CBC’s Search Engine says, provocatively:

With the election of Barack Obama, digital culture in the U.S. hit a tipping point, where a robust online public sphere proved itself capable of changing the world. Meanwhile, here in Canada we’re approaching our own tipping point, where a series of ignorances and capitulations threaten to turn our country into a digital ghetto.

Having spent some time yesterday discovering that Skype is not able to provide Skypein telephone numbers for Canada the way it can for 21 other countries and that Google’s really interesting Grand Central isn’t available in Canada, I’m ready . . . [more]

I just arrived home and am catching up on the terrorist attack on Mumbai this evening (tomorrow morning in India).

BlogTalkRadio SAJA (South Asian Journalist Association) are holding web-based phone-in discussions every 12 hours, 10 – 11:30 am/pm ET or 8:30 – 10:00 am/pm Indian time. The guests on the first call (evening of Nov. 26 in Canada) included Benjamin Piven, former Fulbright Scholar in Mumbai and Suketu Mehta, author, “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.” Author Rohit Bhargava has posted the details on his Influential Marketing Blog.

For those wishing to follow the latest news, some . . . [more]

Looks like Twitter is cutting outbound SMS messaging:

Unexpected changes in our billing have forced us into a difficult situation with our Canadian SMS service. We can’t afford to support this service given our current arrangement with our providers (where costs have been doubling for the past several months.) As a result, effective today we are no longer delivering outbound SMS over our Canadian shortcode (21212).

The ability to update Twitter over SMS will still be supported over 21212. But we know that this is only part of the experience and we want to make Twitter work in the

Yesterday saw the release of Windsor Law Professor Richard Moon’s long-awaited report on Internet Hate Speech and the jurisdiction of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The editorial writers are lapping it up – here is the Globe and the National Post, as well as the CBC’s more measured coverage.

The principal recommendation of this report is that section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act be repealed so that the censorship of Internet hate speech is dealt with exclusively by the criminal law.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has described the Moon report “an important contribution” to the discussion . . . [more]

On Friday, Google launched its “SearchWiki,” a way of customizing your own search results. I gather that they’re rolling it out according to some pattern, which means you may not see this feature in your results for a few days yet.

What you will see is illustrated below:

If, for example, Slaw hadn’t come up top in my results in a search for “slaw,” I could have moved it up there with the arrow, and ever after it would be first. For me. Which is what I don’t quite get: why exactly would I want to fix the results of . . . [more]

Everything I know about social media I learned from PR professionals in my brief career in that field prior to law.

Neville Hobson (a social media guru in the U.K. who hosts one of my first podcast subscriptions, For Immediate Release) launched an RSS feed yesterday that combined over 60 of the best PR blogs around the world.

He based the selection on a PR Network previously created by David Jones, a local PR guru based in Toronto (he also hosts one of my other first podcasts, InsidePR).

I thought it was a great idea, so I . . . [more]

Back in September I posted about the imminent launch of Europeana, the digital library, museum and archive that will share Europe’s cultural objects online with Europe and the world. Well, it launched on November 20, as scheduled, got 10,000,000 hits an hour and crashed. The site is now down until some time in December, we’re told, when it will return in a more robust form and ready for the huge digital crowds that clearly want in. Ah, the tribulations of success.

[via ::CultureLibre.ca::] . . . [more]

The Register has an interesting report on crimes in virtual worlds.

According to a study [PDF] by the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), there is a lot of crime in virtual worlds, and it can be lucrative.

Quoth the author of the study: “While annual real-money sales of virtual goods is estimated at nearly €2bn ($2.51bn) worldwide, users can do very little if their virtual property is stolen. They are a very soft target for cybercriminals.”

There is of course an action plan – indeed a 12-step program – one step of which is “Clarification of virtual property . . . [more]

One of my more recent clients is Clio, a Vancouver-based SaaS (Software as a Service) company built for web-based law practice management.

Clio’s target market is clearly set at solos and small firms, and feature wise they’re incredibly strong. They know who they want to serve, and what they want to deliver. However, like other SaaS companies, and especially within the legal market, the biggest challenge they face is how create an environment of trust.

This concept of trust is extremely important for clients both when establishing a sales proposition, but perhaps more important, in maintaining a strong . . . [more]

Add this one to our long list of scams: some Canadians have received letters (both by email and Canada Post) supposedly from the Canada Revenue Agency indicating they are owed money, but that the government does not have sufficient information on file for them to forward the outstanding amount. A form is included with the letter. Fill in the form, return it and voila, your personal information is handed over to a stranger for the purpose of stealing your identity. Although the letter and T2 form look like photocopies, they look quite legitimate. The RCMP and CRA are warning . . . [more]

Links to a lengthy interview with Richard Susskind (parts 1 and 2) who continues to provoke with his explanations of how the English market for legal services is dramatically different from that in the United States, and how the Legal Services Act presages the future on this side of the Atlantic too.

One of the unplanned advantages of federal systems appears to be the way in which they militate against reforms of professional monopolies.

Good plugs for The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the nature of legal services , Richard’s book which will be imminently published by OUP.

The most . . . [more]

About eighteen months ago I posted about various online mind-mapping tools, MindMeister among them. Updated not too long ago to include several new features, including the ability to attach files, notes, tasks and links to nodes, MindMeister offers a series of accounts from free to $6 a month for a business edition. Worth a second look, I think, if you don’t already do all your mind mapping work with the high end and expensive MindManager or the free but surprisingly good FreeMind — and maybe even if you do. . . . [more]