TechnoLawyer: Desktop PCs/Servers

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers a multifunction network appliance for small law firms (see article below), mind mapping software that integrates with Microsoft Office, and backup software that can backup anything to anything. Don't miss the next issue.

Internet in a Black Box
By Taeho Lim

In Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," a black monolith taught the apes everything they needed to made the jump to humanity. That black monolith was the first network appliance.

Plustek's MultiServer MFA 1000S looks a lot like one of those monoliths — a black tower that sits between your network and the Internet, and provides your firm with today's essential services, including a router, email server, Web server, anti-virus and anti-spam protection, firewall, FTP, QoS, VoIP telephone service, SMS messaging, file server, and DNS.

MultiServer MFA 1000S runs on Linux, the popular open source operating system mostly used on servers. For email, MultiServer MFA 1000S supports IMAP and provides SSL encryption so that you can send and receive email securely even when using a mobile device. You can access email using clients like Outlook or via your Web browser. It can even handle multiple domains.

In addition to scanning email for viruses and spam, MultiServer MFA 1000S can also archive email and monitor it for certain keywords or domain names. Storage is unlimited as you can add additional hard drives as necessary.

MultiServer MFA 1000S features a system recovery feature, enabling you to roll back to any point in time. Thus, you can easily retrieve a mistakenly deleted message or undo any incorrect settings. You can manage MultiServer MFA 1000S via your Web browser, including downloading and applying updates. MultiServer MFA 1000S supports Chinese, German, French, and Japanese in addition to English. MultiServer MFA 1000S carries a street price of approximately $975. Learn more about MultiServer MFA 1000S.

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Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that enables you to learn about new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming December 7, 2007 to Fat Friday: Harold Goldner explains how his solo practice survived a hard drive failure, Steven Schwaber reviews ActiveWords (and our publisher ponders the speed of keyboard commands versus mousing), Jonathan Cope responds to a recent post that criticized CLE seminars, Deborah Schneider reviews her experience with Dell versus other PC makers, and Ed Schoenecker discusses what's missing from Office 2007. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Fridays, Fat Friday is a weekly newsletter that features a grab bag full of genuinely useful product reviews and tips on a wide variety of topics. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

BlawgWorld enables you to explore and discover legal blogs (blawgs) without spinning your wheels. It features the best essays of the year from 77 of the most influential blawgs.

TechnoLawyer Problem/Solution Guide uses a question/answer format to help you find solutions to problems commonly encountered by law firms. It contains 185 solutions organized into 58 topics.

Thanks to the eBook's inspired design, you're never more than three clicks away from what you want to read. BlawgWorld 2007-08 with TechnoLawyer Problem/Solution Guide has received glowing reviews from many publications. For example, LLRX writes:

"The substance of both books is exceptional, while the eBook format is innovative and inviting.... [The eBook] was designed to open in just about any PDF viewer and it worked very well in my various tests.... The best part of the entire eBook is that it is free."

Download Your Free Copy Now
BlawgWorld 2007-08 with TechnoLawyer Problem/Solution Guide is truly free — no registration hassles.

So please download your copy now (PDF file).

And then enter our sweepstakes.

Coming October 4, 2007 to Answers to Questions: Paul Purdue compares PracticeMaster, Time Matters, and Amicus Attorney, Brian Garves reviews RoboForm for password management, Pamela Coleman provides four helpful tips for printing temperamental documents, Anthony Vrsecky shares his firm's approach to trust accounting with QuickBooks, and Matt Baker sends in an update on his firm's clean install of Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 and its impact on PCLaw's performance. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published Thursdays, Answers to Questions is a weekly newsletter in which TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers (including you if you join TechnoLawyer). Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming September 6, 2007 to Answers to Questions: Charles T. Lester, Jr. reviews three document comparison programs, Michael Kenwood explains how to set up dual monitors on a computer with a KVM switch and how to best manage a server, Paul Mathias discusses his conversion from Windows to Mac, Steven J. Best compares Amicus Accounting to Timeslips,  and Richard Stevens shares some tips on finding "out of title" cases. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published Thursdays, Answers to Questions is a weekly newsletter in which TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers (including you if you join TechnoLawyer). Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers an automated metadata removal utility, a database that doesn't require programming, and monitoring software designed to keep your servers up and running. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Metadata, Meet Your Match
By Dennis Kennedy

We regularly read news accounts of sensitive, confidential, or downright embarrassing information being exposed through poor metadata handling practices. Metadata is all that hidden data associated with your document files, including deleted text, comments, author name, date created, email addresses, and more.

We most often hear about it in connection with Microsoft Word documents, but metadata can also be found in PowerPoint presentations, and any other office suite that generates OpenDocument format (ODF).

3BView's 3BClean metadata management tool does what its name suggests. It helps you ensure that each document contains only the appropriate metadata or none at all if you prefer. When you email a document, 3BClean automatically monitors and cleans unnecessary metadata pursuant to your settings.

