I spent this past Sunday in Dartmouth at the first Podcamp Halifax. As an enthusiast of the Podcamp movement of grassroots community-run events for the social media set (and an organizer of Podcamp Toronto), I was there to help them kick off their first such event, as well as spend time meeting some fascinating people.

One such person is David Fraser, lawyer with McInnes Cooper with whom I have been corresponding for a few years now, president of the Canadian Information Technology Law Association, and law blogger (see his posts here on Slaw and also his . . . [more]

Slaw may not be a family website but that doesn’t mean that anything goes here. We exercise restraint, avoid the crude and generally stay within the bounds of taste, if not always good taste. And yet the word “porn” has appeared here before, and not in some dry discussion of the Criminal Code prohibition either. I’m speaking of library porn, of course (Porn for Librarians, More Library Porn). However, no more book smut today. No, today is porn that is a cut above, that should elevate you, indeed.

I’m speaking of stair porn.

Uh huh. There is . . . [more]

My friend Doug Jasinski at Skunkworks here in Vancouver spoke on Social Media for Lawyers (powerpoint link) at yesterday’s Vancouver LMA lunch. I didn’t get out to see it, but Doug was nice enough to relay a copy of the slides to me this morning. And I have to say, this may be one of the best slide shows I’ve seen put together on the topic. For not attending, and all… :)

Thanks for the repub permission, Doug. I have no doubt you did a crackerjack job! . . . [more]

The Globe this morning described yesterday’s events in Washington as the first internet inauguration. According to the story, there was a 54% spike in internet traffic during the speech, and 8,500 people changed their Facebook status through a partnership with CNN’s website as Obama was beginning his speech.

Like many in my office, after finding a site that was not blocked by our filters, I was partly responsible for the first. I had no part in the second, but can certainly attest to its general truth as a lot of my acquaintances contributed their own spontaneous status changes.

For . . . [more]

The Globe and Mail has a long and interesting obituary for Glen How, lawyer for Canada’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, who died December 30, 2008, at the age of 89. How will be remembered for a trio of cases involving civil liberties in the Duplessis era in Quebec:

The Boucher, Saumur and Roncarelli cases went to the Supreme Court in the 1950s. The Boucher case [Boucher v. the King, [1951] S.C.R. 265], which used truth as a defence, eliminated an archaic Quebec law defining sedition as criticism of the government and led to the dismissal of nearly 125 sedition

Canada should have a Chief Technology Officer, similar to what Obama is doing in the US. While using modern tools to deliver government services is important, the role I am suggesting for a CTO is a bit different.

It would deal with how technology inter-relates with legislation and policy.

The general idea behind a Canadian CTO would be to have someone experienced and well-versed in science and technology issues, who understands current tools and trends in technology, where those trends may be headed, and how they may affect citizens and businesses.

Understanding that would lead to better legislation and policies . . . [more]

Many people are distracted today, and I thought this might be a bit of a “Tuesday Fillip”. This word cloud shows the use of terms in Barack Obama’s Inauguration speech today. The more often a word or phrase, the larger it will appear.

Source: Barack Obama Inauguration 2009 Wordle
Licensed under Creative Commons by http://www.wordle.net/

Link courtesy of L.J. Montserrat. . . . [more]

The new U.S. President’s web page is up at http://www.whitehouse.gov. There’s an animated square menu in the upper left corner that rotates through four features; and down below there are excerpts from the new blog, which you can access directly at http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/ (feed at http://www.whitehouse.gov/feed/blog). Good to see that slick as the work of President Obama’s IT people is (and it is), they too can fluff it: the blog post Read the Inaugural Address promised but didn’t deliver the text of his speech. Doubtless it’ll be coming along with the also promised video. As you might have expected, . . . [more]

So I was thinking about what to write about: with the posts on the Martin Luther King Jr. collection made open to the public (by the way, when did he become MLK? something else I missed, obviously), the Inauguration today and hearing Oscar Peterson’s Hymn to Freedom (to be played at the Inauguration), it was tempting to add my musings to the millions of words written and spoken about how these are all interconnected, why it took someone with Obama’s background rather than the descendant of slaves to get things this far, or about the significance of transitions in democratic . . . [more]

As everyone gears up for Barack Obama’s inauguration tomorrow, other work is being done behind the scenes for George W. Bush’s step into the history books. That includes the creation of a George W. Bush Presidential Library. According to Wikipedia, construction could cost between $200 and $500 million, and it will be located at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas. The George W. Bush Presidential Library will be part of the larger George W. Bush Presidential Center, which will also house a museum, policy institute and foundation.

According to the washingtonpost.com:

The presidential center building is being

British novelist, playwright and ex-laywer John Mortimer died today. He was 85.

He was perhaps best known, and loved worldwide, as the inventor of the fictional character Rumpole of the Bailey whose legal philosophy was summed up in that magnificently witty phrase: “Crime doesn’t pay, but it’s a living.”

According to Amazon.ca:

“Before there was Quincy and The Practice, there was Rumpole. Rumpole of the Bailey is, quite simply, one of the finest television series, and it has served as a model for all law dramas that followed it. Edgy and satirical, Rumpole is based on John Mortimer’s

It’s barely possible that if someone had told me when I was young that you could become an inventor as an alternative to becoming a “doctor, lawyer, teacher etc. etc.,” I would have gone for that as a career. I’ve always enjoyed dreaming up and building devices that do things that don’t get done otherwise or efficiently. Mind you, these contraptions — concatenations of bits and bobs and glue — more often than not turn into Heath Robinson (“I really have a secret satisfaction in being considered rather mad.”) or Rube Goldberg machines. Still, there’s something deeply satisfying to me . . . [more]