safely, on Mars – the Mars Rover named “Curiosity”, that is – even if the Americans can’t spell.

Here’s explanations of how it was to work. It did.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/24364591/highlight/281462

http://www.space.com/16503-photos-mars-science-laboratory-curiosity-landing-guide.html

And, here’s a video stream of a collection of very relieved, very happy, people in blue shirts.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/24512027/highlight/282919

I doubt the missing “u” made a difference; however, those who once drove British Leyland vehicles may remember the crack about the best British workmanship going into the parts that fall off.

Fortunately, nothing fell off here.

  . . . [more]

Earlier this week, Tech Vibes reported that as worldwide Twitter subscribership crossed the half-billion mark, Canadian accounts were shown to account for 2% of that total, placing Canada at 8^th spot among all countries in total Twitter subscriber numbers. Canadians, of course, were also among the early adopters of Facebook and routinely top the rankings of ComScore and similar reports for such things as time spent online, so our collective Twitter presence is not actually all that surprising.

The surprise comes courtesy of some recently completed but not-yet-released research conducted by CanLII. Over a 6 week period in . . . [more]

From 3D-printed guns to hacking DNA for assasination via targeted synthetic pathogens, Marc Goodman is capable of throwing a scare into you. Is he a little short on solutions? Well, that would be telling. See his presentation at TED, and a followup interview. Also see his website for more. . . . [more]

A few weeks I posted the 1959 vision of the Law Library of the Future, that got my gears turning and I undertook a visioning exercise the result of which I present now, The 2012 Law Library of the Future: To-Day! . . . [more]

Online users who want a certain amount of anonymity will want to stay off Quora. Their new Views feature is set to track which users have looked at your posts. Some good coverage on the subject via Gigaom.

This type of insider knowledge has always been a bit of a balancing act. On one side, this information is incredibly valuable to the websites that collect it. Heck, it’s a core element of Linkedin’s paid account service — seeing who’s viewed your profile over the last X number of days. As a user, my interests are divided. It both . . . [more]

The July 2012 issue of Connected is available online.

The bulletin covers news about the impact of new social media such as Twitter and Facebook on court proceedings, the ethical implications of judges and court staff using new media, and court policy issues relating to these technologies.

It is published by the Virginia-based National Center for State Courts and the Conference of Court Public Information Officers.

Most of the stories are about the United States, but there is occasionally material about non-US matters. One of this month’s items is about a mistrial declared in a New Brunswick murder case because . . . [more]

Every two years for the past few years I’ve written something before the Olympic games about the IOC’s social media and web rules, which are overly controlling, out of touch, and behind the times. This year is no exception. Even though we are just a few days in, there have been several stories vying for the most outlandish social media excess medal. For example:

Carmi Levy wrote an article just before the games began entitled The IOC’s social media anti-lesson for business that starts off with:

As the final hours tick down until the 2012 Olympic games get started in . . . [more]

A picture is worth a thousand words. A streaming video is worth a lot of bandwidth, or is it? From Supreme Court of Canada live and archived webcasts to CanLII training videos on YouTube to political speeches, there is plenty of valid, useful, legal content on the web that is being blocked from viewing in an office near you.

A common argument used by organizations to support blocking streaming content is based on productivity drain, usually kicked around with the word bandwidth.

What is the bandwidth drain of streaming content? A service provider with the unlikely name of Bummer Hosting . . . [more]

Legal complexity is nothing new. The scope of its unhappy consequences, however, seems to be getting ever wider thanks to the internet. Now texts land right in the living rooms — or the pants pockets — of half the planet at a keystroke. And, as a colleague once complained, computers and the internet “grease the skids of prolixity” where lawyers are concerned: ten words can become a hundred or a thousand at no marginal cost.

The terms of service “agreements” governing almost all the software and services you use are famously long and impenetrable. Just to read privacy policies alone . . . [more]

We hear a lot of talk about access to justice from the judiciary and the politicians who are charged to execute this lofty ideal. But it took an initiative between the National Virtual Law Library Group and the Federation of Law Societies of Canada to found CanLII over a decade ago.

The Free Access to Law Movement could hardly envisioned the rise of mobile technology in the 2002 Declaration on Free Access to Law. When a solo private practitioner uses their own resources to advances the goals of unrestricted legal access and provides it to the public for free . . . [more]

AustLII, the Australasian Legal Information Institute, has launched the Australasian Colonial Legal History Library, a free online collection of databases containing legal information from the colonial period of Australia and New Zealand.

A recent article explaining the project, Digitising and searching Australasian colonial legal history, has been published on the Social Science Research Network:

“The paper explains the construction, content and features of the first version of the Library, which as of July 2012 contains 12 databases including one case law database from each of the seven colonies (including New Zealand), some of which are ‘recovered’ cases

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, / Searches.
(With apologies to Omar Khayyám)

Google’s just made a new feature available for searching on mobile or tablet platforms. “Handwrite” allows you to write your search terms with your finger on any portion of the screen. You have to enable the function by going to “settings” at the bottom of your Google search page, where you’ll find the option. You can then turn it on or off from the basic search page, as you wish.

I’ve tried it on my iPhone and find that the writing recognition function is quite . . . [more]