We’ve written about punctuation a few times here on slaw in the past, in particular, Simon’s lament for the semi-colon.

It’s not every day you get to read a lengthy article on the history of a punctuation point, but Slate’s piece today, “Has modern life killed the semicolon?” was just that. Despite current despair in France and the Fodden household about its declining use these days, the author points out that its disuse was despaired as far back as 1865.

The author seems to suggest that it was the telegraph that killed the semicolon. Makes you wonder . . . [more]

About a year ago founders Kevin Lai and Travis Fielding unveiled the website housing123.com, a mash-up between the Canadian Real Estate Association’s Multiple Listings Service and Google Maps. Their service allowed website visitors to view housing sales on a map rather than having to sort through pages and pages of listings on the regular MLS site.

Lai and Fielding received a cease and desist letter from CREA’s legal counsel and decided to close the site effective June 15th. There is some indication on their blog that they may re-open the site with user contributed property listings.

Blog TO’s . . . [more]

The AALL’s Computing Services Special Interest Section (CS-SIS — which does come off sounding a whole lot like our wholly different CSIS, no?) is offering a free online 5-week course for law librarians to introduce them to the new web technologies. The course will take a couple of hours a week, and the weekly outline looks like this:

• Week 1: Blogs & RSS
• Week 2: Wikis
• Week 3: Social Networking and Second Life
• Week 4: Flickr & Social Bookmarking
• Week 5: Next Steps: Web 2.0 @ Your Library

You can get more info — and sign up — at . . . [more]

Thanks to our friends at Spada’s new Swordplay site for links to an article at the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology on INFORMATION INFLATION: CAN THE LEGAL SYSTEM ADAPT which asks, how do vast quantities of new writing forms challenge the legal profession, and how should lawyers adapt?

It’s written by George L. Paul, a partner in Lewis and Roca, LLP and Jason R. Baron, Director of Litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.

The piece is well worth your attention. . . . [more]

Over at Above the Law, a silly season list of the best songs about the law, as polled by readers of that blog.

Here’s the official ATL Top Ten Law Song list:

1. I Fought The Law – The Clash [ Lyrics│YouTube ]

2. Lawyers, Guns, and Money – Warren Zevon [ Lyrics│YouTube ]

3. 99 Problems – Jay-Z [ Lyrics│YouTube ]

4. Folsom Prison Blues – Johnny Cash [ Lyrics│YouTube ]

5. We’re All Winners, as arranged by Nixon Peabody [ Explanation]

6. Law and Order theme . . . [more]

How many Canadian law students could identify John Humphrey or explain his significance to the law? I certainly couldn’t when we met at a meeting in 1976, convened by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. He was then seventy, a tweedy academic in bow tie, who had come down from the McGill Law School. Only at a break did a friend lean over and tell me that this academic had held the pen for the drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . . . [more]

The Lawyer’s Weekly reports that the law society of Saskatchewan has introduced mandatory professional development for all lawyers in the province to begin in 2010. Apparently, in the current set-up, where attendance at annual conferences would keep liability insurance at a lower level, a lot of lawyers were prepared to pay the “fine” of higher insurance fees that truancy cost them. The explanation put forward is that they didn’t want to lose a day’s pay to attend.

One wonders whether (cough, cough…) modern legal research will be on the required curriculum. . . . [more]

1-800-4664-411 equals 1-800-GOOG-411

Okay dear readers, another number to put on your mobile’s autodial. Google 411 launched in Canada today.

Dial 1-800-GOOG-411 to connect to a computer armed with voice recognition software.

The automated voice will ask for city and province. A voice menu runs you through finding the information you’re looking for ((Business information only – they won’t offer residential service)).

I asked for Indian restaurants in Toronto and got decent recommendations with location details and an opportunity to connect by phone. . . . [more]

The grassroots net neutrality advocates are becoming increasingly organized. Case in point is the coalition SaveOurNet.ca hosting an open forum tomorrow evening in Toronto called Protecting Canada’s Open Internet:

SaveOurNet.ca: Protecting Canada’s Open Internet

An open forum for Toronto’s tech/web/media communities hosted by:

Matt Thompson, SavetheInternet.com and SaveOurNet.ca
Steve Anderson, SaveOurNet.ca and The Campaign for Democratic Media
Mark Kuznicki, Remarkk.com, Open Community Evangelist, TorCamp

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 24th, 6:00pm
Location: Fionn MacCool’s, 181 University Avenue @ Adelaide, Toronto
Snacks will be provided, cash bar
Your donation/sponsorship to help cover costs can be made by purchasing special tickets above.

There have been so many mythical quotations attributed to Bill Gates over the years, that it’s helpful to have a journalist actually separate myth from reality.

As Bill Gates moves on to the next stage in his career, Nancy Weil has done us all a favour by gathering the quotes together. . . . [more]

Slaw has a bevy of excellent columnists, and so I never have to draw your attention to The Column from the main column of the front page: you check it out each week religiously. But I’m going to make an exception today because Steve Matthews’ column this week is something different. He’s done a tutorial on how to use Yahoo! Pipes that’s a must read, and I don’t want to let even a single reader slip by unedified. And just to make certain the tutorial does its work, I’ve made a PDF file out of it that you can download . . . [more]

Yahoo Pipes is a tool that we’ve covered a few times here on Slaw. And having fielded a few questions myself on its use for RSS feed mixing, I thought it might be nice to demonstrate how simple the process is with a tutorial.

What you’ll find below is pretty granular in detail, with way too many screen captures. But if you like the KISS principle (a.k.a. Keep It Simple for Steve), a little hand-holding never hurts. So… go over to Yahoo Pipes, create an account, click on the big blue Create A Pipe, and let’s get . . . [more]