For the London Free Press – April 30, 2012 – Read this on Canoe

BYOD, or bring your own device, is a hot topic. It refers to the trend for employees wanting to use their own smartphones or tablets for work purposes, rather than the ones their employer provides.

Why would an employee want to use his or her own device? It might be a better or more familiar device than their employer provides. Or they might not want to carry two phones. Or their employer might not provide phones or tablets at all.

BYOD can cause headaches for IT departments. It’s much harder to deal with many different types and configurations of devices in the workplace than one specific device or configuration approved by and owned by the employer.

This is a trend that can’t be stopped, and can have advantages to the employer. BYOD raises legal issues that need to be considered as well.

For example, employers usually have technology use policies that allow them to look at whatever an employee does on his work computer or device, even if the employee uses it for some personal use.

The goal is to be able to monitor and deal with improper employee behaviour, such as wasting excessive amounts of time surfing the net, or violating privacy, confidentiality, laws or corporate policies.

But those policies usually justify monitoring based on the notion that the equipment is owned by the employer. Those policies should be expanded to try to include BYOD devices.

It’s unclear to some extent how effective that will be if the issue gets into court, as there are issues of personal privacy connected with employer monitoring of a personal device. But there should at least be an attempt to address the situation and provide a plausible argument for monitoring in certain situations.

Another issue is how to ensure the privacy and security of employer data on a BYOD device. Businesses must keep personal information secure, and need to keep other information secure for various confidentiality and business reasons.

That is easier to do on a smartphone, for example, that the IT department has configured and locked down to require password access, or to encrypt sensitive information, or to allow it to remote lock or wipe the device if it’s lost or stolen.

That becomes more of a challenge when dealing with BYOD. Technology use and security policies should be looked at in light of this. Should, for example, users be only allowed to use a BYOD device if it has a screen lock?

Another approach is to set up systems so that as much as possible remains in the cloud or company-controlled servers, with proper access security. That way, if a device is lost or stolen, the data is not on the device itself.

Access must be simple and easy, though. Otherwise employees will just ignore corporate policy, and will resort to faster and easier ways to get what they want on the device, such as dragging files into Dropbox, or e-mailing them to a personal email account.

http://harrisonpensa.com/lawyers/david-canton

My Slaw post for today:

On average, the typical lawyer does not use cutting edge technology, and even if we do have the latest smartphone or tablet, we generally don’t push the envelope for its use. It is worthwhile though (at least for those of us who might be described as tech geeks) to think about how we might better use the tech we have now, and what might lie ahead. For example:

Microsoft announced in November a modified version of the Kinect that is designed to work with PC’s, rather than the XBox. So Minority Report like gesture control can now be used, for example, to control presnentations in a board room or conference hall.

The New York Times reported yesterday some speculation that Google might be working on Google glasses for sale later this year. The concept is that the glasses will provide a display to stream information to the wearer’s eyes. And its not just a display. It is rumoured to include data connections, sensors, a camera and GPS – essentially a smartphone in a pair of glasses. For a taste of what this might do, take a look at Google Goggles.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

As Connie mentioned, the annual Consumer Electronics Show is now underway in Las Vegas. The tech press is full of commentary on the latest and greatest things at the show. One trend is that everything is becoming more intelligent and more connected, ranging from TV’s to appliances.

That results in many great features and new capabilities. At the same time, a Washington Post article entitled Privacy rights activists worry about potential abuse of high-tech devices featured at CES event points out that we can’t forget about the privacy issues that comes along with this technology.

The article starts off by saying:

The thousands of devices debuting Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show here demonstrate how tech companies are poised to gather unprecedented insights into consumers’ lives — how much they eat, whether they exercise, when they are home and who they count as friends.

Silicon Valley is in a gold rush for information, highlighted by Google’s announcement Tuesday that it would incorporate data posted by users on its social networking service into the results of its main search engine.

Many of the companies providing this technology are certainly cognizant of the privacy issues, and will do the right things regarding use, disclosure and consent. But we can’t forget that we don’t all have the same sensibilities or thresholds for privacy issues. Some of us may indeed care about who our washing machine tells that our laundry is done, or who knows what the temperature is in our house.

This is an issue that we can’t just brush aside.

