Futurelawyer

The Wisdom of Crowds: Is the Internet Fostering Bad Decisions? : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech

Link: The Wisdom of Crowds: Is the Internet Fostering Bad Decisions? : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech. The recent attacks on Larry Bodine by angry Mac users for his post on his Mac G5 trouble got me thinking about the inadequacy of the legal system to deal with Internet Mob violence (the flame post kind). This article by Christopher Null muses about the psychology of Internet crowds, who react in a knee-jerk fashion to real or perceived slights or injustice. The power of the Internet magnifies the impact of such mob behavior. How should lawyers react to this problem? Is restricting Internet freedom an answer? How do you file a lawsuit against anonymous posters on the web? Even if you identify them, how do you sue hundreds of people all over the world for the same tort? Or, should they be protected by free speech provisions in State and Federal Constitutions? If Internet mob post violence chills free speech of others, how do we prevent it? No answers, just questions.

NETGEAR Powerline Networking

Link: NETGEAR Powerline Networking. Powerline networking has never lived up to its promise, but new digital home standards adopted by the Universal Powerline Association promise data transfer speeds up to 200 mbps. Real world experience with the new devices is closer to 20 to 40 mbps, fast enough for ordinary networking and Internet stuff, but not fast enough for the future of video media transfer. In any event, if you are uncomfortable with running Cat5 cable through your house or office, and don't want to mess with wireless networking, the new devices may be for you. Figure about $130 per appliance. Just plug your router into the powerline adapter, plug the adapter into the wall, install the software, and go. You can get a kit with two Netgear powerline adapters for around $250.

e-Mobile TV: Live TV anywhere! on PocketGear.com

Link: e-Mobile TV: Live TV anywhere! on PocketGear.com. If you have a cell phone or PDA running Windows Mobile or PocketPC, and want to catch live TV feeds of News, Weather and Sports, this $20 program is for you. It aggregates 20 or so live TV channels, and has no subscription fees. The software links to the feeds over the Internet, so you will need Edge or EV-DO speeds. However, this is a great way to get current news in TV format on your phone or PDA, if you have broadband and Windows Mobile.

If You Dislike Microsoft's Windows Antipiracy Checks, Look Out - Yahoo! News

Link: If You Dislike Microsoft's Windows Antipiracy Checks, Look Out - Yahoo! News. Not satisfied with the problems created by the Windows Genuine Advantage software for the Windows XP operating system, Microsoft is introducing it for Microsoft Office. Since I use WordPerfect and OpenOffice, I don't expect that this will create problems for me; however, if you use Microsoft Word, watch out. The false positive I got on one of my computers running XP wasted a couple of days. I don't understand why more users don't get it. Why are you paying money to Microsoft to annoy you?

Headgear shows images in 360-degree view - Yahoo! News

Link: Headgear shows images in 360-degree view - Yahoo! News. Would you wear this on your head? Want to get away? Have I got the gadget for you! This Toshiba prototype is not designed for commercial use, but allegedly gives a user a 360 degree view of a virtual reality. Say, you are a lawyer tired of the same old courtroom scene. Just wear this to Court, and, until you are carted away to the detention cell, you can pretend you are in outer space, or on a beach in CanCun, or, well, you get the idea. This would be perfect for the dentist's chair, except the dentist would have to get inside to get at your teeth. Or, how about this? Paint a smiley face on it, and use it as a Halloween costume!

Welcome To Fastap

Link: Welcome To Fastap. I learned to type on a QWERTY keyboard and a typewriter, with real ribbons, and real paper, more years ago than I care to admit. So, I am partial to mobile tech that uses standard QWERTY key layouts, such as my trusty Treo 700w and my Treo 650. I have never been a fan of Cell phones as methods of typing text messages or emails, since they require numerous taps to get a single letter. Blackberry's two letters a key solution always seemed, well, like the Blackberry, a brain-dead alternative. Now, Digit Wireless is bringing its innovative Fastap keyboard to the U.S., in a phone by LG for Alltel. The keyboard has been on Telus phones in Canada for a couple of years, and should be a hit here with users who like the standard cell phone look, but want to text their hearts away. The keyboard has an alphabetical arrangement of every letter in the alphabet, mixed in with the number keys on the cell phone pad. If you don't want a Treo or a Moto Q, and you want to text and email, try this one out.

Spyware Terminator - Spyware & Adware Real-time protection

Link: Spyware Terminator - Spyware & Adware Real-time protection. A new anti-spyware and anti-virus program is taking the Internet world by storm. Spyware Terminator, by Crawler, LLC, of Boca Raton, has been downloaded over a million times from Download.Com. It is free, with a corporate networked edition that can be purchased, and it is easy to install and use. The reviews are positive, and it appears to be a superior product. I tried it, and it works great. The interface is pretty, and functional. Worth a look, if you are security conscious.

Adobe Labs - Adobe Digital Editions Frequently Asked Questions

Link: Adobe Labs - Adobe Digital Editions
        Adobe Digital Editions is available for beta download. This flash based EReader software creates a page like environment based on Adobe's ubiquitious PDF document format. This will become the standard way to ERead documents, including legal research materials. In the next few weeks, I will be searching out, and collecting, PDF versions of legal resource material to create my own ELibrary. Since this software will be usable on any current computer, it makes Sony's new EReader appliance obsolete before it arrives. Why buy an appliance to do one thing? Unless, of course, it does that one thing better than anyone else. We shall see if the Sony appliance gains any traction in the market. I doubt it.

Fastcase™, Searchable Caselaw Database - Accelerated Legal Research

Link: Fastcase™, Searchable Caselaw Database - Accelerated Legal Research. While I am still a fan of TheLaw.Net for National legal research, I took another look at FastCase, since it is provided for free to Florida Bar members as part of the membership package. FastCase is fast, accurate, and easy to use, and contains the entire Florida case law database, together with links to free Statute, Federal, and other research for basic research. Surprise, I discovered that, in most cases, all I needed was a Florida case or statute solution, and I finally found something I was happy my Bar dues were paying for. If you just need State-specific case and statute research, you can't beat free. The 50 state database is also available for $195 a year.

No Service Pack 3 Update for Windows XP? - Yahoo! News

Link: No Service Pack 3 Update for Windows XP? - Yahoo! News. Why am I not surprised? Microsoft says it is "not obligated" to provide Service Pack releases of the dozens of patches to its buggy operating system, and, thus, the Service Pack 3 release may come at the end of 2008, and may not come at all. Since Microsoft is all about making money, and very little about customers and users, do you want to bet on which? Is it a surprise that the world is moving to Macs and Linux? The new dual core Intel chip based Macs will permit Mac's OS and Windows to coexist on the same machine. Maybe the Mac people have something? But, of course, Apple is about making money also. Linux and Web-based computing are looking better than ever. By the end of 2008, maybe we will all be platform independent, and web-based, and the open-source movement will be a tsunami. And, maybe there is a tooth fairy.