ML107:- Proquest are going to be doing some work on their databases at the following times

Tom Roper's Weblog:- ...I promise. But here are those that lurk in my wardrobe:

Tom Roper's Weblog:- 200 Haydock: Blue Bajan

UK Freedom of Information Blog:- FOI Podcast episode 11

UK Freedom of Information Blog:- Call for papers - Journal of Information Rights Law and Practice

UK Freedom of Information Blog:- New SIC guidance

UK Freedom of Information Blog:- SIC guidance

Tom Roper's Weblog:- Alas, I have no column in Milady's Boudoir but I have noticed that every second tie-wearer sports something with diagonal stripes. In pastel shades, and with stripes of irregular thickness, these bear no relation to the school ties of old, such as the purple and black forced round my neck from 1966-73. I think them rather  hideous

Tom Roper's Weblog:- Alas, I have no column in Milady's Boudoir but I have noticed that every second tie-wearer sports something with diagonal stripes. In pastel shades, and with stripes of irregular thickness, these bear no relation to the school ties of old, such as the purple and black forced round my neck from 1966-73. I think them rather  hideous

Tom Roper's Weblog:- After posting my diatribe this morning, it occurred to me that readers might reasonably ask if striped ties may be found in my wardrobe. I have nothing to hide, indeed I once planned b log devoted entirely to ties, with photographs, with a daily posting showing that day's choice, with a full and frank disclosure of the reasons for my choice, accompanying shirt and suit, and so on. I have the following (photographs to follow): Red and black diagonal striped tie from Hackett. Bought about ten years ago, slightly faux-regimental, but still good. Blue diagonal striped tie from Liberty. Bought more recently. Good, but difficult to pair with shorts. Old school tie: purple and white stripes on a navy ground, with pelicans. Rarely worn.

Tom Roper's Weblog:- After posting my diatribe this morning, it occurred to me that readers might reasonably ask if striped ties may be found in my wardrobe. I have nothing to hide, indeed I once planned b log devoted entirely to ties, with photographs, with a daily posting showing that day's choice, with a full and frank disclosure of the reasons for my choice, accompanying shirt and suit, and so on. I have the following (photographs to follow): Red and black diagonal striped tie from Hackett. Bought about ten years ago, slightly faux-regimental, but still good. Blue diagonal striped tie from Liberty. Bought more recently. Good, but difficult to pair with shorts. Old school tie: purple and white stripes on a navy ground, with pelicans. Rarely worn.

ML107:- Following on from my last blog entry (where did November go???) I find that odd things I throw into training sessions or research workshops, almost as asides, are often greeted with the most enthusiasm and appreciation. For example pressing Crl-F to find a word on a webpage, or alt-tab to move between two open windows, putting quotation marks around the words to find the exact phrase in a search, or using Bloglines to keep track of infrequently updated blogs, creating a concept map in Credo Reference, or the fact that you can set up an alert on Google News. Maybe I need to devise a training session on useful hints and bits?

ML107:- I'm now most of the way through the Intermediate course in Virtual Librarianship I'm doing with the University of Illinois. (Does this mean I'm virtually a virtual librarian?)

UK Freedom of Information Blog:- High Court upholds Information Tribunal EIR decision

Tom Roper's Weblog:- Regular readers, if there are any, may have noticed some unpleasantness here in recent days. That's not my blog reacting to the dire news of Boris Johnson's election as mayor of London, and his proposals to introduce fagging, flogging and roasting new boys over a slow fire to the capital; rather, I have been trying to implement domain mapping, so this blog shows at my domain of roper.org.uk, which I registered years ago, but have never used to any great extent. It should all be fixed now. If you read me in a newsreader, you probably didn't notice.

Tom Roper's Weblog:- J'ai perdu mon Eurydice. I hesitate to put myself forward as Seaford's Ken Tynan, but the performance I saw in the Komedia Studio Bar on Sunday of multi story's Backward Glance deserves a review. Multi story are two actors, Gill Nathanson and Bill Buffery, with an international reputation in fringe theatre. They offered last year's Brighton Fringe their Cassandra, and return to Greek myth this year with Backward Glance, a play based on Orpheus's loss of Eurydice and death at the hands of the Maenads. Transposing the story to the present, Orpheus and Eurydice are both writers in a vicious drunken relationship, Eurydice the more successful and famous of the two. After Eurydice's death, stung by a bee, Orpheus, drunk at his laptop, is interrogated by a journalist and a detective, and railed at by his mother-in-law. He cannot explain...