3BClean emphasizes automation. You can administer rules-based metadata policies for your entire office through a central administrator. No software is installed on user desktops and little or no user training is required. 3BClean can scale from single documents to thousands of documents. It also cleans email attachments sight unseen and even supports Webmail, BlackBerrys, and PDAs — a plus in this day and age as lawyers often send email with attachments when they are on the road, in court, or burning the midnight oil at home.

3BClean's smarts and versatility stem from the fact that it resides on a server. As a result, it also integrates with document management systems and works on Mac and Linux machines as well as Microsoft Windows. This centralized approach enables you to enforce firm-wide policies consistently both in and outside of the office.

In addition to metadata scrubbing, 3BClean can convert files, at your option, to a cleaned, secure PDF format for worry-free distribution. (Traditional PDF conversion does not remove metadata.)

In a new twist on the free trial, you can upload a document to 3BView's Web site to test 3BClean. You can also sign up for a free 2 week trial. Learn more about 3BClean.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that enables you to learn about new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

BlawgWorld 2007 with TechnoLawyer Problem/Solution Guide is a free eBook. Actually, it's two eBooks in one PDF file.

BlawgWorld 2007 is the best way to explore and discover legal blogs (blawgs). It features 77 remarkable essays from 77 of the most influential blawgs. Each blogger handpicked their best essay of the year for inclusion in the eBook.

The 2007 TechnoLawyer Problem/Solution Guide is a revolutionary new way to find Solutions to Problems your law firm is experiencing. Specifically, it contains 185 Problems and corresponding Solutions.

Each Problem is written in the form of a question from the point of view of a law firm and organized by topic. Topics include case management, depositions, discovery, document management, legal research, time-billing, and many more — 58 topics in all.

Download Our eBook Now
Our eBook is truly free. You click the link and it downloads. No registration hassles.

Download your copy of the eBook now.

And then watch our press conference.

Coming July 26, 2007 to Answers to Questions: Stephen Lambeth explains why he would want to see a Microsoft branded PC, Sanjay Singh explains how QuickFile 4 Outlook works and why, Pam Rolph suggests a quick solution for anyone who can't print a large PDF file (use at your own risk), Daniel Fennick claims to have the answer that will end the Word v. WordPerfect debate, and Ernest Marquez explains how to set up and use multiple monitors. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published Thursdays, Answers to Questions is a weekly newsletter in which TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers (including you if you join TechnoLawyer). Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming February 9, 2007 to Fat Friday: Barron Henley gives the lowdown on how to buy Dell computers for use in a law firm, John Starkweather shares how a $100 million Powerball victory would change his personal injury practice (and who he'd really like to pursue), Tim Donovan discusses why he thinks PowerPoint can serve as an effective presentation tool, Susan Billeaud discusses a $30 tool that streamlines her billing process, and Ken Laska reflects on a recent legal video that we exposed. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Fridays, Fat Friday is a weekly newsletter that features a grab bag full of genuinely useful product reviews and tips on a wide variety of topics. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers an online repository with Google-like search speed, PDF creation software for thrifty law firms, and a plug-and-play Microsoft Exchange appliance that promises 99.99% uptime for your firm's e-mail. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Finding Needles in E-Discovery Haystacks Very Quickly
By Dennis Kennedy
As electronic discovery becomes a fixture in complex litigation, both law firms and clients seek better ways to handle large volumes of documents. Increasingly, they seem to choose online repositories. Security, features, and other factors play important roles in the selection process. However, speed may be the biggest consideration. Do you really want to enter a complex search through millions of documents and wait minutes rather than milliseconds for your results?

Catalyst Secure's Catalyst CR 6.0 (Grid Edition) attacks the issue of speed directly. The first grid-based document review and litigation support platform, CR 6.0 delivers sub-second response times for complex searches. In audited benchmark testing, CR brought back search results in less than a second in the vast majority of queries even for queries with 750 search terms and 15 million documents.

CR 6.0 uses an innovative grid-based computing system that efficiently uses a large number of servers to generate fast results. The grid runs the well-known FAST search engine, optimized for the types of searches used in electronic discovery.

You can locate the documents you want swiftly using keyword, full-text, date-range, proximity, concept and even bates-number searches. CR 6.0 supports native review of Office documents, e-mail, and hundreds of other file formats, and has been optimized for PDF files. CR 6.0 uses a simple interface for searching designed to give you both flexibility and power. You can save searches, tag results, and manage workflow.

Once you locate documents, you and your team can review, redact, and prepare them for production, especially under tight deadlines. Every party in a case can securely use the CR 6.0 repository.

CR 6.0 provides a secure platform that can scale as your repository grows, but the speed will likely impress you and your team the most.

Contact Catalyst Secure for information about pricing, which depends on the size of the repository.  Learn more about Catalyst CR 6.0.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that enables you to learn about new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.