On Friday, I attended the amazing workshop Digital Odyssey 2010 – Going Mobile, held by the Ontario Library and Information Technology Association. Focused on how to develop information/library services and products in a mobile environment, the individual sessions discussed augmented reality, QR code, designing for mobile, ebooks, and more. Jason Griffey, keynote speaker, discussed why the mobile world is important and why we should be thinking about it. Here are some highlights from his session:

• 4.1 billion people on the planet have cellphones.
• More cellphones and cellphone contracts than people in some countries. People are carrying multiple devices.

I’ve been learning the ins, outs, and inbetweens of my new iPad, which means for the most part figuring out what apps work on it and what their limitations are. (e.g. I don’t use Word so I’m not fussed about its lack; but I do use RTF and am disappointed that I can’t create rich text files.) In the course of doing that, I’ve downloaded the iPad app version of Dropbox and have been impressed all over again by that great service.

If you don’t know Dropbox you should take a look. It’s a file storage and sharing system that . . . [more]

To continue our ebook reader discussions, I’ll throw in some recent comments. For the past few months, I have been very interested in purchasing an ebook reader…certainly not urgent but I’ve investigated the Kindle, B&N Nook and now the ipad. Each reader seems to have its pluses and minuses. Although I was not ready to pick one yet, I recently received an ipad as a birthday present. I was delighted though not convinced I would have bought one myself. I have to admit I love my ipad. I’m reading a book on it, however I now do most of my . . . [more]

It has been interesting to watch the excitement and hysteria about the iPad over the last few months. I especially liked reading some of the off-the-wall comments from people who had never seen, much less touched or even used, an iPad or any other tablet device for that matter.

As we approach the big day when this long anticipated gadget is finally released to the public (that would be April 3 for those that might have missed it – unless you live in Canada where is it “late April” per the Apple.ca site – guess it takes the dog sleds . . . [more]

In university history classes the textbooks provided shots of cuneiform for our wonderment. It was hard to imagine reading the stuff, though, and I recall being told that the ancient Messopotamian tablets were mostly accounting documents. Well, no more. According to Knowlegde and Power:

The Neo-Assyrian capital of Nineveh in northern Iraq, from the mid-7th century BC, is the earliest attested site of courtly scientific patronage in world history. This website presents the scholars’ letters, queries, and reports to their kings and provides resources to support their use in undergraduate teaching. Since the summer of 2008 it also gives

For the record, I don’t intend to buy one. At least, not for a few more years and not until the inevitable upgrades, improvements, fixes, and content distribution changes have run their course. But well before the iPad 3.o arrives, the original version will have had a serious impact on the computer industry, on the production and distribution of content, and yes, on the legal profession.

I won’t recap everything that’s been said about the iPad in the mainstream and legal communities — Reid Trautz and The Wired GC have two solid takes — but it’s worth noting that the . . . [more]

ROOTS

The Legality of an American Slavery

Introduction

February 1 is known as National Freedom Day in the U.S. It’s also the start of Black History Month, the annual celebration and triumph of the descendants of African-Americans. This year, President Obama has also indicated that National Freedom Day will also be the first ever National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. For this reason, Blawg Review #249 will follow the theme of African slavery in America, using the model of Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family.

Haley’s novel traces his family roots back six generations to . . . [more]

Simon beat me to the punch mentioning the iPad. I’ve been watching a live-blog of the event. These are my first impressions.

It’s meant for things like “Browsing the web. Doing email. Enjoying and sharing pics. Watching videos. Enjoying music. Playing games. Reading ebooks”. Jobs says it has to be better than either a phone or a laptop at these,or its not worthwhile.

It certainly looks good in his demo — works like the iPhone — indeed, iPhone apps work on it.

Pricing: $499 for 16GB. 32GB is $599, 64GB is $799. 3G models cost an extra $130. $629, 729, . . . [more]

A reputable legal researcher recently suggested to the chief executive officer of a legal publishing company that the day was coming soon when his company would be offering its secondary content for free on a kindle. Needless to say, the CEO’s response was “not any time soon”. As an aside, he noted that it is becoming increasingly difficult to pay authors to write secondary content even now. He was frustrated by the growing market expectation that everything, including secondary content, would soon be available for free.

There is a growing assumption in the market that “someone else”, other than the . . . [more]

Hint.fm, the baby of a couple of IBM scientists, Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg (who are actually a couple) [UPDATE: actually NOT a couple; my mistake; see the comments], is a website about visualizing data. As we’ve talked about many times on Slaw, one method of trying to understand the current surges of information involves using data to construct visual Gestalts that our minds might ingest in a gulp. The fact that a picture is worth 10³ words is nothing new, of course; charts and graphs and diagrams have been around since before Babylonian geometry. What is . . . [more]

The annual Consumer Electronics Show is about to start in Las Vegas. Many companies anounce their latest and greatest products at the CES. Indeed, there have already been several announcements over the last few days.

The netbook / notebook distinction continues to blur. Netbooks have sold in large numbers – mainly because of their price – but their performance was not stellar. We are now seeing new netbooks using an updated Atom processor (there is even a dual core version) that will improve performance. And we will see more thin and light notebooks using ULV (ultra low voltage) processors that . . . [more]

At the end of each year, I try to find some time to consider growing trends and how each might play out the following year. I’m just beginning that process now, and honestly, I’m not even close to a complete list. For those items I do have, however, I thought it might be interesting to present them in the form of predictions. And then with any luck, others here at Slaw might consider adding an item or two of their own!

So here we go:

More Social in our Enterprise Software: We know some of these features are in . . . [more]