I have always believed that Apple does not have customers. They have converts. In fact, I often refer to Apple fans as Macvangelists. It looks like Mark Cuban has now started drinking the Kool Aid. I can see why, of course. both the new MacBook Air and the iPod Touch are beautiful devices.
Of course, I still think iTunes sucks.
One thing that I absolutely hate is a webpage that starts playing music when I navigate to it. This is one (of several) reasons that I avoid My Space pages like the plague. Haineault.com has a great post on this very issue.
He gives a few reasons that you should not have autostarting music on your webpage. My two favorites are:
If this too drives you crazy, I recommend an extension for Firefox called Flashblock, which blocks all flash media from loading. You can then manually start the flash items. You can also white list certain pages so that the embedded flash works normally.
I received great news this week. Dell is finally releasing a convertible tablet notebook. The Latitude XT. The problem, of course, is that it is pricey $2499 for the least expensive option with a 1.06 GHz processor, 1 GB RAM, and a 40 GB hard drive.
One cool thing about it is that it comes standard with Microsoft Windows XP rather than Vista.
Equipping the mid tier model with the things that I want (120 GB Hard Drive, Bluetooth, 2GB RAM) raises the price to $3,203. These are great looking machines and I would love to have a convertible. However, when a comparaby equipped Latitude D630 costs about half of that ($1,617) I have to question the additional expense to upgrade to the XT.
On the other hand, the XT certainly is appealing. I would love to get my hands on one.
I love ebooks. I love the fact that, on my Treo, I can carry a several books with me as well as a multitude of short stories. If you enjoy reading, I cannot recommend highly enough that you check out ebooks. Also, if you have a PDA (or at least if you have a Palm PDA) you can easily use that device as your ebook reader. If you already have a PDA, you have no need to purchase a separate e-reading device.
Of course, having a reader is only the first step. You now have to find the books. Free books (those no longer protected under copyright law) are available at Project Gutenberg. Manybooks.net also is a great place to find free books. Additionally, my public library allows me to “borrow” ebooks, just as I would borrow a dead tree version of a book. Plus I can do this from the comfort of my own home, or anywhere else I happen to be with internet access.
My favorite source for books, however, is Fictionwise. I have been using Fictionwise since early 2003. They have a huge selection of books in a wide variety of genres. Fictionwise also allows you to subscribe to magazines such as Analog, Asimov’s, and Interzone.
Fictionwise also has a reward program that gives you a percentage of the purchase price of a book (sometimes up to 100%) to be deposited into your micropay account. The micropay account allows you to accumulate money in order to purchase items that cost less than $5. Fictionwise has plenty of these, in that its short stories often sell for about a $1. In fact, as of the writing of this post, Fictionwise has 2633 items for less than $1.
Although I love Fictionwise, that does not mean that I think it is perfect. The key thing I would like to see is a version of the website that allows me to easily search and browse the website and purchase books from my Palm. Right now, the website if virtually impossible to view and purchase from on my Palm. If they would correct this, I would really love Fictionwise.
My other complaints about Fictionwise/ebooks are directed more toward the publishers than to Fictionwise. For example, the publishers will make some volumes of a trilogy available but not all. Often this involves offering volumes 2 and 3 of the trilogy but not volume. Why would people want to read the first book in the series? The last two should take care of everything.
More comments on ebooks can be found at Rob Sawyer’s Blog in posts where he talks about Fictionwise buying eReader, Manybooks.net, and purchasing books over the air.
It has been one year since I officially launched The Connected Lawyer. I thought I would take a second to detail some statistical information. In that time, I have made 182 posts. Of those posts, my most popular posts have been my series on formatting in Word. The categories that I posted in most frequently were Software, Tips and Tricks, and Internet.
The most interesting statistic to me, however, relates to the operating system used by the people viewing my website. According to StatPress (which was not operating all year) the page visits from the various operating systems are:
What I find most interesting about this is that three times as many page views came from people using Linux as did those from people using Vista. Also, almost as many visits came from people using Windows NT as from using Vista.
I know that I have been hesitant to jump on the Vista bandwagon. From the looks of these numbers, it appears that I am far from the only person who is avoiding Vista.
A few days ago, Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune published his list of 50 Things he has learned in his 50 years.
Some of my favorites:
2. Promptness shows respect.
3. You can’t avoid offending people from time to time. When you don’t mean it, apologize. When you do mean it, accept the consequences.
6. The most valuable thing to have is a good reputation, and it’s neither hard nor expensive to acquire one: Be fair. Be honest. Be trustworthy. Be generous. Respect others.
8. Don’t be bothered when people don’t share your tastes in music, sports, literature, food and fashion. Be glad. You’d never get tickets to anything otherwise.
14. It’s not “political correctness†that dictates that we try not to insult others’ beliefs and identities. It’s common decency.
