I’ve joked previously that the Google crowdsource traffic feature was a free ambulance chaser application.

A British firm has developed a iPhone application specifically intended to document all the details necessary for future litigation, the iPhone Car Incident Assistant application (iCIA). The Times Online reports:

It appears ambulance chasing has gone digital after Bott & Company, a law firm in Manchester that specialises in personal injury claims, has developed an application for the iPhone that prompts people involved in an accident to record insurance and witness details, take multiple photographs, store GPS information and click through to a

That’s according to Google in a statement made this afternoon. Jonathan Lister who heads up Google’s Canadian operations made the following comments to CP in relation to a spate of job vacancy adverts that Google is placing to recruit new staff:

Google is now looking for a new head of industry, software engineers, administrative assistants and other staff to help take advantage of Canada’s base of extraordinarily plugged-in Internet users

An announcement early today from Google Distinguished Engineer Anurag Acharya that Google Scholar now features major cases, as well as an ability to search in legal periodicals for case citations.

I thought initially it was just American, but searching on the following names brought interesting results:

Donoghue v. Stevenson 2380 hits
R. Drybones 849 hits
Delgamuukw 956 hits
Mabo v. Queensland 2770 hits

Google hat-tips “several pioneers, who have worked on making it possible for an average citizen to educate herself about the laws of the land: Tom Bruce (Cornell LII), Jerry Dupont (LLMC), Graham Greenleaf and Andrew Mowbray (AustLII), . . . [more]

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

Google adds World Bank data

googleblog.blogspot.com… – Permalink – Similar

Now it’s possible to export your documents from Google Docs, removing one anxiety about working in this cloud. You can export up to 500 MB of data in a single zip file. You can export to a variety of document types.

Google uses feeds to find new sites

googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com… – Permalink – Similar

Google has built a Custom Search Wikipedia skin. If you have a Wikipedia account, log in . . . [more]

Each year Technorati, the online service that indexes blogs throughout the Internet, dives deep to look at the world of blogs, bloggers and blogging in its annual State of the Blogosphere. This year Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra presented it as his keynote to the popular BlogWorld 2009 in Las Vegas in October. His assessment:

“The state of the blogosphere is strong.”

The report itself is published as a five-part series (plus introduction) with lots of easy-to-read graphs giving the overview of statistical findings:

• State of the Blogosphere 2009 Introduction
• Day 1: Who are the Bloggers?
• Day 2: The

All the concerns about Google amassing information about users has led to the Internet giant deciding to be more transparent.

You can see a video of Google Dashboard here. The control panel lets you see what Google is collecting about you, and modify your preferences.

The Globe points out that some of the bigger privacy concerns, such as Street View, have still not been addressed. . . . [more]

Google’s new music search, Discover Music, has launched — but not in Canada. Partnering with imeem, lala, iLike, Pandora and Rhapsody, all music providing sites, Google will now determine whether your search has a musical aspect and, if so, throw up a result box that lets you listen to an excerpt of the music and choose to purchase it, if that is possible. There’s a video on the site linked to above that illustrates this.

Because of copyright issues, none of the partner providers is able to supply music online in Canada, and, consequently, Google’s . . . [more]

Just like Google’s Street View feature, which followed a Canadian launch after being tested in the American market, Google introduced this month traffic levels for major Canadian cities after almost three years of use in the U.S. In the past week the service was extended from mobile devices to web browsing as well.

Toronto.com has offered much more limited traffic features for several years, but nothing even close to the level of detail or interactivity provided by Google.

Late this summer Google had expanded the service to include arterial roads, which was a major complaint among American users. They also . . . [more]

Google Social Search has now launched. An experiment from Google Labs, Social Search is one of four experimental options you can add to your regular search settings. (You may select only one of the four.)

From the Features page:

Google Social Search is an experimental feature that enables you to find relevant public web content from people in your social circle, when you’re signed in to your Google Account. For example, search for [ restaurants ], and restaurant reviews by your friends and other contacts may appear more prominently in your results.

I ran the suggested search — “restaurants” . . . [more]

Congratulations to Melissa Kruger, Publisher and Editor of the magazine Precedent: The new rules of law and style. Precedent magazine recently celebrated its second anniversary in real style with the invitation-only party Dressed to Bill, featuring a fashion show with new looks modeled by ten stylish lawyers. Precedent is an independent magazine aimed at young lawyers (aged 25-40) and distributed for free to over 20,000 lawyers and law students across Ontario.

You may recall Precedent started life over three years ago as a blog. The website has maintained its “bloggy” roots with additional blog posts and columns. . . . [more]

Simon Fodden predicted that the privacy complaints would begin once Google Maps Street View was launched. The maps have proven popular in Canada, with over 150 million views of other countries by Canadians in 2009 alone.

Google recognizes privacy concerns, but claims to address them through their collection and processing approach:

• public access images, no different than what would normally be seen walking down the street
• not in real time, so images can be months old before going live
• blurring of license plates and faces
• allowing removal requests, through the “Report a Problem” option in the bottom-left of all images

The business section of the Globe and Mail today was something of a bonanza for pieces on information technology, and I thought that I’d pass the links along for those of our readers too busy to digest the (or that) morning paper.

First off, of course, is the story about the launch of Windows 7 in Canada. Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, showed up in Toronto to give a talk to a bunch of IT professionals, hoping to help them forget about the Vista disaster. The Globe has a whole section online with a dozen or so articles about Windows . . . [more]