Author Archives

    Bryan Sims

    Posted on

    Scrolling with MoGo

    by

    Last year I bought my wife a MoGo Mouse. The great thing about this mouse is that it stores and recharges in your laptopsMoGo Mouse PC card slot. This means that you always have your mouse with your laptop. Plus, it is always charged. The MoGo connects to your laptop via Bluetooth. Thus, if you have Bluetooth built in your laptop, you can easily carry and use the mouse without adding any extra bulk to what you carry.

    The only drawback to the mouse is that it does not contain a scrollwheel (the new version contains a scroll wheel). Once you get used to using a scroll wheel, it is difficult to use a mouse without one. Thus, despite having this cool, easily transportable mouse, my wife wasn’t using it much.

    Fortunately, Jeff Beard at LawTech Guru has come to my rescue. He has posted a portable mouse roundup that is very informative. If fact, if you are in the market for a portable mouse, I recommend that you read his post. In his post he mentions that MoGo now offers scrolling software for its mouse.

    Following the link, I find that, sure enough, you can download the software from MoGo that allows you to scroll simply by holding down your left mouse button and dragging your mouse. It’s certainly not as elegant as a scroll wheel, but it is definitely better than nothing. As Jeff points out, MoGo’s software is old software revived by a MoGo user looking for a solution to the absence of a scroll wheel.

    Posted on

    Good News From the Illinois Supreme Court

    by

    The Springfield Journal Register reports that beginning in January, the Illinois Supreme Court will release audio and video recordings of the oral arguments before it. The article states:

    The court announced Friday that the arguments should be available on its Web site – www.state.il.us/court – the day after they take place, or possibly even sooner.

    “I’m very excited about this new technology,” Chief Justice Robert Thomas said in a news release. “It will provide the parties with a record of their appearance before the court, and it will help the public better understand what we do.”

    Supreme Court spokesman Joseph Tybor said in an interview that making oral arguments available online is “something the court has been interested in for some time.”

    According to the article, there will be three cameras, one facing the attorneys and the other two facing the front of the courtroom.

    The article goes on to say:

    Audio files will be in the MP3 format, and a podcast feed will be available. Video files will be in the Windows Media format.

    I am glad to see that the Court is adopting this technology. (In fact, last June, I called for the Supreme Court to do release recordings of its arguments.) I am also glad to see that the court will be using a podcast feed. These are steps in the right direction.

    I just hope that the Court continues to take these steps. Right now, Illinois is woefully behind the times in even considering a viable electronic filing system in its courts.  As I stated in June:

    The state of electronic filing in this state is absolutely abysmal. Further it appears as though any possibility of electronic filing is headed toward a hopelessly convoluted system where every county has their own version and own system.

    Unfortunately, in the 6 months since I posted that initial statement, I have see little out of the Supreme Court that would lead me to believe that a viable and usable electronic filing system is within our foreseeable future.

    In the above quoted article, Tybor (the Court spokesman) is quoted, saying:

    “This is a Supreme Court that hasn’t turned away from technology and hopes to use technology to enhance justice and to enhance the educational value of the system,” Tybor said.

    This is a great sentiment. However, I would like to see a little more action behind it. It is fantastic that the Court is making recordings of its argument available to the public. Why is it, however, that at least 14 other states (including Florida, Texas, Indiana, and Wisconsin) beat Illinois to the punch?

    Posted on

    Date Calculators

    by

    In the legal world, we often have to calculate the number of days between two dates. In my practice, I run into this frequently in determining postjudgment interest and calculating real estate tax prorations.

    I use a custom spreadsheet created by my mathematically inclined wife. TechnoEsq offers some other solutions. In his post, he talks about a WordPerfect macro that you can download. If you are not using WordPerfect, he also points you to TimeAndDate.com, which will perform these calculations for you as well. He also points out that if you are a Mac user running Leopard, you can create a widget out of the TimeAndDate webpage.

    The point is that there are a variety of resources available. You should never be manually calculating these dates.

    Posted on

    Travel Tip of the Day: BiddingForTravel.com

    by

    Bidding for TravelWe have all seen those commercials with Captain Kirk trying to convince us to book our hotels through Priceline.com. Because of the bidding rules that Priceline uses (you can’t make another bid the same criteria for at least 24 hours) you are never quite sure that you are getting the best price. Also, you never quite know at what hotel you are going to end up.

    BiddingForTravel.com aims to end some of that mystery. At Bidding For Travel, you can see what the hotes typically are in each of Priceline’s classes for each area. You can also find reviews of those hotels, as well as user posts stating how much they bid and what hotel they booked for that price. This is a great resource that you should check out if you are thinking of using Priceline.com.

    Thanks to Legally Certifiable for pointing out this website.

    Posted on

    100 Financial Calculators

    by

    I often tell people that I married someone with an advanced degree in mathematics so thCalculatorat I would not have to do math anymore. For those of you who are not quite as lucky as I am, Bootstrapper has a list of 100 Financial Calculators to help you calculate everything from your profit margin to your effective tax rate. This is a great resource to bookmark and keep close at hand in the event you need to perform a quick calculation.

