As Simon detailed recently the issue of online comments and the identities of those who make them is a going concern and the concern in question arose here in Nova Scotia this week.

A recent story about issues within the firefighting department in a local weekly publication The Coast, elicited various comments in the online version of the paper. People who were targeted by those comments took exception to the comments and went to Nova Scotia Supreme Court to request an order for the Coast and Google to reveal the names and IP addresses of the commenters, neither the . . . [more]

Colleague and fellow blogger Patrick DiDomenico has started a blog called iPad4Legal that is further whetting my appetite for an iPad. He describes his new blog in these terms:

iPad4Legal is a blog about iPads as they pertain to lawyers, law firms, and the legal profession. We may occasionally stray and discuss iPhones or other Apple products since the technologies often overlap.

Another colleague described iPad as good for content consumers (which I am) but perhaps less so for content creators (which would be perhaps disappointing but something I suspect Apple would improve upon). The obvious interest will be in . . . [more]

The issue of archiving Tweets has come up before. But now Google has an even better suggestion through a Twitter archive.

Google suggest using the tool to identify how the news broke, or see what people were saying about a specific popular issue. Anyone watching the Guergis/Jaffer affair last week would probably want to check out #bustyhookers (I’m not just being gratuitous, there’s a really interesting story behind it for those who weren’t following).

I can see it being used for public relations metric purposes, but also discovery for future online defamation cases. Some have expressed concerns about the . . . [more]

Just announced (by Tweet naturally) is that every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress. That’s a LOT of tweets, by the way: Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day, with the total in the last four years numbering in the billions.

The announcement is timed to coincide with the Twitter developers conference in California.

One wonders just how future researchers will grapple with all of this content. . . . [more]

We have seen much pressure over the years for governments to enact tougher laws for piracy and counterfeiting – often based on statistics that lead to conclusions that billions of dollars are being lost because of it.

It leads to questionable things like three strikes laws, the Digital Economy Bill, and the ACTA treaty discussions. Many people have questioned the statistics, and the conclusions based on them.

The US government accountability office (GAO) just released a report that concludes that while the problems are real, “Three widely cited U.S. government estimates of economic losses resulting from counterfeiting cannot . . . [more]

The US Impact Public Library Study is a research project examining the impact of free access to computers and the Internet in public libraries. “Opportunity for All: How the American Public Benefits from Internet Access at US Libraries” is the first research report of the project. It discusses the characteristics of the people who use computers and the Internet in libraries, the types of use they engage in, and the impact that their use has on their own lives, that of their families and friends, and their communities. The key findings of this first report include:

• Internet access is now

It’s easy to forget that the first and often the last interaction most of us have each day with our legal technology involves logging into – or out of – our trusty desktop machine. And that makes a lot of sense, because it’s typically the nexus of practically all that we do each day, from e-mail to web research to practice management and beyond. And yet the legal technology press is abuzz about how to ‘get into the cloud’ or ‘the perils of entering the cloud’ or the latest SaaS application that enables practice management for the price of a . . . [more]

Every year at this time librarians from across North America (and the odd one from other parts of the world) gather together in Crystal City, Arlington, VA for the Computers in Libraries conference. This year almost 1,500 delegates are attending. All aspects of technology in libraries is covered, from the computers that make the catalogue and library records hum all the way to the social media presence of libraries. Focus tends to be on service, so there is a great human element in the discussion, not just bits and bytes.

It is one of my favourite conferences, where I truly . . . [more]

In this talk from O’Reilly Media’s Where 2.0 2010 conference, Walter Scott of DigitalGlobe discusses imagery techniques available today using images from satellites and airplanes. He discusses accuracy and the related manipulation of data sets. Data and imagery previously only available to governments is now becoming more widely available. Now depth maps of the ocean can also be made. Graphic processing units from the gaming industry can be leveraged to provide advanced geospatial-type imagery. Before and after images can now also be more effectively used to accurately track changes in what is happening on the ground. Data available from DigitalGlobal’s . . . [more]

Thanks to a good question from a new associate I have done some exploring of mobile access to legislation. The question was, “Is there any way to have a copy of an act that I use all the time available on my Blackberry?”

I can now say, “Yes”, and here is the method:

1. Open your Blackberry (or other smartphone)
2. Go to the mobile Web Browser and enter the URL for Canlii
   I suggest going directly to the URL for the language and jurisdiction of your choice (http://www.canlii.org/en/ab/laws/ for example)
3. Once there, you can search for the act name by

Wow! Yet another indication that social media is becoming woven into all aspects of our daily lives. In the US the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo yesterday that will make it easier for US federal government agencies to communicate with citizens and collect feedback from them by way of the Internet and social media: Social Media, Web-Based Interactive Technologies, and the Paperwork Reduction Act.

To engage the public, Federal agencies now have guidance on expanding their use of social media and web-based interactive technologies such as blogs, wikis, and social networks, as a means of “publishing” solicitations . . . [more]

Sadly, what I recently learned from Times columnist, Richard Susskind, is indeed the case: The Times, TimesOnline and the Sunday Times will begin charging for online access. Presented by the publisher as the advent of something new and better — “timesplus” — the wall will go up around the garden at some near but as yet unidentified time. In the meantime, you’re invited “register for our exclusive preview” and they’ll get in touch when it happens.

The economic plight of newspaper organizations has been in the news for years now, so this attempt to monetize internet access . . . [more]