A peer recently brought this image to my attention and it immediately caught my attention and spoke to me. The image is from an article entitled, “What will a World of Warcraft player look like in 2030?”. If, by some chance, you are not familiar with the World of Warcraft, suffice it to say that it is an internet gaming phenomena that has wasted countless hours and more than a few thousand dollars of tuition. The title of the image has been co-opted in various locations to “The future of gaming?” and I have further co-opted it here to . . . [more]

Congratulations to Doug Cornelius who has started the new blog Compliance Building. You may remember last October we mentioned he had moved from his real estate practice and knowledge management law firm work to take on the role of Chief Compliance Office for Beacon Capital Partners, LLC, a real estate private equity firm. On the “About” page, he explains the new blog: “I focus on compliance issues applicable to real estate private equity firms.”

I love the dual meaning of the blog title! Very clever, even if it does stray from his “spaces” blog name theme. . . . [more]

I DO have a dependence on coffee. I DO NOT have a dependence on technology…or do I? This question requires some serious philosophical introspection on my part, which I will not make you suffer through. I hope that the more interesting aspect is why I write about this today.

It is the anniversary of Abe Lincoln’s birthday, and as the Smithsonian points out, he had an interest in technology. The US News agrees that Lincoln was a technology leader. Lincoln was even a communications technology leader with his use of the telegraph. A reasonable person may theorize that his . . . [more]

The Georgetown Law Library will hold a symposium on the Future of Today’s Legal Scholarship on July 25, 2009 in Washington. It will debate how blogging has become an integral part of legal scholarship:

“The Future of Today’s Legal Scholarship is a symposium that brings together academic bloggers, law librarians, and experts in preservation to tackle the bigger, more imperative challenges that will influence legal scholarship and democratic access to legal information for generations to come.”

“We must determine how to prioritize, collect, archive, preserve, and ensure reliable long-term access to the burgeoning amount of legal scholarship being published through

Dr. Ben Goldacre writes a weekly column for the Guardian called Bad Science, in which he “skewers” journalists, politicians, advertisers and others who misrepresent, make up or ignore scientific evidence concerning the sorts of things that concern us all. He also maintains a blog by the same name, where he can (and does) expatiate on these issues. One of his recurring themes is the awful mishandling of vaccination data by the media and, consequently, the various vaccination panics that spring up around the world.

In this connection he writes about an interview he gave on LBC Radio in . . . [more]

In the US, Amazon.com has just announced the second version of its wireless reader, the Kindle 2, will be released February 24, 2009 and cost US$359.

See info and specs here.

3G wireless lets you download books right to your Kindle, anytime, anywhere; no monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots (in the US from the Sprint data network). This means you can download books in less than 60 seconds; no PC required. They are claiming the Kindle 2 has a better display and 25% longer battery life. It can hold over 1,500 books. It also has a . . . [more]

The folks at the Toronto law firm Hicks Morley are leaps and bounds ahead of most other firms in their wiki use. They are using the wiki-based platform ThoughtFarmer as their whole intranet. This has had advantages, including being quick to set up and cost effective compared to other intranet or portal platforms.

In October Knowledge Management Specialist Heather Colman made a presentation to both the Toronto and New York Legal KM Groups, and we subsequently invited her to present at Toronto Wiki Tuesdays. These were her slides: . . . [more]

There’s been some discussion about Facebook and privacy, but less, perhaps, about the matter of who may use the material posted to it. Remember the fuss when Google Chrome’s EULA claimed rights in everything that passed through the browser? Well, if you’re a Facebook user, you might want to take a look at their “contractual” offer.

Facebook’s terms of use make it clear that in using the site you:

hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to

(a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan,

This past week, Google introduced a snazzy new application for smartphones. It’s called Google Latitude and it’s a bit like a location-based Twitter. It uses the GPS in your blackberry so you can know where your friends are and they can track you, too. In an age when more and more people are voluntarily putting personal information online, this takes it a next step by creating a record of where you are at almost all times.

Google touts the privacy settings, so you can adjust who can see where you are and when. The introductory video (below) has some good . . . [more]

I will be speaking later this month on February 25, 2009, in New York at the Ark Group conference Best Practices & Management Strategies for Law Firm Library & Information Service Centers.

I chose to speak at the session entitled “Risk & Innovation: Aligning Technology with Explicit Business Goals” in part to give and receive ideas on some of the technology-related initiatives we are undertaking in my department (and I will not necessarily focus just on technology since such a focus can distort the importance of non-technological ideas).

From the 40,000 foot level, innovation with technology in law libraries . . . [more]

As part of the Ontario Bar Association‘s 2009 OBA Institute (continuing today) the Privacy Law section held a program yesterday entitled “What Every Lawyer Needs to Know About Privacy”. Dan Michaluk has blogged about his session in which he was a panelist with Professor Avner Levin from Ryerson University; their focus was on workplace privacy issues that came out of the Ryerson study The Next Digital Divide: Online Social Network Privacy. . . . [more]

Yesterday, Nicole Baute of the Toronto Star covered a new social networking analysis company, Sysomos. The Canadian company gathers data from Twitter, Facebook, and 30 million blogs. Yes, 30 million.

It’s a new start-up by a UofT prof and one of his grad students, and they received financial support from the province to get things going.

They claim to go beyond brand monitoring by identifying what people are saying, who these people are, and what their tone is.

One recent practical application is mentions of Stephen Harper when parliament was prorogued. They also say . . . [more]