Wednesday, May 31, 2006
RSS vs. the Newsletter
Over the past few weeks, I have noticed a number of my newsletter subscribers have unsubscribed -- the reason they gave is: "I subscribe to your RSS feed, so I don't need the newsletter anymore."
A response like this creates a dilemma for me. I have published the newsletter since 2000, and the vast majority of my newsletter subscribers will not subscribe to the blog's RSS feed. For that reason, I often include a lot (but not all) of my blog content in the newsletter, so those readers can get the benefit of that information without knowing anything about RSS.
On the other hand, there's a lot of material I put in the newsletter that I don't post on this blog -- the Help Desk, Internet Research Sites, and Fun and Useful are generally newsletter-only features. So unless they regularly read the archives, my RSS readers never see that content.
From now on, I'll make sure I include a link to the newsletter each week, so you RSS readers can get to that content as well. Let's start now: here's a link to the May 28, 2006 issue of the Internet Legal Research Weekly.
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Easily Plan that Global Conference Call
If you're like me, you have a heck of a time scheduling international conference calls. Okay, so I never schedule international conference calls. If I did, I'm sure I'd have a heck of a time doing it. Thank goodness the World Clock Meeting Planner would be there to help me out. All I would have to do is enter the date of the meeting, and up to four locations around the world. Then I'll get a listing of times for that day, where it's easy to see which times are during waking hours. Not sure what I'd do if I had to schedule *five* locations, but it's still a useful site.
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Blawg of the Day
Edward Mello is a Tulsa, Oklahoma law student, and he wants to help others gather information about starting a solo practice in estate planning and elder law. His new blog Solo Estate Planning discusses just that.
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Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Blawg of the Day
The Transnational Crimes Blog is another blog from the firm of McNabb & Associates, a worldwide criminal defense firm.
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Create a Graph
Here's another extension of the Web 2.0-type Office products we've seen a lot of lately -- Create a Graph is a product of the National Center for Education Statistics -- so it's for kids and students, but that doesn't mean we can't use it, too. You can create 2-D, 3-D, or drop-shadow graphs, and you can export them to PDF, JPG, or other image formats. Just fill in the blanks with your data, and you're off.
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Monday, May 29, 2006
Blawg of the Day
Jus in Bello is a weblog from Pace University School of Law. It's authored by three law professors, and it focuses on the International Criminal Court, other international criminal tribunals, and the law of international criminal prosecutions.
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Sunday, May 28, 2006
Blawgs of the Day
We have double your law-related blogging pleasure today:
Rick Georges is the FutureLawyer -- he's blogging about law, computers, and legal technology.
And Counterfeit Chic is the blog of Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Georgetown University School of Law. She's addressing the interesting niche of counterfeit fashion and how and why it happens.
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Saturday, May 27, 2006
Blawgs of the Day
IP and Tax law for you today:
Another day, another law firm intellectual property blog. This one is from Sacramento's Weintraub Genshlea Chediak, and it's the IP Law Blog.
The word "intaxicated" is defined as "euphoric about getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with." The Erb Law Firm in Philadelphia is talking about tax law at Intaxicated, a blog about life, death and taxes.
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Friday, May 26, 2006
More Tips for Outlook Users
I'm always on the lookout for better ways to manage e-mail, and last month Richard Kuo posted two real gems on dealing with the killer app. In his Optimize Your Life #3 -- How to Manage E-Mail Effectively (1/2), he discusses turning off those annoying alerts and other ways of getting your other work done. In Optimize your life #4 - how to manage e-mail (2/2), he incorporates the Getting Things Done method into his e-mail routine -- I started using the GTD method on my Inbox a while back, and it's a terrific way of getting control of the madness.
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Blawg of the Day
The Atlanta firm of Hope Baldauff Hartmann is an intellectual property shop, and they're providing patent prosecution laws, news and information at the Patent Prosecution Blog.
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Thursday, May 25, 2006
Blawg of the Day
David Munn is providing information on technology to corporate counsel at his Legaltech.com Blog.
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Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Blawgs of the Day
Someone known only as Robert Loblaw (say his name, "Bob Loblaw" fast, and you'll get the joke) is having some fun with appellate law at Decision of the Day, "a daily summary of the best (and worst) of federal appellate decisions."
