What does the acquisition of one publishing house by another mean for an author? Since the announcement of the acquisition of Canada Law Book by Carswell Thomson, I have received a number of calls from authors and editors asking me questions relating to the acquisition and what it will mean to them.

Is one legal publisher better than another?

Needless to say, it can be a bit disconcerting for an author to learn that his or her publisher has been sold to a competitor. In persuading an author to sign with Publisher A, as much effort would have been spent . . . [more]

I came across an interesting article in the Autumn issue of University of Toronto Magazine. It indicates that John A. Cunningham, a behavioural scientist at U. of T., has come up with new criteria for defining how much alcohol consumption is too much.

You can measure your own drinking habits against these criteria by taking a short five minute survey at checkyourdrinking.net.

The survey asks about the amount of alcohol you consume, and compares it to averages for others of the same age and sex. On an annual basis it also reports how much you spend on alcohol and . . . [more]

According to the Official Google Blog:

Second, today we demonstrated new mobile editing capabilities for Google Docs on the Android platform and the iPad. In the next few weeks, co-workers around the world will soon be able to co-edit files simultaneously from an even wider array of devices.

This is good news for iPad owners who will no longer need to buy an app to edit Google Docs. (Not to mention making a number of iPad-owning SLAW contributors very happy.) . . . [more]

Hat tip to Susannah Tredwell (@hannasus) for retweeting:

Google Docs now supports web fonts – we’ve added 6 new fonts to documents & more are on the way

The article starts out with: “Documents without font choices are like photographs without colors. Just as shades of color can add depth to a picture, smart font choices give your text another dimension.”
This is just the beginning for font additions to Google Docs.

A question for Slaw readers: Does this font addition create enough of an incentive to start using Google Docs if you aren’t using it now? . . . [more]

The annual Special Report to Parliament by the Interim Information Commissioner of Canada, Suzanne Legault, was filed in April 2010 and is now available online [PDF]. As the title of the report says, it is a “2008-2009 Report Card” on the “Systemic Issues Affecting Access to Information in Canada.”

The report assesses the delays encountered by members of the public seeking information under Canada’s access to information system from various federal departments. The Interim Commissioner awarded grades ranging from “A” for the Department of Justice and for Citizenship and Immigration Canada to “off the chart” (as in terrible) for Foreign . . . [more]

Ted Tjaden (August 20), Mark Lewis (September 3), and Shaunna Mireau (September 9 and September 14) have already posted on the McGill Law Journal’s Canadian guide to uniform legal citation, 7th ed. (Toronto: Thomson Carswell, 2010), and many others have commented. Here are a few additional links, just for reference:

• lawjournal.mcgill.ca
• Library and Archives Canada Amicus No. 38179070
• Carswell pub. no. 1852 (hardcover)
• Carswell pub. no. 1853 (softcover)

I hope it’s not too late to add a few words of my own. I thought I should hold off until I had actually seen . . . [more]

Over the last decade cloud computing vendors have invested heavily in making Software-as-a-Service secure as possible. Daily security audits, SSL-based encryption, and SAS 70 Type-II-certified data centers are now the norm, rather than the exception, and data stored in the cloud is now privileged to receive some of the best security technology can afford.

However, as with any security framework, cloud computing security is only as good as its weakest link, and in many circumstances the weakest link is the password used to access a web-based application. Passwords are often easier to guess than users think, and are all too . . . [more]

For those who think “tiff” is a file format for quantitative gel scans, I hardly need to point out that we are in the midst of National Biotechnology Week here in Canada (it runs from the 17th to 24th). For the rest of you, here is some notable news that is devoid of red carpets and couture:

In the lead-up to National Biotechnology Week, Saskatchewan hosted the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference. ABIC provided an opportunity for Canada to showcase its strengths in agricultural biotechnology, for me to showcase my strengths in agricultural puns, and for Premier Brad Wall to . . . [more]

I know a few law librarians.

I make no secret of it.

Some of them have been essential in making Slaw a success — and only in part because they “got” IT light years ahead of the legal profession generally. Some have been engines driving the creation of powerful institutions of legal learning. Some have even been known to play vital roles in firms that practice law.

Why, then, do law firms hide their law librarians as if they were . . . dipsomaniac uncles and aunts?

I don’t say that firms sequester them in dank, windowless quarters. Or that . . . [more]

3-D printing has been around for a number of years. It has allowed creators to design objects on their computers, and then “print out” prototypes, with the printer layering material such as plastic or metal. A recent New York Times video (below) and article show just how far this technology has already come. Prototypes with fully moving parts can be printed–without assembly–and individual customized objects can be created.

The most fantastic use–shown in the second half of the video–are prosthetic limbs that are made to fit the individual at a fraction of the previous cost. As well, these limbs can . . . [more]

The looseleaf service is one of the legal publishing world’s more interesting phenomena of the last third of the 20^th century. Conceived in its most familiar form in the 1960’s as Keesing’s Contemporary Archive by the Commercial Clearing House, they were seen as a clever alternative to publishing new editions of books. It was acknowledged that the pace of change in passing new legislation was increasing, and it was difficult to make a bound book of legislation on a topic of law current, because of the delay between writing and publication. The idea of collecting a book as a . . . [more]

A print merger waiting to happen

The acquisition of Canada Law Book provides a unique opportunity for Carswell Thomson to eliminate a significant amount of duplication in print law reporting by merging print publications like the Criminal Reports and Canadian Criminal Cases, something long overdue in a market that is filled with law report services that offer virtually identical content to virtually the same customers.

Setting aside altogether the question whether either of these full text law reporting services have any future in print, it is inconceivable that both of them will continue to be published as separate publications now . . . [more]