Big anouncement yesterday from the International Digital Publishing Forum, which is a consortium of major players in the digital book industry.

The fear driving the consortium is that the potential growth of the market could be frustrated if different companies adopted proprietary standards. For example, despite the growth of .pdf files, customers can’t read a Palm e-book on a Microsoft Reader.

Major software companies and device manufacturers have announced plans to support new electronic book standards developed within the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). The companies will support these standards in their next generation software and devices, alleviating many

EDGAR is the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system, and is one of the larger text-storage databases maintained by the US government. It has long been a gold mine of information on public companies in the US, but a very frustrating gold mine…a deep and valuable resource, on the one hand, but on the other, the lack of full-text searching made it hard to find that needle in the haystack.

SEC’s beta text search, which they slipped in quietly, is a major breakthrough in EDGAR access, and provides a feature which, until now, was only available in

The Spring 2006 Issue of Perspectives contains two short but helpful articles. Thomas Keefe’s “Teaching Taxonomies” reviews the author’s experiences in trying to explain to law students why they should think twice before relying on full text searching. Rather than merely lamenting the reliance on electronic over print, the author suggests a focus on the benefits of structured sources.

Stephen Armstrong and Timothy Terrell’s “The Perils of E-Mail” is a very practical look at how to send emails that are likely to be read by the recipient.

These articles will, of course, join my rather voluminous file on “articling student . . . [more]

I came across the Pacific Islands Treaty Series (with the wonderful acronynm PITS) this morning and I thought it would be of interest to SLAWers. The collection covers the 21 countries and territories in the Pacific. There are 14 countries, namely, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Northern Mariana’s, Papua New Guinea, Palau, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu and 7 territories which are New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna (territories of France), American Samoa, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam (territories of the United States of America) and Tokelau (territory of New Zealand).

For . . . [more]

This morning’s BBC News carried the story of a 22 year old blogger who’s been asked to join the Beeb for a week as a Citizen JournalistWhen I was a 22 year-old, the job offered was News Trainee, and a lot less glamourous.

He will apparently be posting all week from deep inside the Mother Corporation. Compare his account with what the BBC is saying from its side of the fence.

Thanks to the BBC story, I’ve now stumbled on Wikinews, which says it’s the free news source you can write. The rhetoric sounds wonderful, until . . . [more]

Much fun though Bloomsday and the Joycean post was, Simon, you missed the deeper legal relevance for Slaw of the entire event.

Curiously, this is best explored in an interesting discussion of how Stephen James Joyce, James Joyce’ grandson who controls the writer’s estate, has used copyright threats to deal with writers and scholars. The article is in this week’s New Yorker – an odd place for an informed discussion of the consequences of lengthening copyright terms But then the New Yorker has long had a reputation for publishing thoughtful pieces on legal issues – Charles Reich and Jeffrey Toobin . . . [more]

My posts last week on the best legal academic blogs, and Jon Smithen’s list of blogs, should have included a nod to the AmLaw’s piece by Dahlia Lithwick entitled Blawgs on a Roll. Good thoughtful piece which suggests that main stream legal journalism is being challenged by the blogs. . . . [more]

The hard-working Ian Best, a student at Moritz College of Law (Ohio State University)See Jon Smithen’s post has just translated his taxonomy of blogs into Spanish – Taxonomía de Blogs (Bitácoras) de Derecho.

Interesting that Canadians don’t seem to have a similar taxonomy for our legal blogs. . . . [more]

It’s always been frustrating that the search engines associated with government portals seem less than helpful – searchers used to the relevance rankings of Google or Copernic can get frustrated by the interminable lists that are offered by the federal government portal.

Now Google has announced that it’s launched a website to help you navigate around all those federal sites in WashingtonDon’t overlook the FAQs.. It is competing with the official federal portal, which is is powered by Google competitors MSN Search and Vivisimo.

For more information, see Information Week , and Search Engine Watch, which . . . [more]

Readers of the Tunkhannock, PA, New Age Examiner have been offered the contents of the County’s Law Library – made obsolete by online access apparently.

E-Bay didn’t solicit any bids either.

Today, Tunkhannock, tomorrow where? . . . [more]

Good to have solid links to writings on freedom of speech. I like what the Poynter Institute is doing – while it’s focussed on student journalists, the site is first rate.

For all that Wex, the legal wiki, seemed like a good idea at the time, its own entry on free speech is a bit anti-climactic.

For lawyers, the First Amendment Center’s caselinks are usefulThe Canadian equivalent is slightly dated, and one hopes that Canlii will update it.. And Findlaw has a very useful set of annotations.

And don’t overlook the First Amendment Project and the American Library . . . [more]

In this month’s Canadian LawyerCanadian Lawyer, the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, PC Chief Justice of Canada gives a candid and insightul interview about the role of the Supreme Court of Canada.

I can’t think of a similar interview by a Chief Justice – it seems that the spotlight on Justice Rothstein may have also served to encourage a broader dialogue. . . . [more]