Archive for April, 2011

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ABA Techshow 2011: 60 Sites in 60 Minutes Blows Us Out of the Water…Again (mark i unger)

April 23, 2011

“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” C.S. Lewis

If time were something I had more of, I’d gladly spend it with Paul Unger, Sharon Nelson, Jim Calloway and Erik Mazzone; but only if they’d promise to keep doing “60 Sites,” but for longer than a mere 60 minutes an hour.

This ultimate Techshow event not only garners as much ‘splash’ as the Keynote (no small feat, given Professor Lessig’s performance), but also never fails to thrill.  While not all of the sites were new this year, they were all ‘relevant,’ if not outrageously affable.  There was certain notoriety and unabashed contrarian tint, as these brilliant speakers (all individually and collectively), predicated self-deprecation against a sprinkling of mockery.

Sharon’s listings highlighted the theme of denial, not forgetting to mention that she failed to succeed at www.donothingfor2minutes.com by hitting print screen for this presentation. She added to our experience with–

Anti-Social http://anti-social.cc, “…a productivity application for Macs that turns off the social parts of the internet.”

Freedom http://macfreedom.com, “…a simple productivity application that locks you away from the entire Internet on Mac or Windows computers for up to eight hours at a time;” and

Fmylife www.fmylife.com “…a collection of everyday anecdotes and stories likely to happen to anyone and everyone, sent to the site by users,” designed (well, by design) to make us feel better about ourselves.

Erik Mazzone wins the “Simon Cowell Most Relevant” Award this year, nailing the intuitively needed and relatively obscure sites we tend to crave.  He played us from the beginning, citing, among others –

Hipmunk www.hipmunk.com,  “…the next generation of travel aggregator tools available on the web,…[which] helps zero in on the best flights faster,..by checking out the “agony index.”  This travel landing page shows you a graph of how long you’ll be traveling, laying over, pulling your hair out, etc…  It is, without question (and with a nod towards [my opinion] graphic display trending) the best I’ve seen so far.  This keeps the nod to Kayak.com as I think the leader, with a bit of a nod to hotwire.com, and raises the question of whether the recent litigation in this area will truly affect those of us trying to get the best deal on the best flight.

He quickly digressed into the mania of the day, however with –

SorryGottaGo (www.sorrygottago.com), a site which makes it possible to get off the phone with that one person in life who calls all the time and is impossible to get off the phone with.  During the call to ‘this’ person, it lets you play any one of dozens of audio files that provide plausible excuses for you to say “sorry, gotta go.”

Now in my mind this site works opposite with the App “Fake Calls,” which will ring you with any number of celebs that you choose to have them fake call you…I chose Lindsay Lohan, but apparently that may not be abelievable option for 100 days, at some point in the near future.

This theme was perpetuated by the venerable Jim Calloway, who ponied up –

Texts from Last Night (www.textsfromlastnight.com), which ‘…reminds us that some of the best stories from today’s world are now contained in text messages. These stories are gone and lost forever, unless your buddy/gal-pal decides to send them to this site.’

However, my antidote to this puppy is the App “Last Night Never Happened,” a sly little minx that will (the next morning) go into your Facebook and/or Twitter and remove all posts by you, based on the time you tell it to go back to and remove; pretty ingenious really and what I think ought to be part of the breakup kit I created with an ‘Ex’ of mine.  In my perfect world this is bundled with an App I would call the “CelToxilyzer 5000” (non-existent at this point, though I believe someone in Korea or Japan launched something similar a couple of years ago), but which at midnight requires you to blow into this ‘apparatus-connectus’ affixed to your cell phone.  If you blow over .12, .10, or .08, (depending on how long you’ve been broken up/get back together, broken up/get back together,…etc…), it will prevent you from actually making the call to your ex-girlfriend/ex-boyfriend/ex-huband/ex-wife.  Notice the penalty by BAC measurement is enhanced by repeated violations.  But until this time, the “Last Night” app will have to suffice.

It wasn’t all fun and games, however and Paul Unger and Jim Calloway joined the rest of the panel to remind us to pay attention to some serious sites that will help make us seriously productive.

Such sites (and they were dead on) were—

WhenIsGood (www.whenisgood.com) and Tungle (www.Tungle.me). Both are very good scheduling site additions to the already known TimeBridge and Wiggio staples.

SimpleCertifiedMail http://www.simplecertifiedmail.com is a slick and fast solution for those who have to send certified mail to people.  And let’s face it –  to those of us who hate having to deal with mail, dealing with certified is like nails on the chalkboard in the unending classroom of life.

Squarespace.com http://www.squarespace.com, in the last year or two, being touted as a really serious (and seriously simple to use) alternative to WordPress for free blog creation (Note: yes, the same WordPress who had an alleged and ‘slight’ hacking attack issue on their hosted sites recently).

With Apple under attack in just recently for allegedly tracking user locations from within iOS4 iPads and iPhones (and rumors of similar android based antics), simple seems really nice right about now.

Other extreme notables were –

Chrome Webstore (chrome.google.com/webstore) for Chrome browser web apps to make surfing like super-surfing.

