TechnoLawyer: TL Editorial

You don't have time to track 100 business and technology magazines and blogs. We do. Below you'll find five excellent articles we've recently come across.

17 Deadly Small Business Mistakes

Addicted to E-Mail? You're Not Alone.

What Would Vader Do?

The Unexpected Effects of Apple's Intel Move: Linux Is Likely the Big Loser

New FTC Regulation on Document Destruction Impacts Law Firms

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

Tired of my friends poking fun at me for continuing to use a Motorola StarTac phone despite my role as publisher of TechnoLawyer, I set out to find a replacement. Actually, I had periodically searched for a replacement, but found nothing compelling. Finally, Motorola released the Razr, which seemed to provide everything I wanted.

What do I like about the Razr? Thanks to its slim profile, I can keep it in my pants pocket (even jeans!). It has a speakerphone, which I like using when listening to voice-mail messages. It synchronizes with my PowerBook using the same USB cable that I use for my digital camera (don't waste your money on the official cable).

Once you synchronize your address book, you can set up customized voice dialing. For example, I can click the voice dialing button, say "Julia Work," and the phone will dial my friend Julia's work number. Because you decide what you'll say, you can endlessly amuse yourself -- use your favorite expletive to voice dial an adversary!

The dual LCD displays enable you to view caller ID information without opening the phone. Cingular's coverage here in the New York metropolitan area is excellent (no dead spots yet), and the Razr provides crystal clear sound -- almost as good as a land line in my opinion.

What do I not like? Just two complaints so far. First, voice dialing does not work reliably outside in noisy environments (like midtown Manhattan). Second, when you receive a voice-mail message, the phone does not provide a persistent audible or visual alert. For example, my StarTac would flash its red LED until you retrieved your voice-mail. The Razr plays a one-time audio alert after receiving a voice-mail message, but after that the only way to see if you have a voice-mail message is to check the LCD display, which requires pressing a button. (If you know how to configure a persistent alert, please reply to this Post.)

I paid $299 for my Razr phone. Of course, it now sells for $199 and comes in a black version. If you wish to keep your current telephone number, you must order the Razr directly from Cingular.

Do you have a Razr? If so, what do you think?

Read Mobiledia's review and CNet's review.

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

On June 10, 2005, legal technology pioneer Jim Keane passed away after a long battle with cancer.  Jim was among the first TechnoLawyer members and remained so until his untimely passing. Over the years, he contributed 19 outstanding Posts to TechnoLawyer. Jim was an uber legal technology expert. Among his many accomplishments, he started up JusticeLink, which eventually merged with LawPlus and became LexisNexis CourtLink. Jim's good friend Tom O'Connor, also a TechnoLawyer member and legal technology guru, had the following to say about his friend:

"Jim Keane, a true pioneer in legal technology and LPM stalwart, as well as a great friend of mine, passed away earlier today after a prolonged bout with cancer. We passed many an evening, as Irishmen do, telling each other great lies about our business exploits and greater truths about our love of friends and family. My mom passed away last fall and I'll miss Jim in my life not a touch less than I do her. I suspect anyone who had the pleasure of meeting him will miss his presence just as much. He was an excellent attorney,  outstanding  technologist, and an even better person."

Wherever Jim is now, I'm sure he's talking to a group of lawyers about the importance of e-filing and online dockets. We will not forget him, and we extend our condolences to his family.

Update: Via DennisKennedy.blog comes news that Jim Keane's family has set up an online guest book that you can sign.

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

As evidenced by our recent coverage in Fat Friday, Corel has a renewed interest in the legal profession. TechnoLawyer member Stephen Seldin writes in with news of a CRN article about the Department of Justice's recent decision to extended its Corel WordPerfect license for another five years. The DOJ apparently has 50,000 PCs running WordPerfect.

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

These days, many e-mail programs have a very annoying "feature" — they don't load remote images in HTML e-mail messages (images that load from a Web server, not those attached to a message). Instead, you must manually click to download the images in each such message. This "feature" supposedly protects you by preventing spammers from detecting that you've opened their messages. Fine, but many of us don't receive much spam, yet some e-mail programs don't allow us to turn this "feature" off.

Unfortunately, these programs also block remote cascading style sheets (CSS). Nowadays, many law firms and especially publishers use CSS when designing Web pages. Thanks to CSS, you need not place design elements in each Web page, but can instead simply refer to a file with all the design specifications, including font information.

All well and good, but if you refer to a remote CSS in your HTML e-mail newsletters, you risk not having your e-mail newsletters render properly thanks to the image-blocking feature noted above. To make matters worse, even embedding CSS in your newsletter carries a risk because some of the online e-mail services (such as Gmail) strip embedded CSS from e-mail newsletters.

For this reason, I recommend that you use <font> tags and other basic HTML formatting code within your HTML e-mail newsletters. Also, use <br> tags instead of <p> tags for line breaks as the former will preserve fonts. While using these tags will add to the complexity of your code, at least your newsletters will look as intended regardless of whether your recipients download images or not.

