Category Archives: Internet

Posted on

Twitter Tips

by

I have written before about Twitter. If you do not use Twitter, there is no way that I can explain it to you without the concept sounding ridiculous. What I will say is that if you have thought about trying Twitter, I urge you to give a whirl. I think you will be surprised by what it offers.

At her blog Practicing Law in the 21st Century, Nicole Black has posted Twitter 101 for Lawyers. Niki explains:

Of course, you’re probably wondering whether Twitter has any value to you as a lawyer. It does. With Twitter you can network with other lawyers across the country and the world; promote your practice and its Web site or other online presence; receive news updates relevant to your area of practice and connect with potential clients or referral sources.

Twitter is an invaluable resource, as long as you know how to use it. The first step is to create an account at Twitter.com. Make sure to choose a user name that is easily recognizable and promotes your practice.

The next step is to locate people and organizations you’d like to follow, including people you already know, those who practice in the same area of law, potential clients and users with similar personal interests. There are a number of ways to do this.

Locate people you already know by running your Web-hosted e-mail address through Twitter’s system. (You’ll be prompted to do so when you first sign up.) Once you’ve connected with people you know, check their follower lists and “follow” anyone who interests you.

I urge you to read her entire post.

If you are curious, my Twitter page is here. You can find Niki’s here.

Posted on

Tips for Using Google Docs

by

Google Docs is becoming more popular as people realize the advantage of having documents accessible to them anywhere they have internet access. Recently Digital Inspiration posted a “practical guide to Google Docs.” The post includes tips such as the following:

Q: How do I upload all my Microsoft Office documents from the desktop on to Google Docs?

A: List Uploader is a Windows utility that enables you to bulk upload files to Google Docs via drag-n-drop or through the right click menu.

Mac OS X users can upload documents through GDocsUploader – simply drag-n-drop the document onto the uploader icon. Another option is GDocsBar – just drag your files in the Firefox sidebar and they’ll automatically get uploaded to Google Docs.

Q: How do I associate the common Office file extensions like doc/xls/ppt with Google Docs so that desktop documents open directly in the web browser?

A: Get the Google Toolbar for Firefox and select the ‘Google Docs’ checkbox from Toolbar options. This will let you open Office documents directly in the browser bypassing Microsoft Office.

Q: I am worried that someone may hack into my Google Account and delete the important files. To play safe, I want to download all documents from Google Docs locally and burn them on to a CD. Is it possible?

A: To download a copy of all your Google Docs documents on to the hard drive, get this Grease Monkey script. It will create a list of all your online documents that you can download in one step using the DownloadThemAll add-on.

Click here to see the remainder of the tips. If you use Google Docs, you definitely want to read this post.

Thanks to Dumb Little Man for pointing me in the direction of this post.

Posted on

Citations the Easy Way

by

Bonnie Shucha of WisBlawg recently pointed her readers in the direction of a great new Firefox add-on called CiteGenie.

CiteGenie describes itself as being able to:

Automagically copy text with correct citations from Westlaw and other websites

Cite Genie further explains:

Cutting and pasting when doing legal research using your browser is simple. But having to construct the citation for what you pasted is not so simple. This is especially true with legal citations from sources like Westlaw. You have to stop and copy the case name separately, determine the pinpoint page numbers, and adjust the date and court name format.

So I decided to write a browser plugin that would automatically add a pinpoint citation to the text I copy and paste. Thus CiteGenie was born.

* * *

When CiteGenie is installed, it adds a new option to the browser’s right-click menu to “Copy with CiteGenie.”  To use CiteGenie, simply highlight the text in the court opinion, right-click and select the “Copy with CiteGenie” option (or just press Ctrl-Shift-C).  Then you can paste the text into any other program, such as your word processor, and the text will be pasted, along with the pinpoint citation for the selected text from the court opinion.

This sounds almost too good to be true. However, a review of CiteGenie on LLRX.com reveals that it may work as easily and accurately as promised.

I have not yet had the opportunity to use CiteGenie in a brief. However, I have installed it in my browser and am ready to take advantage of it.

Posted on

WebMail Notifier: Another Great Firefox Add-on

by

FirefoxAs I have said before, one of the reasons that I love Firefox is that it allows you to install add-ons to make the browser work the way that you want it to work. The newest extension that I have fallen in love with is WebMail Notifier.

WebMail Notifier checks your webmail accounts (including GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and others) and lets you know when you have new mail and how many messages you have. For my work email, I use Outlook. However, I have a variety of other email accounts that are aggregated into my GMail account. Before installing this add-on, I often forgot to check my GMail account. Since installing the add-on, however, I have remembered to check the account on a daily basis.

The add-on simply puts a small envelope on your bottom status bar. When you have mail, the envelope lights up. It’s very unobtrusive, yet effective.

If you have a webmail account, I recommend WebMail Notifier.

Posted on

Google Maps in the Courtroom

by

I was in court this morning waiting for my case to be called. The judge was hearing a short argument over how much access and expert needed to a private home to render his opinion. To demonstrate the situation, one of the attorneys had brought in some pictures of the houses at issue.

While the attorneys were arguing, the judge asked for the address of the property at issue and then pulled that up on Google Maps. She asked the attorneys if the map accurately depicted the homes at issue, both attorneys agreed that it did.

From my perspective, the great aspects of this situation are that the judge actually had a computer on the bench that was connected to the internet and that she was not afraid to use it to resolve the discovery dispute between the parties.

