Elisabeth Osmeloski, managing editor at Search Engine Watch , writes in Part I of a two part article:

Does information really want to be free? If so, how can traditional information publishers and aggregators deal with shifting value propositions and revenue models of premium content and survive in the era of free web content?

She comments on a report from the fall conference of the Association of Information and Dissemination Centers (ASIDIC.org) which …

faces multiple challenges as its members struggle to adapt traditional information retrieval methods and legacy systems to the new business models arising with

Deane at Gadgetopia has an interesting post about intranets . She writes:

There are three types of intranets. They’re very different, and when someone thinks “intranet,” they’re no doubt thinking of one of the three types. Intranets can overlap from one type to another, but they tend to fall along these lines:

1. The collaboration platform
2. The internal Web site
3. The distributed intranet

When discussing an intranet with a client or within your own organization, you need to first figure out what people think when the word “intranet” comes up.

Semantics. Is it a regular issue with you, . . . [more]

It makes an old property law teacher’s heart beat faster to read the Globe and Mail story about Mr. Thomas and the mysterious $18,000 that arrived in his mailbox by mistake one day.

So Mr. Thomas took the booty to the police to have them hold it and look for the rightful owner.

(“Marge, have you seen that 18 grand we had on the kitchen table? I seem to have misplaced it.” “Sorry honey, have you looked in the garage? You were out there fixing the shelves yesterday. Maybe it wound up in that jar of nails you insist on . . . [more]

From the CALL-L list:

…The Canada Map Office has found its way out of the scrap heap…

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2006/10/12/map-office.html . . . [more]

Lakehead University has approved a law school in principal, and has sent proposals to the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and the Law Society of Upper Canada; the proposal details a small school, with 30 students to start class in 2008.

The story is in Thunder Bay’s Chronicle Journal.

Ontario already has six law schools, but none up north — though it sometimes feels that Osgoode Hall Law School’s Downsview location is in the small latitudes. LU Law would focus on aboriginal issues and offer a work/study program. There are lots of interesting questions about this proposal, just . . . [more]

the cases are Jameel v. Wall Street Journal and Heather Robertson v. Thomson Corp. . . . [more]

The University of Western Ontario’s Master of Library and Information Science Program is currently offering the distance elective course LIS 757: Social Software and Libraries. Instructed by Amanda Etches-Johnson, it explores the role of various social software applications (blogs, wikis, tags, RSS) in libraries and other information services organizations. The course blog is a great resource for anyone interested in social software. Specifically, the course readings and student group presentations not only discuss how to create and maintain social software tools, but they also outline how to critically evaluate each tool’s usefulness in responding to an organization’s information . . . [more]

Some weeks back, the Canadian Copyright Board ruled [pdf] that the ringtones you download to your phone are subject to copyright. The Board decision opened the issue this way:

[1] Cellular telephones are omnipresent; their ringtones are ubiquitous. Ringtones announce to anyone within hearing distance the phone owner’s penchant for the theme from Hockey Night in Canada, Beethoven’s Für Elise, Axel F from the film Beverly Hills Cop or any other music (or sound) of the owner’s choosing.

[2] Ringtones are the bane of funeral parlours, theatres, courthouses and hearing rooms. They are also extremely popular. In 2003, they generated

I just stumbled upon this interesting looking blog that talks about my city, Toronto:

Torontoist is a website about Toronto, and is the seventh of fourteen cities covered by the Gothamist network. We write about news, events, restaurants, bars, arts, crafts and happenings. Our first post was on October 26, 2004, and we’ve made over 3,000 more since then.

Hey, waitaminute! This contributor looks vaguely familiar….. . . . [more]

The Quebec Minister of Education, Jean-Marc Fournier, announced today that he is creating a consultative committee on diversity in the province’s schools whose primary task will be to come up with “a clear and accessible definition of what is a reasonable accommodation” between the needs of children from cultural and religious minorities and the values of the officially secular public education system.

Over the past decade, there have been numerous controversies in Quebec society over how much space should be afforded religious symbols in public institutions, whether it be the right of practicing Muslim girls to wear the hijab headscarf . . . [more]

First it started a buzz and got popular; next it was shut down; then it reappeared; now it’s… transmogrified: Writely, which Google bought, is no more, but has become part of Google Docs & Spreadsheets (a name that has got to go — GDS, maybe… or GoDo…).

I’ve taken a first look but only that. I was prompted to move my Writely documents over. And then I went to upload a document to the new system; that worked fine, but I was reminded I could email docs in — to an adress that had “writely” in it, a clear . . . [more]

J’ai été frappé de lire à quelques jours d’interval les articles publiés de l’autre côté de la frontière chez les américains et de ce côté-ci, au Québec, relatifs à l’utilisation de la visionconférence dans le cadre d’auditions. Je vous invite à consulter l’article intitulé It’s Prime Time for Videoconferencing in Court paru aujourd’hui sur Law.com et à le comparer à celui paru dans le journal du Barreau (page 13) intitulé La visioconférence… avec modération. Vous noterez que les questions et problèmes existants avec ce medium sont partagés et n’ont pas de frontière!

Comme ces articles traitent principalement de l’usage . . . [more]