Yesterday I happened upon the Legal History Blog, and wanted to share my find. Started in November 2006, this blog has been consistently covering the academic scene in legal history, including the publication of new treatises, for some time. It is a group blog with main contributors Mary L. Dudziak, Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law, History and Political Science at the University of Southern California Law School, Dan Ernst, Professor of Law, Georgetown University, and Clara Altman, a graduate student at Brandeis University who co-ordinates the Legal History Blog’s accompanying Facebook . . . [more]

A group of Canadian authors has launched an online petition to protest the proposed settlement intended to put an end to a class action copyright lawsuit by U.S.-based author and publisher groups over Google’s plans to make and sell digital copies of millions of books.

In November 2009, the settlement was amended so that it would now apply only to books registered with the U.S. Copyright office or published in the U.K., Australia, or Canada.

The Book Rights Registry board, the entity that will be responsible for paying authors and publishers from revenues earned by the digitization project, would also . . . [more]

Google has finally released its own android phone, Nexus One.

Decent reviews and the implications of the release can be found on Wired, Mashable and PC World.

It appears as if the phone is not yet available in Canada. . . . [more]

I know it’s a long way till Friday, but this gag deserves a Monday mini-fillip:

Google is honouring the birthdate of Isaac Newton today. They’ve got a special doodle for the purpose. Give yourself a treat and go to the Google home page, and once there, roll the cursor over the doodle.

  . . . [more]

In the last couple of weeks, there’s been a little twittering about Osun.org, a search engine that seeks out documents of the PDF, .doc and .ppt persuasion. And that’s all we know.

Well, we know that it’s designed to mimic Google’s front page in all but colour. But apart from that, things are murky: there is no “about” page; there are, in fact, no links on the search page at all that offer to take you to explanation.

A search in whois reveals that the domain name is owned by Wang Linhua, who gives Shanghai as the city of . . . [more]

Dear all,

For those who don’t have or won’t find more compelling reasons – without limiting the generality, etc., getting together with family, giving and getting presents, unwrapping presents, staking out garbage, getting a pedicure, washing the dog, herding cats, discovering the next unknown prime in Pi, successfully rendering coherent some of the jurisprudence of … [subject optional] – occupying their time in the immediate future, I’m pleased to announce I’m going to be a guest blogger on the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law, Faculty Blog.

What can I say? I’m sure my occasional musings, here, played some . . . [more]

I was reading Connie Crosby’s recent Slaw.ca post National: Canada’s Best Law Firm Websites. It described an article in the Canadian Bar Association’s National magazine about the best law firm websites in a variety of categories, including blogs.

And then, I came across an article in Legal Blog Watch on Law.com:

As the world goes to hell in a handbasket, the blawgosphere is abuzz with a debate over whether big firm blogs are boring. Blame it on the ABA Journal’s Blawg 100, which listed but two blogs from Am Law 100 firms. Not surprising, opines big-firm blogger Mark Herrmann,

Google is always releasing new features or apps. Here’s a rundown of some released recently that may have relevance for lawyers…

Google Groups joins Google Apps

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/… – Permalink – Similar

Google Labs is collaborating with the New York Times and the Washington Post to present certain featured news stories in a web-sophisticated way. Essentially, stories chosen by the news sources — no searching for items that you select — are presented on a page in which you’ll find a summary at the top, a timeline of events immediately below, and excerpts from reports as the story has developed over . . . [more]

When I closed an old Google account over the weekend, it appears that I inadvertently deleted the Custom Google Search of Canadian law firms that I had created (and that I understand is used a fair bit by researchers).

I have created a new Custom Google Search of Canadian Law Firms, now at a new URL of:

http://www.tinyurl.com/canadianlawfirms

Click here to see a sample search result on the phrase “fiduciary duties.”

The new site is free of ads and has more Canadian law firms included (now there are 51 or the larger law firms from across the country). I also . . . [more]

Today Google has released its real-time search function. It will index much of the internet’s real-time content — such as tweets on Twitter or postings on Facebook or entries on blogs that have pubsubhubbub enabled RSS — and offer up these results for searchers in a dynamic fashion. So, for example, a search for [copenhagen climate summit] yields at fourth position on my screen an item titled “latest results for copenhagen climate summit” that displays dynamically the very latest updates on that topic from Twitter et al. The image below will give you a better sense, perhaps; click on . . . [more]

It’s that time of year again! The 2009 Canadian Law Blog Awards (CLawBies) is now open for nominations. Categories will resemble last year’s when the nominations were first opened up to the adoring Canadian law blog audience. From the blog:

How to Nominate in 2009:

Between now and Monday December 28th, publicly nominate a Canadian authored legal blog using ANY of the following methods:

1. Tweet your endorsement on Twitter.com along with the hashtag text: #clawbies2009. We’ll be monitoring!
2. Email your favourite blog, along with a sample post or two, or any other notable highlights to Steve Matthews at steve@stemlegal.com

Google is always releasing new features or apps. Here’s a rundown of some released recently that may have relevance for lawyers…

Personalized Search for everyone

googleblog.blogspot.com… – Permalink – Similar

Google’s website/wiki building application now provides users with a range of templates that take most of the fuss out of formatting a website — at least, if you have a fairly specific purpose in mind. The basic “web page” template, though, offers users a lot of easy-to-customize features. Lawyers may find the intranet template useful. The barrier to publishing on the web keeps dropping; now there’s no excuse.

New site . . . [more]