Had she pulled this up during a trial and used it to issue her ruling, there would likely be some evidentirary issues. Here, however, this was a discovery dispute that she was able to resolve more efficiently because she was better able to accurately picture the property in question.

Posted on

Let Mail Goggles Save You

by

One of the things I love about Google is that they aren’t afraid to try something. They almost always have some cool new feature coming out of their labs. One of the latest is Mail Goggles. Named after Beer Goggles, Mail Goggles is a feature in GMail that requires you to perform a series of simple math problems before sending an email.

In the default setting, the feature is enabled only on Friday and Saturday nights between the hours of 10 pm and 4 am. The idea is that you may not be in the best frame of mind if you are sending emails at that time of night. On the other hand, Google figures that if you have the thinking skills to solve a few math problems, you can probably decide for yourself whether to send the email.

You can activate Mail Goggles from selecting Setting > Labs from you Gmail screen. Best of all, there are a bunch of additional lab feature that you can choose from in that same tab. Take a stroll through these features and see which you would like to enable in your Gmail account.

Posted on

The 20th Century Strikes Again

by

When I checked my mail at home today I found a two inch thick book that was a gift from my alma mater. The book is an alumni directory. And yes, my undergrad is small enough that all of the alumni can fit in a single book.

When I realized what this was, I was struck by the absurdity of it. I can’t imagine how much money the school spent to compile it, to print it, and to mail it to everyone. Despite the fact that I just received it, I have no doubt that it is out of date and it will simply continue to grow more out of date as time passes, simply because people move and change jobs.

On top of that, is the fact that it is flat data, when there is no reason that it should be. Why should I have to thumb through a book to find someone’s information. It would be much easier for me if I could search for it. Speaking of searching, if I want to find a woman that I graduated with, I either have to know her married name or I have to the year she graduated and read each name until I find hers (because of course the graduating year information is organized by last name with the maiden name in parentheses).

Why isn’t this information in an alumni section on the website rather than in some dead tree version in my kitchen? Why do I have to wade through pages of names instead of simply searching for names in a database? Why can’t I pull up a list of all of the alumni who live in my city, my state, or within 10 miles of me? Why can’t I pull up a list of alumni who are doctors, or lawyers, or plumbers? Why can’t I find alumni who also attended my law school?

This could be a really cool feature. As it stands, however, it is practically worthless. I would love to see a useful Web 2.0 version this directory. Instead, what I got was the same thing that could have been handed to the first incoming class in 1954.

Posted on

Safely Using Wi-Fi

by

The Consumerist has a great post titled The Idiot-Proof Way to Securely Use Public Wi-Fi. The article discusses a variety of VPN solutions to protect your privacy when you are using a public wi-fi connection. I have a VPN through my work. Thus I have not tried any of the listed programs. However, because I am a fan of open source software, I was intrigued with the discussion of OpenVPN. If you want to check it out, it can be found here.

Posted on

Has Anyone Tried Box.net?

by

Google Docs and Zoho seem to be getting all of the press for online document creation and collaboration. I recently discovered an additional service Box.net. Box.net allows you to upload files and store them on their server. Additionally, you can edit these documents online as well as share them with anyone you wish.

Box.net is primarly a online storage, access, and collaboration, service. As a consequence, it uses Zoho to edit documents and Picnik to edit pictures.

Box.net offers four different plans, including a free plan with 1GB of storage as well as a paid plan at $19.95 a month for 15GB of storage.

A cool feature that I like about the service is that you can access it from a web enabled cell phone.

I have just signed up for the service and haven’t had a chance to really try it out yet. I would be curious to hear from anyone who has experience with the service.

Posted on

Why Do the Clerks Hate Us?

by

I am doing postjudgment collections on a case and I recently downloaded a form from the clerk’s office for my post judgment collection. The form has a location to enter the judgment amount, court costs, postjudgment costs, etc. Then the form (which is in Acrobat) is supposed to automatically total the numbers.

In this case, however, whoever designed the form screwed up an the form was repeating the judgment amount in the intial filing fee box. This, of course, means that I will have to handle this manually, instead of using the automatic calculations. I figure that this is not a big deal. I will just use the typewriter function in Adobe Acrobat and “type” the information I need to add.

Except of course, that whoever created the form decided (for reasons wholly unknown to anyone) to disable the typwriter function in Adobe Acrobat. Thus, I cannot use this (wonderful) feature. Let me pause just one second to point out the utter stupidity of disabling the typwirter function in Acrobat given that until just recently, these stupid forms were completed on an actual typewriter. In fact, I have no doubt that the majority of these forms are probably still being prepared on an actual typewriter.

Anyway, I have ran into this problem on court forms before. For reasons I cannot fathom, this is often disabled on court forms. I think to myself that this will not be a big problem, however, because I can just “print” the form to PDF and do with it whatever I want.

Of course, this can’t happen. The designer had secured the form, thus preventing it from being printed to PDF.

The security features in Adobe Acrobat are nice. They enable you to send electronic documents and retain some control over what the user can actually do with the documents. These are great features and are quite useful in the proper situations. Here, however, I would argue that because these forms are provided by the Clerk for me (and other attorneys) TO FILL OUT, it doesn’t make much sense to lock the form down so that I CAN’T FILL THE FORM OUT.

Complete stupidity. I just do not understand it. There are some days that I am convinced that there are people in the clerk’s office who sit around and think up ways to make our lives more difficult.

To solve my problem, I simply printed the form, scanned it in and added my own fields that work properly.