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ABA Legal Technology Resource Center
Helping Lawyers Solve the Technology Puzzle
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Pop Rocks & Coke
Survey Says!
Banish Belated Greetings!
No Cheating
Annual Meeting Alert
News You Can Use
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Pop Rocks & Coke: A Deadly Twosome?
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Snopes
Are you providing assistance to a wealthy Nigerian needing to complete a large financial transaction? Are you convinced that infected needles lurk in phone booth change slots? Has Walt Disney Jr. promised you a trip to Disneyland? If any of these questions sound familiar, a trip to Snopes.com is in order. Snopes is a one-stop shop for urban legend information. It is run by software programmer David Mikkelson and his wife Barbara from their Thousand Oaks, California home. This two person truth squad wades through much of the information found on the Internet, TV, or newspapers to determine what is true, what is bunk, and what it just too close to call.
Snopes.com is an Internet veteran and its no-frills design reflects that. Items are archived by topic and can be accessed by clicking on one of many subject headings that appear in the body of the home page. A robust, Boolean friendly search engine receives top billing on the home page. Snopes.com depends on advertising and donations to keep it afloat; be prepared for banner and pop-up advertising. The unfortunate placement of a banner ad in the middle of the home page almost obscures the top toolbar. An efficient color coding system allows user to scan each topic to see what story is true and what is legend. A link to each complete story , which includes Snopes's research methods, is provided.
Snopes.com is an effective tool against e-mail spam and gullible friends. The next time someone tells you that Mikey from the Life cereal commercial died from mixing Pop Rocks & Coca-Cola, you can calmly inform them that John "Mikey" Gilchrist is alive and well. He works as an Ad Executive for a New York City radio station.
Molly Kilmer Flood
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Survey Says!
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The 2003 ABA Legal Technology Survey
Is Wireless sweeping the legal community? How many law firms have document management software? Are plasma monitors found in most US courtrooms? Answers to those questions and more are found in the 2003 ABA Legal Technology Survey. Over 1500 lawyers participated in this annual survey put out by the Legal Technology Resource Center. The survey consists of five volumes: Law Office Technology, Litigation and Courtroom Technology, Web and Commutation, Online Research, and Mobile Lawyers. ABA Members can download a free copy of the survey's executive summary. Contact the ABA's Service Center at 1-800-285-2221 or purchase online to get one, several, or the entire set of volumes of this annual look at legal technology.
Molly Kilmer Flood
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Banish Belated Greetings!
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Birthday Alarm
Every trip to Target or the grocery store I tend to scan the card aisle, certain that I am forgetting about an important upcoming birthday. Technology has allowed me to banish that useless Hallmark induced anxiety and never miss an important day. A free membership in Birthday Alarm alerts me to all important birthday, anniversaries, and the other key days of the people in my life.
Registration at BirthdayAlarm is quite painless. Users provide their name, e-mail, and a password. You can then manually insert the names of your friends and family and their important days. If you are unsure over an exact date (and bold enough to admit it), the site provides a form letter for you to send out. You will be sent an e-mail message 7 days and 3 days before each entered day. For an additional $9.99 a year, users can receive alerts via text messages on their cell phones. The front page of BirthdayAlarm.com is devoted to e-cards. Besides birthday and anniversary cards, you can also send out "thinking of you", congratulations, or party invitations. Many of the cards are only available with a $13.95 annual subscription to Birthday Alarm's premium service. Free cards are marked accordingly. For those who require one-stop-shopping, flowers and plants can be ordered directly from the web site. BirthdayAlarm is an extremely useful silent partner in the battle against missed birthdays.
Molly Kilmer Flood
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No Cheating
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CopyScape
Websites represent the blood, sweat, and tears of many people in an organization. They are full of copyrighted content. Most of us, after all that work, do not feel too generous about letting John copy our homework. Enter Copyscape, a site that lets you enter your URL and searches the web looking for other sites using your content.
Brought to you by the providers of Google Alert, Copyscape is a simple tool to help track down those who might be “borrowing” content from your site. The subtitle of the homepage reads “Internet Infringement Protection”. It takes more due diligence than just using this site to find copyright infringement on the web, but this is a good place to start. Simply add a URL and hit “search”. The results are a mixed bag. Some of the hits are legitimate, but some do not seem to have any reason to appear. Looking at the source code of the document still did not reveal why some sites appeared in the results. For those results that do show content from your site, that content is conveniently highlighted. The results are currently in a Copyscape frame, showing a cached copy of the pages. Options include “matching page without highlighting”, the number of matching words, and links to Whois information.
The site is in BETA, which means that further refinement is coming. The pages are slow loading, even on a broadband connection. It seems to work best for text-heavy pages. It is worth a look, and definitely worth keeping an eye on in the future.
Catherine Sanders Reach
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Annual Meeting Alert
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Technology Tools to Survive Law School
The ABA's Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia has something for everyone involved in the legal industry. The exhibit hall is a sight to behold, the CLE offerings are outstanding, and the networking opportunities are tough to beat. The ABA Law Student Division, with help from the LTRC, is sponsoring a discussion on tech tips for law students. Topics will include affordable hardware solutions, time saving open source software, and useful web sites. Join me on Saturday, August 7th at 10:30 AM at the Sheraton Colony Square Hotel for this informative presentation.
Molly Kilmer Flood
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News You Can Use
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Are you looking for a way to add news feeds to a website, but lacking in technical skills? There are quite a few free options available for copy/paste JavaScript, offering an instant gratification option for adding continuously updated content to your website, Intranet or blog. The caveat to any free feed, of course, is that you get what you pay for. Most of these have subtle ads and branding, but do provide a great resource. Offerings from Feeddirect, Topix, and FeedRoll all offer free and fee based services.
- Feeddirect
This service is the new name of a previous free feed – Moreover, which now offers fee based services. Feeddirect has a simple three step process. You simply choose the content, select a layout, and create the JavaScript. A simple copy and paste and voila, you have a newsfeed. For the more adventurous sorts, the site offers some advanced features to manipulate fonts, colors, sizes, etc. The drawbacks are that the newsfeeds are quite generic and there are “contextual text ads” (Google ads) in the feed. However, if you are looking to add an industry news feed for a certain practice area or client page, this might be your ticket.
- Topix
Topix is a bit different from Feeddirect, in that it is a multi-purpose site. You could simply go to the site and browse news, or search news, or create a search box or newsfeed for your site. The Topix subject lists are more robust, offering a substantial amount of resources from local news to the “offbeat”. They claim to be the “Internet’s largest news site”. The newsfeed is available only for “non-commercial use”, so is not appropriate for all sites. They also offer a paid, commercial feed. Users simply choose the topic and then click on the “news for your site” link on the right column. The options for customization are very, very limited and the feed only displays three headlines with a “more stories from Topix.net” link. You can also generate a search box for your site to search Topix news directly.
- Feedroll
Interested in getting RSS or ATOM feeds on your site? Feedroll offers a few choices, or the opportunity to add your own, with a simple cut/paste procedure. The number of feeds in the dropdown menu are very limitedso the ability to add your favorite feed URL is a huge plus. The site offers a fee-based, pro version for more options. The customization options for Feedroll are excellent. Users can choose to use existing cascading style sheets, or use the intuitive menu options to create a look and feel that works well with your site. For more flexibility than just news headlines, Feedroll is worth a look.
Catherine Sanders Reach
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Mention of a company, product, or service does not indicate endorsement or support by the American Bar Association, the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center or the authors.
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