For the London Free Press – December 12, 2011 – Read this on Canoe

If you are looking for a gift to buy someone who seems to have or want the latest tech products, here are some suggestions.

If they have an iPhone or iPad, get a gift card to the Apple app store. The recipient will be able to choose from a long list of items, ranging from music and apps to car mounts.

Many accessories are available for smartphones and tablets. For someone who is partial to classic arcade video games, such as Missile Command, ThinkGeek sells the iCade Arcade Cabinet that turns an iPad into a table top arcade game complete with joystick and buttons.

For the musically inclined, an external microphone to use with the GarageBand iPad app might be appreciated. Or an Amplitude iRig to plug a guitar into an iPad or iPhone to turn it into a mobile amplifier/effects studio.

Smartphone cameras are getting so good that they can replace point and shoot cameras. Adapters are available, such as the Glif for an iPhone, that will mount a smartphone to a tripod just like a real camera.

Some day using your cell phone as your credit card will seem as normal as using a debit card today. Smartphones are becoming equipped with technology called near-field communications, or NFC, that will allow the phone to act as a digital wallet. All one has to do is to hold the phone near a card reader. NFC and digital wallets have been in trials for several years.

But we don’t have to wait for NFC. You can, for example, get a Starbucks gift card that can be used by a smartphone app to pay for your Starbucks purchase.

Smartphones and tablets are all controlled by touch. The screens are capacitive, meaning that your fingers have to actually touch the screen to work it. That’s fine until you want to use it with gloves on in the cold. But there is a solution to that. You can buy gloves made with conductive fibres that work with touch screens. Or Twittens brand gloves that let you expose you thumb and forefinger to operate a phone or camera.

If you are buying for the adventurous sort, consider a GoPro HD Hero video camera. It comes with mounts to attach it to a helmet, wing, surfboard, bike or pretty much anything.

High-definition video content is available online from various sources, or might reside in files on one’s computer. Much better, though, to watch it on a big screen TV than a small computer screen.

There are many ways to stream content to a TV from Internet-based services or a computer. Depending on what the individual’s technology of choice is, options include Apple TV, Roku (which you may have to import from the U.S. until sometime in 2012), or even an Xbox. Some Blu-Ray players also include this ability.

If price is no object, check out the “Expensive Gifts” category at blastr.com. The rocket belt, or the working TRON light cycle would no doubt be appreciated.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

I am attending the Dig2011 conference today. Several hundred people will be at the London Convention Centre today and tomorrow to hear about topics in 2 different streams – the digital game industry, and the web industry. (Harrison Pensa is a sponsor.)

The second day includes a mini-MBA for budding game development companies, and a high school stream with panels on the path and options leading to a successful game development career.

There are good employment opportunities in this sector. Companies in the game and software development business are having difficulty finding qualified employees. But just because one likes to play video games, or can create a spreadsheet doesn’t mean you can create a game or software.

The conference also features an exhibitor area, and a place to play the latest Canadian made games. And don’t think that “Canadian made games” connotes few or inferior products. Canada actually has a significant concentration of game developers, which create some of the most popular games.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

Drafting proper trade-mark use descriptions when registering a trade-mark is important to get the right protection. Drafting uses can sometimes be a challenge when the wares or services the mark is used for is new and changing technology. The use description must accurately describe the wares and services the mark is used for, must stand the test of time, and must satisfy CIPO’s (Canadian Intellectual Property Office) rules on use descriptions.

Software is a good example of how things can rapidly change. If a business is selling software in the traditional manner where the user installs it on his/her computer, then from a trade-mark perspective, the software is a ware. It might be described, for example, as “Computer software for [describe function]“.

But if that software is being provided as an online service, then from a trade-mark perspective it is not a ware, it is a service. It might be described, for example, as “Online service providing [describe function]“.

Then we get to the smartphone world. If it is an app installed on a phone, it would be software. If it is coded in html5 and used through the phone’s browser, then it is a service.

Since wares and services are considered to be different things, you can get into the position where, for example, software brand X might be considered confusing with software brand X1 – but not be considered confusing with service brand X1 that provides the same function to the user.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

I’ve been thinking about mobile commerce recently, in part because I am on a panel at the Canadian IT Law Association annual conference tomorrow entitled “Mobile Business: Industry Trends, Public Policy Issues and Legal Implications” along with Jacob Glick of Google, and Eric Gross of Gowlings.

m-commerce is already here, and will grow significantly in the near future. Consider that mobile devices are outselling PC’s.

