Because this is Good Friday, a holiday, and a serious one for many people, this won’t be a flippant fillip. I’m simply presenting you with two rather different blogs that might catch your interest.

The first is Hometown Baghdad, which describes itself as: “A documentary web series following the lives of a few Iraqi 20-somethings trying to survive in Baghdad.” This is an unusual implementation of the blogging format, using You Tube to play out documentary segments across the weeks. There are new video episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday; I’m not entirely clear but it seems that everything . . . [more]

ThinkFree, one of the online office companies fighting for the alt-MS turf (and something we posted about nearly a year ago), has released a WordPress plugin for its free MS Office file viewer. I’ve installed the plugin here at Slaw, which is produced by WordPress, and I’ve created some sample links below in this post to demonstrate how it works. On the creation side, you need only make a link to the file and the plugin does the rest.

The links that follow are to Microsoft Office files (.doc, .ppt, and .xls formats) available on a web server. . . . [more]

Using CanLII a fair bit lately, I’ve noticed something that may or may not have been there in the old version having to do with obtaining a decent URL for a case.

The problem in a nutshell is that by the time to get to the case you’re looking for, the resultant URL is made up of all of the decisions taken (or taken for you) until that point, and there doesn’t appear to be a straightforward way from the resulting case page to reduce it to the minimum necessary.

Let me assume something close to the best case scenario: . . . [more]

There have been various ways to do it before, but now the easiest way to make and mark up a Google map is by using Google itself. A new feature, My Maps, requires you to log into your Gmail account; then when you go to Google Maps, you’ll see a new tab, “My Maps.” Within that tab you’ll be able to create a map of anywhere on the globe and populate it with the usual blue teardrop location identifiers. But now you can edit the popup text field associated with those location identifiers and create a rich text or HTML . . . [more]

LexisNexis is currently offering free 20-minute training sessions on a wide variety of legal research topics:

The Big Dig: Deeper Due Diligence Made Easy
Who Says Tax Law Research is Taxing?
Search, Find, Validate: Top Tips for Case Law Research
How to Become a Company Information Super Sleuth

These webinars have become very popular in my workplace. Why? Not only do you quickly learn about new research solutions LexisNexis offers from your own desk, but all webinar attendees also receive a $5 Starbucks Card for every session you attend! . . . [more]

Canadian Lawyer has a magazine for students called, appropriately enough, 4Students. In the March 2007 issue, Derek Hill has authored an article called Beyond the online: there’s more to legal research than sitting at a computer.

As someone quoted throughout the article, I come off as sounding quite critical. I am a lot more diplomatic in real life! Some of my colleagues contribute quotes as well to mitigate my pessimism (or take help take the heat, depending on how you look at it): Beatrice Tice, chief law librarian at Bora Laskin Law Library, University of Toronto, Shaunna Mireau, . . . [more]

Some of Slaw’s readers may know of CALIThe name was originally an acronym for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction., that venerable institution that is

[a] non-profit consortium of law schools that researches and develops computer-mediated legal instruction and supports institutions and individuals using technology and distance learning in legal education. CALI was incorporated in 1982 and welcomes membership from law schools, paralegal programs, law firms and individuals wishing to learn more about the law.

During my many years of teaching I flirted with CALI, greatly enjoying their annual conferences, from time to time making use of the few lessons aimed . . . [more]

This is London, an online entertainment guide for the British capital, reports that “(T)he Big Brother nightmare of George Orwell’s 1984 has become a reality – in the shadow of the author’s former London home”:

“On the wall outside his former residence – flat number 27B – where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move”.

“Orwell’s view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights”.

“The flat’s

Following up on a post from last October, Arbitrator Peter Cory handed down his decision in the Beaverbrook Arbitration, last Monday (the 26th). In simple terms, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, was awarded 85 of the 113 disputed paintings; essentially, the paintings that were given to the gallery, prior to the opening. The gallery also won remuneration for three paintings that were removed from the gallery in 1976. The art gallery was justifiably pleased with the result; however, the Beaverbrook foundation has indicated that they plan appeal the decision of the arbitrator.

The decision itself (114 pages posted . . . [more]

As it does each year the World Economic Forum released its country rankings for ICT, or “information and communication technologies,” styled as the Networked Readiness Index. Canada slipped from 6th to 11th position, behind (in rank order) Denmark, Sweden, Singapore, Finland, Switzerland, Netherlands, USA, Iceland, United Kingdom, and Norway. This is Canada we’re talking about, so of course there’s no mention whatever of it in the freely available material.

I’ve no idea whether this means anything at all. I’m invariably skeptical of anything that boasts of being “World” this or that, and positively averse to reports that use cant terms . . . [more]

The French continue to battle to see to it that the web contains as much serious material as possible originating from outside the United States (and that is in languages other than English).See, e.g, Simon Chester’s post We Have Seen the Enemy – And it’s Name is Google. Europeana is a recent part of this effort:

Europeana est un prototype de bibliothèque en ligne développé par la Bibliothèque nationale de France, dans le cadre du projet de Bibliothèque numérique européenne.

Europeana rassemble environ 12 000 documents libres de droits issus des collections de la BnF, de la Bibliothèque Nationale

I’m reluctant to introduce commercial content to SLAW; however, I think some kudos should go to Heinonline for some of the excellent work they are doing in building theme related collections of digital documents from disparate library holdings. I know from previous postings on SLAW that some Toronto law firms are considering subscribing to Hein. One of their new releases is the World Trials Collectiosn which they describe in a brief summary as collections of famous trials from libraries around the world, and from antiquarian book dealers, as well as books that analyze and debate famous trials, as well as . . . [more]