Looks like Twitter is cutting outbound SMS messaging:

Unexpected changes in our billing have forced us into a difficult situation with our Canadian SMS service. We can’t afford to support this service given our current arrangement with our providers (where costs have been doubling for the past several months.) As a result, effective today we are no longer delivering outbound SMS over our Canadian shortcode (21212).

The ability to update Twitter over SMS will still be supported over 21212. But we know that this is only part of the experience and we want to make Twitter work in the

Cough, hack, snort. If you are anywhere near my office these days the sounds can be pretty gruesome. When my body collapsed into illness and exhaustion last week I had several days in bed to contemplate what had gone wrong.

How did I get so run down? The usual suspects were behind it: Over work and long hours in service of the tyranny of the urgent. And I ask you, as a business coach shouldn’t I know better?

The tyranny of the urgent – you likely have experienced it yourself: An email in-box that fills up as soon as it . . . [more]

E-Tips, from Deeth Williams Wall, informs us that Gary Fung, a Canadian web entrepreneur, has filed a petition in the B.C. Supreme Court seeking a declaration that his site, isoHunt, does not infringe the Copyright Act. isoHunt is an extremely popular BitTorrent search engine. Fung is currently being sued by the Motion Pictures Association of America and has received a take-down notice from the Canadian Recording Industry Association. His petition is available online [PDF], as is his analysis of his situation. . . . [more]

We blogged yesterday about the Report that Professor Moon made to the Canadian Human Rights Commission on whether hate speech on the web should be regulated by the CHRC or handled differently.

The Canadian Jewish Congress has issued a strong statement of dissent, quoting Mark Freiman of Mccarthy Tétrault. [Mark had done a commentary on the earlier CHRC ruling.] Here is the Globe op-ed piece by Mark as well as a CBC discussion.

If, as we suggested yesterday, the issue goes to the Commons Justice Committee – we can expect a spirited debate. . . . [more]

That’s the title of an article worth reading at social computing magazine.com. (And speaking of social media, this article came to my attention via a Twitter post by Mathew Ingram.)

The article says:

KM and SM look very similar on the surface, but are actually radically different at multiple levels, both cultural and technical, and are locked in an undeclared cultural war for the soul of Enterprise 2.0.

And the most hilarious part is that most of the combatants don’t even realize they are in a war. They think they are loosely-aligned and working towards the same ends,

I am normally skeptical when it comes to “vendor” panels or demonstrations, but Rick Borstein of Adobe did such an entertaining demo of Adobe 9.0 for lawyers at the Canadian Law & Technology Forum last week that was also useful and showed a number of improvements to the product.

His blog – Adobe for Legal Professionals – provides lots of great tips (I learned more about the annoying problem when OCR’ing with Adobe when you get this message: “Acrobat could not perform recognition (OCR) on this page because the page contains renderable text.” – Rick mentioned that the newest version . . . [more]

Ecojustice, formerly Sierra Legal Defence Fund, and pro bono lawyers from Paliare Roland Barristers, counsel for Friends of the Earth, have appealed the Federal Court decision in Friends of the Earth v. Canada (Governor in Council), 2008 FC 1183 (CanLII).

The court in that case held that it could not deal with the issue of whether the Minister of the Environment had failed to comply with the duty imposed on him under s.5 of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, 2007, because the issue under the legislation was not justiciable. . . . [more]

In tough economic times it is more important than ever to make sure your clients are happy with the work you did for them. A post-matter client survey is one of the best ways to collect information about what clients thought about the services you provided.

Make sure your survey is structured to help you identify specific areas for improvement. Ideally, it should include some open-ended questions.

LAWPRO’s booklet, Managing a Better Professional Services Firm, included a sample post-matter client survey. An electronic copy of this survey that you can adapt for your firm is available at www.practicepro.ca/servicesbooklet. . . . [more]

I want to do a little bragging today (on behalf of a number of people). Yesterday (November 24, 2008), the Attorney General introduced in the Legislature reforms to family law, including on division of pensions on marital breakdown. Now, this was a project the LCO undertook a year ago. . . . [more]

The internal policy of the Canadian Human Rights Commission concerning the accommodation of mental illness has been published [PDF] by that organization as a model that may prove helpful in the development of such a policy by other organizations.

[via Thoughts from a Management Lawyer] . . . [more]

Yesterday saw the release of Windsor Law Professor Richard Moon’s long-awaited report on Internet Hate Speech and the jurisdiction of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The editorial writers are lapping it up – here is the Globe and the National Post, as well as the CBC’s more measured coverage.

The principal recommendation of this report is that section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act be repealed so that the censorship of Internet hate speech is dealt with exclusively by the criminal law.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has described the Moon report “an important contribution” to the discussion . . . [more]

♫ So you want to be a leader
See how high you can climb
If you want to be a leader
It takes guts and sweat and time

Can you take it on your shoulders
Be proud and strong and free
Can you look them in the eye and say
Come this way follow me…♫

Words and music by ImprovAndy

Winston Churchill once said: “We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.” These are dark days and the gloom is growing darker. Economies are faltering world-wide, industries and corporations are looking for bailouts . . . [more]