I just had a read of Peggy Garvin’s current The Government Domain column in LLRX.com, and wanted to bring it to the attention of Slaw readers. The sites that Peggy reviews, most of which are drawn from a list compiled by the Sunlight Foundation, are wonderfully – I don’t know about insanely – useful components of a U.S. government/legal research toolbox. As is pointed out in the column, many of the sites take essentially a mash-up approach to information derived from the venerable THOMAS and GPO Access. It has been some time since I carried out any . . . [more]

…”What the world looks like today, and where it is headed” How can you not love the chutzpah of a lead heading like that? The fact is, not everyone has loved the material that follows in the report University Publishing in a Digital Age [PDF], put out by Ithaka, a U.S. not-for-profit that works closely with JSTOR and Portico to “accelerate the productive uses of information technologies for the benefit of higher education worldwide.” (See the Inside Higher Ed report and comments for a variety of responses to the report.)

How will the world of scholarly publishing be? Unsurprisingly, . . . [more]

The University of Alberta Libraries have created a Facebook application that lets Facebook users look at the library catalogue, use RefWorks and perform other library functions without leaving the snug confines of Facebook.

Are we heading back to the future, where Facebook is the new AOL or Compuserve and the world is seen from within its borders? Clearly there is a general struggle in virtual land to create the space within which it all happens — whether it’s iGoogle or Netvibes or some other proto-webOS — as if the actual “world” of the internet is simply too big and people . . . [more]

Via Boing Boing, a link to Law is Code, which discusses a demonstration that legalese has more in common with software than literature. . . . [more]

We’ve talked briefly about paper for the paperless office, and now it’s printers that are in the news. “Particle Emission Characteristics of Office Printers,” by Congrong He, Lidia Morawska, and Len Taplin in Environmental Science & Technology [abstract], has kicked up a dust storm because of its finding that 40% of printers studied emitted particles when printing, 27% being “high emitters.” The particles are small and can find their way into your alveoli, apparently, from where they may enter the bloodstream.

Digital Koans has a good overview and citations to a number of online articles and reports. . . . [more]

Good news and bad news. The good news is that you can now leave comments on Slaw once again. The bad news is that we have not yet been able to restore most of the comments that have already been made. We are continuing to work on it. Please bear with us. . . . [more]

Today — the first Monday in August — is a holiday in most of Canada (Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Yukon are the exceptions) — which is a good thing, because we’re still working hard here at solving the problem that’s blocking access to our large (over 3000) and valuable (because you wrote them) comments. I hope to have good news by the end of the day, and will pass on the status of comments then, whether good or bad. . . . [more]

We are experiencing difficulty with Slaw’s comment database. Until it’s repaired you will not be able to see any comments and I would advise against making any comments.

Then main database of posts doesn’t seem to be affected. . . . [more]

Last year I remember Slaw-ers having a discussion about email and technology avoidance whilst on vacation. Well I’ve succeeded in the avoidance category quite well this summer. But lest anyone think I’ve gone away, I did notice this story and thought some might find it interesting. I’ve wondered how You Tube gets around that whole copyright snaggle and this story goes some way to answering the question.

YouTube Preps Video Fingerprinting . . . [more]

In reading what now passes for a headnote in most of the cases reported by Carswell, I came across the phrase, “efforts and exhortions”. See Dumbrell v. Regional Group of Companies Inc. (2007), 25 B.L.R. (4th) 171. I had originally thought that I might post this neologism—if that’s what such a collection of letters can be called—and invite members of Slaw to add any others they might come across from any legal source.

On a whim, I did a search in CanLII for “exhortions” and, to my surprise, discovered that there were over 400 cases where this word appeared . . . [more]

Linex Legal, a service based in the United Kingdom, is offering access to newsletter material produced by big law firms and organizations in jurisdictions such as Australia, Canada, France, the United States, the UK and others.

I registered for free and signed up for e-mail newsletters containing material from Canadian, UK, US and Australian law firms and organizations. It is also possible to sign up for RSS feeds.

Among the Canadian law firms whose newsletters are available are: Torys, Stikeman Elliott, McCarthy Tétrault, Gowling Lafleur Henderson, Goodmans, Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg, Blake, Cassels & Graydon, Smart & Biggar/Fetherstonhaugh, . . . [more]

Here’s a novel way of tackling the email problem. Carolin Horn, as part of her MFA work, created a way to view your inbox as though each email was a microbe belonging to one of six families (family and friends, school, job, e-commerce, unclassified, and spam). These critters change their nature depending on their status: unread “anymails” are hairier and more vigourous, as you might suppose. There are a couple of movies that show the wigglers in action here and here.

This wouldn’t be a workable way to manage the e-flood, but it sure would be fun if one . . . [more]