Author Archives

    Bryan Sims

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    Owning Your Own Domain

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    Legal Technologist (and all around great guy) Nerino Petro recently a posted about the benefits of owning your own domain. Nerino points out two good reasons to own your own domain. First, it is a great branding technique. As Nerino points out, you don’t even have to have a website to own the domain and have an email account associated with it. Second, it provides you with a professional email address to provide to your clients.

    Check out Nerino’s entire post. In the post he includes links to several additional posts that point out the benefits of owning your own domain.

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    A GMail Tip

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    The ABA Techshow Blog had a great GMail tip a couple of weeks ago. The post explains how you can tell if someone is accessing your GMail account from another location:

    Once you’re signed in, at the bottom of the page you’ll find a lot of fine print.  Beneath where it indicates how much of your allotted storage space you’re currently using, you’ll see a line that gives the time and IP address of your last account activity.  Click on the “Details” link, and you’ll be taken to a window showing the last several times anyone signed in to your account, how (Browser, mobile, POP3, etc.), the IP address, and the time.  It will also tell you whether there is concurrent activity.  There’s also a button to allow you to close any concurrent sessions and link to allow you to change your password immediately.

    I know that most people have a GMail account that they use for some purpose. Doesn’t it make sense to check this every once in a while to make sure someone else isn’t accessing your account?

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    And Now for Something Completely Different: Jonathan Coulton

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    I know that this has nothing to do with anything legal, however, this weekend I was finally able to see Jonathan Coulton in concert. For a good description of the concert, check out this review. The short version is as follows:

    Paul & Storm opened and did a fantastic job. They are hilarious and I would love to see them do a full show.

    They took a short intermission and then Coulton came out with Paul and Storm and performed the entire They Might Be Giants Flood album. For an explanation of why, see Jonathan’s blog here.

    After that, Jonathan went into his own stuff and played a really enjoyable set. The audience clearly loved songs such as Code Monkey, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Skullcrusher Mountain, and Re Your Brains. The only songs I really missed that he did not play were Chiron Beats Prime and The Presidents.

    The concert started at 8 and didn’t end until about 11:15. Although there was a brief intermission, it was still basically 3 hours of musical goodness.

    If you like Coulton at all and you are anywhere near where he is performing, I can’t recommend him highly enough.

    Also, I would recommend the venue where we saw the concert: Park West. This was a great venue with good seating (we sat in a booth) and an attentive, but not overbearing, wait staff. After looking around, I am not sure that there is a bad seat in the house.

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    Upcoming Events

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    Just a note to let people know where I will be speaking in the near future.

    Tomorrow, October 8, 2009, I will be speaking on Setting up your Practice: Equipment and Systems for the ISBA at a CLE on the Business Side of the Criminal Law Practice. Tomorrow’s CLE is at the Chicago Regional Office of the ISBA. A week later, I am doing the same presentation in Bloomington.

    Later in the month, the ISBA is presenting the 5th Annual Solo and Small Firm Conference. There I will be presenting on Technology and Services that Every Lawyer Needs to Run the Office and The Hidden Danger: How Failing to Understand Metadata and Redaction in Electronic Documents can Ruin your Day.

    I encourage you to attend the Solo Small Firm. I have been there every and have enjoyed it every time. You still have time to register. Just click here.

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    Comcast Continues to Confuse Me

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    I recently wrote about how we had switched our home phone to Comcast Digital Voice, we didn’t like the service and we were switching back to Vonage. Switching back is a fairly simple process, we simply contact Vonage and have them start the process to port the number back to Vonage.

    While this is going on, we are getting inundated with communications from Comcast telling us that we have to have a digital converter box for every television in our house or we will be unable to watch certain channels. Despite the number of communications, I have yet to find anything that actually explains what change Comcast is making and why it requires me to have digital converter boxes. It’s not a huge deal because they will provide them to me at no additional charge. (I will note that, once I hook up the converter box, my HD TV will no longer be able to pull the HD feeds from the local stations that it currently pulls off the cable connection. Make of that what you will).

    Anyway, I call Comcast and order the additional converter boxes that I need. A few days later I receive a call from Comcast. The caller tells me that because I have placed an order to port my telephone number to a different service, they cannot place an order on my account to deliver the additional cable equipment to me. Instead, once my number is ported, I should call back and order the equipment again. WTF?

