I returned last week from committee meetings of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) at their annual meeting in Calgary. Having reached the 6-year maximum term for service on the CBA International Development Committee (IDC), I wanted to mention the IDC’s good work and make readers more generally aware of what that they do (particularly in light of the recent, negative “lawyers are rats” media coverage). There are also a number of ways in which CBA members can get involved.

The mission of the IDC is to promote the rule of law in developing and transitional countries. Their funding for overseas . . . [more]

RSS feed notwithstanding, it has been a while since I have spent some time on one of my all-time favourite legal research sites, The Virtual Chase, written by the amazing Genie Tyburski at Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll LLP. I must visit more often. An interesting article by Genie from a couple of weeks ago poses the question “Can We Throw Away the Books Yet?“. As she explains in the article, the query flows from the premise suggested by a colleague that “…print as a medium was losing ground. And assuming his suppositions were true, he expressed . . . [more]

The National Post yesterday reported that the CRTC overturned its decision last year in the so-called “million dollar comma” case. In the original decision last year, Bell Aliant was successful in arguing that a misplaced comma in an English version of their contract with Rogers allowed them to terminate the contract early. However, on appeal, Rogers was successful in arguing that the commas in the French version of the contract were in their proper position and that it was clear, based on the French version, that Bell Aliant could not terminate early.

The CRTC appeal decision is here. . . . [more]

Google Maps today released the ability to embed (through inline frames) a map within a website. This could be handy for all sorts of things. I’ve embedded below the map I created some time back, when Google first released My Maps, showing the location of Slaw’s core contributors. I’ve chosen the small size, from the menu that allows you to customize the size of the map you’re embedding. Because it’s live, you can slide it around “behind” the small window.

View Larger Map . . . [more]

Although Microsoft Word still underlines it in red, googling the word cyberchondriac provides 46,800 hits, and the term cyberchondria has had its own Wikipedia entry since June, 2005. It seems that the practice of self-diagnosing medical conditions with the assistance of Dr. Google continues to grow in popularity.

Although health professionals have plenty of online resources at their disposal, specialized search engines are popping up to cater to the demands of laypeople in pursuit of an ailment, a cure, or merely a second opinion. For instance, Healia allows a searcher to filter their results for articles at a basic (or . . . [more]

There is a thoughtful short article in the September issue of The Walrus by Jon Evans, “Apocalypse Soon”. The focus of the article is on the future of online texts, or ebooks, and ebook readers. Although the author makes a number of overgeneralizations, there is a good point about why e-books have so far only captured a small percentage of the market – 0.2% according to Evans. Evans partially explains this by reference to “contrast”, which print has an electronic text doesn’t, and goes on to praise the virtues of the Sony Reader.

We actually purchased a Sony reader . . . [more]

Ever wanted to know which links users are drawn to on your website?

For the past week, I’ve been testing out Crazyegg.com, which will track site visitors and clicks with a tiny snippet of code in your website template. The free subscription for this site offers up to 6000 page impressions, and creates a series of visual maps to represent the most dominant linking patterns on your site.

The results can be displayed as a ‘heat map’:

Or as ‘confetti’:

Want to try yourself? Please feel free to use my temporary login for the VLLB test (user: steve@stemlegal.com; pw: . . . [more]

… with the Canucks (story). But I guess this wasn’t what Simon intended about me getting a post up at Slaw. Ah well, I’ll try to get something more substantive up shortly.

Although I’m sure there’s a legal angle… why else would a signing of this magnitude take this long? ;-) . . . [more]

Karen Sawatzky, Librarian at Pitblado LLP in Winnipeg, points us to a post on Law Librarian Blog about Twittering in the U.S. House of Representatives. Posts to the Clerk of the House’s Current House Floor Proceedings Page are pumped out via Twitter ever five minutes or so when the House is sitting. This is the sort of thing that could really excite politics junkies.

Twitter is a “microblogging” application that we’ve talked a bit about before here on Slaw:

I don’t think Hansard is built moment by moment throughout a sitting day, . . . [more]

Unless you’re someone who builds or modifies web pages, you can unfurrow that brow and relax into a “what will they think of next” state of mild wonder. And until they think of that next thing, XRAY is worth a look. It’s a patch of JavaScript, acting as a bookmarklet, that takes the source code and css of the page you’re on in your browser, sends it back to the home planet from where a small window is sent to overlie your browser window: click on any area in your browser and that area’s bone structure, so to speak, is . . . [more]

The latest lovechild of the Zoho-Google cuddlefest is an offline capacity for Zoho Writer. After installing Google Gears (see my post on Understanding RIA), you’ll see that there’s an offline button that appears in your Zoho Writer toolbar. According to an information video, this currently lets you download 15 documents to be read — but not edited — offline. A full editing, document creation function is to be added in about a month’s time.

All of which is cool for two groups of people, I guess: the advantaged (or driven), who fly a lot and are, thus, . . . [more]

According to a post today on Information Today’s Newsbreaks page, Thomson West will be making the American Law Reports exclusive to Westlaw as of January 2008. In the post, Carol Ebbinghouse, director of the California Second District Court of Appeal Library, writes about the origin and history of the ALRs. She also says:

As a legal research educator and a librarian who has worked with law students and attorneys as well as judges, I can tell you that there are users who won’t know a product like ALR is gone from an online service until they really need it.