Futurelawyer

Wireless keyboards for Handhelds - The Jury is Out

I keep a big cardboard box at home, filled with computer cables and gadgets that I don't use anymore, or that I never really used at all. I could call it a junk box, but every now and then, on a Saturday morning, I pull everything out, look at each item, and try to figure out what I was thinking when I paid good money for it. Rarely, I find something that I have a current use for, like the Jabra BT200 bluetooth headset that never really worked well until I paired it with the Treo 650. This time, I pulled out an old wireless Targus Palm folding keyboard, a clunker that unfolds into a chiclet keyboard for entering text into any Palm device. The device sits on a cradle in front of the keyboard. While I store documents on the Palm for reference, I have never been able to get the benefit of typing on this little keyboard for editing and saving documents. My notebook computer slice only weighs 2 1/2 pounds, and I carry it with me for real work. It always seemed kind of useless to try to edit large documents on a kludgy keyboard that was too small anyway. Kind of destroys the whole point of carrying something small in your pocket, doesn't it?

LexThink - Legal Blogging Takes Off

LexThink Link . The FutureLawyer is looking forward to attending BlawgThink in Chicago the second weekend in November. The brainchild of Dennis Kennedy and Matt Homann (LexThink.Com), the weekend promises discussion groups and brainstorming with the leading legal bloggers on the net. While the FutureLawyer doesn't put himself in that class (yet), I am looking forward to seeing what is new in this emerging field. I am looking forward to bringing back techniques and ideas that will make the FutureLawyer a place that you want to come to for legal tech news and opinion. Thanks to Dennis and Matt for sponsoring this first ever event.

US Supreme Court won't stop injunction on BlackBerry - Yahoo! News

Link: US Supreme Court won't stop injunction on BlackBerry - Yahoo! News. If you are still using a BlackBerry device, you might reconsider. RIM lost another battle yesterday, when the Supreme Court refused an emergency plea to end the injunction now on appeal. While not unusual, this may be another nail in the coffin for the Toronto manufacturer of the popular device, used by many law firms for lawyer to lawyer, and lawyer to firm communication. The FutureLawyer has been down on the BlackBerry for some time, because its lack of the ability to use third party software, makes it not a versatile tool. I also never did quite get the appeal of a device that beeped at me every time someone else chose to send me a message. I don't want my email pushed at me. I want to go get it when I am ready. Anyway, it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will hear the appeal of the injunction and verdict against RIM. Dare I say it? Treo 650, Windows Mobile, anyone?

The University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law

Link: The University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law. Listen up, grasshopper, and hear the wisdom of age. In the early times, around 1994, two legal technology pioneers had the idea that the World Wide Web would be a wonderful place where lawyers and law students could learn all about the law, and do legal research, and they started doing seminars around the State of Florida, touting this wonderful new resource. You have probably guessed who one of them was. The other was a remarkably bright guy, Andy Adkins, who is now the Legal Tech chief at the University of Florida College of Law in Gainesville. Andy is one of the country's leading authorities on the use of technology in law practice management, and his website is a great resource. Recently, however, he has co-authored a book on World War II with his dad, A. Z. Adkins, Jr., "You Can't Get Much Closer Than This", published by CaseMate Publishing. Great stuff. You can get more information about the book by emailing Andy at [email protected] , or go to the website at 80th Division Diary .

Tweney.com - Palm Today, Gone Tomorrow

Link: Tweney.com - Palm Today, Gone Tomorrow. On the Palm Treo front, Dylan Tweney, in the November issue of Mobile Computing to Go magazine, seems to agree with the opinion that Palm is heading in the direction of Windows, and appears to be between a rock and a hard place with all of its Palm base. However, like Deion Sanders, when asked whether he wanted the millions from baseball or football, the FutureLawyer thinks that Palm should answer: "Both." Why not continue to support the Palm operating system, and create smartphones that leverage the Windows Mobile 5.0 interface? This is one lawyer who really doesn't need multitasking on his smartphone. While I will certainly love playing with the Treo 700W when it comes out, I still get my work done with the Treo 650.

