A number of years ago, “hotelling” was all the rage among managers. Companies were going to save money by taking away employees’ assigned desks or cubicles, giving them laptops (or “thin client” computers) and assigning the company’s office space on a temporary basis to whoever needed it.

Ten years ago, the technology wasn’t quite there yet to support this model. But it’s definitely there today. And hotelling is making a comeback. The Globe and Mail this week reported that IBM is moving to a hotelling model for all of its 19,000 employees in Canada – a major change for the . . . [more]

The most recent issue of the Canadian government’s Weekly Checklist features the 2006 annual report on electronic surveillance from Public Safety Canada.

The report outlines the use of electronic surveillance of private communications by law enforcement agencies to assist in criminal investigations.

Under the Criminal Code, agencies must obtain judicial authorization before conducting the surveillance.The government is required to prepare and present to Parliament an annual report on the use of electronic surveillance.

The 2006 Annual Report covers a five-year period from 2002 to 2006. The Report includes new statistics for the period of January 1, 2006 to December . . . [more]

Today marks the 35th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision on abortion, Roe v. Wade. CNN.com’s report appears to be one of the more balanced I found– 35 years after Roe: A legacy of law and morality. For additional detail on the decision itself, see the Wikipedia entry Roe v. Wade. . . . [more]

We’re getting ready to launch our SharePoint 2007 portal. At launch, our goal is to have features and functions that will appeal to both searchers and browsers. The portal will be the new desktop and will be the access point for legal, non-legal, business, administrative, client and financial information in the firm.

Some of the content on the portal is organized by practice area. Content for a practice area will include relevant precedents, commonly used research resources, practice area materials (such as meetings agendas and minutes), and relevant business development material.

Of particular interest to me is the ability to . . . [more]

Simon ((the other Simon)) reported from the Lexum Conference on Justice Bastarache‘s speech on the Supreme Court of Canada’s technology plans.

Completely unofficially, here is a picture from last Wednesday, showing the extent of the court’s commitment – every place at the counsel table is wired, the central desk from which counsel addresses the court looks like a command centre. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

I didn’t have a chance to peek behind the judges’ area – I suspect that is permanently off-limit to mere mortals – but I suspect that the bench will be similarly wired. . . . [more]

Today our American cousins celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day in honour of Dr. King who spoke out for civil rights. It is no surprise that many Canadians respect the man and his message, and also pay homage to him.

A few links of interest:

• Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service – official U.S. government website
• Proclamation – Martin Luther King Jr. Day – City of Toronto 2008 proclamation
• Leaders like King bring message of hope – column by Kevin Little, The ChronicleHerald (Halifax)

Compare these thoughts–

from the City of Toronto 2008 proclamation:

The people of Toronto are

Google is offering terabytes of space for OA scientific data at http://research.google.com. Here is some coverage:

• Wired
• Peter Suber

I wonder if all Canadian court cases and legislation, and all the citations between them, would come to even one terabyte… . . . [more]

An announcement that’s appropriate, given that this weeks Column is on e-discovery:

The Sedona Canada E-discovery Principles [PDF] in English are now up on the Canadian E-discovery Portal, which is hosted by Lexum. The French version will be posted soon.

You will also be able to find Canadian e-discovery related precedents (common law, civil law) on the Portal.

Congratulations to everyone involved, particularly the “content managers” Peg Duncan, Dan Pinnington, Frédéric Pelletier and (Slawyer) Dominic Jaar. . . . [more]

We learn yet again, from a recent N.Y. Times piece that book titles can’t be copyrighted: there are now two books in print (one 30 years old, mind you) called The Saucier’s Apprentice.

Apart from the fact that Raymond Sokolov, the author of the older book, has done a brilliant job of promoting his work through this piece — it’s the work that comes up when you search for “the saucier’s apprentice” — what interests me is the question of why. Why can’t you copyright a book’s title? Or, to put it more broadly, why can’t you protect . . . [more]

The new iPod Touch software released by Apple lets you put icons for your favourite websites on your “desktop,” so naturally I gave Slaw pride of place in the dock. Better still, Apple lets you put a custom icon on your website that the iPod Touch will pick up and use (otherwise it simply uses a weensy pic of the front page). So for all of you (three?) iPod Touch Slawyers out there, I’ve put the Slaw icon where your slim machine will find it — as you see in the photo below. (Note that it’s Apple that gives the . . . [more]

One of the most controversial electronic discovery cases in the U.S. in 2007 involved the preservation of ephemeral, or transient, electronically stored information (“ESI”) stored in Random Access Memory (“RAM”). In Columbia Pictures, Inc. v. Bunnell [PDF], 2007 WL 2702062 (C.D.Cal. Aug. 24, 2007), the court addressed plaintiffs’ motion for an order directing the preservation of information in the RAM of defendants’ computers. The court rejected defendants’ argument that ESI included only information stored for later retrieval. Defendants also argued that ESI could not include information held in RAM because the period of storage (less than six hours) was too . . . [more]

Everyone knows the ubiquitous bar coding — though reading it might be another matter. But I for one wasn’t acquainted with it’s potential replacement, QR Code — QR for “quick response” apparently. What you see below is a large version of a QR Code symbol that contains the first 250 characters of the “About Slaw” page.

(I imagine, but don’t know, that the object could be shrunk considerably, the only limit being its readability by a scanner.) By comparison, a bar code can only contain 20 digits.

Invented in Japan in 1994, QR Code is gradually spreading throughout the world. . . . [more]