The newswires have just reported that the Library of Congress has awarded ATS Corporation a $14 Million contract to enhance the Global Legal Information Network.

Hebrew and Chinese content is coming: . . . [more]

I recently posted about the Privacy Commissioner’s concern over Google Street View and its ability to catch identifiable people unawares as it snaps the low level environs. Of greater concern, I think, should be the abililty of security forces to watch us from the various cameras at their disposal. We all know about the CCTV cameras made so infamous in Britain. Now there’s an effective, affordable, and nearly silent eye in the sky to worry about.

A piece on the Wired website talks about a small drone helicopter being tested by British police that is capable of photographing pretty much . . . [more]

Starting today, Google Presentations which will permit a slimmed down version of PowerPoint to be available on the web, with fairly rudimentary editing functionality. It permits loading files of up to 10MB from PPT, though I found some cutting off happened of images and all animation appears to have gone. . . . [more]

I received a press release today for a lawyer social networking site called LawLink, which apparently aims to be LinkedIn for Lawyers, or maybe Facebook Without the Kids. Free registration allows you to “network with other attorneys, develop new business leads, share information with other attorneys, develop new business leads,” etc. A lawyers’ social network site is a fine idea — although many lawyers are still unfamiliar with or dismissive of LinkedIn/Facebook (according to an article we’ll publish next month), lawyers are networking and gossip mavens at heart, and I do think this will catch on within the profession . . . [more]

How do you tell when there is a really old elephant in the room – maybe so old that people tend to forget it is there? Here is one way: if someone writes you an open letter notifying you. In the case of open source ILSs, maybe the ILS Customer Bill of Rights was a missed wake-up call. Maybe these were also missed:

• http://www.vufind.org,
• http://open-ils.org,
• http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/11133,
• http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/endeca,
• http://about.scriblio.net,
• http://www.extensiblecatalog.info/?page_id=2, and
• library thing and aquabrowser.

Yahoo! have just started a new social networking tool called Mash. Thus far it is calmer and simpler than Facebook, MySpace and the lesser-known Ning.

From the Mash Blog:

We just started inviting our friends outside Yahoo! to join us in testing Mash: a new approach to online profiles. If you’ve used other online profiles before you’ll feel at home in Mash. But there are some new twists that make things a little interesting and, we think, a lot of fun.

1. You can make starter profiles for your friends. Think: “first round’s on me.”
2.

That too, sometimes, maybe, but not today.

Today’s subject is obliquely about something that will enrapture the heart of every litigator with deep-pocket clients: e-mail management and the fees associated with litigation that has extensive e-mail discovery.

Today’s message is also an opportunity to let others do my thinking for me.

I’m going to quote from a recent study by a US vendor [MessageOne, Inc.] which is generally applicable to Canada, too, titled “Critical Email Management Problems“. The study is available on-line here, although you might have to join ZDNet (it’s free – it’s worth . . . [more]

We learn from Technaute that Praized, a Quebec web2.0 startup, just got an 1M$ investment from the canadian branch of Garage Technology Venture, the venture capital company behind Pandora. Knowing that Pandora is now unaccessible to canadians, lets hope the same will not happen to Praized… It should not be the case due to the type of application they are developping. Here is a quote from their website:

Praized Media is a startup company working on a web-based application that will enable you to find and discover local places and merchants with help from people you can

Yesterday a new book on the Law of Blogging was released. It’s available for $9.95 directly from the author as a PDF download only.

The Contents sketch out a broad range of topics: . . . [more]

I’m finally figuring out some things when it comes to ‘talking’ once and ‘publishing’ many. Ok Matthews, what are you going on about? 2.0 of course! Facebook, Blogging, RSS feeds and Twitter to be exact.

One of the awkward things about all these 2.0 applications is deciding where to publish. Where do I put my thoughts online? Do I blog, linkblog, twitter, or facebook? Well, I *think* I have a solution!

• Step 1 is to decide where to publish. And the answer is not Facebook or Twitter. I’ve come to the conclusion that both should be considered content destinations

A few links to the 2007 survey released this morning.

It covers:

Collaboration tools
Web conference software
Wikis and extranets
Instant messaging
Wireless devices
VoIP
Vista
Automating Processes
Tech Support

Don’t overlook the detailed data either at
CIO’s Pleased as Punch

Communications Chart

Software Chart

Financial Stats Chart

. . . [more]

Catching up on my reading of The Hindu, a piece on Legal Knowledge Outsourcing should be read by everyone.

Even if you discount the ambitions massively, the challenge is still quite amazing.

A few quotes:

The majority of legal services in the West can and should be sent offshore, says Mr Russell Smith, President and Chairman, SDD Global Solutions Pvt Ltd, a Mysore-based legal services KPO (knowledge process off-shoring). “And we are talking about services that now fetch a price tag of $250 billion per year and growing”

. ((Mr Smith, a Columbia Law School graduate and former partner . . . [more]