    Hat tip to Build A Solo Practice for the link.

    Posted on

    Another Example of Authentication Causing Problems for Honest Users

    by

    I have no issues or problems with publishers taking reasonable steps to ensure that their software is not pirated by someone. What I do have a problem with, however, is when those publishers implement “authentication” schemes that cause problems for the legal users but do nothing to stop the real threat of large scale pirates.

    APC Magazine  has an article detailing how the author’s upgrading of a device driverPirate resulted in his copy of Windows Vista being deactivated. After a telephone call, the author was able to get the software reactivated. However, it is simply ridiculous that he had to jump through those hoops simply because he upgrade some device drivers.

    This would annoying, but probably acceptable, if the activation process actually prevented people from pirating the software. That, however, is clearly not the case.

    As the author explained:

    So pirates haven’t been slowed down at all, and the rest of us — the legitimate purchasers — are left to live with Windows Activation. You really need to ask the question – who’s benefiting here? Certainly not users, and given the amount of discontent this is likely to cause, arguably not Microsoft either.

    In its attempts to combat piracy, Microsoft has created a system which doesn’t focus on the problem correctly. After all, how do you define piracy? At its most basic level, piracy occurs when you install software on a machine when you aren’t licensed to do so. But the Windows Activation model isn’t designed to address this particular problem – as far as Windows Activation is concerned, there’s no difference between someone who tries to image two machines with the same activated version of Windows, and a legitimate user who wants to upgrade their system.

    If you buy a retail version of Vista, as long as you’re not breaking the terms of the license, then surely it’s none of Microsoft’s business what you do with that software. Legitimate users shouldn’t be monitored and inconvenienced to this extent.

    Microsoft is not the only culprit here. Many software companies use some form of activation to authenticate their software. The problem, however, is that most of these methods only annoy the people who paid money to purchase the program and do nothing to stop the pirates.

    Maybe someday, a publisher will realize that there is an advantage to not treating your customers like thieves.

    Posted on

    Undocumented Firefox Tips

    by

    PC WorldPC World gives us an article with 15 undocumented Firefox tips. If you use Firefox (and you should), this article is definitelyFirefox worth a read. The article contains tips things such as keyboard shortcuts, easy searching of pages, purging your private information, and optimizing Firefox for broadband.

    The tips are well written, easy to understand, and even easier to implement. Check out the article and start improving your browsing experience immediately.

    Posted on

    Friday Fun: Fashion Tips

    by

    43 Folders, a great place to find tips on getting your life organized or implementing a GTD process, provides some practical fashion tips.

    The post provides 3 great tips.

    1. When trying anything new, always ask yourself “Is this going to make me more or less likely to get laid?”
    2. Everyone looks good in boots.
    3. When you find the perfect bag, buy it.

    I agree strongly with tip #3. As the poster explains:

    Dudes and dudettes, do you know the perfect bag when you see it? The answer will be different for everyone, but it usually involves the perfect marriage of beauty and practicality.

    . . .

    And if that perfect bag ends up costing a king’s ransom, it doesn’t matter in the least. You can afford it. It is, after all, perfect. And how often does one find perfection in one’s life?

    Check out the entire post to see all three tips explained.

    Posted on

    I Sent It Via You Send It

    by

    You Send ItI had some discovery that I had to deliver to an opposing attorney. It was a construction case. This meant that almost all of the original documents actually existed as handwriting on paper. The remaining documents were letters and other similar documents. Thus providing evidence that not all cases are headed down the electronic discovery path.

    As is my standard practice, I had all of the documents scanned so that I could Bates Stamp them and work with them electronically. Knowing that I needed to deliver these documents to opposing counsel, I was faced with three options.

    1. I could print the 800 pages and have them physically delivered to the attorney–thereby incurring both costs of printing and costs of delivery; or
    2. I could burn a copy of the documents to a CD and mail that to the attorney–thereby incurring costs of delivery (admittedly only $0.41); or
    3. I could electronically transfer the documents electronically–thereby incurring no costs.

    I chose option 3. I used a service called YouSendIt. YouSendIt uploads a copy of your document to their server and sends an email to your designated recipient with a link where they can download the file you uploaded.

    As long as the file is less than 100MB, the service is free. With the free service, the link is good for seven days. If you want to deal with larger files, you can also sign up for paid accounts. The paid accounts also give you the ability to control the maximum number of downloads for a file, give you file tracking, and give you the ability to password protect the file.

    The one thing I would caution about the free service is that the file is not encrypted. Thus, you would not want to send confidential information through the free service. In my case, the documents that I was sending contained no such information.

    The best part of the service was the call I received from opposing counsel, who absolutely loved the way that I delivered the documents. He inquired about how the service worked and was interested in trying it out as method of sending the same documents to his client.

    As I noted above, this service should not be used with all types of communications or documents. However, if you have a big file that you need to send to someone, YouSendIt is a great, free option that allows you to transfer files virtually instantaneously.

    YouSendIt is just another example of how we can leverage technology to make our lives easier (as well as to save us some overhead costs).