    Unfortunately, I missed the call, so all I have is a message. Thus, I could not ask the person to explain this. Does anyone have any conceivable explanation for how this can be? It makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

    My number was ported on Monday. I called that afternoon and ordered the equipment again. However, I am still confused.

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    An Acrobat Learning Experience

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    On Tuesday, I attended the Acrobat demonstration that I recently posted about. As usual Rick Borstein and Mark Middleton did a great job. Despite the fact that I had already seen each portion of the presentation as part of a webcast, there were still things that I learned that I would never had known had I not gone.

    There is still time for you to sign up for the presentations in Seattle or San Francisco. I cannot urge your strongly enough to learn how to leverage the power of Acrobat.

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    Unpaid Internships

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    Mark Cuban recently posted a screed about how he was unable to provide unpaid internships through the Mavericks.  Mark explains:

    One silver lining of a “great recession” that we are now in is that there are a lot of incredibly talented people without jobs, or who have lost their jobs. I didn’t care if they were 18 years old or 73 years old.  I thought we could assemble a talented group who would enjoy the internships and could also gain valuable experience to add to their resumes.  When the economy opened up, one of two things would hopefully occur.  We were generating revenue from this effort and we could hire them, or they had just built up their resumes and improved their chances of finding a paying job.

    Makes sense right ?

    Wrong. Enter the US Government.

    This is what our HR person, who his supersmart and really knows his stuff came back with

    “The law says that interns have to be paid unless they are perfoming work that is of no value to the organization; ie., helps them in some way but we get no benefit from their work.  Thus we would have to create work that is useless to us  if we choose not to pay them.  How silly is that?”

    I would love to hear the thoughts on employment lawyers on this one. The additional info Mark provides appears to support what he was told.

    I understand the concept of not violating minimum wage laws. However, when I look back at the two internships that I did what I was in college, I am sure of a few things. First, if the “employer” would have had to pay me, I would not have had the opportunity offered by the internship. Second, if I had been paid for what I was doing (at least in my first internship) that would have been unfair. Third, the experience I gained in the first internship convinced me that I wanted nothing to do with local government. Fourth, the experience I gained at my second internship, provided me with foundational skills that I still use today.

    It’s just sad to learn that the internships I had would be illegal today.

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    First Thing: Reboot

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    I was going to go into a long involved story about what happened to me this morning. However, I decided that this is much more simple. If you are having a problem with your computer. Do not contact your IT person about the problem until you have at least rebooted the computer once. Why? Because that is the first thing I (and everyone else I know) is going to have you do.

    Reboot. If you still have the problem after rebooting, then contact someone.

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    The Federal Courts Are OK With RECAP

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    As most of you know, recently a Firefox plugin was released called RECAP. The idea behind RECAP is that is captures documents retrieved from PACER and uploads them to a free database. In response, at least some federal courts sent out a sky is falling, beware of evil hackers email in which they stated, in part:

    Please be aware that RECAP is “open-source” software, which means it can be freely obtained by anyone with Internet access and could possibly be modified for benign or malicious purposes.  This raises the possibility that the software could be used for facilitating unauthorized access to restricted or sealed documents. Accordingly, CM/ECF filers are reminded to be diligent about their computer security and document redaction practices to ensure that documents and sensitive information are not inadvertently shared or compromised.

    I have seen some pretty significant criticism leveled at the courts for the emails that were sent out. For the most part, I have agreed with the criticism I have seen.

    I was happy to see today, however, that the Administrative Office of the United States courts is taking a more reasoned approach to RECAP. As reported by the Consumer Law & Policy Blog, the Administrative Office has “no problem with counsel using RECAP.” This is good, and reasonable, news and I am happy to hear it.

    To find out more about RECAP, go here.

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    Ted Kennedy & FedEx

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    I noticed that yesterday, while I was complaining about the Comcast installer stealing my cable modem, Adrian at The Nutmeg Lawyer was fondly remembering his encounters with Ted Kennedy. I laughed out loud when I read about Adrian calling Ted Kennedy “Baby.” If you have not read his post, you have to go here and read it.

    On a completely unrelated note, I also enjoyed Ken Adams’ post in which he has decided to refer to companies such as FedEx as “nationally recognized express transportation compan[ies]” in future contracts.