Futurelawyer

Some Of Us Are Living In Another Century

Trying to call your teenager? This is so NOT the way.

Don't Try This On Amazon

Google reveals Chromecast: video streaming to your TV from any device for $35 | The Verge. You want a new Chromecast $35 Google TV broadcast dongle, don't you? Well, the only place you can order it now is at the Google Play Store. Amazon has a not available message. I predict this will be a hot item, even though it isn't scheduled for delivery for 3-4 weeks. Just don't go out to lunch two days this week, and you have already paid for it. And, you might lose a couple of pounds. 

Google Chromecast - This Is Cool

Google Chromecast - Digital Media Receivers - CNET Reviews. Okay, at $35, the new ChromeCast HDMI dongle will plug into any HDMI port on your TV, and broadcast your phone's Netflix, movies, video and such to the TV. How cool is that? I just paid $99 for a Samsung device that is much bigger, requires a power brick, and has cables coming out of it. It works; but it is so kludgy compared to Chromecast. You can order one now at the PlayStore. Oh, and you can't use this with iPhone.

Keep Your Pennies Away From My Logo

Remove Logos from Glasses with a Penny. Are you kidding me? At least half of the cost of the sunglasses I bought SWMBO came from the logo on the sunglasses. If she wanted sunglasses without a logo, I could have saved a lot of money. Keep your hands off of my logo.

CiteStack - It Will Draft Your Brief For You

CiteStack. Okay, maybe it won't actually draft your brief or memorandum. But, it will certainly do a lot of the work for you. You know what a drag it can be to pull, pincite, and draft paragraphs in a brief or memo with all of the cases you have pulled into your research project. CiteStack creates a pincited group of citations, with correct citations, highlighted language from the case, and full case cites. You can literally copy and paste the result into a memo or brief, and edit it into a finished product. The best part of the software is that it works with the free legal research tool, Google Scholar, and it costs only $69.99 a year. You can get a month to play with it for under Ten bucks. Can you say bargain? I really love looking at cases in Google Scholar, highlighting some text, clicking CiteStack, and then, checking out the Stack. It looks like I spent half an hour writing the paragraph, and inserting citations. Disclosure: I get to use it for free. Go write your own blog.

 

Don't Type Me, Bro!

The 17 Types of People You See at Any Nerd Convention. Okay, this is a pretty humorous post about the types of people who attend Conventions like ComicCon. It is part of a standing meme that presumes anyone who would dress up to go to a Convention about fantasy and fictional characters must be a nerd or a dork who can't get along in society. Okay, well maybe that is often true; but, generalizations about types of people who do anything is no better than profiling. It may be grounded in some fact; but, it is certainly not always true. I like the comment by the business professional who only attended ComicCon because he couldn't find a parking space around the Convention Center. I actually envy the people who have the free time and money to go to these things. Some of them make a living at it; but, many of them are spending someone else's money. Nice work if you can get it. One of these days, I will have to write a post about the types of people who go to Bar Conventions.

 

Does Alcohol Help Or Hinder Creative Thinking?

Execupundit.com: Was Hemingway's Skill Booze-Driven?. Put me in the camp of those, like Execupundit, who think that, overall, alcohol impedes creative thought and productive work. While it may, in the beginning, liberate a mind to ponder more creative ideas, and to take risks in writing, I think it impedes good judgment when done to excess. There is a reason we call it "drunk dialing" or "drunk texting". Great authors write because they must. They drink, those who do, for the same reasons other people drink. The better question is to ask how many more great novels Hemingway could have written if his demons didn't prompt him to drink in the first place?

Motorola Rules Droid World

Verizon announces Motorola DROID Mini, Ultra, and Maxx | Android and Me. It's official. If you own a Droid, you own a Motorola smart phone. The three new phones by Motorola, now owned by Google, keep the Motorola aesthetic; but, they are new under the hood, and carry the cachet of Google everywhere they go. I am a fan of the Samsung plastic curvy build; but, I know there are millions of fans of the Motorola Droid build style. The new phones will have a unique chipset, with eight cores, and the Droid Ultra will have a 10 megapixel camera. There truly is something to like here for every user. While the Droid Mini will have a tiny 4.3 inch display (like iPhone), the other two are 5 inch beauties, and they all have no touch interfaces. Just wave at it.

If you are in the market for a new phone, these three are worth a look.They can be pre-ordered now; but, you will have to wait until August 24th to get your hands on one. Happy hunting.

Electronic Warfare - The Hidden Wars

Viber Attacked By Syrian Electronic Army | TechCrunch. The newspapers print the news of global conflict daily. Armies and revolutions and genocide; it is enough to make a grown man cry. So much suffering, so much anger. However, the real war of the future is not being fought on a battlefield; it is being fought by computers, and the people who use computers. From American pilots who sit in computer bunkers piloting drones across the globe to computer hackers working for governments attempting to destroy computer systems of their enemies, we are in the age of computer warfare. The recent attack by the "Syrian Electronic Army", an arm of the al-Assad Government, on the Israeli development center for U.K free calling and messaging service, "Viber", is just one example. Fortress America is a fortress no longer. As computers and the Internet connect the Earth, our future enemies will not attack in planes and ships that we can see coming. This is a powerful argument for having a computer system sophisticated enough to ward off electronic armies. However, how do we maintain our privacy and freedom while doing so? This is the question for our age. 

Top Ten Things You Can Do With Your Router

10 Useful Options You Can Configure In Your Router%u2019s Web Interface. You know you have a router in the house. But, did you know that you can change the settings? This useful article will tell you what you can safely change to make your router run smoothly. Of course, the first thing you should do with a new router is to enable encryption security and change the password. But, after that, there are many things you can do to speed up access, enable usage controls (my favorite is limiting the teen's access during certain times of the day), and much more. Check it out, and root around in your router.