We are all publishers now, but are bloggers journalists? Frankly, I don’t think so, and I don’t pretend to be a journalist (even though I have been writing a weekly newspaper column for several years) – although the issue has been subject to some debate.

Wikipedia defines a journalist as: “a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people.” – although it defines journalism as “the profession of writing or communicating, formally employed by publications and broadcasters, for the benefit of a particular community of people.”

Bloggers are often treated as . . . [more]

I imagine not a few Canadian lawyers might be in China right now, and even if they are ‘on business’, they might be checking in with the office now and then. If this describes you, then take a look at his note from GigaOm, which surveys some of the security risks posed by the unique reality of a regulated internet. . . . [more]

I am an Olympics fan-girl, and have been absorbing as much television coverage as possible. What I find new this Olympics are all the references by reporters to blogs written by athletes. I was a bit surprised that the athletes would be into blogging, but in a CBC interview following his Olympic competition this weekend, Kyle Shewfelt said that he likes to write and he finds writing about his day of training to be a good way to unwind and “let it all out”.

And write he does! I had a look at his personal blog, simply called Kyle Shewfelt . . . [more]

An article in yesterday’s New York Times, “Goodbye, Passwords. You Aren’t a Good Defense,” by Randall Stross, talks about the need for a new way of authenticating users at sites that require a login. Passwords, as we all know, can be cracked, stolen or simply guessed. The coming prodedure, it seems, involves “identity selectors.” These are applications that live on your computer and manage your “identity cards,” which in turn are, so far as I can tell, bits of code that “talk” to paired bits of code on sites you want to log in . . . [more]

It had to happen. . . . [more]

12 Seconds is an online app in “public alpha” that lets you record a video of just that length, in deliberate imitation of Twitter’s 147 character limit. The idea is, I suppose, that people will feel more comfortable recording themselves if the exposure is very very brief. You can arrange the settings such that links to your — what will be the equivalent of Twitter’s tweets? “dozens”? — vids automatically get posted to your Twitter account.

I dunno. Maybe.

At any rate, should anyone want an invitation, let me know and I’ll arrange it.

introducing 12″ on 12seconds.tv . . . [more]

CasemakerX announced today the development of a social networking site which will be available to American law students, law school faculty and law librarians who register as users ((CasemakerX is a free service supported by the Casemaker Bar Consortium and its 475,000 attorney membership consisting of State Bar Associations across the USA. The purpose of CasemakerX is to provide a conduit to network law students and legal professionals, creating an information portal for self-promotion, education, mentoring and future opportunities in the legal profession. Our mission is to help law students connect and use the power of group knowledge and professional/social . . . [more]

Fascinating real-life stuff.

New York Post photojournalist Steven Hirsch writes a blog called Courthouse Confessions.

It is all based on his encounters in front of the Manhattan Criminal Court with criminal defendants leaving the building.

He snaps their pictures and asks them a few questions.

[Source: New York Times, August 3rd, 2008]

Cross-posted to Library Boy. . . . [more]

Hats off to David Whelan and his colleagues at the Great Library for an intelligently designed practice portal clustering together resources for real estate lawyers in Ontario. Somewhat similar to the Pathfinders developed in many firms, it’s a great resource for solos and small firms. . . . [more]

That great Canadian blogger Rob Hyndman has a good piece on the sad news that William Patry is closing down his copyright blog. Patry has two reasons: first, because he can’t get people to treat what he says as personal, as having no connection to his work as Google’s copyright counsel; and second, more unhappy, because the current state of copyright law is truly depressing. Rob notes that Larry Lessig abandoned the field because of a “corruption” of the political process.

Read both entries. . . . [more]

Here is a link to an interesting segment in Fox Business’s digital innovations scheme. This time it’s about FastCase’s challenge to the empires of West/Thomson in Eagan, MN and Reed Elsevier in Dayton OH. The interview talks about possible patents on the search algorithm, but nothing is on the USPTO yet. . . . [more]

Law library podcast The Law Librarian is set to continue recording next Friday, August 8th at 3 pm CST. The show is hosted by Richard Leiter and Brian Striman, and we first made note of it back in May.

Today’s guest is Margie Maes (some readers may know her as Margie Axtmann), Executive Director of the Legal Information Preservation Alliance, a committee of AALL. Margie is also an active CALL member; I first met her on a CALL Vendor Liaison Committee panel a number of years ago when she was serving on AALL‘s equivalent . . . [more]