Here it is again: the LLRX tour d’horizon of gadgetry, “60 Gadgets in 60 Minutes” by Ed Vawter, Barbara Fullerton and Dina Dreifuerst. From the frivolous (marshmallow gun) to the somewhat less frivolous (a Cadillac automobile), the gadget gamut is certain to offer you something that you just can’t live without — even if only for ten seconds, until rational thought kicks in again.

It’s offered as an iPaper set of slides and as a PDF and PowerPoint presentation suitable for downloading and viewing while you let your “sweat analysing shirt” do its work. . . . [more]

About a year ago founders Kevin Lai and Travis Fielding unveiled the website housing123.com, a mash-up between the Canadian Real Estate Association’s Multiple Listings Service and Google Maps. Their service allowed website visitors to view housing sales on a map rather than having to sort through pages and pages of listings on the regular MLS site.

Lai and Fielding received a cease and desist letter from CREA’s legal counsel and decided to close the site effective June 15th. There is some indication on their blog that they may re-open the site with user contributed property listings.

Blog TO’s . . . [more]

The AALL’s Computing Services Special Interest Section (CS-SIS — which does come off sounding a whole lot like our wholly different CSIS, no?) is offering a free online 5-week course for law librarians to introduce them to the new web technologies. The course will take a couple of hours a week, and the weekly outline looks like this:

• Week 1: Blogs & RSS
• Week 2: Wikis
• Week 3: Social Networking and Second Life
• Week 4: Flickr & Social Bookmarking
• Week 5: Next Steps: Web 2.0 @ Your Library

You can get more info — and sign up — at . . . [more]

Thanks to our friends at Spada’s new Swordplay site for links to an article at the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology on INFORMATION INFLATION: CAN THE LEGAL SYSTEM ADAPT which asks, how do vast quantities of new writing forms challenge the legal profession, and how should lawyers adapt?

It’s written by George L. Paul, a partner in Lewis and Roca, LLP and Jason R. Baron, Director of Litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.

The piece is well worth your attention. . . . [more]

1-800-4664-411 equals 1-800-GOOG-411

Okay dear readers, another number to put on your mobile’s autodial. Google 411 launched in Canada today.

Dial 1-800-GOOG-411 to connect to a computer armed with voice recognition software.

The automated voice will ask for city and province. A voice menu runs you through finding the information you’re looking for ((Business information only – they won’t offer residential service)).

I asked for Indian restaurants in Toronto and got decent recommendations with location details and an opportunity to connect by phone. . . . [more]

There have been so many mythical quotations attributed to Bill Gates over the years, that it’s helpful to have a journalist actually separate myth from reality.

As Bill Gates moves on to the next stage in his career, Nancy Weil has done us all a favour by gathering the quotes together. . . . [more]

Paul E. Kennedy, Chair, Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, has released his final report on RCMP Use of the Conducted Energy Weapon (CEW) (i.e. Tasers). (A PDF version is available.

As an aside, why is it that the online news stories fail to contain a link to the original report? I don’t mind doing the ten seconds of research myself, but it does seem odd that a web-based news outlet would ignore an easily available link to the documents in question. Maybe they need librarians. . . . [more]

StatsCan’s Health Reports delivered a one-two punch today with its interrelated reports on “Screen time among Canadian adults: A profile” [or PDF] and “Sedentary behaviour and obesity” [or PDF]:

A recent study of adults based on data from the 2007 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) found evidence that screen time (time spent viewing television and using computers) was positively associated with obesity, inactive leisure time and a poor diet.

I must say that at first blush the screen-time data don’t look as bad as I’d feared: 29% watch two hours of TV a day, . . . [more]

Google Trends has been improved lately — you can export data to a spreadsheet, for example — so I thought I’d take a look at how “copyright” has been faring as a search term in Canada over the last month. The graph that results shows clearly the increase in public interest as legislation became imminent, spiking just after the government introduced Bill C-61, and falling away within a day or two, headed for the usual level of general lack of interest.

If you click on the image of the chart, you can see an enlarged version; the “A” is the . . . [more]

Quietly this week, Google Docs added support for PDF files. You can now upload PDFs to your account, making them available for viewing and sharing.

Unfortunately, you currently can’t edit those PDFs, but I’m sure the feature is in the works. They’ve also had the ability to create PDF files out of your Google Documents for some time now. . . . [more]

Redesigned FindLaw.com site helps people find answers, find lawyers . . . [more]

Mozilla is trying to set a Guinness World Record. They’ve already collected over 1.7 million pledges and served up several thousand Firefox 3 downloads. To be part of the record you must download Firefox 3 by 11:16 a.m. PDT (18:16 UTC) on June 18th.

A technical assessment of the browser, but it works beautifully for me here now. . . . [more]