John Gregory recently mentioned the new anti-spam bill, the Electronic commerce Protection Act, Bill C-27.

My take on the bill is in my Free Press article for this week. It can be found on my blog, the Free Press site, and the Canoe tech pages.

In a nutshell, while the goal is laudible, the wording needs to be looked at very carefully before it is passed, as it has the potential to affect more than what we would typically consider spam. Indeed, it might be interpreted to prohibit things that business and consumers alike would consider normal.

It also . . . [more]

UNESCO and its Communication and Information Sector have just released a new edition of Freedom of information: a comparative legal survey, and it is free online. . . . [more]

Open Medicine, the Canadian, open-access, peer-reviewed medical journal that launched two years ago as a consequence of some concerns about the independence of medical publishing, has pushed the boundaries yet again. They’ve placed a published article on a wiki and have invited readers to edit the piece in order to improve it. As their blog says simply:

This project explores the use of a wiki as an online collaborative tool for improving and updating peer-reviewed systematic reviews.

The article in question is “Asynchronous telehealth: a scoping review of analytic studies,” by Amol Deshpande, Shariq Khoja, Julio Lorca, Ann McKibbon, Carlos . . . [more]

A friend pointed me to what I think may be The Next Great Thing that may actually enable the dream of networked collaboration and communication. It’s Google Wave and it hasn’t left the labs yet. But if the video is any indication, it’s amazing:

It’s a long video (an hour and a quarter), but worth the watch.

We hear all the time about technology-enabled collaboration, but it seems more theory than reality. Until now (or whenever Wave is launched), it usually requires closed systems, hosted applications, hefty license fees or incompatible software. The Wave model puts e-mail, IM, editing, document . . . [more]

I just flew back from Halifax a few days ago and was made to think yet again how like bus travel flying has become. It’s all so routine — and so ubiquitous. What isn’t so routine, perhaps, is all of the complex communication that goes on behind the scene to enable us to get from here to there via a curve that’s 30,000 feet high in the middle. Air traffic control is especially difficult. In fact, I’m amazed that it works at all. Let’s take a small gander at what’s involved.

In the partial image below, each of the yellow . . . [more]

Canadian futurist Jim Carroll (@jimcarroll)just spoke about innovation at the London TechAlliance AGM. Here are some of the points that got my attention. (We used to call these sound bites or bullet points – I’ve already seem some of these show up in Tweets from the audience – so lets call these Slaw Tweets.)

Change is so rapid – 65% of public school children will be in a career that doesn’t exist yet.

1/2 of what science grads learn in first year is obsolete when they graduate.

Product lifecycles used to be measured in 2 digit years. The product . . . [more]

Some time ago I started a blog which sets out questions and answers to copyright questions. The questions are divided into 16 categories so they can easily be searched. Many people continue to contribute questions as comments which I answer (usually within 24 hours) and which I eventually incorporate into my postings. Please help me by posting your copyright questions — www.copyrightanswers.blogspot.com.

Thanks! . . . [more]

I am delighted to share the news that the 2nd edition of my book, Licensing Digital Content: A Practical Guide for Librarians, is now out! You can order it directly from ALA Editions. The book blog is at www.licensingdigitalcontent.blogspot.com. The book covers licensing issues for librarians in the US, Canada and around the world.

If you are attending SLA this year, please join me at a book signing on Sunday June 14 at 4:30 in the Expo Hall at the DC Convention Center. Also, if you attending SLA, you may want to consider the June 13 or . . . [more]

I pleased to announce that Slaw is inviting law firms and other organizations involved in law to become guest bloggers. During the last week of every month our regular contributors will be joined by members of a guest firm. On the Sunday before we’ll post an introduction to the coming week’s guest firm and we’ll identify their posts with a header that will mark their contributions as special.

Regular blogging is not for everyone. But occasional blogging can work for a whole lot of folks if we provide the platform and support, which is the idea behind our guest firm . . . [more]

We judge books by their covers, the proverb notwithstanding (love that word). At least we do so at first blush and in bookstores — which is why they get displayed in shops lying flat. This is a hopelessly irrational thing, as I know from having written a book or two myself: the cover design need bear no relation, either in content or in quality, to what’s inside. Still… the wishful thought is that a good cover betokens a publisher’s care which will also have gone into the selection of a good manuscript.

What makes a good book cover? Might as . . . [more]

♫ What’s the buzz?
Tell me what’s a-happening…♫

Lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, from Jesus Christ Superstar.

What makes a successful legal conference?

• An uplifting opening event, which sets the stage for the conference.

• Engaging speakers and a highly participative audience.

• A wonderful setting.

• Great organization from the conference staff and organizers.

• And not the least of all, a positive ‘buzz’ that permeates the entire conference.

Well, the 4th Annual Solo and Small Firm Conference, sponsored by the Law Society of Upper Canada and the Ontario Bar Association . . . [more]

In a recent speech Bill Veghte – senior vice president, Windows business, for Microsoft – advised that if a business is now in the testing phase to upgrade from XP to Vista, they should stop and go direct to Windows 7.

The Windows 7 release candidate is now available for testing purposes, and Windows 7 is expected to be available this fall.

Conventional wisdom for operating systems in the enterprise is that we should wait until the first service pack is released to deploy, to give more time for initial bugs to be worked out. Early reviews and commentary on . . . [more]