Phone-charging trousers

Microsoft has partnered with Nokia and British fashion designer Adrien Sauvage to create trousers with wireless cellphone charging capability. Woven into the front pocket is the new Nokia DC-50 wireless charging plate, which grants the wearer the ability to charge a phone by simply placing it into the pocket without the worry of having to plug it in. The Nokia wireless charging trousers will be available on Amazon 'soon'. You can read more on IT Pro.
No word on a phone-charging skirt.  Yet.  

New CALI website launched

The Computer Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) website has been completely revamped (upgraded to Drupal 7) and was relaunched yesterday.  You can check it out at www.cali.org.  Kudos to Elmer Masters and Dan Nagy for a job well done.  

Westlaw webinars on transitioning from Westlaw Classic to WestlawNext

Westlaw has provided links to two recorded webinars that teach about  transitioning to WestlawNext from Westlaw Classic. The recordings will be available until May, 2015.
From Classic to Next: Basic
From Classic to Next: Advanced 

LOC recommends digitial formats for library collections

The Library of Congress has announced a set of recommended formats for a broad spectrum of creative works, ranging from books to digital music, to inform the Library’s acquisition practices. The format recommendations will help ensure the LOC's collections processes are considering and maximizing the long-term preservation potential of its large and varied collections.  The document describes the hierarchies of physical and technical characteristics of creative formats, both analog and digital, which will best maximize the chances for preservation and continued accessibility of creative content.
The Library was able to identify six basic categories of creative output, which represent significant parts of the publishing, information, and media industries, especially those that are rapidly adopting digital production and are central to building the Library’s collections: Textual Works and Musical Compositions; Still Image Works; Audio Works; Moving Image Works; Software and Electronic Gaming and Learning; and Datasets/Databases. Expert technical teams brought specialized knowledge in technical aspects of preservation, ongoing access needs and developments in the marketplace and publishing world. Standards were established to identify recommended formats for each of these categories and to establish hierarchies of preference among the formats within them.
 The Recommended Format Specifications are available here.

hat tip: Margie Maes, LIPA

Lexis Academic training in July

LexisNexis Academic is offering several free webinar training sessions in the month of July.  The links will take you to the registration page for each webinar.
1. LexisNexis Academic : Learn how to use this general reference tool provides access to the most news, business, and legal information available from one interface. Newly redesigned with a simplified, single-search box and improved search options.
• Wednesday, July 9, 2014 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. (EDT) - Register
• Tuesday, July 15, 2014 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (EDT) - Register (TELEPHONE ONLY)
2. LexisNexis Academic - Business  This seminar focuses on business resources and Company Dossier.
• Tuesday, July 15, 2014 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. (EDT) - Register
3. LexisNexis Academic – Legal Research  This webinar will focus on legal and criminal justice resources within LN Academic.
• Check back for dates/times
4. LexisNexis Academic - News
• Tuesday, July 8, 2014 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (EDT) - Register
5. LexisNexis Academic - Shepard's® -  The webinar will cover the features and benefits of using Shepard's® on-line.
• Tuesday, July 8, 2014 12:00 p.m. to 12:30 p.m. (EDT) - Register 

HathiTrust digitization ruled fair use

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an opinion upholding the lower court's ruling in the  HathiTrust case, in which the Author's Guild was suing HathiTrust for copyright infringement for its book digitization project. The court ruled that HathiTrust’s book digitization and accessibility efforts are be fair uses of copyrighted works. The Conclusion of the opinion reads:

"The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED, in part, insofar as the district court concluded that certain plaintiffs appellants lack associational standing; that the doctrine of “fair use” allows defendants‐appellees to create a full text searchable database of copyrighted works and to provide those works in formats accessible to those with disabilities; and that claims predicated upon the Orphan Works Project are not ripe for adjudication. We VACATE the judgment, in part, insofar as it rests on the district court’s holding related to the claim of infringement predicated upon defendants appellees' preservation of copyrighted works,and we REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion."

Metadata in Twitter tweets

The Wall Street Journal Digits blog reports that there is more metadata in a Twitter tweet than there are characters.  Twitter is famous for its 140-character limit on tweet length; but in order to facilitate data-mining for companies that gather information from social media there are 150 separate points of metadata (information about the tweet) for each tweet, so each tweet can yield a wealth of information: "For a tweet, metadata includes a unique numerical ID attached to each tweet, as well as IDs for all the replies, favorites and retweets that it gets. It also includes a timestamp, a location stamp, the language, the date the account was created, the URL of the author if a website is referenced, the number of followers, and many other technical specifications that engineers can analyze." The blogpost includes a link to a map of all the metadata contained in a tweet.

hat tip: beSpacific