My friends and I like to travel. And yet, we also like to reduce our footprint on the environment. And really, the two things are so contradictory. Every time we step onto an airplane, we are doing inestimable damage to the environment. What to do?

Back in May Air Canada announced a carbon off-set program called Zerofootprint. The program has a website where you can submit your flight information, and using information it has on record for Air Canada’s planes, it calculates how much it would cost to plant trees to off-set your carbon usage: Zerofootprint calculator. Now . . . [more]

Vapourware [vaporware] is, according to dictionary.com: “Computer Slang. a product, esp. software, that is promoted or marketed while it is still in development and that may never be produced.” We may just have seen the first reported instance of VR hardware vapourware.

Law.com Legal Technology reports, under a posting captioned “Is That Your Phone or Your Imagination?” that

“Many mobile phone addicts and BlackBerry junkies report feeling vibrations as if they’re wearing a cell phone when they’re not.”

Law.com also reports, in the same piece, that

 Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams wrote on his blog, dilbert.org, that he

The selling of ‘expertise’ has always been a crucial element to legal marketing. Why else would lawyers with heavy billable targets take months of their valuable time to write a book? Expertise, even more than having years of experience, is an important measure of qualification, and a tool used to grade the modern professional. So the question presents itself: does an Expert rise from the ranks and develop out of peer acknowledgment? -OR – is an Expert a created entity carefully crafted by profile building and marketing? It is my contention that the answer is likely found in that ‘grey . . . [more]

Somewhere along the way — probably back in high school (highschool? high-school?) ((Russell Smith, “Bye-bye (or is it byebye?) to 16,000 silly hyphens,” Globe and Mail)) when the rôles of jock and outlaw were foreclosed to me and I needed a way, any way, to get attention if I couldn’t get dates — I seem to have picked up the aim of becoming a polymath, a.k.a. knowitall. Some would tell you that I’m irritatingly close to my goal. Shows how much they know: I’m woefully short of the sort of omniscience I had hoped for, and I’ve . . . [more]

The annual combined meeting of the Toronto and New York Knowledge Management Lawyers group met this past Friday in New York (the group also included others, including some from Boston and one colleague from the United Kingdom). I learned a lot. In no particular order:

1) Never, ever fly into LaGuardia Airport again. A group of us from Toronto suffered a 12-hour trip to New York due to cancelled flights (apparently due to weather conditions at LaGuardia). On arrival, there was the longest lineup for taxis I have ever seen (likely 300 people or so in line).

2) I intentionally . . . [more]

Take a look at / listen to CBC’s Spark. Nora Young offers “a surprising and irreverent look at tech, trends, and fresh ideas” each week, broadcast twice on radio (Wednesdays at 11:30 a.m. and Saturdays at 4:00 p.m.) and available online (with requisite podcast and mp3 download).

The online version tells you what’s upcoming and gives you the show notes, with links, for the already aired shows. So, for example, on this week’s show:

• Nora rides David McCallum’s Warbike
• Boost your WiFi with aluminum foil and a glue stick
• Jesse Wente unwires his house with Internet over Power Lines
• William

Announced yesterday, a new Canadian law blog is now available via the Financial Post blog community called Legal Post Docket. After blogging for a couple months behind closed doors, it *looks* like the wrapping was taken off yesterday morning (Oct. 10th). Not sure on that…. perhaps someone from LPD can chime in with an answer? Also a test to see if they’re following other Canadian legal blogs like Slaw. Timer starts now! ;-)

Most of the entries are from Jim Middlemiss, formerly connected with both Law Times and Canadian Lawyer, and two other notable Canadian legal writers . . . [more]

“Outsourcing slow to catch on in Canada” by Daryl-Lynn Carlson in yesterday’s National Post features Rob Hyndman and his view that when it comes to outsourcing and the associated savings, the big firms have “got their heads in the sand.” Rob, who is a noted blawger at robhyndman.com, says:

he regularly achieves savings of as much as 50% for his clients outsourcing legal services to India. He sends mostly commercial contract work to an Indian law firm, the name which he guards as a “trade secret.”

The article goes on to quote a number of practitioners at . . . [more]

The Ontario Court of Appeal is the the middle of hearing Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation v. National Automobile Aerospace Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada (Caw-Canada) (on appeal from the Divisional Court), in which the First Nation is arguing that the Labour Relations Act ought not to apply on their reserve because of their self-government rights. The Great Blue Heron Casino (warning: sound) is on the reserve. Today the government lawyers will argue. The hearing is scheduled to begin at 10.30 EST and is being webcast.

By the way, the Court has archived all . . . [more]

The World Bank has released the results of its ongoing examination of world governments along six dimensions: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. Government Matters 2007 offers you various ways to see the data. For instance, you can call up a graph that compares Canada and the United States. Initially I looked at Canada’s current values compared to two prior years and was scratching my head a bit about the less than perfect record for “political stability,” understanding that it was about Quebec but thinking . . . [more]

Odd where hyperlinks will take you. Thanks to a piece in Slate on what to do about e-coli in the food supply, I wound up finding the Seattle law firm of Marler Clark LLP, which specializes in food poisoning cases — indeed the title on their home page declares it and the first paragraph of text claims that

Marler Clark is the nation’s foremost law firm with a practice dedicated to representing victims of food poisoning.

If you’d asked me this morning, I’d have said that the idea was a bit far-fetched, but there is indeed a niche for . . . [more]

I understand that strict adherence to good grammar is, in some circles, considered to be a slightly annoying trait. And I understand that e-mail is a rapid, off-the-cuff communications medium to which formal correspondence etiquette isn’t always expected to apply.

But I’m still rather aghast that I received two e-mails today that contained spelling errors in the subject line — one a professional press release (“Reserach Highlights”) and the other, believe it or not, a job application for an editorial position (“Piublication”).

A former boss of mine in the publishing industry once sent a company-wide e-mail with a subject line . . . [more]