Joel Alleyne’s Extreme KM column this past week on Everything is Miscellaneous – A Must-Read Book enouraged me to move forward my plan to read the book. I read it last night and agree with Joel that it is “must reading.”

As Joel mentions, David Weinberger’s central premise in the book is that the “power of the miscellaneous comes directly from the fact that in the third order [note: what the author of the book means as our current era of digital information], everything is connected and therefore everything is metadata” (p. 105).

My initial cynical reaction to the book . . . [more]

The NY Times Technology section has been revamped, principally by bringing the Blogrunner technology stories into the page and giving it central place — literally in the middle. Blogrunner is the aggregator that the Times bought last year and that culls material from various blogs on a wide range of topics. This is the first time that the Times has incorporated stories from outside sources directly into its publication.

The Times Technology section cum Blogrunner, unlike TechMeme, doesn’t rely soley on an algorithm to choose pieces automatically, but rather on a combination of machine and human decision-making.

Relevant links are: . . . [more]

Steve Matthews, Slawyer and the person behind Stem Legal Web Enterprises, has once again shown his technical chops. Now that the Canadian legal publishers have finally come into this decade by putting out RSS feeds, thanks in large measure to his and Connie Crosby’s chivvying and chiding, ((See, e.g., Canadian Legal Publishers – RSS Feed Update)), there’s some interesting publisher data to work with.

Steve has taken advantage of the various tools that are out there now on the web to mix and to gather the feeds into one place, LegalPubs.ca.

There you’ll find an aggregation of . . . [more]

The Web Marketing Association just announced the winners in the 2007 WebAwards for excellence in the use of the Web for Marketing.

The best of the legal category came from Womble Carlyle, which has a wonderful and updated stable of blogs ((Though their podcasts are looking somewhat dated.

For the record here are all the legal prize-winners. . . . [more]

The October 2007 issue of Statistics Canada’s publication Education Matters looks at how the Internet is being used by Canadian students. The article “Learning online: Factors associated with use of the Internet for education purposes” reveals that students mostly use the Internet for researching asssigments and distance education:

• An estimated 4.2 million adult Canadians (two-thirds or 66% of those who went online for education purposes) used the Internet for finding information for projects/assignments
• Just over one-quarter (26%) went online for distance education
• Residents of rural and small-town areas are more likely to use the Internet for distance education

The Supreme Court of Canada has published an executive summary of a client satisfaction survey of recent Registry Branch customers. The Registry Branch is the administrative arm of the Court.

The survey was done in the spring of 2007 by the firm Phase 5.

299 counsel, agents and self-represented litigants who had appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada in 2006 were invited to participate in an online survey. The response rate was 60%.

Highlights:

• Information related to appeals was the most commonly accessed service area by respondents (93%), followed by information related to applications for leave to appeal (85%),

Today’s Bar Talk in The Globe & Mail suggests that the Canadian Lawyer Magazine is soon to formally launch its new magazine aimed at Associates (and to be called by the same name?). So far, there only appears to be “blog-like” postings on the website and it is not clear to me when the formal magazine launch will take place. Since most of the large Toronto law firms are doing student recruitment interviews next week, I thought the posting on the “Google Effect” by Donalee Moulton was timely – as per one of the persons quoted in that . . . [more]

Fast car chases are a staple of every action film ((I leave it to the dweebs to debate whether Bullitt, French Connection or Ronin takes the medal.)) What is unusual is for the US Supreme Court to be confronted with such a clip. If this doesn’t work, try Youtube 1 and Youtube 2

The case was Scott v. Harris

All but one of the nine justices viewed the tape of the chase before the hearing, and they were entranced by it, discussing it for most of the hearing. Most of the court seemed attracted to the plaintiff’s claim he . . . [more]

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is pleased to announce the creation of the Humanities Research Network (HRN). HRN will provide a world-wide, online community for research in all areas of Humanities, following the model of the other subject matter networks within SSRN (http://www.ssrn.com).

We expect HRN to become a comprehensive online resource for research in humanities, providing scholars with access to current work in their field and facilitating research and scholarship.

At the outset HRN will have networks for classics, English & American literature, and philosophy. Naturally, in each of these subnets there’s a place for law:

• Classics

Wikipedia has been both celebrated and panned on these pages. Its strength is that anyone can edit it, meaning there are thousands of people out there to improve every article. Its weakness, of course, is that anyone can edit it.

A new site called Veropedia has recently launched. Its goal is to collect the best that Wikipedia has to offer and save it in a stable, quality-controlled version that can no longer be edited by anyone except Veropedia staff. Articles about which there no longer appears to be any controversy on Wikipedia (that is, they’re no longer marked for . . . [more]

Few lawyers in Canada – I except the wonderful Milt Zwicker – will remember the name of Kline D. Strong who died at the weekend. But he transformed the practice of law in North America.

Kline Duncan Strong 1927 ~ 2007 Kline was born January 23, 1927, in Driggs, Idaho He tried to impress upon his family that you’ve never really experienced work until you’ve hoed sugar beets. His professional education included a CPA/MBA from Northwestern University, a law degree from the University of Colorado and he was the first person to obtain a Ph.D in law office management. He . . . [more]

I’ll tie this to the privacy, law enforcement, and copyright disputes grab bag topic cluster to justify linking to these recent cool developments of the “geographic web”:

3D WorldViewer Everyscape Launches

Everyscape is a new service that takes 2D photos and 3D-fies them to create an immersive street-side experience

EveryScape Takes Streetview Indoors

On the face of it, their service is exactly the same as Google Streetview. EveryScape has driven around each of the cities creating full 360 degree panoramas. However, there’s one key twist — anyone can contribute. Contributions will help them go beyond other services and capture indoors