It had to happen. . . . [more]

Fascinating real-life stuff.

New York Post photojournalist Steven Hirsch writes a blog called Courthouse Confessions.

It is all based on his encounters in front of the Manhattan Criminal Court with criminal defendants leaving the building.

He snaps their pictures and asks them a few questions.

[Source: New York Times, August 3rd, 2008]

Cross-posted to Library Boy. . . . [more]

That great Canadian blogger Rob Hyndman has a good piece on the sad news that William Patry is closing down his copyright blog. Patry has two reasons: first, because he can’t get people to treat what he says as personal, as having no connection to his work as Google’s copyright counsel; and second, more unhappy, because the current state of copyright law is truly depressing. Rob notes that Larry Lessig abandoned the field because of a “corruption” of the political process.

Read both entries. . . . [more]

I’ve just released a new blog watch website over at Stem; this time tracking 54 different law blogs on the topic of DUI law.

A while ago here on Slaw I published a Yahoo pipes tutorial, and tried to show how we can take a set of authoritative feeds for a particular topic and mix them together as a current awareness tool. This new site is a good example of a subject-based feed mix. It’s also a good example of how feed mixing might help for the development internal collections; not simply because it pulls together like subject . . . [more]

It’s been a while since I made any use of Google Notebook — mostly, I think, because I’m not much of a note-taker unless I have a project in the works, and then I’ll probably use a desktop app. But I may revisit the online application because the Official Google Notebook Blog tells us they’ve added an export function that lets you:

• Export this notebook to Google Docs.
• View this notebook as a web page.
• Get updates from this notebook in Google Reader.
• Get updates from this notebook as an RSS feed.
• Save this notebook as an Atom document. This

Google is rolling out a new feature that will use some of your data to “improve your search experience.” According to the Official Google Blog, we can expect to see a notation appearing in the upper right hand corner of search results pages that state “Customized for the [your city] area.” Using the location of your ISP, Google will give prominence to results that come closest to that location. You will have the ability, apparently, to dictate which address is used for the location customization.

What is not made clear is whether you will be able to turn this . . . [more]

Out-Googling Google.

by David J. Bilinsky

July 29, 2008.

♫ I tried my best to let you know
That I’m not trying to test you
It’s just so hard to let you go
When I have nothing against you…♫

Words and music by Midtown

It was just a matter of time. It isn’t that I have anything against you, Google, indeed I have learned so much from you, but in time, all things must end. Alas, I have found another.

Cuil (pronounced cool) is the new well, Cool search engine in town. And she is big – very big . . . [more]

I’ve just discovered that Google offers a way of stripping style sheets (and images, if you like) from any website, with the effect that you’re left with simply the text and fundamental html formatting. The advantage is that this can make reading the text of sites much easier on the small screens of various mobile devices.

The Google URL is http://www.google.com/gwt/n, which offers you an ultra simple screen:

I’m glad to say that Slaw works well when fed through this device. The following link will take you to Slaw with all style and images removed:

http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slaw.ca&_gwt_noimg=1

If you’re able . . . [more]

Some time back we posted about Google’s wisdom of the crowds encyclopedia knol, the idea being that it would be useful to have experts write about what they know and authenticate the pieces by attaching their names and info to them. Google now tells us that the experimental phase is over and you, too, can contribute to the store of the world’s knowledge by either writing your own knol or by making suggestions to those of others, suggestions they’re free to accept or not, of course (a process Google has called “moderated collaboration”).

I have to say that thus . . . [more]

When a shift away from law is wanted, you might take a look at Robbins Library Notes, a blog by Jason Pannone, Librarian at Robbins Library, Department of Philosophy, Harvard University.

Incidentally, his is one of the many blogs facilitated by the Berkman Center‘s offer of a free blog to anyone with a Harvard or Radcliffe email address. I haven’t been able to find a decent listing of all such blogs, but there is a page setting out the 40 most recently updated Harvard blogs, if you want to see what Crimson is up to. . . . [more]

Something that we haven’t mentioned here on Slaw is the new law blog monitoring website Lexmonitor. The site was developed by Kevin O’Keefe and Lexblog, who are normally in the business of building lawyer blogs, and now expanding into the world of aggregations & web publishing. If you subscribe to the make your own media approach, which I frequently do, then a monitor tool aligned with the company product makes a lot of business sense.

When I noted the launch of Lexmonitor a couple weeks back, the concept I thought the most of was the threaded discussion . . . [more]

Small footnote to the SCC’s recent decision in Simpson v. WIC and Mair.

LeBel J’s concurring judgment mentions blogs:

[73] This is all the more true in an age when the public is exposed to an astounding quantity and variety of commentaries on issues of public interest, ranging from political debate in the House of Commons, to newspaper editorials, to comedians’ satire, to a high school student’s blog. It would quite simply be wrong to assume that the public always takes statements of opinion at face value. Rather, members of the public must be presumed to evaluate comments