North America is not on the leading edge of this. Places like Japan and Korea, and parts of Europe are ahead of us.

As examples of what can be done, take a look at these McDonald’s interactive billboards. You play a game on the billboard using your phone to win a virtual coupon. (Ironically, the videos in the article at this link might not play on your iPhone).

Also see the virtual grocery store in a south Korean subway station. The walls have images of store shelves. You take pictures QR codes beside items you want, and the store delivers the purchases to you shortly after you get home.

That we are in the midst of a huge change in the way we communicate in our work and personal lives is no revelation.  But I think many of us don’t realize how rapidly this change is happening, and the many ways it will affect us.

It is a combination of things like mobile access, handheld computing power, inexpensive apps, cloud computing, location awareness, and social media.

Consider this: mobile devices are outselling PC’s, and digital media is equal to television in importance amongst ad executives. 

The explosion of smartphones and tablets enables us to get information about almost anything immediately wherever we are.  And to provide information to others just as quickly.  Tools like Google Goggles and Siri can do that by simply taking a picture of something, or speaking into our phones. (And really, the “phone” part of our phones is dwindling in importance to the rest of their features.)

All businesses and organizations should be thinking about how this is now affecting  them, and how it will affect them in the future – both in how it will challenge their current business models, and how they can use it to their advantage. 

And don’t forget to think about who your competitors will be.  For example, who is going to own the mobile payment space?  It might be the banks and credit card companies – but it could be telcos or Google.

It also raises interesting legal issues – like who owns the movie rights to a crowdsourced story, and how do privacy rights tie in with location aware services?

The one certain thing is that we ignore this revolution at our peril.

The brochure for the Canadian IT Law Association’s annual conference is out.   In my view this is consistently the best continuing education conference available for lawyers practicing IT/IP law. (And I’m not saying that just because I’m on a panel this year.)

The Fifteenth Annual Canadian Information Technology Law Association

It will be held in Toronto, ON, October 27-28, 2011.  For the full conference brochure including registration details, please visit the website at www.it-can.ca. If you have any questions about the program please contact Lisa Ptack, IT.CAN Executive Director at lisa.ptack@rogers.com.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows:

So after talking about how tablets are a game changing technology, I finally made the plunge. It was a toss up between an Android tablet like the upcoming Samsung models, and an iPad2. There are pros and cons to each – but in the end either would be a good choice.

I’ve had the ipad2 for about a week now, and in many ways it truly is magical. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its frustrations – the biggest of which is how Apple designs it to depend on iTunes to share content. I’m not the only one to dislike iTunes – a lot of time and effort is put into creating apps that avoid its use.

I started off with the easy stuff. Reading newspapers for example on the pressreader app. I have actually cancelled my home delivery of the dead-tree version. Wired magazine has just announced that one can get its ipad version for free if you already have a traditional subscription. Reading those on the ipad is a superior experience to paper.

Flipboard is an excellent way to view things like twitter feeds and Google reader feeds.

But I didn’t get it just for that. My plan is to use it like a laptop outside of my office, taking it to meetings, and using it for note taking.

Dragon dictate works amazingly well, and you can simply email the result to yourself.

I have the wifi only version, with a plan to tether it to an Android phone once I get far enough into my current cell plan later this summer that I can replace my phone. (Unless Rogers is reading this and offers to let me upgrade early at a reasonable price.)

Since we are a Microsoft shop, like most law firms, one needs apps that can deal with Office documents, and handle file movement to and from the desktop so they can be dealt with within typical document management procedures. Dropbox is the tool that most use to synch files, but I’d like to try Microsoft Skydrive instead. That’s in part because of the recent issues with Dropbox about their ability to decrypt, and the challenges of using ones’ own encryption in an iPad/Dropbox/PC environment.

For privacy and confidentiality reasons, I don’t think its wise to keep a lot of sensitive information on a portable device, so the easy ability to move documents in and out is important.

In a future post I’ll comment on my eventual solution.

And for those wondering, yes, I did download Angry Birds, and it is addictive.