Lifehacker has collected some absolutely gorgeous desktop mods, with descriptions and details on how they were done. Some are really stellar. You and I both spend some time each day staring at our computer screens. It would be nice to fix up the office, so to speak, along the lines of some of these beauties. The Two-Faced Mac-like Windows Desktop in the upper left corner is, well, just crazy.

Google is never content to sit on its laurels and the goodies keep on flowing. Gmail is now offering a task manager and it can add email to your to-do list. In other words, you can convert an email into a task with a few deft strokes. You also can pop the Tasks list into its own little box. Gee, what will they think of next?  No kidding, I seriously do wonder. Hit the jump below to Lifehacker for a more detailed discussion and screen shots.

Gmail: Gmail Labs’ New Task Manager Can Add Email to Your To-Do List

Google is never content to sit on its laurels and the goodies keep on flowing. Gmail is now offering a task manager and it can add email to your to-do list. In other words, you can convert an email into a task with a few deft strokes. You also can pop the Tasks list into its own little box. Gee, what will they think of next?  No kidding, I seriously do wonder. Hit the jump below to Lifehacker for a more detailed discussion and screen shots.

Gmail: Gmail Labs’ New Task Manager Can Add Email to Your To-Do List

Gary Rodriguez over at the most excellent Canadian legal blog Slaw, reports on the recent trend among the provinces to recognize their on-line content as an official version. Ontario’s legislation web site went “official” on November 30, 2008 and Quebec has pending legislation to follow suit. Rodriguez expects that all eventually will fall in line.

Bad news for legal publishers and good news for consumers. With a free official option available, Rodriguez posits that pay-per-search publishers will need to find ways to make their legislative content more valuable, such as including annotations or offering other searching efficiencies.

Either way, the researcher stands to win with both a free option and an enhanced paid option for searching Canada’s laws.

For those concerned about the year-long absence, it appears that the American Law Reports are back on Lexis. According to WisBlawg author Bonnie Schucha, her Lexis rep advised that the

• ALR (American Law Reports)
• Witkin Library
• State Jurisprudences for Florida, New York, Ohio and Texas
• American Jurisprudence 2d (Am Jur 2d)

are available when you expand the Secondary Sources link. Honestly, I didn’t notice because I have enjoyed uninterrupted access to the ALR on my primary search tool, Westlaw.

In some eerie parallel, I found paired in my RSS with the Ultimate Social Media Media Etiquette Handbook this sister article about Tips For Making The Host Of Holiday Gatherings by Julie A. Fleming. Fleming offers suggestions on how to behave IRL at networking cocktail parties in order to secure maximum benefit for your effort. While Weinberg is more about the “don’t” and Fleming is more about the “do”, I found the similarities in strategy quite telling.  Build relationships, get involved and interested, listen well, consider how you can be of assistance to your partner in conversation and follow up. While the tools to connecting IRL and on-line differ markedly, it pays dividends to remember that good manners transcend the high speed connectivity barrier.

In some eerie parallel, I found paired in my RSS with the Ultimate Social Media Media Etiquette Handbook this sister article about Tips For Making The Host Of Holiday Gatherings by Julie A. Fleming. Fleming offers suggestions on how to behave IRL at networking cocktail parties in order to secure maximum benefit for your effort. While Weinberg is more about the “don’t” and Fleming is more about the “do”, I found the similarities in strategy quite telling.  Build relationships, get involved and interested, listen well, consider how you can be of assistance to your partner in conversation and follow up. While the tools to connecting IRL and on-line differ markedly, it pays dividends to remember that good manners transcend the high speed connectivity barrier.

Whew! There is a lot of social media out there these days. Places to do it, articles written about it, consequences of messing it up to think about. So, we should all consider thanking Tamar Weinberg for clearly putting a great deal of time and effort into writing the Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook. Because if you are going to take the time to jump into this bottomless pool, you might as well make an attempt to do it correctly and with good manners.