I wrote a few months ago about labour unions gathering in Second Life for a virtual protest against IBM. Well, the the trend is continuing, this time in a more celebratory fashion.

The Trade Union Congress in London has been organizing virtual May Day celebrations in Second Life. Participants can learn about the campaign for a minimum wage in Germany, get training on using Second Life for online organization, or – and this just seems a little bizarre to me – chat with other virtual activists in a virtual bar over a pint of virtual beer.

You can check . . . [more]

A little bit of fancy stuff for mid-week:

iGoogle has introduced themes by a whole bunch of famous designers, artists and charity figures — Jeff Koons, Michael Graves (pictured above), Robert Mankoff (pictured below), Akira Isogawa and more than five dozen others, so you’re bound to find something that appeals. This is eye candy with some power to nourish.

. . . [more]

There has been some recent debate (on one of the legal community’s discussion forums) on the merits of SharePoint, Microsoft’s portal product. Our firm launched its SharePoint portal earlier this year (although we are still migrating content from our old intranet, and adding features and functions).

Even at this early date, we are enjoying two of the important benefits that led us to implement SharePoint in the first place – “one stop shopping” is not far from reality and distributed content contribution is taking place.

“One stop shopping” is the short-hand we use for our efforts to deliver all the . . . [more]

Louise Arbour, former Supreme Court Justice and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, will join the Board of the International Crisis Group. New fellow board members include Kofi Annan, (Lord) Paddy Ashdown, HRH Prince Turki al-Faisal and the former President of Poland, Alexander Kwaśniewsk. There are 54 members on the board all told.

The International Crisis Group meets twice a year and

is now generally recognised as the world’s leading independent, non-partisan, source of analysis and advice to governments, and intergovernmental bodies like the United Nations, European Union and World Bank, on the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict.

Their . . . [more]

Via the keen eyes at the BCCLS:

The Canada Gazette Directorate has introduced RSS feeds for the Canada Gazette, Part I. 

Feeds are available for the following categories:

Department of the Environment

Department of Transport

Department of Health

Notices of Vacancy

I don’t go to the movies much, partly, I guess, because I’ll eventually watch the good stuff on DVDs at home, and partly because I’m hypercritical of the genre. This addiction to the “good stuff” means that when I do determine to see a flick, I wind up vapour-locked in the aisle at Blockbuster or glazing over at the movie section of the paper because the choice is so… all-fired important. Dumb, I know. But there it is.

Which is why sites like Apple’s movie trailer page are helpful. I get to sample a bit from the various contenders without . . . [more]

Seems a pair of photographers taking photos of streets and people in a pedestrian zone in Middlesborough, England, were grabbed and detained by citizens and by security guards who were under the impression that it was illegal to take photos of buildings and people. If the photographers are to be believed, even the police officer who was called was mistaken about the right to take pictures.

Some of the confrontation was videoed by one of the photographers and the movie can be seen on Flickr.

I’ve been questioned by police myself for taking pictures in suburban London, but when . . . [more]

On April 17, 2008 IT World Canada published “The 10 Best Technology Bloggers in Canada” a list compiled by ComputerWorld Canada editor Shane Schick [currently accessible; may require free registration later to view].

Congratulations to Rob Hyndman of Hyndman Law for being included. Schick’s rationale for selecting him:

The Toronto-based lawyer works with both vendors and corporate enterprises to untangle the intricate contractual issues that come up in their relationships. His interest in IT is best expressed by a quote, attributed to Gregory Benford, that appears at the top of his home page: “Any technology distinguishable

Olivier Charbonneau, bibliothécaire professionnel et chercheur à l’Université Concordia, and blogger behind the excellent CultureLibre.ca, posts about a petition started by Le député provincial de Mercier à Montréal, Daniel Turp, aiming to persuade ICANN to grant Quebec the top level domain designation “dot qc.”

Apparently the Deputy discovered that the semi-autonomous regions of Catalan and Greenland have their own dot suffixes.

The full list of top level domains is available on the IANA site. .GL, Greenland’s code is listed as a “country code”; while .CAT is said to be “sponsored” and “Reserved for the Catalan linguistic and cultural . . . [more]

It’s a science fillip this Friday and I’ve got three mildly related stories for your delectation.

1. The Complete Works of Charles Darwin is/are online. Here you’ll find “Darwin’s complete publications, thousands of handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published; also hundreds of supplementary works: biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and more.” You might want to take a look at the celebrated Voyages of The Adventure and Beagle — and you can, both in a scan of the original work and in the plain text version alongside. Or you may want to give your eyes . . . [more]

A legal low-tech note for a Friday — which is still law and technology and, so, fit meat for Slaw:

The Premier of Ontario will announce today that a regulation taking effect immediately will undo any existing bans on the use of clotheslines by homeowners and preclude any such bans in the future. The regulation, which hasn’t yet made it to the e-laws site, is made pursuant to the Energy Conservation Leadership Act, 2006, S.O. 2006, c.3, Schedule A:

s.3(2) A person is permitted to use designated goods, services and technologies in such circumstances as may be prescribed, despite

Google News has added a quotation feature. According to the Google News Blog, entering a person’s name into the News search box will bring up a recent quote above the search results — provided, of course, that person has been quoted by an indexed news source. If you then click on the highlighted name of the person (beside the lead quote) you’ll go to a page full of quotes from that speaker.

Here, for instance, is a bit from the 117 quotations from Stephen Harper:

It seems that Google News can recognize a person’s name. At least, a search . . . [more]