GMDesk is a little Adobe Air application that lets you run your Google apps in a stand-alone browser. This could be handy for some folks, particularly those who frequently close their browser and would lose contact with Google Mail or Calendar or Docs this way: it lets you treat Google as a separate matter conceptually, in effect. As you’d imagine, there’s a menu (and easy shortcuts) that let you switch between the various Google applications you use.

Given that browsers load so quickly now (I’m assuming that IE loads fast), it’s not so clear that there’s a need for a . . . [more]

Those Slawyers in or near Toronto might like to know that Richard Susskind, author of “The End of Lawyers: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services,” will be speaking at the National Club on Wednesday, February 11 at 5 p.m., courtesy of the Canadian Bar Association. Those wishing to attend can let the organizers know here. The first chapter of Susskind’s book is available on the CBA site in PDF.

The CBA announcement of his impending talk also said that Susskind

has recently agreed to share his expertise with the Canadian Bar Association in the role of Special Adviser. He

It’s been almost two years since I referred to George Orwell’s 1984 in a Slaw Post, entirely too long. Apparently, the mayor of Montreal is a Slaw fan and felt it had been far too long since I made such a reference and Montreal council is considering banning….words! Montreal may ban insults to police …and here. Use of the words such as “pig” and “donut eater” could be outlawed (on a complete side note, for all you hockey fans out there, imagine if Jim Schoenfeld and Don Koharski ran into each other in Montreal, could be a bad scene). . . . [more]

A wave of spending is about to take place pretty much all round the globe, and some of that money will be directed to improving “infrastructure,” the underpinnings required for businesses and individuals to prosper. A portion of infrastructure spending will, in many places, be devoted to bettering the internet and our access to it, typically described as improving “broadband” access.

The recent federal budget made scant mention of this as a goal:

The Government will advance Canada’s knowledge advantage by:

…Providing $225 million over three years to develop and implement a strategy on extending broadband coverage to unserved communities.

Just a quick note about some of the newest additions to LawBlogs.ca. Since our update in November, we’ve added 14 new Canadian law blogs to the ever-growing list at LawBlogs.ca. In no particular order, they are:

Many thanks to Dan Michaluk at All About Information for the heads up that the Privacy Commissioner has new Guidelines for Processing Personal Data Across Borders.

Processing? According to the Commissioner:

PIPEDA does not distinguish between domestic and international transfers of data.

Processing
“Processing” is interpreted to include any use of the information by the third party processor for a purpose for which the transferring organization can use it.

Here at Slaw we have talked about outsourcing on occasion. It is somewhat comforting to have a document to point our sources at to guide the way Canadian personal information . . . [more]

Most knowledge management systems and frameworks are built on the premise that we can encourage people to share what they know. However, sharing is what we do in kindergarten – trading is what we learn to do later in life. Most organizations could benefit from looking at knowledge strategy initiatives through a market lens rather than a simplistic sharing lens. We need to rethink some of our KM strategies and examine the knowledge processes in our organizations with a market perspective in mind. Consistent with that thought, Larry Prusak said “people don’t just give knowledge away. Knowledge does not flow . . . [more]

CCH Australia has just released an interesting study on Web 2.0 usage by professionals in HR, law, accounting and tax in the Asia-Pacific. They consulted 200+ professionals in the region about current and expected usage in their professional and personal lives. A few snippets of note:

• Blogs are used about equally for professional and personal reasons.
• Wikis are slightly more popular for professional use.
• Not surprisingly, social networking sites are significantly more frequently used for personal purposes.

I was also interested to read the reasons why professionals use Web 2.0 tools, and the types of information that they are used . . . [more]

Language Log, that wonderful blog I mention on Slaw from time to time, has a recent post and a spate of comments on the English word “fair.” The matter was prompted by some writing by experimental economist (yes, Virginia, there are such things…) Bart Wilson, who has been working with “a pie-splitting problem known as the Ultimatum Game.” Lawyers might be interested in the matter of dividing up a pot, something that happens regularly in practice, albeit not in such a pristine fashion. But the real interest in this particular post lies in the examination of the simple word . . . [more]

♬ Oh we make the standards and we make the rules
And if you don’t abide by them you must be a fool…♬

Words and music by Paul Weller, recorded by The Jam.

One of the issues in moving to a paperless law office is the inherent difficulty of accommodating older and different proprietary file formats. Even within the same product family, for example Microsoft Word, which was first released in 1983, Wikipedia reports that there have been 5 distinct file formats. This presents huge difficulties. Imagine that you have been dutifully backing up your networked . . . [more]

I’ve done a quick search of Google Books (“Canada” + “law”)(“canadian” + “law”) and have created a library of some of the resulting material. I chose books published in this century that had a limited preview available and came up with 57 volumes. As you’ll know, I’m sure, Google Books has four degrees of accessibility online: no preview available, snippet view, limited preview and full preview. Those in the last category tended to be the oldest material, typically published in the 19th century.

The books I’ve identified have what I believe is a substantial proportion of their text readable . . . [more]

Fellow Slawer David Fraser points out that today is Data Privacy Day, being celebrated in the United States, Canada, and 27 European countries.

Intel’s privacy day page says:

Designed to raise awareness and generate discussion about data privacy practices and rights, Data Privacy Day activities in the United States have included privacy professionals, corporations, government officials, and representatives, academics, and students across the country.

One of the primary goals of Data Privacy Day is to promote privacy awareness and education among teens across the United States. Data Privacy Day also serves the important purpose of furthering international collaboration and . . . [more]