Legal Technology - Stay Denied as RIM Seeks Supreme Court Appeal of BlackBerry Infringement

Link: Legal Technology - Stay Denied as RIM Seeks Supreme Court Appeal of BlackBerry Infringement. Well, my wife's love affair with her BlackBerry may end in divorce. Since the 2003 verdict, RIM, the Ontario make of the BlackBerry device that runs the lives of many lawyers and other professionals, has been scrambling to find a way out of its fix. The BlackBerry , known on the street as the "CrackBerry" because of its addictive qualities, will be sorely missed by its users if RIM is forced to stop selling pending its appeal to the Supreme Court. Somehow, there has to be a way to resolve the dispute. The user base is way too large. I suspect that RIM may have to suck it up and pay royalties. Would I buy a BlackBerry today? No, but I have never liked the fact that I couldn't download the thousands of Palm applications out there. The real growth possibilities for RIM seem to be in joint marketing with Windows and Palm devices. It will be interesting to watch how this all plays out.

Colleges Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems - New York Times

Link: Colleges Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems - New York Times. The inevitable conflict between laws ostensibly passed to protect against terrorists has again run up against resistance from the Colleges and Universities, who threaten litigation to prevent the Federal Government from forcing them to upgrade computer networks and systems so as to make 24-7 monitoring of all Internet activity possible at the Institutions. The use of the 1994 Communications Assistance Enforcement Act  requires telephone companies to re-engineer their systems, at their own cost (read taxpayer and telephone customer cost), in order to allow federal agents to monitor transmissions. This is not so much a civil rights issue, since wiretap warrants from a Judge would still be required, but , according to Terry Hartle , a Senior Vice-President of the American Council on Education , a College and University Association, "This is the mother of all un-funded mandates". What do you think? Would you pay an extra $450 a year in tuition costs for your child, so that the Government could monitor all Internet traffic at college? This is all coming to the forefront now because the F.C.C. recently issued an Order extending the reach of the 1994 law to Universities, as well as Commercial Internet Providers, municipalities, large and small, airports, etc. Can "Big Brother" be far behind?

3am Labs - LogMeIn Free - Free is Good!!!

Link: 3am Labs - Innovation at Any Hour.. 3AM Labs, a Boston, Massachusetts provider of computer software and remote support and access solutions, has hit a home run with LogMeINFree, a secure remote access application that is easy to install and use. It compares favorably to GoToMyPc, discussed here previously, and it can't get any cheaper than free. Of course, if you want data and file transfer and synchronization, you have to pay a monthly fee, but, the FutureLawyer has found that, in a vast majority of cases, remote access is all that is needed. I have rebooted, installed update software, and administered the office network from many exotic locations. My favorite, though, is my den, while still in pajamas, at 5:30 A.M. I do not have fond memories of the past, in which I had to get in my car, drive 20 minutes, go into the office, sit at my desk, solve a network problem, and then drive home. You need to try this remote access marvel, that now works natively in Mozilla and FireFox, with Java support. Pretty soon, I will be able to relegate Internet Explorer to the trash heap of history, where it belongs.

Gavel to Gavel - Florida Supreme Court Oral Argument

Link: Gavel to Gavel Home. Thanks to the beauty of Internet technology, and Media player technology, together with high-speed broadband access, any lawyer, paralegal, or citizen may view the entire oral arguments before the Florida Supreme Court online, as they happen, or through archives of past arguments. Any lawyer who intends to file or argue an appeal should view some of these arguments, and download the appellate briefs, also available from Florida State University, at its GaveltoGavel website. Gavel to Gavel may also be linked to from the Florida Supreme Court website, which has a new URL: Florida Supreme Court . Many Courts are leveraging the power of computer technology and the Internet to make their content accessible to the citizenry. The FutureLawyer recommends every citizen tune in from time to time. It will deepen your knowledge, and may even make you a better citizen.

PCWorld.com - Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents

Link: PCWorld.com - Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents. I don't know how this escaped my notice, but Xerox, HP and many well known makers of computer printers have apparently been putting coded yellow dots, not visible to the naked eye, in every printout, that disclose the printer's serial number and date and time of the printout. The dots are a millimeter in size, and spread every inch on the page, between the printed words and the margins. On the one hand, this seems very 1984-ish, and the Government's involvement is scary. On the other hand, the electronic discovery implications are that paper may be back as a source for litigation evidence. Is there a document in your litigation that is suspect? Hackers have apparently figured out how to read the coded language. Why isn't everybody screaming about this?