While Worldlii covers many jurisdictions, it missed last night’s decision in Malvolio v. Olivia argued before the Supreme Court of Illyria. [Nothing to do with Marmont’s division of the Illyrian territory into 96 cantons, each with a justice of the peace. The rest of the judicial hierarchy consisted of 11 Tribunals of First Instance and a supreme court of Illyria – see Napoleon and the transformation of Europe by Alexander I. Grab at 191.]

Shakespeare apparently missed out the denouement of the story of Twelfth Night, where Malvolio did not go sheepishly to gaol, but responded by suing Olivia . . . [more]

A number of our Slaw bloggers were down at the ABA Techshow this past week, including a few of us captured on video by the newly launched LexConference website. For those that missed the event, I’m embedding the videos for Dominic Jaar, David Bilinsky and myself.

ABA TECHSHOW 2009 Interviews: Dominic Jaar, Legal Counsel at Ledjit Consulting from LexConference on Vimeo.

ABA TECHSHOW 2009 Interviews: David J. Bilinsky of Thoughtful Legal Management from LexConference on Vimeo.

ABA TECHSHOW 2009 Interviews: Steve Matthews of Stem Legal from LexConference on Vimeo.

You can see all of the videos . . . [more]

I hope that where you are is not as grey, cold and wet as Toronto is this morning. Not an inspiring way to start a new week. But this post on the Darien Statements on Libraries and Librarians (from blyberg.net) is enough to compensate for the lack of spring on this April morning. . . . [more]

If you haven’t seen and heard Kutiman’s efforts, be prepared to be blown away.

Ophir Kutiel, his real name, is a 27-year-old Israeli musician who spent something like a month straight in his room/studio scanning YouTube for music videos that would lend themselves to being mixed together, layered, looped and generally mashed into a coherent, attractive — no, better: really good — piece of music. In that time he married many bits into seven songs, all of which you can hear (and see) at Thru-You.com.

For me, there’s a sense of joy here that is completely infectious. All seven . . . [more]

As reported in the Globe and Mail, among other media outlets, the Canadian Judicial Council has recommended to the Minister of Justice that Justice Paul Cosgrove be removed from office. Pursuant to s.99 (1) of the Constitution Act, 1867:

…the Judges of the Superior Courts shall hold office during good behaviour, but shall be removable by the Governor General on Address of the Senate and House of Commons.

The Judicial Council’s full report is available in PDF and there is a summary on the Council’s website.

The Council acts under the authority of the Judges Act R.S., 1985, . . . [more]

We can all prepare for the onslaught of April Fools’ day stories spreading across the web today. Most of which are neither clever nor amusing. But the Guardian has managed to get a laugh out of me by poking fun at the recent Twitter obsession in the media (represented in the Globe by stories like Margaret Wente’s “Ego Tweeto, Ergo Sum” and Ian Brown’s musings that twittering is motivated by a fear of death) with their story:

Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink

A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole

Here are some things I would ban if I was in charge. (And no – while this is a bit facetious – its not an April fools joke.) What would you add to the list?

legal sized paper

fax machines

paper closing books

the phrase “but we’ve always done it that way”

any contract more than 20 pages long

any consumer contract more than 2 pages long

technology that doesn’t play nice with others (e.g. iTunes not seeing music stored on a server)

those small capacity memory cards that sometimes come with cameras

forms that can only be filled in . . . [more]

It has been a busy day, and between sneaking a very nice scotch into a hotel restaurant with some Army librarians, and smoking a cigarette indoors with a different group, we have been very bad. Librarians on the loose get a bit wild…

There are a couple of notes that will help if you would like to follow any of the conference. Firstly, the presentations are being streamed Live, though I have not been able to find the link – I would check the main website during conference hours. Another thing: there are a lot of bloggers here, and I . . . [more]

I’ll be at Computers in Libraries all next week, the premier technology conference for libraries. Since some libraries are pretty leading edge in using technology to reach their clients, and generally to support their missions, it may be interesting for Slawyers to have some updates, which I’ll try to supply.

This year Web 2.0 is still a pervasive topic, but since libraries have been using social software for a few years now, the content seems pretty down to earth. Presenters are looking at how to marry library strengths, such as in-depth personal reference interviews with mobile and other technologies that . . . [more]

… is practically a one-liner today. And a line (or two, or three…) that you yourself can draw, at that.

It goes by the inelegant name of BallDroppings. And it’s a game in which you draw lines in order to catch and deflect the balls that, well, drop from the sky. These make “pings” and “pongs” as they carom to your bidding, just the sort of tiny universe one wants on a Friday afternoon, one that is wholly within one’s control. Even “gravity” is subject to your whim. So satisfying. . . . [more]

In a slick marketing move (and I mean that in the best sense of ‘slick’) to demonstrate the raw computing power of its Web MD product, Sun Microsystems has moved the Internet Archive into one of its modular data centers – or as they aptly describe – the Internet in a box.

They’ve also produced an interactive tour of the product, complete with IA founder Brewster Kahle describing the bi-monthly copying of more than “three petabtyes of information”. The press release kindly explains those three petabytes as “roughly equivalent to about 150 times the information contained in the Library . . . [more]

Google Docs has just introduced a feature that lets you insert a drawing that you can create using their own in-browser tool. While this isn’t exactly momentous — especially for a profession where a thousand words are preferred to a picture — it can be a useful feature if you need to create a diagram on the fly, for instance.

The actual program works really well, having all the expected features such as grouping and rotating and colour fill, with a roster of ready-made shapes to suit most purposes.

Doodle on. . . . [more]