I don’t often post about local Toronto matters, but I couldn’t resist this, I’m afraid. ILLEGALsigns.ca is to my way of thinking a wonderful example of the marriage of law, community action and technology — and, it would appear, no small amount of research, both street-level and legal.

According to this site half of the billboards in Toronto have been errected illegally:

[A]dvertising companies in Toronto have been obtaining illegal permits for billboards by filing false information with the Buildings Department.

These billboards require City Council approval — yet they are being granted permits without Council approval because advertising companies

Thanks to Garry Wise’s Wise Law Blog, I’ve been pointed to a nifty video about the web and text produced by cultural anthropologist, Michael Wesch, of Kansas State University. Rather than put up the YouTube window here, I’ll give you the link to the video on Wesch’s own site, Digital Ethnography. It’s one of those medium-is-the-message things that you have to see; and then as you’re watching, think about the plodding PowerPoint presentation you’re going to be making the next time you talk… I think for me this hyper-twitchy rush is more fun, but I’m not sure I’d want . . . [more]

Here is the webpage and publicity for the Leg@l.IT conference, the event of the year (look at the speakers list). Feel free to forward this post, print the add and give it to your friends and ennemies, blog about it: you have all the publishing writes!!

If you post on the web. please let me know what is the URL. Thanks in advance! Hope to see you there!

Voici la publicité du Colloque Leg@l.TI que je vous pries de faire circuler. D’ailleurs, les droits de reproduction sont à vous… Laissez-vous aller: publiez sur le Web, dans des revues, journaux, . . . [more]

Summer is miles away still, and Christmas is a fading memory, so we can consider tangled cord with something approaching equanimity. How many hours do we spend picking apart the bunched up cables, carefully threading the plug end through this and that loop only to find to our consternation that we’ve just added another layer of mess to the mess. Not now, though, not in the dead of Feb., when these disentangling hours are to spare. Never fear, I have a solution to this time on your hands: the tying of knots.

Yes, why not go in reverse, push the . . . [more]

February is Black History Month and in honour of that, I would like to bring to your attention, the case of Nancy Morton. Nancy Morton was a slave in New Brunswick around the turn of the 19th century and in 1800 she became a central figure in a year-long court case that was brought to the NB Supreme Court. Represented by Ward Chipman and Samuel Denny Street she sought to win her freedom. A fuller description of the case and circumstances around it has been prepared by the Heritage Branch, of the Dept. of Wellness, Culture and Sport in New . . . [more]

Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol.

Tor offers anonymity online, avoiding “traffic analysis” — the discerning of who visited a website or sent and email, when they did it, etc., by looking at the headers, which are not encrypted even though the body of data may be. It does this by rerouting your traffic through a distributed network of volunteers’ servers, . . . [more]

I’ve never watched so many videos on YouTube as this week. Thanks to everyone who has been sending me links to these!~~

The Librarian and the IT Professional (Mac commercial parody)

Web 2.0 explained

Discover What You Know – Knowledge Management

Okay, I know this is all advertising. But they are very well done and have messages that can be taken independently, without buying something. . . . [more]

In conjunction with the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada’s conference marking the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) asked polling firm SES Research to do a detailed survey of the attitudes of Canadians towards the Charter.

Among the more interesting findings:

• “Much has been made of equating Charter values to Canadian values, but we found that the Charter is by no means central to Canadian identity”.
• “[There is] a clear generational divide on this question — younger Canadians tend to idealize the Charter

As most of our readers will know, the Ontario Court of Appeal hearing of the Steven Truscott matter is being broadcast live via CBC TV. In addition to the live feed there are also recordings available of the prior days’ hearings.

The CBC has done an absolutely splendid job of providing the interested viewer with all of the information necessary to understand the hearing, even supplying the appellant’s compendium and an index to it, so that viewer’s can follow along as the court is referred to parts of it. There are backgrounders, including a link to The Fifth Estate’s . . . [more]

Thomson is doing well.

Thomson Corp reported today that its 2006 revenues increased 8%, to $6.6 billion, and operating profit increased 7%, to $1.3 billion. For the fourth quarter of 2006, revenues increased 8% to $1.9 billion, led by its Legal and Regulatory segment.

Revenue highlights by business segment:

Legal and Regulatory
Revenues increased 8% in both the fourth quarter and full year, to $1 billion and $3.6 billion. In the fourth quarter, legal products and services achieved a solid revenue growth of 7%, led by US Westlaw. The fourth quarter revenues for Tax and Accounting products grew 12%, led . . . [more]

The Library of Congress announces its birthday plans this morning.

Law Library of Congress To Celebrate 175th Anniversary in 2007

In celebration of its 175 years of service to Congress and the nation, the Law Library of Congress is launching a yearlong series of events designed to celebrate its achievements and showcase its unparalleled resources.

The celebration began with a special ceremony held at the Library of Congress on Jan. 18. The American Bar Association presented the Law Library with a resolution recognizing this historic milestone, and the American Association of Law Libraries presented the Law Library with a commemorative

The spread of customized searching continues in the library world.

David Sharp, the Government Publications Librarian at the Maps, Data and Government Information Centre at Carleton University in Ottawa, has recently developed a customized search tool for Canadian government documents. It is in the middle of the page.

According to a post on the Access to Government Information blog:

“For now, it searches on the federal level, including select crown corporations, the provincial and territorial level; as well, it searches 80 municipal sites from across Canada. (The 80 municipalities were chosen from a list of Statistic Canada’s Census