Everyone’s going wireless — and that now included Taser, the company that makes the stun gun that’s been in the news so sadly of late. We don’t usually blog about technology here if it’s used to convey something other than information, and legal information at that. But I thought that those of us in the world of law should have a certain degree of familiarity with the tools that are used by (the other?) forces of social control. So here’s a quick note about Taser’s newest product, XREP, or eXtended Range Electronic Projectile. This small projectile is fired from a . . . [more]

Those of you who are interested in the whole phenomenon of social networks and blogging generally — if only because innovations will come to law sooner or later — might take a look at a piece by Alex Iskold on Read/WriteWeb, “The Evolution of Personal Publishing.” His opening diagram gives you a sense of what he’s thinking. Note that blogging (which is us, and which is finally after some years catching on with lawyers) is firmly lodged in the “heavy” and “corporate” end of things — appropriately, I suppose.

. . . [more]

Steve Matthews, the brain behind Stem Legal and LegalPubs.ca, has revivified his original list of Canadian blawgs by giving it a home of its own as the Canadian Law Blogs List. This is brilliant.

The only thing that’s needed now, Steve, is the RSS links for each, and the ability to mix a feed of our choosing right there on the site, and….

When you have time, that is. . . . [more]

There’ll be no Chumbies in Canada, we’re told. I’m not sure if that’s a sad thing or not. This USD180 retro tube, which is about the size of an old fashioned alarm clock, is an always on, content-constrained iPod Touch, connecting like it’s sleek sister through wifi, but unlike her only pulling in certain “channels” from the internet. This reminds me of the mini TV’s that you’d see (in the movies, okay?) in people’s kitchens back in the 60’s: always on: nothing much on.

Are you (a) sad? (b) indignant? (c) indifferent? (d) faintly pleased? (e) none of the above? . . . [more]

Rogers’ version is, so far, exactly as advertised. Purchase a wireless modem, sign up for the service, plug the modem into a (working) socket, attach one’s computer etc., turn on one’s computer, and away you go.

Rogers provides a high speed and basic service. Basic is apparently about as fast as dial-up. High speed isn’t as fast as cable high speed, but it’s good enough for when one is away from one’s base, so long as one is within the coverage area. And, the price is right.

Read about it Rogers Portable Internet according to Rogers

Bell’s equivalent is called . . . [more]

UK law librarians are now following our lead, encouraging the UK legal publishers to produce a new titles RSS feed.

Publishing consultant Nick Holmes has been calling for this service for some time, and recently put the pressure on publishers by scraping their websites to create sample feeds, posting them on the infolaw site. He also wrote an open letter to UK legal publishers on November 2nd asking for RSS feeds.

Blogger lo-fi librarian reports that a Facebook group has also been set up to help build concensus amongst law librarians in their request for RSS feeds from . . . [more]

There’s a new tech product in the offing that you might like to know about.

When, in the last 40 years or so, has that line not been true? Commerce, posing as news or progress or pleasure, has insinuated itself into every nook and cranny until every crook and nanny has a pretty heavy jones for technology, hard and soft. This is, of course, a blessing (and a reprieve?) for our market economy which, not that long ago, seemed on the point of exhausting itself in the creation and meeting of every (then) conceivable nuanced need. Now that a new . . . [more]

Perhaps encryption isn’t so easy after all, and some people could use a little primer. This is how I protect my laptop….

Wired – “How Does Bruce Schneier Protect His Laptop Data? With His Fists — and PGP“

After a discussion among academics about the perils of crossing the U.S. border with your laptop full of research data, I began to wonder how diligent law firms are in ensuring that nothing leaves the office on a laptop that is unsecured. The shocking incident in which Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs lost a couple of disks containing private . . . [more]

Sadly there’s one more niche for advertising to ply its charms. Yahoo and Adobe have signed a deal for Adobe to provide space in PDFs for Yahoo-pushed advertising. The joint communiqué — an ad-free PDF — can be found here. A publisher of information (U.S. only — for the time being?) registers with Adobe and uploads content; Adobe’s algorithm then pairs that content with ads; the distributed registered PDF comes to you adorned with ads. As the articley on ZDNet says, perhaps it won’t be so bad: who reads publishers’ PDFs anyway? . . . [more]

Previously reported here on Slaw, the One Laptop Per Child program’s Give One Get One promotion has now been extended to December 31st. So, you now have until the end of the year to order yours if you are in Canada or the U.S.!

Thanks to Chris Brogan for the tip and the additional discussion of the program. . . . [more]

We’ve covered a couple of different browser-based tools in the past here, including Zoho, ThinkFree, Buzzword, and Adobe Share. A new competitor, Live Documents, has now entered the fray.

If you think the name sounds suspiciously similar to what Microsoft calls all their products, well, there’s a reason for that. The program is built to integrate closely with Microsoft Office. The interface of its web application is very similar to that of Office, but this online suite goes further. It integrates into your desktop copy of Office (by installing its own toolbar) and allows you to share and collaborate . . . [more]

Tim Bray over at Ongoing does some light speculation about how we should understand the accelerating growth in ways we communicate with each other. He starts with the timeline you see to your left and then goes on to play with ways of comparing and charting the means at our disposal today, wondering where the holes in the map might be that could reveal the spaces for new forms.

Tim, who happens to be Canadian, is director of web technologies at Sun Microsystems and has a background in search technologies. He should do more speculating in public about such things. . . . [more]