Olivier Charbonneau, bibliothécaire professionnel et chercheur à l’Université Concordia, and blogger behind the excellent CultureLibre.ca, posts about a petition started by Le député provincial de Mercier à Montréal, Daniel Turp, aiming to persuade ICANN to grant Quebec the top level domain designation “dot qc.”

Apparently the Deputy discovered that the semi-autonomous regions of Catalan and Greenland have their own dot suffixes.

The full list of top level domains is available on the IANA site. .GL, Greenland’s code is listed as a “country code”; while .CAT is said to be “sponsored” and “Reserved for the Catalan linguistic and cultural . . . [more]

Apparently the University of Chicago Law School has stopped giving students access to the internet in classrooms, at least on an “experimental basis,” according to the Dean. Inside Higher Ed has the story on the situation, first broken by the blog Above The Law. Students are not happy about it, according to reports.

This seems to be the first time a law school has shut off wireless connectivity as a matter of policy.

I’ve just finished teaching a law school course and I’d have to say that, looked at from the other side, there are few if any good . . . [more]

Google News has added a quotation feature. According to the Google News Blog, entering a person’s name into the News search box will bring up a recent quote above the search results — provided, of course, that person has been quoted by an indexed news source. If you then click on the highlighted name of the person (beside the lead quote) you’ll go to a page full of quotes from that speaker.

Here, for instance, is a bit from the 117 quotations from Stephen Harper:

It seems that Google News can recognize a person’s name. At least, a search . . . [more]

I’ve happened on a paper published last year by Graham Greenleaf, Philip Chung and Andrew Mowbray, Co-Directors of AustLII & WorldLII, “Emerging Global Networks for Free Access to Law: WorldLII’s Strategies 2002-2005” on SCRIPT-ed – A Journal of Law, Technology & Society.

SCRIPT-ed is an online journal out of the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh, and is associated with the AHRC Centre for Research in Intellectual Property and Technology Law there. . . . [more]

Adam Kolber, who teaches law at the University of San Diego School of Law, and who is currently teaching at Princeton University, studies neuroethics. You might well ask. Well, folks have always been trying to mess with our heads one way or another — just ask any of my students — and now there needs to be some greater discussion of ethical standards to hamper, if not to restrain, some of the more enthusiastic and direct neural intruders. And we need to think about how to understand and use what we’re learning about neural functioning.

His blog, the Neuroethics . . . [more]

I am always leery of using SLAW to mention the services or product of a particular company, but I have been impressed with the earnestness at which XMLaw focuses on delivering practical solutions for law firms in delivering Intranet solutions to their users using the SharePoint platform (I am currently attending a conference they are sponsoring in Boston for their [primarily) law firm customers; my positive comments on their company have nothing to do with the boat tour of Boston Harbour and the open bar they just sponsored . . . .).

They seem to “get it” by their focus . . . [more]

You may find it handy to be able to convert a file from one format to another using an online service, Zamzar. You can go from any of 16 different types of document file, for instance, to half a dozen or more alternative types. So, for example, you can convert a PDF file into a .doc file, or a .docx file into a .odt (OpenDocument text document) file, etc. Zamzar works as well with image, music, video and compressed formats.

Files are converted when Zamzar has the time, although my test files all were cooked within two hours; you . . . [more]

I wanted to introduce Convictions, Slate’s new legal blog, but I noticed Simon beat me to it (great minds think alike!). An About page has been added to Convictions since Simon’s post which lists its contributors and touts itself as a “destination for smart legal conversation and commentary.” A quick glance at the blog’s tag cloud shows its popular topics include 9/11 plotters, gun control, Iraq, law schools, war crimes, and the second amendment. Also, see Law.com for a review of the blog. . . . [more]

My time at Cornell is flying by ((My first week was too busy to allow time to post, but I have several items in the works)), and I’ve put together lots of notes on the law library. However, today I’m going to post about how Cornell University Libraries has developed a wonderful system for creating digital resources. The Digital Initiatives page provides access to the their many projects and partnerships. Central to the operation is the Digital Consulting and Production Services unit (DCAPS). . . . [more]

A lot of folks were disappointed that the MacBook Air from Apple was only thin and not small in its other dimensions, because there’s a need for a small computer with a full-size keyboard. The HP 2133 Mini-Note might be just the thing to meet that need. It weighs in at 1.19 kilograms (2.63 pounds), has an adequate 9-inch display and sports a keyboard that’s 92% full size. And you can pick one up for somewhere between $500 and $900.

Introduced for the “education market,” the Mini-Note would seem to merit a much wider market: when it comes to carrying . . . [more]

Google’s brand new App Engine allows developers to write (in Python only, at the moment), store and run programs using Google’s application environment. This is no longer just parking documents in the clouds but sky writing — for those who can fly, at least. Speaking of which, you can see how it’s done by looking at a (slow-loading) video of the coding process under App Engine on YouTube. For a while, it’s a kick to see this kid just typing out code as fast as you or I might tap out a simple declarative sentence in English.

At the moment . . . [more]

I was searching for a free Visio-like product today and luckily came across this great website that lists open source software alternatives to commercial products:

The site allows you to browse through various software categories and compare pros and cons of both commercial products and open source software.

The editor of this site, Anders Ingeman Rasmussen, boldly states in a sort of fortune cookie way: If you want success, open source is the way to go.

Who knew the answer was so simple… . . . [more]