As of yesterday, Canadians can use Google’s Map Maker to correct and add details to places in Canada that appear on Google Maps. You can add roads, hiking paths, buildings, businesses and just about any other detail or point of interest that only a local person would know.

Map Maker brings the Wikipedia model the world of online mapping and proves once again that there is order in chaos. People in 188 other countries and regions around the world have had a chance to use Map Maker and the results are amazing. Changes are reviewed by Google staff or other …

Sometimes data just demand to be presented in the form of a table. Besides, there’s something pleasing about lining things up this way and that way; it seems to make whatever is in the table cells clearer and your sense of control firmer.

While creating tables in Word isn’t all that hard, it does require going up to the menu and fishing around for the right buttons to push. If all you want is a series of compartments — cells — for confining a set of thoughts in a single row, you can whip up a table right from the …

Over the years, Google doodles (adaptations of the standard Google logo) on the Google homepage have generated surprise and interest for people visiting the Google site to do a search. Doodles celebrate events, holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous people.

The concept of the doodle was born in 1998 when Google founders Larry and Sergey played with the corporate logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. A stick figure drawing was placed behind the 2nd “o” in the word, Google and the revised logo was intended as a comical message to Google …

“Search by Image” is an amazing new search functionality that Google now has. And to be clear, this isn’t the same as Google’s image search (i.e., searching for an image using a string of text).

Search by Image lets you find other occurrences of an image on the web, as well as all sorts of other content from the web that’s related to a specific image. For example, search using a picture of your favourite band and you will see search results that might include similar images, webpages about the band, and even sites that included the same …

There are times when a text message gets better attention than an email. And then there are times when you’re not able to text from you phone — for example because you’re at your desk and your phone is… elsewhere. In such cases, you can use your email program to fashion the 160-character message and ship it off to your recipient’s phone.

You only have to know which service your recipient uses (because each service has its own text-as-email address), which is likely to be the case if you’re sending the message to a friend or an office-mate who has …

Sometimes you will get an email from a client and that will trigger the need to have an in person meeting. This requires the creation of an entry in your calendar. To save time and avoid re-entering all the information in the email, remember that you can create an appointment in your calendar by dragging the e-mail message to the taskbar Calendar icon and dropping it there. All the information from the original email will automatically be transferred to the new calendar entry – no need to retype it. Make any necessary edits and save the meeting entry. This trick …

Have several tips in draft, but came across (hat tip to Ben Schorr) this really great post on Yahoo’s Upgrade Your Life blog: 5 ways to make an easy-to-remember, ultra-secure password.

This is a must read. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Essential and very practical advice in this post – please read it – I guarantee you will change a bunch of your passwords.

And it closes with a good suggestion for those of us that can’t remember all our passwords: Consider using a password manager like LastPass and 1Password. With a password manager, you’ll use …

If you routinely print two or more kinds of documents, each requiring its own printer settings, you’ve probably found it frustrating to have to re-enter all the printer properties every time you change documents.

There is actually a very simple trick to avoid having to do this. Simply install the same printer two or more times, but with different names and settings.

This way, you simply select the “printer” that has the group of print settings you want each time you print.

To install a printer with new print settings in Windows, go to Start, Settings, Printers, and click the …

PIPEDA and Your Practice: A Privacy Handbook for Lawyers was launched by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at the Canadian Bar Association Canadian Legal Conference and Expo 2011. This handbook explains how the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) relates to the everyday practice of Canadian lawyers in the private sector.

PIPEDA covers the collection, use and disclosure of personal information in the course of commercial activities. Like other organizations in Canada, lawyers and law firms must comply with the requirements of applicable privacy legislation in their jurisdictions. This resource describes best practices in managing …

Lynda.com is one of the best online technology training sites you will find. For just $25 a month, you have access to more than 1,100 online courses on just about every program you would ever want to use. Stop, rewind and replay videos as many times as you want. This is an ideal way to brush up on basic or advanced skills, or to provide help to an eager staff member who just wants to learn more. What a bargain!…