Lynda (www.lynda.com), Not new, “…but online tutorials for all of your favorite software suites.”

Prezi (www.prezi.com) “…online and offline presentation software is turning heads with its non-linear method of presenting information.”  This one is slick and easy with it’s own App reader for iPad.  This is likely going to become one of my favorites as my right brain leaps into Spring like a borderline collie chasing enigmatic sheep.

Zamzar (www.zamzar.com) or KeepVid (www.keepvid.com)  in order to “Download and convert YouTube or other online videos to MPEG, AVI, etc…”

In addition, you could go to www.vdownloader.com, which will perform a similar function.

With the rumors of Apple’s new iPhone possibly boasting an 8 megapixel back-facing camera (though not till September, unfortunately), along with Cisco’s pulling the plug on flip-cams, one might rest assured by the number of video conversion sites, that while video may be shifting in the way it’s taken, it’s also shifting toward being able to pull it from the net just as easily.

The full list of sites will be out soon and we’ll let you know when it hits the ‘www,’ but I hope this teaser lets you know just how great this panel was.

miu

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ABA Techshow 2011

April 19, 2011

This year’s tech show was held in Chicago from Monday, April 11, 2011 to Wednesday, April 13 20. This is the first time that Techshow has been held in April and on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. It is normally held on Thursday, Friday and Saturday in March. The ABA indicated that they wanted to move Techshow a month later and that the scheduling of the hotel required it to be on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Sessions

For those who haven’t been to Techshow, it is a presentation of the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association. The show is broken down into tracks. The tracks range from Solo/Small Firm tracks to Large Firm tracks, E-discovery, Cloud Computing, Paperless Office, etc. There was even a whole track devoted to Apple computers in the law office. Within each track, there are generally four presentations. The presentations are an hour-long with the first one starting at 8:00 or 8:30 and going for one hour. There is a one hour break so the attendees can visit the Expo booth where exhibitors have come to Techshow to display their products. There is a second session in the morning and then two more in the afternoon. There is a lunch with a keynote speaker on the first day with various get-togethers in the evening..

For each hour of the show, there are 6 to 7 presentations that you can choose from. Because there are so many tracks and so many presentations, attendees cannot attend all of them so they have to choose which of the many sessions they want to attend. As you might expect, each hour either had no sessions that I was really interested in or it would have several that I wanted to see and from which I had to choose only one. If you start a presentation and realize it is not for you or not what you thought, you can leave that session and go to another one. You can’t go to two different sessions at the same time so you’re going to miss some presentations that you want to see. However, you do get all of the presenters’ papers on a USB drive so if you missed one you can go back to your office and review the paper.

This year, they had four sessions on Cloud Computing. Most of them dealt with the same issue e.g. security and client confidentiality. One of the speakers pointed out that in 1986, the model rules of the ABA required attorneys to get written permission from their clients before they could send out an e-mail relating to the client’s case. Obviously, progress has been made and that has changed. Cloud Computing is gaining in use and acceptance.

I was somewhat disappointed in the presentations this year. I have been to Techshow before and it seemed that most of the presenters were attorneys who were sharing how they used the latest technology. Maybe I’m mistaken but it seemed that most of the speakers this year were consultants who were selling their services to law firms. While each of the speakers indicated that they were forbidden from promoting themselves, it did seem that most of the speakers talked about the need for consultants to help you in your practice. As an example, in one of the sessions on Cloud Computing, there were two consultants and one lawyer who were speaking. One of the consultants said that if you’re going to use cloud computing, for instance Dropbox or Google to store documents, you need to have a third-party audit Dropbox or Google. When one of the attendees pointed out that small firms or solos could not afford that, another consultant who was attending and standing in the back, said the small firm or solo should hire a consultant to help them audit the companies. That seemed to be the universal answer to questions.

Exhibitors

It is always fun to visit the exhibitors in the exhibit hall during Techshow. There were exhibitors from the large firms like Lexis and Westlaw to the small firms like an Indian outsourcing company. Most of them were helpful and were anxious to show their products. Some of them were more aggressive and you wanted to walk by their booth without making eye contact.

Mark Unger, from the Computer and Technology Section also attended Techshow and he has previously written on Trialpad. Trialpad is an app for the iPad that allows you to you make presentations in court. The current version of Trialpad does not seem to be much different from other apps like iAnnotate and PDF expert. The difference between those apps and Trialpad is that they cost around $10 and Trialpad cost around $90. Mark is going to talk about an upcoming version but as always with upcoming versions, you’re not sure if its vaporware or not until you actually see it. Maybe version 2 will add features that would justify the $90 cost.

There was a company called DK Global Inc. that exhibited an app called TrialTouch. Their app does the same thing as the above-mentioned programs e.g. assist with presentations at trial. Their app is $15 but what they are selling is a $50 a month subscription service for you to upload all of your documents, photos, videos and audios in a case to DK Global. They then convert them so that they’ll work on the iPad and you don’t have to worry about doing the conversion or formatting yourself. When you download them from their site, they are ready for court. The service seems a little expensive since if you are spending that kind of money you would probably be using one of the more well-known trial presentation products like Trialdirector and would not be using your iPad.

