I attended day 1 of the Mesh conference yesterday. (I had a conflict for today – but a colleague is going in my place.) Some video from the event is already on the Mesh site.

The highlight for me was the keynote by Mike Masnick of Techdirt. Anyone interested in changing business models and how to conduct business on the web should follow the Techdirt blog.

Microsoft had one of their Surface devices there. If you ever get a chance to play with one, you should. Multitouch technology will be included in Windows 7. That could lead to . . . [more]

In light of Ted Tjaden’s post about choosing between a netbook and a laptop, I thought readers might be interested in the “pocket yoga” from Lenovo. It came out of their Beijing (and New Zealand) design studios two years ago (!) but never made it into production. Today, someone published a host of photos of the nifty thing on Flickr, so a spokesperson from Lenovo talked with Design Matters about the project. Oh yeah: it’s a tablet, too.

This, I would buy:

. . . [more]

If you follow us by RSS or email and don’t visit the website, you’ll likely be missing a couple of interesting conversations in the comments to recent posts. (You can, of course, subscribe to the comments either by email or RSS, though many readers haven’t yet done that.)

Alex Manevich’s post on arbitral awards and limitations periods has generated an interesting series of exchanges between him and John Gregory. Well worth taking a look.

And Dave Bilinsky’s post, Shouldn’t It Just Work?, sparked a bunch of comments on tablet PC’s.

So drop by the website for a good read. . . . [more]

♬It’s work, the most important thing is work..♬

Words and Music by Lou Reed and John Cale, recorded by John Cale.

I was part of an online email dialogue today on Tablet PC’s. I have long been an admirer of these devices that are closer to a pad of paper than any other computing platform. I liked the idea that you could take out a stylus and start drawing, writing, clicking – rather than being limited to using a keyboard. I felt that this was a positive step in the development of the portable computer. . . . [more]

My relationship with information technology has gone through at least three phases: 1) the PPP, or Poo-poo phase, 2) the OPP, or Obnoxious and pretentious phase, and 3) the GOWIP, or Getting on with it phase. In phase one, for example, I disparaged the then novel “word processors” by wondering whether we wouldn’t be facing “language spreaders” next. In phase two — which is the reason I mention all of this — I would say to those unfortunates who were in their own phase one that, yes indeedy, the old ways were the best and I’d be right along with . . . [more]

Some bright folks at the University of Toronto’s Department of Computer Science Human-Computer Interaction Group spend their time thinking about how we get along with computers and make them do our bidding (ha ha). One interesting project involves a hand-held projector and a computer pen, enabling the user to project material onto any surface within a room and, in effect, park it there, such that this document is “located” on that tabletop and that graphic is lodged on the wall to the right, etc. “Shining” the projector gun on that tabletop reveals the document and sweeping the gun to the . . . [more]

I sat in on the hearing of Kerr v. Danier Leather at the Supreme Court today and suprised myself by thoroughly enjoying it even though it had to do with securities law, something distant from my heart (and head). The quality of argument ranged from decent to very good; all of the justices had questions; and I learned once again that the sorts of things I taught my students to think important are in fact important at the top court, at least.

The law apart, three things having to do with IT came to my attention.

First, an intermittent noise . . . [more]

There’s an interesting essay in today’s NY Times, “How to Speak a Book“The free NYTimes link maker doesn’t work with this URL because it’s to a special section, I think, so you may need to have registered with the Times., by Richard Powers. It’s essentially a paean to dictation as the means of writing a book. Powers, once a serious computer geek and now a novelist of some renown, dictates his novels to his tablet PC. (He doesn’t say what software he uses but my bet is that it’s Dragon.)

I find the piece interesting but . . . [more]

Décidément, l’hiver va être chaud à Ottawa car après les affaires Dell et Rogers, qui seront entendues par la Cour suprême respectivement le 13 et 14 décembre 2006 (voir le dernier billet à ce sujet), voici que concernant l’affaire Euro-excellence c. Kraft Canada, que nous avons déjà également évoquée, les auditions sont prévues, provisoirement du moins, pour le 16 janvier 2007. On peut aussi y voir que ce mercredi 06 septembre, l’appelante a déposé son mémoire, mémoire que voici. Merci aux avocats du dossier, Pierre-Emmanuel Moyse (également Wainwright Fellow à la Faculté de droit . . . [more]

A palimpsest -- one of my favourite words -- is, according to Wikipedia, “a manuscript page, scroll, or book that has been written on, scraped off, and used again,” dating from a time when wax tablets and parchments were bases for writing. Stuff from the past, right?