35. Candor is overrated. It’s hard to unsay what you’ve said in anger and almost impossible to take back what you’ve written.
49. Whatever your passion, pursue it as though your days were numbered. Because they are.
 His entire list is worth reading. I encourage you to check it out.
Everyone once in while I notice that my keyboard gets a little dirty and key may start sticking. When that happens, I get out my can of compressed air and blow the dust and stuff out of my keyboard.
For those of you who really like a clean keyboard, however, Scott Moschella of Plastic Bugs tells us how he got his keyboard really clean: He put it in the dishwasher. I don’t know that I would recommend this approach, however it worked for him.
As he explained:
Last Monday, I spilled beer on my keyboard and received the Dishwasher advice from two very tech-savvy people.
Today, I can report that not only will the keyboard come out clean, but it will probably work once it dries completely. Every key on the keyboard works and feels just right – the Caps Lock light even works! This ‘hack’ is not for the weakhearted, and I would probably avoid putting a $100+ keyboard in the dishwasher. But if you don’t have any other options, it’s a pretty good bet.
So if your keyboard is real dirty and you would otherwise have to replace the keyboard, this might not be a bad option for you.
I recently watched Walk the Line, the movie about Johnny Cash and his relationship with June Carter Cash. I really enjoyed the movie and I thought that both Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon did an excellant job in their roles.
The dissatisfaction that I have comes not from the movie at all. Instead, it comes from the fact that someone (presumably at Fox) decided that what the movie needed was to start with a commercial accusing its customers of being thieves. Furthermore, because this message is so important, it is necessary to make sure that the viewer cannot jump from the commercial to the DVD menu. No, instead, the viewer must watch the entire commercial in which they are accused of being a thief.
It’s bad enough that we have to put up with the stupid FBI message at the beginning of every movie. Does anyone actually believe that this stupid message from the FBI, telling you all of the possible penalties if you violate copyright law, has ever prevented a single instance of a copyright violation?
Who first came up with the idea that the best thing for movie companies to do is to treat all of their customers as if they were criminals? Is this any different from a store posting someone at the front door that accosts any customer who walks in and warns them that they have to pay for the merchandise they are getting?
I am pretty sure that most people have a pretty good idea that it is illegal to copy a DVD and sell it. I am also pretty sure that the little PSA at the beginning of the movie is going to do nothing to stop thieves who are stealing the movies and instead, will act only to irritate and create a less pleasurable viewing experience for the lawful majority of the viewers.
If you have thought about moving toward a paperless workflow but have not yet made the commitment, check out this excellant post from Ernie the Attorney at PDF for Lawyers.
I think his last paragraph hits the point dead on:
If you don’t start purging paper from your desk you’ll never realize the full benefits of scanning. After a few weeks you’ll start to notice little things about how you used to deal with paper. Mostly, you’ll learn that people hoard too much paper, keeping it close by in case they need to access information. Soon you’ll notice that having too much paper around you makes it harder to find information, not easier. The less paper you have around you the less stress you’ll feel, especially once you learn to trust the paperless system.
I think this is the point most people don’t understand. They think if that if they keep the paper close at hand they can find things more easily. Instead, however, they just end up sorting through more paper to try and find what they want.
Ernie also emphasized another point that I think most people miss, which is that the electronic version of the document, is probably more secure than the paper version. You can lose the paper, or it can be destroyed by fire (or hurricane for that matter). With the electronic version, however, it is easy to have multiple copies of the same document.
For example, on the cases that I am working on, a copy of everything sets on our server. Those copies are regularly backed up as a matter of course. Additionally, for all of my active files, I have a copy of them on my laptop hard drive. The likelihood that all copies of these documents would be destroyed is fairly remote, and certainly much less likely than just the paper version being destroyed.
Check out the rest of Ernie’s post and, if you have not started to make the move to a paperless system, there’s no time like the present to get started.
Do you sometimes have trouble remembering to make a call at 2 pm? Do your client’s forget your meetings? Do you fail to follow through on your new marketing plan?
Last week, two different bloggers pointed to two different tools to help with reminders.
First up is a service called Oh, Don’t Forget and it was mentioned by Matt Homan at the [non]billable hour. Oh, Don’t Forget allows you to send a text message to any phone at a predetermined date and time. This is great for reminding you to make a call or leave for a meeting if you know you are going to be in the middle of something. Of course, you could also use it for more interesting purposes, such as setting it to go off during a meeting that you fear will be boring and drawn out.
The second reminder service was mentioned by Julie Fleming-Brown at Life At the Bar. This service is called HassleMe. HassleMe explains their service as:
Not eating enough fruit? Forgot to feed the fish again? Need a little help keeping your New Year’s resolutions?
Tell us what to hassle you about, and we’ll nag you via email at semi-unpredictable intervals.
This is a great opportunity to have someone remind you to drink enough water, go to the gym, or call a referral source every week just to say hello.