The federal government’s website MedEffect is officially launched. The site is intended to let consumers and health professionals file adverse reaction reports.

This is a site that health law professionals or litigation departments might find useful.

By the by, there’s a section on the medical uses of “marihuana” (sic). How come it’s spelled with an “h” here — despite the fact that everyone, including the title to the report “Expert Advisory Committee on Marijuana for Medical Purposes” linked on the MedEffect site, uses a “j”? . . . [more]

Technorati Weblog makes a point of continuously monitoring the “State of the Blogosphere”. In its latest installment, State of the Blogosphere, August 2005, Part 3: Tags they look at tagging or indexing for the first time. . . . [more]

There is a downside to technology – Internet addiction. The CBC News Online reports “Man dies after marathon video game session” in which a 28-year old Korean man, who had quit his job to devote more time to Internet gaming, had apparently died of heart failure and exhaustion after playing an online game for 50-hours non-stop. . . . [more]

Current Cites, the excellent online annotated bibliography on information technology is now 15 years old. Roy Tennant, the editor, reminds us of this remarkable fact in an email to subscribers today. It seems amazing that the whole internet thing has been going for even more years than that. . . . [more]

I have marked up a version of the Copyright Act incorporating the proposed amendments from the first reading version of Bill C-60. My marked up version is here (additions to the Act are shown in yellow, deletions are shown in green and transitional provisions are shown in purple). I believe that my marked up version is accurate, but if readers spot any errors or omissions, let me know and I can update the marked up version. . . . [more]

The Association pour l’avancement des sciences et des techniques de la documentation (l’ASTED) has released an August 4, 2005, French-language PDF news release criticizing the Canadian federal government’s approach to Bill C-60 dealing with Copyright Act amendments (an English news release is apparently pending). The organization is critical of the lack of balance in the proposed amendments. From the news release: . . . [more]

Google News is reporting that IBM is about to give away a concept-based search engine for unstructured data:

link

This piece explains the concept

Search concepts, not keywords, IBM tells business
Mon Aug 8, 2005 12:02 AM EDT

By Eric Auchard

NEW YORK (Reuters) – IBM plans to give away key search technologies for corporate data retrieval that use concepts and facts instead of simpler “keyword” searches relied upon by consumer Web companies such as Google Inc., the world’s largest computer company said on Monday.

While simple but powerful keyword searches have revolutionized how Internet users locate and retrieve . . . [more]

Tobe Liebert writes to say that there’s now an RSS feed for his Current Copyright Literature service at Tarlton Library, UT. The feed URL is:
http://web.austin.utexas.edu/law_library/copyright/rss.cfm.
And once again the URL for the web site is: http://web.austin.utexas.edu/law_library/copyright/. . . . [more]

There was a recent news story on CBC about the stock of the Chinese search engine Baidu being traded on NASDAQ with an opening day gain of 354%. This reminded me of the important research being done through The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School on Internet filtering and censorship by the Chinese government. There is a full text report entitled Internet Filtering in China in 2004-200: A Country Study. From the executive summary of this report: . . . [more]

New from OCLC:Now any Web site can create “Find in a Library� links for specific titles. The syntax for link URLs is straightforward and keyed on common numeric identifiers.

I’ve developed Top Five and Top Ten lists as part of the Boot Camp I teach, with my colleagues, to articling students at our law firm. While it started out in fun, I soon discovered that it was an effective teaching tool that students paid attention to (as opposed to anything else I said), and have spent time refining it recently. I thought I’d offer this one as my first post, (although it’s not very tech-y) and welcome comments.

TOP FIVE MISTAKES TO AVOID IN ELECTRONIC RESEARCH

1. Missed higher level of Court: This one’s a career-limiting move! Did . . . [more]

I was at a conference in San Antonio in July where Westlaw announced a new graphical interface for “shephardizing” US caselaw.

The dome url is http://west.thomson.com/gkc

I talked to the Canadian rep who said this is under development in Canada, but not yet available. I reccomended that they consult with the legal research and academic communities on features, specifically on being able to note up foreign cases in Canadian courts, as this is now a significant aspect of Canadian legal research.

I urge Slawites to do the same.

I think graphical keycite is great, but I’d like to hear other . . . [more]