About two years ago I wrote about an application in development that would make your computer desktop more like your real desktop, providing the ability to arrange things in piles, pin icons to “walls” and the like. BumpTop has finally been released (Windows 7 only). There’s a brief video on the site’s main page that puts the app through its paces, so you’ll get a chance to see what it can do. It may suit the way some people work, but I doubt it’ll find much favour in law offices — though I could be wrong. . . . [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]

Olivier Charbonneau and I will be engaging in a conversation in 13 days with the LegalIT audience on how Web 2.0 tools are being used by lawyers.

A retired lawyer friend in Chicago tells me that Twitter is being used by sophisticated lawyers and firms down there. There seems to have been a lot of buzz at TechShow too.

But can anyone tell me how exactly lawyers are using Twitter? In the delivery of legal services? Or as a networking, communications and marketing tool? Or in some other way? . . . [more]

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has a splendid project available online on the practice of deep packet inspection, or DPI (not to be confused with “dots per inch”). Essentially, DPI involves the examination of a message sent over the internet at the deepest level, a level ordinarily assumed to be private, and is usually done by governments concerned about security or law-breaking or by internet service providers seeking to extract (or introduce) marketable information. DPI is the basis upon which, for example, service providers might “throttle” some flows in favour of others that are, typically, more lucrative. . . . [more]

The Australian government has announced its plan to build a high-speed fibreoptic network that will cost upwards of $30 billion. The government rejected proposals from the private sector in favour of this plan, which will see public-private partnerships and the sale of the government’s share after five years of operation. Between the Lines has the story.

This will be the largest infrastructure project in the country’s history and will generate nearly 40,000 jobs.

Now if only the Canadian government would wake up and invest in the future in this way… . . . [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]

Hat tip to Dario Bonacina at the New Blog Times for a report on Vic Gundotra’s remarks at the Web 2.0 expo on Google’s migration to voice activated searches, which would be a killer app for mobile phones.

According to a report on CNET: Mobile is central to Google’s work. The company already offers a search application for the iPhone and some other models that lets people issue queries by speaking rather than just typing. The accuracy of the speech recognition has improved 15 percent in the last quarter, Gundotra said, and usage of the service is growing fast. . . . [more]

A number of great things are emerging from “library land” following last week’s Computers in Libraries conference in D.C.. As a pre-conference event to the upcoming Canadian Library Association conference in Montreal May 29-June 1, 2009, the CLA Emerging Technologies Interest Group has organized some workshop sessions with prominent emerging technologies librarian Jessamyn West for the morning of Friday, May 29th. In the afternoon they will be holding a “Library Camp” of unconference sessions. This will be a fantastic opportunity to bring some of our brightest minds together to nudge Canadian libraries into the future. Cost is $100 . . . [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]

Lawyers often need to know what people are saying. This became apparent to me today when gathering material for sentencing submissions and I was asked to gather material on the scope of publication of the offence.

I looked at the usual suspects:

• Canadian Newsstand – a ProQuest database available to me through my public library
• Infomart
• Google (web and blog search)
• Facebook groups
• Twitter

During my peek I found a couple of text articles on radio station websites. I know that Slaw readers will share my Ah Ha moment.

The web is filled with different types of media, including streaming . . . [more]

CAIJ, the Centre d’accès à l’information juridique (the network of law libraries associated with the Québec Bar Association), today launched a mobile version of its suite of free online legal research products.

CAIJ | mobile will provide access to:

• CAIJ’s online catalogue
• its databases of legislation, case law and legal literature
• JuriBistro TOPO, the CAIJ knowledgebase of hundreds of legal questions and answers from 57 fields of law
• access to Quebec Bar Association publications such as Développements récents (annual reviews of areas of law), the Collection de droit (Bar School materials), and proceedings of the annual Bar Association congresses

Many installations of Microsoft Office have “Full menus” disabled (it is the default setting when Office is installed). What does this mean? You will see only a few items on any menu you select (File, Edit, View, etc.). And, to find a menu command that you don’t use often or have never used before, you have to click the two downwards pointing chevrons at the bottom of the menu – this forces Windows to show all the available commands on that menu. You can also double-click the menu to expand it.

When you expand one menu, all of the menus . . . [more]