There’s no escaping it, apparently. Almost every day I see articles on the coming of e-books, and declarations they will replace the lovely bound books that I collect, read, annotate, store and dust occasionally.

Here’s a link to a recent article, “A Hundred Books in Your Pocket”, from the Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2006 by Terry Teachout. If that link doesn’t work please contact me if interested and I can send you a copy of the article.

He describes Sony’s Reader, a pocket sized e-book reader that makes use of E Ink and is slated to be on . . . [more]

At the law school and at the firm, there are regular backups that ensure you'll never lose but a smidgeon of data -- provided things are set up such that you save to the network and not just your hard drive.... Tim Bray, one of the Canadian IT biggies (now working for Sun) did a column on his weblog, Ongoing, on Protecting Your DataThe Rules · If you follow these, you almost certainly won’t lose data in any damaging way.Don’t use proprietary file formats.Don’t erase anything.Store everything twice.Do occasional ad-hoc and regular full backups.Note that these are not rules for professionally-managed data centers, who have incredibly complicated backup requirements and often live in a regulated environment. If you’re a pro, the only way to be safe is to hire an expert and throw some real money at the problem.This advice is aimed at the users of personal computers, whose needs are simpler and less variable.

I’ve been giving the newest version of the Google Toolbar a spin and it has some nifty new features that I like.

Having used the Google Toolbar from the time it was introduced, I’ve come to rely heavily on it for quick internet searching but the unexpected bonus that has come with using it turns out to be impressing lawyers and staff! Often they’ll ask me some really simple question (though they don’t know it’s simple) and they’ll watch over my shoulder while I find their answer. Being able to quickly find their answers using the Google Toolbar has given . . . [more]

The new BIALL Handbook of Legal Information Management I blogged about recently was just placed in my hands today, thanks to the speedy work of Nick Pengelley. It’s not likely to benefit any Slawyer much — far too basic — and seems directed for the mostpart at information professionals (“IPs” I learn) who have recently turned to law.

But I did find two essays interesting, as a legal academic (“LA”?) who has recently turned to information management: “Knowledge Management” by Sue Doe, and “The Role of Taxonomies in Legal Knowledge Management Systems” by Christine Miskin. The KM piece shunned any . . . [more]

The Phase 2 Report from the Commission of Inquiry into the Sponsorship Program and Advertising Activities has just been released. This report, entitled Restoring Accountability, comes in four volumes: . . . [more]

Microsoft today outlined a new policy framework for content access to its popular blogging and personal publishing service, MSN Spaces. It also called for broad dialogue to produce a set of principles to guide practices in this area.

Speaking before a conference of government officials and community leaders in Lisbon, Portugal, Microsoft Senior Vice President and General Counsel Brad Smith reaffirmed the company’s commitment to blogging as an important vehicle for sharing of information and ideas, and outlined the policy framework that would guide Microsoft in dealing with government orders related to blog content:

• Explicit standards for protecting content access:

. . . [more]

“Information in context” is the simplest way to describe our firm’s new portal. There are a variety of contexts – personal pages, practice areas, library services, a learning centre, firm services and departments and clients and matters. Our portal is highly integrated with a number of firm applications, including our document management system and our accounting system. Users access all of their applications and all on-line services from the portal (the portal is the new firm desktop – on the screen 24/7).

I was particularly interested in figuring out how to integrate “external” information into our portal pages. Before tackling . . . [more]

I apologize that this post is focused on Toronto-based readers of SLAW, but I thought some of you might be interested in the various seminars being put on by the Faculty of Information Studies from time to time. Their upcoming seminar sounds interesting:

“Weblogs & Libraries: Communication, Conversation and the Blog People”
Date: Thursday, February 2nd, 2006
Time: 4:15-5:15 pm
Place: Bissell building, 140 St. George Street, Room 728 . . . [more]

Microsoft has released a public beta of IE 7 with RSS built-in.

Robert Scoble has a video interview with IE Team about it, and the comments on Dave Winer’s WordPress Blog will be worth watching.

I haven’t installed it (and not sure if I will), but did do the online tour if that counts. :-) The thing I’m excited about is the mainstream marketing towards the ‘average joe’ RSS consumer. This should make things easier. . . . [more]

Having been reading so much lately about the recent Palestinian elections I tried this morning to see what legal material the Authority had on the Web. I went to Google of course first and looked for the Web-sites of both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas (idly wondering of course whether any of W’s troops were monitoring). Neither appear to have anything much in the way of legislative, court or general government information. The Authority Web site has a lot on the peace process and basic documents, UN resolutions and so forth, but not what you’d usually expect from a government . . . [more]

Blawg Review, the self-professed “Carnival of Law Bloggers” features law blog reviews by a changing kaleidoscope of reviewers. In the current issue, Chicago IP lawyer and blogger Kevin A. Thompson, has just posted a fantastic review of law blogs using Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as the model, hosted on his blog Cyberlaw Central. See what is reviewed under Arthur Dent, Babel Fish, Ford Prefect, and all the rest! Under The Vogons, we even see Patrick Cormier’s recent Slaw post The Uneasy Lawyer and IT Dialogue from Jan. 25/06 mentioned while he’s off somewhere in the sun . . . [more]

Ray Kurzweil’s very much in the air lately. He’s the MIT prof and former successful businessman who has written The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology in which he argues that information technology will overtake us and remove distinctions between human being and machine, and together with other advancing technologies, this leap will ensure us all a rosy future. (He’s not the first by any means to promise that accelerating change will at some point tip over into something completely different and liberating: older readers may have heard of the Roman Catholic priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin who . . . [more]