmas is a fading memory, so we can consider tangled cord with something approaching equanimity. How many hours do we spend picking apart the bunched up cables, carefully threading the plug end through this and that loop only to find to our consternation that we’ve just added another layer of mess to the mess. Not now, though, not in the dead of Feb., when these disentangling hours are to spare. Never fear, I have a solution to this time on your hands: the tying of knots.

Yes, why not go in reverse, push the . . . [more]

February is Black History Month and in honour of that, I would like to bring to your attention, the case of Nancy Morton. Nancy Morton was a slave in New Brunswick around the turn of the 19th century and in 1800 she became a central figure in a year-long court case that was brought to the NB Supreme Court. Represented by Ward Chipman and Samuel Denny Street she sought to win her freedom. A fuller description of the case and circumstances around it has been prepared by the Heritage Branch, of the Dept. of Wellness, Culture and Sport in New . . . [more]

Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol.

Tor offers anonymity online, avoiding “traffic analysis” — the discerning of who visited a website or sent and email, when they did it, etc., by looking at the headers, which are not encrypted even though the body of data may be. It does this by rerouting your traffic through a distributed network of volunteers’ servers, . . . [more]

I’ve never watched so many videos on YouTube as this week. Thanks to everyone who has been sending me links to these!~~

The Librarian and the IT Professional (Mac commercial parody)

Web 2.0 explained

Discover What You Know – Knowledge Management

Okay, I know this is all advertising. But they are very well done and have messages that can be taken independently, without buying something. . . . [more]

In conjunction with the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada’s conference marking the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) asked polling firm SES Research to do a detailed survey of the attitudes of Canadians towards the Charter.

Among the more interesting findings:

• “Much has been made of equating Charter values to Canadian values, but we found that the Charter is by no means central to Canadian identity”.
• “[There is] a clear generational divide on this question — younger Canadians tend to idealize the Charter

As most of our readers will know, the Ontario Court of Appeal hearing of the Steven Truscott matter is being broadcast live via CBC TV. In addition to the live feed there are also recordings available of the prior days’ hearings.

The CBC has done an absolutely splendid job of providing the interested viewer with all of the information necessary to understand the hearing, even supplying the appellant’s compendium and an index to it, so that viewer’s can follow along as the court is referred to parts of it. There are backgrounders, including a link to The Fifth Estate’s . . . [more]