The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, / Searches.
(With apologies to Omar Khayyám)

Google’s just made a new feature available for searching on mobile or tablet platforms. “Handwrite” allows you to write your search terms with your finger on any portion of the screen. You have to enable the function by going to “settings” at the bottom of your Google search page, where you’ll find the option. You can then turn it on or off from the basic search page, as you wish.

I’ve tried it on my iPhone and find that the writing recognition function is quite . . . [more]

WIPO appears to have resurrected negotiations over its broadcast treaty, which would grant broadcasters a new property right in content they transmit. This treaty has been contentious in the past for obligating signatories to provide a completely unnecessary, redundant and at the same time over-expansive right to guaranteeing broadcasters over the broadcasting of content. This may seriously impact on individuals, particularly as it will be applied to online retransmission:

Granting broadcasters and cablecasters exclusive rights to authorize retransmissions of broadcasts over the Internet will harm competition and innovation by allowing broadcasters and cablecasters to control the types of devices

A court in Massachusetts last month refused to dismiss a case brought by the National Association of the Deaf against Netflix, claiming that Netflix is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act to provide closed-captioning on all its products, including streaming of broadcasts. Netflix was held to be a place of public accommodation within the meaning of the Act.

Does this strike you as a reasonable result? What would happen in Canada, under our various access statutes, one of the most extensive of which is the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act? Governments tend to have standards about . . . [more]

An Ontario lawyer notified us that his office started receiving emails from Florida from people who had responded to a Craigslist ad advertising for a local office assistant. The ad said the lawyer was Ontario-based but looking to conduct transactions in Florida and needed someone to run an office, book flights, etc. Because the ad used a Hotmail address instead of a proper law office domain name, some responders grew suspicious and contacted the lawyer directly.

Here is the message received by those that replied to the ad (which has since been removed). . . . [more]

While lawyers and academics will surely be allocating a significant amount of short term resources to analyzing the SCC’s pentology of copyright decisions issued this morning, a quick look demonstrates a vindication of fair dealing, online innovation, technical neutrality and general common sense.

In brief and lacking any nuance, the Court’s decision in Entertainment Software Association v. SOCAN, 2012 SCC 34 seems to imply some interesting developments in copyright law:

Online distribution of video games should not be impeded with additional tariffs for musical works embedded in the games simply because the games are sold ‘by means of telecommunications’. The . . . [more]

The UK government has a new website in beta aimed at improving citizen access to official services and information. Gov.uk hopes to be “simpler, clearer, faster,” as its tagline says.

By the look of things, the site succeeds. The design is plain and appealing. (I’d dump the set of scrolling options. It could be that they’re aiming to give viewers something engaging to do; but I think that a simple list of half a dozen FAQs would work better.)

As is often the case on the internet, there’s no top level entry for “Law.” (There is one for Crime and . . . [more]

I’ve spent the last week trying out Google Chrome on my iPhone and iPad, and I have a simple recommendation for anyone who hasn’t tried it yet: install it now. You’ll love it.

Google Chrome provides several significant benefits over the built-in Safari browser:

• Google Account Sync. Logging into your Google Account automatically syncs your bookmarks, browser history
• The OmniBar. The Omnibar (the unified address / search bar) is my favorite features of Google Chrome’s desktop web browser. On my mobile experiences, I frequently frustrated myself by typing search terms into the Safari address bar. No more: Google Chrome

As short as 6 weeks ago in a SLAW post on my most frequently used iPad apps I bemoaned the fact that there was not a robust word processor for the iPad.

Either I overlooked what must have been a recent update to Pages for iPad at that time or in fact there was an actual update in the last 6 weeks, since it is now relatively easy to add footnotes (and headers and footers, among other things) while word processing in Pages.

The online help from Apple here discusses how to do this (it is simply a matter of . . . [more]

I’ve seen other summer reading lists lately and thought it would be fun to put together my own list of books currently or recently on my nightstand. There’s quite a range here–management/leadership type titles, geek girl titles, and some challenging fiction. I’m not really one for light reading! And, there’s probably no way I can get through all of these in the summer, but I can certainly try. And of course in putting this list together I found even more new books, so I better get reading.

What is on your summer reading list?

Here is the list (with no . . . [more]

Happy Canada Day long weekend! Okay, it’s still a few hours early… but before you head out on the road or away to the cottage, your friends at Stem would like to invite you to re-visit the Canadian Law Blogs directory.

We’ve orchestrated a few design changes to celebrate our country’s 145th birthday! Canadian-ized the place, if you will; planting a couple of dozen easter eggs — Terrance and Phillip would be proud!

I’ll even start you with an example: Fodden’s Beer Fridge (formerly Simon’s Canadian Law Blogs Google co-op search) has a ‘Crack a Cold One’ button . . . [more]

You’ve likely seen a few references now to an upcoming free online course offered by Google: Power Searching with Google. The tagline is “…a short course on becoming a great internet searcher.” For this post, I’ll leave aside speculation about how one becomes a “great internet searcher” using, presumably, one suite of products.

Some discussion I’ve seen refers to this as Google’s MOOC – massive open online course. I’d like to engage in a bit of pedantry for a moment and question whether that’s an appropriate characterization of Google’s offering. A course that requires use of a Google account . . . [more]