Information Overlord:- Have now fixed feed and moved this part of site to http://www.informationoverlord.co.uk/oldblog. New look blog now at http://www.informationoverlord.co.uk and feed http://www.informationoverlord.co.uk/?feed=rss2 (which should bepicked up by my feedburner feed) but if you don't see any new content in next few days, it means not working!

ML107:- If there's one book I'd say was well worth students buying it's a book on study skills. It's excellent value as it will apply to every course, not just one. I don't know that I'd recommend any particular book as what works for one person doesn't always work so well for another, but this one is new in and gets lots of stars on Amazon, so it might be worth a look.

ML107:- It's the summer time and so I'm.... busier than ever! When does the quiet time come I wonder? I've just started an online course with the University of Illinois, so am learning not just the course content but also about how online courses work from the student point of view. We're using Moodle and Second Life and as it's all new for most people there is a lot of learning going on! Two weeks in and we've covered the basics and started thinking about future potential. It's all a bit mind boggling.

ML107:-

ML107:- I'm being painfully reminded lately about the difference between theory and practice.

Tom Roper's Weblog:- today's selections, all at Newmarket.

UK Freedom of Information Blog:- Health Service Journal

Information Overlord:- Oliver at Headshift has an excellent post entitled 'Behind "Enterprise 2.0" Performance: Exploitation or Exploration?'

Information Overlord:- BskyB, Virgin and others have replied to the possible remedies and the provisional findings of the Competition Commission (CC) that the acquisition by British Sky Broadcasting plc (BSkyB) of a 17.9 percent share in ITV restricts competition, and therefore operates against the public interest.

Information Overlord:- According the The Local,Pär Ström, a member of the Swedish government's IT Council and integrity spokesman, says that agreeing to facebook's T&C's amount to a ‘slave contract.’ He says ‘People think it is free to join, but you pay with your personal integrity and your future. When you apply for a job in 30 years, the recruiter will be sitting there with what you have written.’

Information Overlord:- A number of media related stories/events have happened during the past week that I feel could do with short mentions from me, so excuse this collection of rambles.

Information Overlord:- I had to do some sport related research yesterday (sadly not something I get asked to do that often) so I thought it might be an idea to list a few sources that I have found useful.

Information Overlord:- Well, I'm back, and getting up to date with things that happened whilst I was on Holiday - such as the Booker Prize result. You will know dear reader, that I try (and fail usually) to read the shortlist before the prize is announced. This year I only made it through three and a half by judgment day: On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan ; Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones; The Gathering by Anne Enright; and Darkmans by Nicola Barker (the half, 400 pages down and about the same to go ...)

Information Overlord:- I have ummed and arhed this week over whether to add to the latest 'meme' started by Blawg Review calling on bloggers to name their favourite 'current 10 best law blogs’. Now as both Binary Law and Lo-Fi Librarian were kind enough to include me in their lists, I have decided to bit the bullet and list my 10, although Lo-Fi's is quite close to what my first blind run at this would have looked like (minus me obviously - not even my ego is that large) so you can take it as read that those 9 are all worth your time, if they are not already part of your regular reading regime.

Information Overlord:- I realised this afternoon that I hadn't mentioned the revamp of the Lawyer website. I hate it. It is far too busy and cluttered and they have also opted for a small font size to exacerbate matters. The content itself is still perfectly fine, but the look and feel is just nasty. If you compare it with Legal Week's site for example, I don't think there is any competition as to which site I would prefer to be looking for material on.

Information Overlord:- I got an email this morning from Jaiku telling me that they were now part of the Google family. Must admit, as when Google nabbed Jotspot, this caught me a bit by surprise. I actually really like Jaiku although as I have had a hard time getting people off Twitter, I only really tend to post directly to it when Twitter is down - although it is set up to pick up feeds from my blogs and Twitter when I am not posting, so my Jaiku feed isn't a bad way to follow me.

Information Overlord:- I'm off on holiday tomorrow, so the blog will be quiet until 21st October. Don't miss me too much.

Information Overlord:- Whilst I was away Deliotte finished their investigation of the use of premium rate interactive services ("PRS") in programming on all ITV channels. Before its release Michael Grade had spoken of a Zero Tolerance approach the channel would take. On its release, Grade told us, had he been in charge whilst all this was going on that he'd have resigned. Correct me if I am wrong, but some of this similar behaviour was going on at the BBC WHILST he was in control. Handy he changed job then. I am not calling for Grade's head - I think he's the kind of person ITV need in control - but to take no action against anyone involved (which seems to be what has happened thus far) is just jaw dropping - anyone would think he was the Prime Minister.

