Twitter in the Courtroom

I stumbled across a posting on Slaw.ca a couple of days ago that mentioned a ruling by the presiding judge in the trial of Ottawa, Canada mayor Larry O'Brien that enables reporters to report live using their electronic devices.  Glen McGregor is doing so via http://www.twitter.com/obrientrial.

If you subscribe to McGregor's feed and follow his tweets when trial resumes on Tuesday May 19th, you'll get a surprisingly raw and detailed "play by play" despite the short length of the feeds. A great compliment to the more ... polished... pieces that appear in newspapers, web sites and on TV.

Meaningful content from a credible source on a (to some) relevant topic in a timely fashion to any number of "subscribers" - great application for Twitter.

(Note: if you happen to review McGregor's feeds before he begins posting again when the trial resumes, you'll see reference to "about X hours ago," which doesn't give you the sense of frequency of posts. During the actual trail he's posting every few minutes.)