And two lawyers from Colorado, Lawrence King and Christopher Griffith, are posting on the latest in divorce law news, family mediation information and co-parenting topics at Colorado DivorcePoint!
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Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Blawg of the Day
The Distillery is written by Ari Kopolovic, a Toronto law student.
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Monday, May 22, 2006
Desktop Search — Now You Have No Excuse
For several years now I have been a passionate advocate for desktop search products -- they work so much better than Windows' feeble Search feature at finding e-mail, documents, music files, pictures -- just about anything you would want to find on your computer.
Recently I started using X1 on my computer at work, and I love it. The program keeps a constant index of the files on my computer, and there's even a handy toolbar built within Outlook that I can use to perform a search without booting up the program itself. The search feature is lightning-fast, changing the search results literally with every new letter I type. And X1 also highlights my search terms in the preview window, so I can see exactly where in the file those words appear. And X1 doesn't work just on your desktop -- it will also search across your shared network files, too.
The folks at X1 were kind enough to let me share a good thing with you, and they have given me some free licenses for their product. If you're interested, just click here to download it, for free. You'll be glad you did.
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Blawg of the Day
The University of Toronto Faculty of Law is blogging -- seven law professors are participating in the legal discussion.
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Improving E-Mail Responsiveness
Now that our clients are starting to use e-mail as a primary means of communicating with us, they have come to expect (or demand?) that we respond much more rapidly than we would have for say a letter, fax, or phone call. But let's face it, sometimes we're just too busy to reply to an e-mail when it comes in.
My new acquaintance Itzy Sabo at Email Overloaded has a great two-step process for dealing with this problem in How to reply to all email messages within 24 hours, consistently:
1. Need to reply but don't have time right now? Drag the message into a special folder, entitled "Reply", that holds all the messages that need replying to.
2. Schedule a couple of times a day, every day, in which to crank though the Reply folder, during which you shoot off the necessary answers and file the messages elsewhere.
Great productivity tip.
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Sunday, May 21, 2006
Blawgs of the Day
A lawblog twofer for you today, both from the southeast:
The Florida Personal Injury Law Blog is published by Henry E. Gare, a Jacksonville lawyer specializing in personal injury law.
And Womble Carlyle has another blog -- the Trade Secrets Blog is following trade secrets and trade secrets litigation, particularly in the southeast.
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Saturday, May 20, 2006
Blawg of the Day
Christine Mingie is an attorney in the Vancouver office of Lang Michener. She practices sports and entertainment law, among other things, and her blog Gaming Law International discusses gaming law news from around the world, with a focus on Canadian law.
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Friday, May 19, 2006
Blawgs of the Day
Two blogs for you today:
Alan Tauber is examining the extraterritorial application of the U.S. Constitution at Follow the Flag.
And the Moritz Law Library at Ohio State University is blogging away at the Moritz Legal Information Blog, providing legal information and research resources for law students and lawyers alike.
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Thursday, May 18, 2006
Blawg of the Day
And Asuntos Legales, which simply means "Legal Subjects," is the blog of Juan Carlos Covilla Martinez, a law student in Columbia.
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Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Blawgs of the Day
Here are a couple of new blogs for you today:
Not many anti-trust blogs out there, but here's one: (Anti)Trust Me is published by David Fischer.
And for Rhode Island lawyers out there, the Rhode Island Law Journal is brought to you by Eric Nicastro (Providence) and Jon Pincince (Wakefield), two Rhode Island lawyers.
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Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Google Notebook goes live
As I mentioned last week, Google Notebook went live last night, and the response so far has been underwhelming. To take advantage of it, you have to download a small extension, so that you can add items to your notebook just by highlighting your selected text/images, right-clicking, and selecting Note This (Google Notebook). You can make your notebooks public, and you can also print your notebooks to use in other places.
Google Notebook is very easy to use, but it doesn't have all the features I'd want from a web clipping application, like NetSnippets. I don't suppose it was designed to compete with a full-featured product like that, however -- it is free, after all. But it's still a pretty cool tool -- give it a try.
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Blawg of the Day
The admissions office at Harvard Law School is blogging at the JD Admissions Blog. It's intended to "make the admissions process at Harvard Law School more transparent while providing a venue for those tips, nuggets and ideas that get lost in the wave of information greeting law school applicants."