Information Overlord:- With All Hallows Eve upon us, I thought you'd like some links to some Halloween goodies on YouTube...

Information Overlord:- Decided to give Jiglu a try on this site and my other site Todd is God. Jiglu is "a super-smart engine that pieces your site together, intelligently tagging and linking your web content" ...

Information Overlord:- If any more proof was needed that business' need to think again about allowing access to sites such as Facebook, then surely the announcement from RIM that they have launched Facebook for BlackBerry Smartphones, for that essential business tool - the BlackBerry - is it. If RIM think it makes sense to add it to what is sold as a business tool, then that says a lot."Now you can take Facebook with you on your BlackBerry smartphone! The best part is: you stay connected to Facebook the whole time. Download this free application and take communicating with your friends to a whole new level" Of course, if you work for the type of company that blocks access to such site, then they've probably already crippled your blackberry to prevent you downloading things such as this software add-on.

Information Overlord:- Helen Rose of Bristows looks at the recent flurry of negative publicity when Facebook announced that details of its users would appear in publicly available search results, leading to allegations that Facebook was sacrificing users’ privacy in an attempt to drive more users to the site via search engines. She asks if these claims stand up to scrutiny, and whether Facebooks actions make it comliant with UK data protection law, concluding - rightly in my opinion, that this was really a non-story.

Information Overlord:- This is a round up of a few more things that have gone on whilst I was holiday:

Information Overlord:- I'm sure most people reading this will know I work for Clifford Chance. We're a corporate law firm so we don't usually hit the headlines in other aspects of law. So it makes a change to report that lawyers from our London and New York offices succeeded in securing a stay of execution for Jack Alderman, the US' longest serving death row prisoner, who was due to be executed last Friday by lethal injection. After four unsuccessful appeals in the previous seven days, the stay of execution was granted late on Thursday, 18 October as the prison were preparing Jack Alderman for execution. Jack Alderman has been on death row for 33 years during which time he has continued to protest his innocence and to fight to clear his name.

Information Overlord:- It seems that Yahoo has finally decided to pull the plug on their original failed attempt at social networking/blogging - Yahoo 360. This is not a great surprise, especially considering that they are currently beta-ing yet another attempt, with 'Mash'

Information Overlord:- Simon at Slaw mentioned a mindmapping tool I wasn't aware of - Mind42 , which in turn reminded me to bookmark and mention one that I came across late last week called Wisemapping . Both are Beta products, and look promising.

Information Overlord:- I have decided to move this blog over to Wordpress. As a result,this part of the site will no become an archive. The New blog is here and the feed here

Information Overlord:- This is really rather cool. Frommthe same man who brought us the equally cool Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Information Overlord:- Prince is still trying to get Web Sheriff to police the internet and help him remove any photos, videos featuring his music and any other images to protect his 'image'. According to the Beeb he is also hoping to have any album covers, images of him in concert and any lyrics removed. Which is not what Web Sheriff actually say however - "The dispute, in so far as there is one, is related to the use of photographs and images of Prince, many of which are Prince's copyright," said John Giacobbi, managing director of Web Sheriff.

Information Overlord:- I was thrown back into the world of cataloguing for a brief period earlier today when reading a great post by Paige Turner (still wish I'd have thought of that nom de plume). 'Paige' has a blog detailing the development of the new Swansea central library. Now as someone that worked in the old central library for around 6 years I have an interest in the old place. However, I digress, the post was about Dewey. What about Dewey? Exactly! Paige dares to ask - or at least hints at - do we need him in public libraries???

Information Overlord:- I see Clifford Chance is now sponsoring a blog. Conflict of Law is a "news and discussion portal to those interested in the conflict of laws (otherwise known as private international law)." Which is a posh way of saying it's a blog. To be fair, it is a blog I've been following for a while and contains some good stuff - if private international law is your thing - so congrats to Martin George. [Geek Lawyer isn't happy though ...]

ML107:- I saw a presentation the other evening by Metaverse Evangelist Roo Reynolds from IBM. He certainly lived up to the job title!

ML107:- This is simply excellent. One of my favourite people talking about one of my favourite things! Stephen Fry on Web 2.0.

UK Freedom of Information Blog:- Contractors "should be subject to Information Act"