My 11 year old son thought that it was important that, as the partner in charge of technology at my law firm, I “walk the talk” so I am now the proud owner of a sleek black iPod Nano. I tried downloading a song from iTunes last week (while on holidays) and concluded that downloading on a dial up line was not worth the effort. Any and all suggestions on what I should be downloading (now that I am back in the land of high speed access) are welcomed.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether the Nano will . . . [more]

While I was home on holidays the last two weeks, I managed to catch this item on CBC radio on December 29th, under the heading:

Canadian Libraries join race to digitize books

I can’t find any more information out about this project on the CARL webpage, so if you have any more information let me know, otherwise I’ll keep looking.

A major effort to digitize millions of books and other documents at libraries is beginning across Canada.

Canadian research libraries have formed a digitization alliance called Alouette Canada to get their books online.

The process involves scanning the millions of

Happy New Year, all.

I thought I would take advantage of the international nature of Slaw’s contributors and readers, to search out an answer to a question that occupies my mind from time to time. Across Canada, “legal research” is conducted by lawyers, at the courts and in private practice. By “legal research”, I mean to include the finding of relevant law on a given issue; the analysis of the state of the law; and the application of the law to the given problem/file/issues. In our firm, the reference librarians will find law if given the parameters such as the . . . [more]

At December’s Toronto Knowledge Management lunch, there was a brief discussion of how user expectations (particularly non-expert searcher expectations) have been raised by the ease and seeming reliability of the Google ease of interface. So I was interested to see how Freshfields developed their user interface for KM.

The article is called
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Launches Next Generation Knowledge Management System

International law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has launched ‘Athena’, a fully integrated legal know-how system.

The new application will standardise knowledge management (KM) working practices, enabling even faster client service delivery by providing access to the latest legal expertise

The BBC’s Technology magazine has one of those end of year lists that someone must have obsessed over:

I particularly liked the following factoids:

8. Devout Orthodox Jews are three times as likely to jaywalk as other people, according to an Israeli survey reported in the New Scientist. The researchers say it’s possibly because religious people have less fear of death.
11. One in 10 Europeans is allegedly conceived in an Ikea bed.
14. It’s possible for a human to blow up balloons via the ear. A 55-year-old factory worker from China reportedly discovered 20 years ago that air leaked . . . [more]

I missed the Carswell announcement just before the holidays that the weekly newsletter that Professor Jay McLeod published on family law has now become Epstein & Madsen’s This Week in Family Law. The great thing about McLeod’s family law scholarship was the personal voice, the willingness to articulate a strong and sometimes ideosyncratic view of where Canadian family law was going. Simply having an intelligence wrestling with the issues, rather than doing a paraphrase of judgments was welcome in itself.
Let’s hope that Phil will be as willing to stick his neck out.

His manifesto is: “We intend . . . [more]

Just as we thought it was getting quiet again, along comes the latest Pew Internet Survey to suggest that

* Women are catching up with men in overall web use. They differ from men in using online to deepen connections with people.

* Compared with women, online men are more likely to: check the weather, get news, get do-it-yourself information, get political information, get financial information, do job-related research.

* Compared with men, online women are more likely to: use email, get maps and directions, look for health and medical information, use web sites to get support for health or . . . [more]

1. Jim Milles
2. Out of the Jungle
3. ublaw phoenix
4. Check This Out
5. blog maverick: A splog here, a splog there, pretty soon it ads up… and we all lose
6. Clipmarks
7. Connie Crosby’s blog
8. ECW Shania Twain case
9. Canadian Intellectual Property Office: A Guide to Copyrights
10. Bitlaw: Linking and Liability
11. RocketBoom: Friday, December 23, 2005
12. SomaFM

Jim Milles, law librarian at the University at Buffalo Law Library and also the driving force behind the Out of the Jungle and ublaw phoenix law blogs has his own podcast blog called “Check This Out!” Since the end of October, Jim has been putting together a number of items in his weekly broadcast.

Description of his December 25th podcast:

Episode 009: Happy Holidays!
This is a short end-of-the-year episode for the holidays, featuring a Radical Militant Librarian poem by Robert Ryan, a story of sledding, lost gloves, and sharing from Quirky Nomads, and a shout-out

A little while ago Slaw got an email pointing out that one of our stories linked an excerpt from an author’s work to a “splog” and not to the site where the author originally put it. As well, we were reminded that extensive quoting from sources might best be done with permission, if it didn’t in fact infringe on copyright. Of course we set things right as soon as we could. But the email got me thinking about weblogs and copyright — and wondering what “splogs” were.

The latter is easier to tackle. Splogs are blogs that find their content . . . [more]

I like the idea of “stocking stuffers”, as Simon F. has called them. Here is another:

RocketBoom’s clip from Friday, December 23rd. It is a delightful romp by host Amanda Congdon through the Christmas sights in NYC, set to the music of the Nutcracker. Only 3 minutes long.

Enjoy! . . . [more]

I have been listening to the Groove Salad for a number of years. It is an ambient/chill music station from SomaFM, listener-supported commercial-free radio. It is produced by a streaming media expert Rusty Hodge from his basement in San Francisco.

At this time of year they put together a station/broadcast called “Xmas in Frisco“. It is eclectic and irreverent. Not your average Christmas fare. Well worth a try–do check it out.

To everyone celebrating today, a happy Christmas! . . . [more]