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Monday, May 15, 2006
Get the most out of Google Calendar
Have you tried out the new Google Calendar yet? If so, you might enjoy these Google Calendar Tips to help you get the most out of it. I'm still not using it because it's still lacking one major thing -- the inability to sync with other calendars. Still, it's one of the better calendar offerings out there, and knowing Google it's sure to improve.
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Blawgs of the Day
The D.C. firm of Regan, Halperin & Long are trial lawyers who represent injured victims in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. Their D.C. Metro Area Medical Malpractice Blog discusses such topics as cancer misdiagnosis, cerebral palsy, obstetrics, product liability and tort reform.
And Michael White is the Patent Librarian -- he's blogging from Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and he's discussing facts, opinions, and myths about patent information.
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Sunday, May 14, 2006
Blawg of the Day
Raymond T. Nimmer is a well-known name in the intellectual property field, and he's sharing his knowledge on the subject at Contemporary Intellectual Property, Licensing, and Information Law.
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Saturday, May 13, 2006
Blawgs of the Day
Two blogs to peruse today:
I'm never great translating the foreign-language weblogs, but here goes: Parceiro Pensador is a Portuguese blog, meaning "Thinking Partner." It's maintained by Sandra Mónica Martins Reis Pinto, a lawyer in Porto.
The Supreme Court of Hawai'i Blog (Unofficial) is providing news and commentary about -- you guessed it -- the Supreme Court of Hawai'i, and other legal issues. It's authored by someone known only as David.
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Friday, May 12, 2006
Blawg of the Day
Rob Millard helps law firms and other professional service firms strategize and craft a strategy that best fits the firm's specific circumstance. He's talking about that and other professional development stuff at The Adventure of Strategy.
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Thursday, May 11, 2006
Google coughs up a bunch of new tools
It used to be that Google debuted a new service or feature every few weeks. It looks like they aren't doing that anymore -- instead, they're announcing a whole bunch of them all at once. Yesterday the following new stuff was unveiled:
-- Google Coop -- it's designed so that regular folks like you and me can label pages and help Google create specialized search tools. They are already creating guides on Destination Guides, Health, Autos, Computer and Video Games, and more. These vertical search tools should be really cool once they are up and running. There has already been a lot of buzz on the Health Search.
-- The new version of Google Desktop now includes some cool new gadgets. I'm not a user, but everyone I know who uses it loves the search capabilities -- just be careful of the potential privacy implications.
-- Type in two different words or phrases (say, good vs. evil) at Google Trends, and you'll see how they match up in terms of popularity.
The Google tool I'm most interested in isn't coming until next week. Stay tuned for the Google Notebook.....
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Marketing Links
This month's issue of Law Practice Today is all about Marketing - there are some terrific articles posted on using marketing in your practice, and increasing service to your clients. I contributed a Strongest Links article this month with a listing of the newest marketing weblogs that have popped up over the past year. Give it a look.
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Blawgs of the Day
Double your blog-reading pleasure today:
Patricio Mecklenburg Diaz is a Chilean lawyer, and the eponymous MecklenBLOG is discussing legal issues for "leguleyos."
And we also have Judging Crimes, billed as "a view of the bench from the trenches." It's the blog of Joel Jacobsen, who's an Assistant Attorney General in New Mexico.
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Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Blawgs of the Day
Double your pleasure today with two blogs:
Laurie Williams has been providing Internet marketing services to law firms for over 10 years. She's sharing her knowledge and tips now at her blog, legalmarketing.allthingslegal.com.
And Ian Best is a 3L at Moritz Law School. He created 3L Epiphany to explore blogging, and to demonstrate the many potential uses of a law student blog. He's created a Taxonomy of Legal Blogs that contains most of the law-related weblogs that are active today.
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Keeping your focus
I don't know know about you, but I *really* hate it when other programs try to take over when I'm working on my computer. You've probably had it happen before. You're working on one program, while another (perhaps a web site) is doing something else. Then without warning, that program suddenly appears in front of you, stealing your attention away from what you were doing.
I never thought this was a problem that could be fixed -- that it was just the price we as computer users had to pay for multitasking. That's why I was happy to read this article from Lifehacker on how to stop focus thieves. Just download Microsoft's TweakUI tool (a nifty, free download), and follow the directions in the article to prevent other applications from "stealing focus."
