Canada’s online legal magazine.

Archive for July, 2007

Stem Legal

Slawyer Steven Matthews has just announced that he’s going out on his own with a new company, Stem Legal Web Enterprises.

The vision behind Stem is this: to offer an outsourced service for law firms to increase online profile and web-driven business opportunities.

Things will kick off in August, he says, heralded by a new blog to keep us up to date. We wish him luck. . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Conference: Law via the Internet

Lexum is hosting the 8th International Conference Law Via The Internet – Access to Law and the New Web Reality [français] in Montreal on October 25 and 26. You’ll notice that Slaw is listed as a friend of the conference. Indeed: CanLII is a great institution and the themes of the conference are dear to our hearts:

  • Free access to law: impact on emerging countries
  • The identity of legal doctrine in the Internet age
  • Legal blogs and wikis
  • Electronic libraries of law articles
  • The future of traditional legal doctrine in the Internet age.
  • Problems linked with proliferation of
. . . [more]
Posted in: Miscellaneous

Legislation Act, 2006 (Ontario) Proclaimed in Force 25 July 2007

It appears that the Legislation Act, 2006, S.O. 2006, c. 21, Sched F. has been proclaimed in force 25 July 2007. A colleague (Clare Mauro) and I were visiting the page for something else and noticed this date in red at the top. We did not notice this proclamation date in any recent editions of the Ontario Gazette but may have missed it. If we didn’t miss it, presumably the proclamation may be announced in tomorrow’s Gazette.

As was stated by John Gregory in his 21 October 2006 posting on SLAW:

This is a comprehensive statute on

. . . [more]
Posted in: Miscellaneous

Friday Fillip

Friends of yours? Bloggers here at Slaw? Whatever else they may be, these critters are also one of the creations of Levitated. Their full name is combinatoric critters, because they’re composed from a kit of parts that the computer draws on, making critters on the fly. You can play with them in their natural forest habitat, a click on one changing it to a different assemblage of parts. As well, a click on one of the trees gives you — and the critters — a different tree type. The page linked to just above explains all of this in some . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

I, Phone

The much anticipated Iphone went on sale last week (June 29), south of the 49th (Wikipedia entry). So far, sales have reportedly been solid with 500 000 sold in the first few days. Reviews have been good as well, (more reviews) As for those of us in the Great White North, no date seems to have been given as to when we can anticipate laying out 500 plus dollars, but we know that will be giving this money to Rogers. If you just cannot wait, it seems that several entrepreneurs have cracked the . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Defence de BlackBerry

The Globe and Mail and the Beeb (and others) reported a couple of weeks ago that the French government has ordered its officials not to use BlackBerrys for fear that their communications are insecure. BlackBerry servers are located in the United States and Britain.

Now that RIM can sell in China, I wonder if the Chinese government will be interested. Seems there’s a possibility they’ll manufacture in China and perhaps locate a server or two there… . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

2008 Joint Study Institute Announced

Every two years a Joint Study Institute is hosted in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. or Australia. Details of the 2008 Joint Study Institute, to be hosted in the U.S., have been announced. For more information about the Institute, click on “Read more” in the message below.

American Association of Law Libraries (AALL)
2008 Joint Study Institute: “Harmonization and Confrontation:
Integrating Foreign and International Law into the American Legal System”

Wednesday, June 25 – Saturday, June 28, 2008 Washington, DC.

Sponsored by AALL, the Australian Law Librarians’ Association (ALLA), the British and Irish Association of Law Libraries (BIALL), the Canadian . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Three Reasons to Celebrate at Slaw

On Sunday, July 8, Slaw will celebrate its second birthday, so while you’re dozing in the hammock, mowing the lawn, taking the kids swimming, or just chilling, cast a happy thought our way. And, perhaps an eye, too: We’re toddling now, and you’ve got to watch us all the time or who knows what we’ll get into.

And sometime today we published our 2000th post, a month ahead of our 1000th post anniversary. Our membership has grown and strengthened, we’ve kept up the flow, and, I hope, we’ve made ourselves as near to indispensable as a blog might . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Turning the Pages

If you haven’t done so already you might like to check out the British Library’s Turning the Pages feature. This is software that enables you to leaf through old and rare volumes rather as if they were physically in front of you. The Library has just announced that it is licensing the Turning the Pages Toolkit to museums and libraries for no cost.

The user has to download a client application to see the full beauty of the software, only available for Windows Vista, alas. However, a few books can be seen using Shockwave instead, which still gives you a . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

She’s IM

Or, as Nicole Godin puts it, I am IM: 21st Century Information Management, which is a new blog by the Managing Librarian of Regulatory Information Services for Bell Canada. Nicole Godin, besides being a lawyer and information professional worth reading, seems also to be a bit of a glutton for punishment, having started not one but two blogs recently: her other venture is Librarian 2.0.

Welcome to the world of blogging, Nicole. . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

OASIS Digital Signature Services

OASIS“(Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international onsortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards… Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. http://www.oasis-open.org” members have ratified their Digital Signature Services (DSS) as an organization standard. DSS:

defines an XML interface to process digital signatures for Web services and other applications, enabling the sharing of digital signature creation, verification and other associated services, without complex client software and configuration. [press release]

Those with an understanding of this as . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous