I have seen the future of search – and this demo of Wolfram|Alpha is so mindboggling in conception and ambition that when the site launches I want to experiment at length, when it launches on Monday. It’s essentially about fusing an analytical engine on top of search, drawing data from the web and then crunching it in a myriad of different ways. “Wolfram Alpha is like a cross between a research library, a graphing calculator, and a search engine.” “Wolfram Alpha can generate and compute vast amounts of data and present it using visual charts, spreadsheets and . . . [more]

We don’t realize how much we rely on a service until it’s unavailable.

Did any Slaw readers get affected by the Google outage?

The headline in Information Week read:

Gmail, Google Search, Google Maps, Google Analytics, YouTube, AdSense, and Blogger experienced outages Thursday morning, according to discontented Twitter users.

Here is the statement:

“Earlier today, Google News was temporarily unavailable for many users, from approximately 3:30 AM until around 7:00 AM, Pacific Time. This issue has now been resolved. We know how important Google News hit is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously.”

“The . . . [more]

I can’t do more than point to some links, but Google’s pre-emptive response to Wolfram|Alpha appears to be about to launch.

It is discussed by the BBC, ZDNet , SearchEngineWatch and Inquisitr . The Beeb says

It takes information from the web and displays it in a spreadsheet in “split seconds”, something Ms Mayer said would normally take someone half a day to do.

During the demonstration, a query for “small dog” was typed into the search box. Seconds later a table popped up showing photographs of various dogs, their origin, weight and height in a clear and simple

Google today launched a set of new options for filtering and presenting its search results. Now when you do a search, you’ll see a link in the upper left corner of the results page offering to “show options”:

This opens a menu down the right-hand side of the window displaying a dozen filters, as shown in the image to the left. The videos option displays thumbnails of videos, mostly from YouTube, whose titles contain your search terms. The forum option (somehow) manages to find in your results the hits from forums. Reviews seems to select journals and book reviews. The . . . [more]

The European Journalism Centre has put together a Custom Google Search engine that will search all of the pages of Europa, the portal for the European Union. Search Europa lets you refine your search to pages related to law, to blogs, and to documents in PDF or Word. . . . [more]

The NYT blog is reporting an odd intervention by the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries expressing concern about the long-term impact of the Google settlement on research libraries and asking United States District Court Judge Denny Chin to exercise “vigorous oversight” over a class action settlement between Google, authors and publishers.

The groups did not oppose the settlement, but asked for continuing oversight, to ensure that the prices Google charges for subscriptions to its digital library aren’t artificially high because of a lack of competition. . . . [more]

I gave a talk earlier today on the use of social media in politics, focusing on the Canadian scene, at the Miles S. Nadal Management Centre.

Issues of copyright, including the use of YouTube, are discussed, as well as social media alternatives to defamation actions.

Social Media And Politics in Canada (4/21/09)

Audio of the talk available here until a Slide Cast can be set up. . . . [more]

They say the key to a good golf swing is in the follow-through. Hopefully the same is true of blogging, because this week on the Cross-Border Biotech Blog saw a lot of our trends and stories revisited with new developments and new perspective:

Electronic medical records drew a lot of attention this week, with the annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference and the first EMR implementation by a large hospital group being topped by an even larger and more influential implementation — the U.S. military.

Budgets and bailout issues were also active. There was good news . . . [more]

This is slightly off-topic, though I would argue it all goes back to the classic discussion of Wine and the Law. And here is some legal discussion on wine law from Fermentation.

My friend Charles Hodgson of Podictionary fame has just written:

Compare and contrast:

· First book, a year to write, three years to sell, a year and a half to bring to market
· This book, five months to write, eight days to bring to market

The blurbs on Amazon say: “A great read.” -Rod Phillips, author of A Short History of Wine, “Certain to find . . . [more]

I’m delighted to be hosting the next edition of Blawg Review (#207) on Monday, April 13 at Law21. For those not familiar, Blawg Review is a weekly collection of the best of the legal blogosphere, assembled each week by a different law blogger. This post is to invite all Slaw readers to nominate great posts made during this week (April 6-12) for consideration for Blawg Review #207. Not all entries will make the final cut — there’s a tremendous amount of content submitted for these things, and I’m actually hoping that my version will be a little briefer than . . . [more]

Last week Canada was all about new funding for VCs; but this week in the U.S. saw Essex Woodland Health Ventures close a new(-ish) $900 million bio fund , and even Google will apparently put some of its new $100 million venture fund into bio investments.

This week also saw one of my personal annual Canadian highlights: the 2009 Gairdner Award winners were announced. Here’s one area where we don’t need to trumpet anything to be world-class. 73 Gairdner winners in the last 50 years have also become Nobel laureates. Keep an eye out for the 50th . . . [more]

A week full of money: the Ontario Budget was announced Thursday, and it contained about $700 million of spending on innovation, including $300 million for research infrastructure and $250 million for the previously-announced Emerging Technologies Fund. Reactions were pretty positive, but badly in need of a thesaurus. The proof of the pudding is in the allocation though — in terms of benefits for biotech — the first commitment from the $205 million Ontario Venture Capital Fund turns out to be to a new VC that is more interested in software than soft tissue.

Here’s $100 . . . [more]