While I was attending the session called The Slate Shootout, a representative from RIM brought a model of the new BlackBerry slate, the Playbook. It didn’t have built-in e-mail or contacts or a calendar. To be useful, it had to sync with a blackberry phone. It looked like it was geared more to the large firms who don’t allow their employees to use anything but blackberries and wont’ allow them to use an iPad. It didn’t seem to have a place in the ordinary slate world.

Overall, I enjoyed the Techshow this year but not as much as I have in the past. I think anyone who has not been to Techshow should attend since you not only learn about the latest tech advances being used by other lawyers but you also receive CLE credit from the State Bar. What more could a geek want.

 

Robert A. Ray

www.TheProbate.Net

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OH what a DIFFERENCE a LESSIG Makes: Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig Keynotes TechShow (mark i unger/ @miunger)

April 12, 2011

LESSIG Keynotes ABA TechShow 2011

Lessig's Code is Law (reprinted by perm)

I first had the opportunity to hear Prof. Larry Lessig at last fall’s TedXSanAntonio and this year is no exception to my belief that his Keynote/ppt is far and away the best use of presentation software ever.  Lessig, Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, held captive a packed house Monday with a historical mixed media presentation and commentary on the nuance, irony and contradictions of law, policy, code, intent in beginning and what effect has become of it.

As Twitter handles and hashtags flew around the room and net, some of my following Tweets of what he was saying belied clearly what was an event of enormity.  I would not feign to say I’ve done his talk justice, but his focus on remix/mashup, I believe yields to our collective creativity.

What common link b/w youtube/facebook/google/skype/twitter? All started by kids, dropouts and non-americans @lessig #abatechshow

New Culture: culture top down vocal cords lost; b/c Read Only (RO)…people consume but don’t participate in creation @lessig #abatechshow

(On Souza, who in 1906 testified to congress about the “talking machines” (record players) and the impending loss of one’s vocal cords)

YouTube is Platform for Read-Write (RW) creativity and more importantly communities @lessig #abatechshow

(on copyright and mashups and remixes of popular music to video by regular folks on the street)

Prof. Larry Lessig @ ABA TechShow 2011

Only @lessig souljaboy-breakfastclub-lisztomania-johnphilipsouza #abatechshow

RightInstinct: think about way modify markets/law-reflect new way culture used to maintain copyright intent so artists get paid #abatechshow

@lessig We’ve entered era of data dump…Leaks not leaks…but floods/tsunamis #abatechshow

@lessig Core of code is law is “Norms Law Market Architecture” #abatechshow

@lessig Internet: network desgned to facilitate sharing… What happened? Sharing!? #abatechshow

@lessig Only thing we’ve done in copyright war (napster etc) is to create criminals of our kids #abatechshow

@lessig Short term: attack by law Long term: many more violators (wikileakers) #abatechshow

@lessig Given architecture of net, policy continues as if there were no internet #abatechshow

@lessig repeat after me there is an internet #abatechshow

@lessig Members of congress spend 30-70% if their time raising $ to get back…They become shape shifters #abatechshow

(on why change is needed, but ‘ain’t gonna come’ until we realize–until we fix the roots of the problem; Until we address the loss of [@BenFranklin's] “Republic”).

Thank you Prof. Lessig.

See Entire Talk by Larry Lessig Here

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ABA TechShow Arrives (mark i unger)

April 12, 2011

ABA TechShow Arrives!

Techshow started off with a bang with Sunday night’s IgniteLaw presentation, presented by LexThink and InsideLegal  Twelve (12) talks in 6 minute increments wowed the packed house one after the other.  Some of the presentations (chosen by online voters) this year were:

Kevin O’Keefe:  FACEBOOK: Can it be really be used by lawyers and law firms for professional and business development? How so?  O’Keefe very smoothly took us out of the calm water, forcing us to face the Facebook’s hard questions.  We trust people we know…and 10,371 Twitter followers have a lot of trust when it comes to Social Media.

Carolyn Elefant:  Is Technology the Kryptonite of Client Confidentiality?  Carolyn, one half of the guru Social Media team and co-author of ‘the’ ABA book on Social Media (with Nicole Black) took us down the road of where the lines were drawn and where they stop…maybe.

Tom Mighell:  Preparing for the Post-PC Law Practice.  Former Techshow Chair and “Dallasite’ Tom Mighell has not only been on the tech circuit for years, but is constantly in flux and highly intuitive when it comes to trend-spotting and hitting the broad spectrum of forward thinking lawyers.  This was no difference, as he really held the crowd attention, never once falling back on the ‘what I do’ mentality.

Victor Medina:  Bespoke Legal Services in an Off-The-Rack Culture.  Victor Medina, who’s rise to mac-guru this year, along with Brett Burney, Ben Stevens, Finis Price and Mark Metzger, adds a dynamic but balanced look at legal services in today’s world.

See the whole list at www.ignitelaw.com/2011-talks

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