For those who think “tiff” is a file format for quantitative gel scans, I hardly need to point out that we are in the midst of National Biotechnology Week here in Canada (it runs from the 17th to 24th). For the rest of you, here is some notable news that is devoid of red carpets and couture:

In the lead-up to National Biotechnology Week, Saskatchewan hosted the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference. ABIC provided an opportunity for Canada to showcase its strengths in agricultural biotechnology, for me to showcase my strengths in agricultural puns, and for Premier Brad Wall to . . . [more]

3-D printing has been around for a number of years. It has allowed creators to design objects on their computers, and then “print out” prototypes, with the printer layering material such as plastic or metal. A recent New York Times video (below) and article show just how far this technology has already come. Prototypes with fully moving parts can be printed–without assembly–and individual customized objects can be created.

The most fantastic use–shown in the second half of the video–are prosthetic limbs that are made to fit the individual at a fraction of the previous cost. As well, these limbs can . . . [more]

Toby Fyfe and Paul Crookall wrote a report earlier this year entitled Social Media and Public Sector Policy Dilemmas. It was written for the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC), an organization whose role is to promote excellence in public service.

The report is based on consultations with stakeholders from across Canada and discusses many of the impediments to the use and spread of social media (blogs, wikis, Facebook-style tools) in the public/government sector:

This research paper examines the thoughts and attitudes of public servants from three levels of
government, academics, consultants, and members of think tanks on

. . . [more]

It’s no secret, and no puzzle, that lawyers’ attention generally follows the money. Indeed, with the possible exception of criminal law as romanticized on TV, the public’s view of law itself is shaped by this legal currying of currency and its sources.

But that same public’s actual encounters with the law often happen in areas that have a tiny bar or no bar at all. One of these is with respect to municipal by-laws. In a city of any size, there will be thousands of these laws regulating much of the activity and paraphernalia of everyday life: where and when . . . [more]

Twitter has a new design on its way. It will feature embedded media thanks to partnerships with Flickr, TwitPic, USTREAM, Vimeo, Yfrog, YouTube and a number of other providers. The fun video below gives a preview. The new version is being rolled out over the next several weeks.

The new Twitter platform for the Internet reminds me a lot of the Twitter iPad App, although perhaps not as slick since there is no screen touch available with this version.

More details about the new Twitter are on the Meet the New Twitter page. What do you think? . . . [more]

The Google Reader blog recently published the following graph that shows their growth of accounts over the past five years:

Online pundits have been calling RSS a dying technology for a while now. If you’ve read Slaw for any period of time, you’ll probably recognize what a huge fan I am of the technology. It’s still part of my daily routine, and I continue to find incredible value in a properly tuned personal RSS reader.

Many thanks to Andy Beal for his post: If RSS is Dead, Someone Please Explain This Chart to Me! I agree completely. . . . [more]

This iPhone app gives Ontario lawyers handy Child Support and Land Transfer Tax calculators. Find it at the iTunes store for $1.99.

Cross posted at Avoid A Claim . . . [more]

This weekend I was in Montreal for PodCamp Montreal, an event bringing together people interested in social media. Most sessions (at least, the ones I attended) took the format of presentation and then Q & A. Sunday morning, however, the session Is Social Media Really a Social Media? brought out the true spirit of podcamp conversation with a contentious discussion that delved into the semantics of the term. Pier-Luc Pettitclerc, IT Director at Commun, brought in his boss Martin Ouellette, a traditional ad agency owner, to battle out the question. . . . [more]

We all run into design-related questions when creating a web page. Questions like “Should this button be red or green?” or “What would the most effective headline for this paragraph be?”. While these decisions may have a dramatic impact on the overall effectiveness of a website, they are often the product of subjective judgement calls by an individual, or worse, a committee.

What if, instead, we could approach such design decisions scientifically? A/B testing makes this possible by treating a web page design instance as an “experiment” where multiple variations of a webpage are randomly presented to page visitors; data . . . [more]

I’d forgotten about pastebins until recently, when someone I was following on Twitter linked me over to some text he’d parked on one of them. For those who don’t know, a pastebin is a web location that lets you put up some text on an ad hoc basis so that others can read it. That’s all there is to the thing. Sometimes a pastebin will let you password protect your text; other times not, relying on someone’s having to know the URL to offer a degree of privacy.

Why would you use a pastebin? Because you’ve got some text you . . . [more]

We’ve talked a whole lot on Slaw over the years about translation, as befits a law blog in a country rich with immigration and with two official languages:

[related-posts]

And while the computer translation services such as Google Translate are miracles, they don’t always get it right — and sometimes get it comically wrong. A couple of the tough nuts in translation are idiom and professional jargon. A new online service, Linguee, may help here. Linguee, as it says, uses “the web as a dictionary,” allowing you to search for a word or a phrase and find its . . . [more]

A look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering university this fall.