Shortcuts, those little things that make our tech-life easier, have been making headlines this week.

Here at Slaw, Dan Pinnington posted about his excellent article on essential technology skills. David Canton followed up with more shortcuts and some pet peeves that came to mind. Technolawyer offered up some iPhone shortcuts (Blackberry users can look here) and the Legal Writing Prof Blog mentiond Dan’s tips. My colleagues in the Field Law library learned and shared some useful shortcuts for our Microsoft Access database: Contrl ‘ (moves to the line above) and Control ; (pastes todays date).

I find . . . [more]

The BBC is currently offering its program, “The Draftsman’s Contract,” online. It’s an examination in two parts of “the people who actually write our country’s legislation…” The first part, 15 minutes in length, is available now and for the next 6 days — after which it disappears, I suppose. The second part will be broadcast on December 17 at 20:45, and will presumably be similarly available for a number of days afterwards as streaming audio.

The BBC uses its own iPlayer format, which contains DRM restrictions, and has been the object of much criticism. . . . [more]

I’m not enough of a sucker for punishment that I’ve ever actually read a credit card application – a terrible thing for a lawyer to admit, I know. The pages of dense text full of words I’m not likely to really comprehend just discourage me. So I just look at the annual fee and rewards offered and go from there.

But it looks like that may change. The government of Canada has teamed up with Mastercard to produce a credit card agreement in plain English. It looks quite simple, readable and informative – like it’s goal is to inform rather . . . [more]

If you’re ever in danger of thinking that you’re a gadget freak who’s gone a phone too far, console and correct yourself by looking closely at Stephen Fry. This renaissance eccentric, one of my faves, is so deeply into the tech of it all that you’ll wonder how he finds any time at all for his acting, writing and film-making. His latest blog post, Gee, One Bold Storm coming up…, is a long, long lovely ramble about the stuff he’s taken with him to New York (it’s his desk you see above), where he is for the next few . . . [more]

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Amnesty International Canada is inviting people to get involved by participating in Write-A-Thon events taking across in hundreds of locations across the country.

More background:

• The 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Worth Celebrating! (Canadian Human Rights Commission)
• Amnesty International Celebrates 60 years of Universal Human Rights Protection

There are such things — that is, lawyers who don’t use BlackBerrys but, rather, Apple’s iPhone. As proof of this I offer iPhone J.D., a blog by such a lawyer, located in New Orleans. For most of you, this site will be a curiosity, but for some (?) it will help you find those apps that make your practising life easier and more efficient.

Since I started using Macs some years ago now, I’ve watched Apple grow and begin to challenge PCs in various environments — I’d hazard that at least 1/3 of laptops in a law school classroom . . . [more]

Dan’s 10 essential technology skills and practices contains some good tips (although I must admit I’m not good with keyboard shortcuts – I think more graphically and tend to use the mouse).

I have a couple more to add.

When creating Word documents don’t use the “enter” key to create spaces between paragraphs. The right way is to use the paragraph settings to set the “before and after” spacing. Otherwise, you can’t make efficient use of things like paragraph numbering or bullets. And by using the “before and after” setting, you can often easily adjust the length of a document . . . [more]

♬ Singing power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people, right on.. ♬

Written and recorded by John Lennon.

The Toronto Star reported today on how Premier Dalton McGuinty backed down on a proposed regulation that would have prohibited teen drivers 16-19 years old with a G2 licence from having more than one other teen passenger in their vehicle in Ontario.

“Transportation Minister Jim Bradley said the 150,000 people who had joined a Facebook protest against the teen driving restrictions clearly had an impact on the government’s thinking, as did people . . . [more]

Technology has become an essential part of practising law and working in a law office (or any office for that matter). My TechTips column from the Summer 2008 issue of LAWPRO Magazine summarizes what I think are the 10 essential technology skills and practices that every lawyer and law office staff person should be familiar with.

Do you know what Alt+Tab does? How about a right-click on your mouse? Do you know how to use Cut, Copy and Paste? How about Paste Special. The text format shortcuts will save you tons of time next time you have to type up . . . [more]

This morning the Bank of Canada announced the reduction of its overnight rate by .75, lower than even predicted by economists. The overnight rate now stands at 1.5 %, a level not seen since 1958. And with it, acknowledgement that Canada is “now entering a recession.” . . . [more]

Forty years ago today, yes December 9, 1968, the first prototype mouse was unveiled in a presentation by Stanford Research Institute engineer Douglas Engelbart. Made of wood with only one button. The mouse is likely older than many of Slaw’s readers.

Here is a BBC clip telling the story, and a Wired tribute.

Another time entirely. This was life before long-distance direct telephone dialling, before the photocopier, and while Colin Tapper at Magdalen was talking about computers and the law, it was all considered data-processing or cybernetics.

Law School was much as it would have been fifty years earlier. . . . [more]

So far we at the LCO are being pretty basic about the technology we’re using. A standard (I guess now “traditional”) website that is okay as far as it goes, making RSS available, posting everything we write. But we need to do more. I’m planning to issue our family law project options “paper” in other than traditional form (shamed into it by Simon C. at a lunch with KM folks), maybe as a wiki.

I listened to a webcast (pretty basic in format, too, actually) of how to connect with the new media to get the organization’s message out there, . . . [more]