Small footnote to the SCC’s recent decision in Simpson v. WIC and Mair.

LeBel J’s concurring judgment mentions blogs:

[73] This is all the more true in an age when the public is exposed to an astounding quantity and variety of commentaries on issues of public interest, ranging from political debate in the House of Commons, to newspaper editorials, to comedians’ satire, to a high school student’s blog. It would quite simply be wrong to assume that the public always takes statements of opinion at face value. Rather, members of the public must be presumed to evaluate comments

A ruling released July 1st in the copyright infringement case Viacom v. Google has created a stir in the online world. Judge Louis L. Stanton in the U.S. federal New York Southern District Court ordered Google to produce to Viacom:

all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website

Those interested in the work of the European Court of Justice, might like to subscribe to the ECJ Blog. Allard Knook, a lecturer in law at the Institute of Constitutional and Administrative Law, University of Utrecht, has regular postings in English on cases decided by the Court. . . . [more]

From today’s Globe and Mail:

…for $75 a month, Rogers provides 300 weekday voice minutes, 750 megabytes of data and 100 text messages. In the United States, a customer gets 450 weekday voice minutes, unlimited data and 200 text messages for the same price.

Yes, that’s “unlimited data.” No, that’s not in Canada.

See, the further north you go, the colder it gets; and colder air is heavier air; so it costs more to push signals through such weighty atmosphere. Which explains why Rogers… . . . [more]

We’ve written a few times about powerset, the natural language search engine. When it brought its service public in May, there were rumours about it being purchased by one of the search giants.

Those rumours have now been proven true, with reports that Microsoft has purchased the company. We can all hope that this move will help bring more intelligent search to the broader public. . . . [more]

Adobe is talking to Google and Yahoo. The plan is to make sites that use Adobe Flash searchable, because now search engines slip off the face of Flash sites as if they were glass. The Adobe press announcement doesn’t add much of substance to this declaration (but does use the wretched phrase “going forward.”) Google, on the other hand, announces that it has already launched its Flash indexing algorithm and that web designers should expect better results with respect to their Flash sites.

I don’t have a Flash-based site in mind that I can use to check the situation — . . . [more]

Lots of chirping about social networking tool Twitter today from various quarters. A few stories I am following:

• In What’s Twitter doing right now? Investors would like to know, Globe and Mail (July 1, 2008), tech reporter Matt Hartley explores the value of Twitter and whether we can expect an IPO soon;
• The Digital Home: How Twitter could be worth nothing in a year, CNet News (July 1, 2008), by Don Reisinger discusses valuation of Twitter (could it really be worth 1 billion dollars?);
• in her article All a Twitter: Want to Try Microblogging?, School Library Journal

Lots of people turn to classified ad websites such as Craigslist and Kijiji to find movers to help them with small moves. But, from the lists and lists of movers, how can you tell who are honest? And if you do get ripped off, where can you turn? Here is a checklist of sorts. . . . [more]

I’ve been getting a daily blast of legal-tech news from Lexology, having ticked the IP, IT etc. boxes and those for Canada, the U.S. and U.K. Today, there was a single item under the “Canada” banner: “Employers need to be careful to avoid waiving the protections of written computer and email policies” from the firm of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP, a name I’m not familiar with — but then I’m not exactly up on them all. The telltale was the mention of the 9th Circuit Court and then “the Ontario Police Department.” Ah. No . . . [more]

There’s a good overview of four online presentation tools — “PowerPoints” in the clouds — over at ReadWriteWeb. We’ve already looked at Zoho Show 2.0 here on Slaw, and everyone should be familiar with what Google Docs can do in that respect (not much). A new player, 280 Slides, is starting to make online son et lumière look really interesting: you can pluck images out of Flickr and you can download your finished presentation to PowerPoint 2007 format, if you wish.

But I have to say that SlideRocket is the one to watch. Still in closed beta (I’m . . . [more]

One of my first efforts as Crosby Group has been evaluating the B.C. legislation tracking/research service Quickscribe. An excerpt of the press release is below. I hope you find this report useful. I would love to hear your comments!

Quickscribe: A Comparison and Evaluation Report (White Paper) Released

[June 26, 2008] A new white paper comparing British Columbia legislative tracking services was released today by Crosby Group Consulting. The report titled, Quickscribe: A Comparison and Evaluation Report, was commissioned by Stem Legal Web Enterprises Inc. to objectively identify key differences between Quickscribe Services Inc. and the BC government

An odd sort of an announcement today about a White Paper on the implications of Web 2.0 for the legal profession, but without any indication how to find the white paper.

Here is the press release:

Collaborative Network Addresses Emerging Legal Issues

2008-06-26 21:58:06 –

– nGenera, together with California law firm Folger, Levin & Kahn, and Legal OnRamp, today announced that they had collaborated to use a wiki tool to author a sophisticated white paper on legal issues presented by new Internet technologies, including wikis themselves. . . . [more]