I just downloaded it and already it has allowed me to keep focus on this blog post three times...
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Tuesday, May 9, 2006
Episode Three....
...of the Kennedy-Mighell Report is up, and this one is our ABA TECHSHOW Wrap-Up. Dennis and I discuss what we saw and learned at TECHSHOW, and we talk a bit about legal technology in 2006.
And we promise, this is the last podcast on TECHSHOW (for a while, anyway). We'll be discussing something with an Internet feel next episode.
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Blawgs of the Day
IP Law Observer is the blog of the lawyers at Folger Levin & Kahn. They're blogging about intellectual property law issues including patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret and privacy law.
And from the marketing front, Smart Marketing provides marketing tips for attorneys and financial professionals, brought to you by Mark Merenda.
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Monday, May 8, 2006
Blawg of the Day
Who's behind the Florida Dirt blog? Beats me, but you can read about Florida real estate and property law issues there.
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Sunday, May 7, 2006
Blawg of the Day
Two criminal law blogs for you today:
The BC Criminal Law Blog is brought to you by the folks at Stern and Albert, a British Columbia firm practicing, as you might expect, criminal defense law.
And from the Crime Attorneys, a nationwide law firm working exclusively in criminal defense, comes the Embezzlement Lawyer Blog, featuring news on this specific area of criminal law.
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Saturday, May 6, 2006
Blawgs of the Day
In April 2005, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, otherwise known as BAPCPA, was passed in Congress. David Rosendorf's BAPCPA Blog will follow the implementation of this legislation as its provisions are interpreted and applied by the courts.
And Ben Cowgill, who has already been blogging away at Ben Cowgill on Legal Ethics, wasn't content with just one blog. So he's "advancing the oldest traditions of independent law practice, using the newest advances in information technology" at his new SoloBlawg.
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Friday, May 5, 2006
Blawg of the Day
Christopher F. Earley's Massachusetts Personal Injury Blog, which as you might imagine is about personal injury matters in...Massachusetts. Christopher is providing informal discussion of motor vehicle, bicycle, and pedestrian accidents, slip and falls, dog bites, and other accidents.
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Thursday, May 4, 2006
Keeping a Clean Desk(top)
It's happened to me innumerable times -- I'm looking over the shoulder of a colleague, looking at the computer screen, and he/she reduces all programs to the taskbar, exposing the desktop -- which is cluttered with so many icons I can't even begin to see the wallpaper behind. At this point I'm glad I'm standing behind, so the person cannot see me wince in pain.
You know who you are -- you like to keep downloaded files and lots of other shortcuts at hand, so you can easily access them. I am not one of these people. I like to keep as clean a desktop as possible; it's just one of my things.
If there's a neat freak inside you just bursting to get free, there's hope. Just follow the 4 Steps to Desktop Zen, and soon you'll be saying, "hey -- I didn't know I still had that picture as my wallpaper!"
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Blawg of the Day
Christina Imre is publishing the Appellate Strategist, which she intends as "a platform for sharing information and emerging information of note relating to appellate law and punitive damage awards."
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Wednesday, May 3, 2006
Blawg of the Day
Two law student blogs for you today:
Above is written by Supra (above -- get it?) -- she's a first year law student in San Francisco, and she's writing about the law school world.
And Hil Kaman wrote to tell me of his blog, law-new-view. He's a law student in Seattle, and he's using his blog to provide brief comments and observations on the law, the legal system, and society.
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Tuesday, May 2, 2006
Blawgs of the Day
A double shot of blogs for you today:
From a niche blog yesterday to one with a seemingly broad scope; Human Law is the blog of Justin Patten, a Solicitor in the United Kingdom. He's talking about law, technology, and people there.
And then there's Web-Tones, the blog of a 20-year veteran of the technology industry, who is now a law student at Stetson College of Law in Florida.
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Monday, May 1, 2006
Blawg of the Day
Here's an interesting niche blog for you: the Nutritional and Dietary Supplement Law Blog is devoted to litigation and regulation of dietary supplements and the law. It's brought to you by Joel Rothman, a litigation and intellectual property attorney with the Boca Raton firm of Rutherford Mulhall.
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