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]

A couple of releases from Thomson-West and Reed Elsevier that may interest Slaw readers.

The first radical search innovation in a while from Dayton is the use of semantic search methodology to enrich searching for prior patent art. Here is a slide show advert – which sadly doesn’t explain how it all works. And Kindles are coming to West’s monograph series. . . . [more]

South of the border we’re seeing moves to go well beyond the traditional depository of government documents in how public information is presented.

Most immediately a new site called Data.gov which includes a complete redesign of the Federal Register attracted even the attention of the Washington Post.

The key feature for Slaw readers is that it is based on XML, so can be built into other applications. More detail below the fold.

The second development is the launch of Law.Gov which takes Carl Malamud’s bold pamphlet on public access to legal information We The People and makes it real. . . . [more]

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

Google Wave

wave.google.com/ – Permalink – Similar

This is a new feature for the Google Toolbar, available for IE and Firefox browsers, that lets you put annotations about a website in a sidebar, so that others who have Sidewiki can see them upon visiting the annotated site. As a publisher of a website, I dislike this idea; I do not want uncontrolled content popping up in intimate connection with Slaw, even it it’s clear to anyone with half a . . . [more]

What is it about obituaries that so attracts some people? Perhaps it’s Schadenfreude, or maybe it’s a form of whistling past the graveyard, but some folks can’t wait to bring you the gleeful news that such-and-so is mortally ill — so keen, in fact, that as with Mark Twain, né Clemens[1. “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” This is the actual quote, as you can see from the image of the actual letter that Twain sent from London.], they wind up being previous.

So we have two imminent deaths reported recently that may be just a bit exaggerated. . . . [more]

JDSupra launched an iPhone application today, called “Legal Edge,” available for free download on iTunes.

You can stream pleading, documents, and all the regular JDSupra content, but what makes it interesting is that there are firm-specific features as well.

Now if only they can start including Canadian jurisdictions for their pleading documents. . . . [more]

Can you assert a confidentiality or privacy claim when you have willingly put the information you seek to protect on someone else’s computer system?

This question is important given the full-scale adoption of distributed computing. Yes, I mean cloud computing. But I also mean to address the issue of ISP disclosures to the police and the issue of employers who look at “personal” employee communications. These are all scenarios where a person claiming that certain information is confidential is not the owner of the medium on which it is stored. This common scenario is what makes mine an important question, . . . [more]

I recently wrote that email lists still exist. But perhaps when it comes to living relics the true coelacanth as far as the internet is concerned is Usenet. Begun in 1979, Usenet was a collection of discussion groups — or, newsgroups, as they were known — that, as Wikipedia says, “can be superficially regarded as a hybrid between e-mail and web forums” but possessing considerable technological sophistication.

Yes, Usenet lives — after a fashion. In 2001 Google acquired the 700 million posts in order to preserve the archive. Trouble was, it couldn’t be searched properly. Until today, that is. . . . [more]

A post on the Read Write Web site caught my eye this morning. The post alerted me to Deloitte LLP’s 2009 Tribalization of Business Study, which evaluates the perceived potential of online communities and identifies how enterprises believe they may better leverage them.

Although there is a “maturation” of business use of social media, the summary document perceives that organizations are not yet reaping full potential of social media activities.

Survey results indicate that while enterprises are effectively using online tools to engage with customers, partners, and employees for brand discussion and idea generation, organizations are continuing to struggle

Google Street View has finally gone live in Canada. According to the CBC story, Street View is available now in “much of the Greater Toronto Area and in Vancouver and the surrounding area, north to Whistler and east to Chilliwack, B.C. . . . Hamilton, Ont., Kitchener and Waterloo, Ont., Ottawa, Windsor, Calgary, Canmore, Banff and Lake Louise, Montreal and the surrounding area, Quebec City, and Halifax.”

Let the privacy complaints begin! . . . [more]

. . . pretty much.

Amazon announced today that Kindle now comes in an international version that will be released on October 19. For US$279 you get the e-book reader and the ability to download books with “international wireless.”

Except that it is still unavailable in Canada.

Cape Verde (the next country on the dropdown list), yes.

But Canada, no. All of which makes my refusal to buy one on aesthetic grounds kind of meaningless. Sigh.

Clearly this is the result of an inability to strike the necessary deals with copyright groups in this country. It would be good to . . . [more]