We have always used <font> tags and <br> tags in the HTML version of TechnoLawyer newsletters (most of our members elect to receive our newsletters in plain text though, not HTML).

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

As reported in Application Development Trends, three entrepreneurs plan to launch SeaCode, a software development company that will reside on a boat in international waters three miles outside of Los Angeles. With this strategy, Seacode will offer clients cheap labor in the Pacific time zone. If SeaCode succeeds, how long until SeaLaw emerges? Read the article.

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

Google has a habit of introducing new features without making accompanying announcements. Therefore, even if you use Google daily, you may not know about certain features. Today, I'll run through some of my favorites.

Longtime TechnoLawyer members know that I maintain my weight by counting calories. Sometimes, it's easier to calculate calories using grams (e.g., 100 grams of strawberries = 40 calories), and sometimes it's easier to do so using ounces (e.g., 1 ounce of cheese = 100 calories). If your kitchen scale limits you to ounces, Google enables you to convert from our system to the metric system (but not vice versa for some odd reason). For example, search for "3.5 ounces" and Google provides "93.5 grams." If you want an equivalent liquid measurement, enter "3.5 fluid ounces" and Google provides "103.5 milliliters."

A few months ago, Google released a service vastly superior to the competition — Google Maps. The maps are clear and easy to manipulate, and the driving directions are the next best thing to having a GPS navigation system. Google Maps also provides satellite images so take a look at your home.

Most people know that you can use Google as a dictionary. Just enter a word, and Google provides a link to a definition. If you misspell it, Google will provide the correct spelling. But Google recently overhauled this system to provide additional functionality such as a thesaurus and encyclopedia. The latter needs more work — it can provide a bio of Theodore Roosevelt, but not Bill Clinton.

For more than a year, Google News has provided a remarkable service that few people know about — simply run a search and then click on "News Alerts" to save that search and sign up for e-mail alerts. Thereafter, Google will e-mail you links to news articles that match your search. Recently, Google added the ability to receive e-mail alerts for Web pages that match your search as well.

Two weeks ago, Google unveiled Search History — a service that saves all your searches. The service is optional so ignore all the controversy. Furthermore, even if you sign up, you can pause it, which means you can use it only when conducting the kind of research you'd like to save. You can also delete any of your searches.

Do you have any little-known Google tips of your own you'd like to share?

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear here in TechnoLawyer Blog and also in our TechnoGuide newsletter, but they appear in TechnoGuide first. TechnoGuide also contains exclusive content.

Scratch a blog and you'll find an RSS feed (a.k.a. XML feed). An RSS feed enables you to monitor a blog or other RSS-enabled source without having to visit the Web site. Currently, most RSS feeds consist of raw text and links so when you use them, you miss out on the site's Web design.

Hence, my prediction — Web design will eventually find its way into RSS feeds, especially those of commercial publications. Many RSS purists don't like this idea, arguing that RSS should consist solely of content. To which I say: Isn't design an integral component of content? If design didn't matter, we wouldn't bother hiring Web designers, but we do. We all want to control the look and feel of our Web sites so why not our feeds as well? Shouldn't feed reading provide the same experience as Web browsing?

Just as the purists of an earlier era could not stop the commercialization of the Web or HTML in e-mail, they will not be able to stop what some call "CSS in RSS" (CSS stands for "cascading style sheets," which provide instructions to Web browsers about the design of a Web page).

If you would like a glimpse of the future, copy and paste the RSS feed for MarketingVox (an excellent online marketing news blog) into Thunderbird (select "Account Settings" under the Tools menu, and then add a new "RSS News & Blogs" account to get started). See below for a screenshot. Also, check out this Joi Ito blog post and the ensuing discussion.

What do you think about CSS in RSS?

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear here in TechnoLawyer Blog and also in our TechnoGuide newsletter, but they appear in TechnoGuide first. TechnoGuide also contains exclusive content.

I serve as a Senior Contributor for MarketingProfs.com, an excellent marketing Webzine. Recently, MarketingProfs.com published an article entitled Services Marketing Is Moving Online — Are You? Towards the end of the article, the author, Mike Schultz, does a nice job explaining how online marketing actually works when well-executed — read at least this section if you don't have time to read the entire article.

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

At LegalTech New York, my colleague Sara and I sat through a demonstration of a new service — LexisNexis Marketing Intelligence. With this tool, you can analyze litigation and other public data to figure out where to focus your marketing efforts. For example, you may notice that a competitor of yours has experienced decline in intellectual property business in recent years, which may provide you with an opportunity to swoop in and pick off its clients. You may not find this type of marketing hardball palatable, but it merits your consideration by virtue of the growing demand for such "business intelligence" and "data mining" tools. Leigh Jones recently explored this phenomenon in the National Law Journal. Eat or be eaten.

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.