Today's Law.com has a good article that collects links to various free and inexpensive office software (click here). The article summarizes a session at the annual Association of Corporate Counsel conference earlier this month, and primarily concerns cutting technology costs for in-house legal departments, but it's relevant to a broader range of business users.

Tags: Technology

Today's CNN.com includes an article about Google Wave, a purported "email killer," and the two brothers who came up with the idea (as well as the idea for Google Maps) (click here). "In theory, the idea for Wave is simple. It's e-mail updated for the Internet age. . . E-mail as we know it is based on the snail-mail format: you send a message; your friend receives it. Wave makes mail collaborative and instant. When you type a message to a friend, he or she sees what you're typing as you type it. You can jump in and start drafting a reply before the initial message is complete. Wave also lets users collaborate on editable documents, called Wikis, share photos, update blogs, set appointments and chat in big groups. You can add conference calls to a Wave. A translation function called Rosy will translate chat messages between languages as you write."

At this writing, participation in Google Wave (click here) is by invitation only. You can request an invitation here.

The article is interesting not just for its description of Google Wave, but because it also discusses the brothers' theory about the correlation between risk and achievement, and how they essentially created a company within a company to create the optimal conditions for innovation.

Tags: Technology, Entrepreneurs

A blog post dated today at The Volokh Conspiracy concerning the U.S. Supreme Court's website collects helpful links about where to get copies of briefs, opinions, and oral argument audio for its cases (click here). As the post notes, you can't presently do that through the Court's website, which seems strange. The author writes, "it strikes me as sort of a surprising that the Supreme Court’s own website isn’t the primary source of publicly available information about the Court’s cases. It posts the transcripts first, which is very useful, and it has all the docket pages publicly available, both of which are great. But I would think it a good idea for the Court to remake its website to be the first place new opinions are made available; the first place filed briefs are available online; and the first place oral argument audios are posted." (Hat tip to WSJ Law Blog).

Tags: Supreme Court of the United States, Technology

Today's Wall Street Journal includes Walt Mossberg's review of Windows 7 (click here). It sounds like it's a big improvement over Vista, but, for XP users, it will be a pain to install. Also, there are four versions of it, which is something that's difficult for me to understand. For example, there's only one version of Apple's operating system, OS X. I switched to Apple in January 2002 and haven't looked back.

Tags: Technology

Following up on yesterday's post (click here) about a lawyer getting in trouble for comments posted online, the New York Times has an article today (click here) along the same lines. The NYT article mentions the principle that an attorney is an "officer of the court," which lawyers are taught in professional responsibility class in law school but which some lawyers forget. More than that, though, it's a matter of common sense.

Tags: Legal Ethics, Technology

As a lawyer with a blog, it's a good idea (some might say common sense) not to talk about your clients, your cases, and the judges in front of whom you appear, as a former assistant public defender in Illinois allegedly did. Click here for the story from the ABA Journal. If the allegations in the disciplinary complaint are accurate, her first mistake was not telling her boss that she was blogging. Hat tip to Ernest Svenson, aka Ernie the Attorney.

Tags: Legal Ethics, Technology

This item suggests that some caution may be warranted in using RECAP, the Firefox plug-in referenced in the August 17, 2009 post, below.

Tags: Federal Courts, Public Records, Technology, Intellectual Property

The ABA Journal has an interesting article about a clever new Firefox browser plug-in called RECAP, which is intended to expand access to federal court documents. RECAP duplicates documents that are accessed through the PACER website and stores them in a free public archive. PACER, in contrast, charges eight cents per page. The “Watch RECAP in Action” video here shows how it works. It will be interesting to see how this project progresses and whether any challenges will be raised. TechCrunch has a brief discussion of some of the issues here. As one of the commenters to the TechCrunch piece points out, one issue is the inadvertent publication of confidential information, if a document is subject to a protective order. I note also that RECAP’s terms of use purport to shift risk to the user, and that RECAP’s “About” page raises some questions as to the legality of RECAP.

Tags: Federal Courts, Public Records, Technology, Intellectual Property

A sales representative from the Nolo lawyer directory recently clued me in to Google Analytics. It’s a great way to monitor how many people are visiting your website, from where, for how long, and which pages they look at. It’s very easy to set up, and it’s free. Installing it simply involves pasting a tracking code in the appropriate spot in your website, as the Google Analytics site explains here. It’s a good tool.

Tags: Technology, Internet, Websites

I use an iPhone. One of the more useful iPhone apps that I’ve come across recently is Nolo’s Plain English Law Dictionary. I think it’s useful for lawyers and non-lawyers alike. The dictionary is divided into categories such as “Bankruptcy, Foreclosure & Debt,” “Business, LLC & Corporations,” “Family Law & Divorce,” “Lawsuits, Courts & Injuries,” “Nonprofits,” and “Real Estate & Rental Property.” My own spot check suggests that it does a very good job of explaining legal terms. Best of all, it’s free.

Clicking this icon will take you to the application in the iTunes Store: .

Tags: Technology, Apple, iPhone