practicehacker

Want a better all-in-one internet application for your small business?

Mozilla recently launched SeaMonkey 2.0, a helpful tool that includes an internet browser, email and news client, HTML editor and web tools for your business website. You can download SeaMonkey 2.0 at the website here.

Although this application is not just for business owners, there are a lot of new features that seem to have the small business owner in mind. For example, in the case of an all-too-common crash, SeaMonkey 2.0 ensures that all files will be automatically restored. There is also an upgraded history database that can store more information than ever before. All new features can be found in the release notes.

When running a business, certain unforeseeable mishaps may occur. SeaMonkey 2.0 promises to be a solution.

Are you a fan of SeaMonkey? What do you think of version 2.0?

GoodSharks Founder Alicia Dearn has a vision: she wants to humanize lawyers and uplift her profession in the eyes of the consumer public, while helping solos and small firms market efficiently.   Her website, www.GoodSharks.com, blends social media technology with a lawyer-client matching interface to promote easy and open communications between lawyers and potential clients.  Equally important to Dearn and GoodSharks are the ethical issues implicated by the use of web 2.0 as a marketing and practice management platform.  GoodSharks was meticulously designed over a two year period with these myriad of ethical issues in mind; moreover, it continues to evolve to address the needs of its attorney members.  GoodSharks is free for all users while it is in beta. To encourage lawyers to sign up and harness the marketing value in GoodSharks, the site recently started a SharkWeek promotion on Twitter (@GoodSharks).  Each week, one attorney-member is chosen to have his or her profile tweeted several times over the week.  The promotion has been an instant success, yielding at least one lead for the first featured GoodSharks member within hours of the first tweet.

Another day another buzzword. Today it’s the real-time web - one in a series of recent developments making the web more useful. Now the web

• travels with our handheld devices (mobile web)
• alerts us when something happens (web of things)
• keeps us informed as things happen (real-time web)

Much high-quality writing about this comes from Read/Write/Web, host of the Real-Time Web Summit going on right now. Here are some of the companies they’ve featured thus far:

• identica.ca: open-source twitter client like status.net (formerly laconi.ca)
• superfeedr.com: real-time parsing of RSS feeds
• waze: crowd-sourced traffic tips and directions
• zensify: social network topics via weighted tags
• allvoices: distills input from citizen journalists
• pachube: the www connected to your house, etc. (my addition to the list)

While the legal applications for these developments are virtually limitless, even day-to-day applications are intriguing.  At last my refrigerator can call, IM, or e-mail with a reminder to go grocery shopping; or it may just transmit a pre-programmed list to the store based on the fridge’s lastest contents (adjusted for plans to have the neighbors over). Events that I upload from my phone to my calendar are communicated to the refigerator which can remind me to buy party supplies, etc. The list goes on and on.

Now if you don’t mind I’m going to tell my house to raise the room temperature in time for my arrival this evening.

Just got my invitation to Google Wave. Should be called Google Crack. I’ve been online for 5 hours and still want to experiment but I’m about to pass out. To put it in perspective, I heard about the invitation at 8:30 Friday night. It is now 6:40 Saturday morning. I’ve been tooling around with Wave since 2:45 AM (didn’t sleep last night, okay?).

Turns out that Wave isn’t that complex (despite appearances). The most apt description I’ve heard yet was offered on Bwana.tv where the host referred to it as an open-sourced real-time multimedia platform for communication …. that just happens to draw on nearly all Google’s media properties – e-mail (gmail), video (YouTube), games, pictures (Picasa), IM (gTalk), social networking (Orkut), documents (Google Docs), real-time online collaboration (Google Docs again), etc.

The  point is his tool could really, really change the way we communicate with each other and with clients. It’s that useful. I’ll keep my readers up to date. So far so good.

P.S. In true Internet, word-of-mouth, hacker fashion I got my invitation through a longtime online contact I originally met blogging, who got it from a contact of his, and so on.  You could say we scarcely know one another but he helped me become part of the 100,000 who got Wave invites. Thanks for that bro!

Wave is Google’s open-sourced real-time multimedia platform for communications, combining e-mail (gmail), video (YouTube), pictures (Picasa), IM (gTalk), social networking (Orkut), and real-time online collaboration (Google Docs).

Lawyers are calling it social networking burnout. Law.com reports that corporate America is losing its taste for social networking sites and shutting down access to Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. Recent back-to-back studies show a big chunk of corporate America banning Twitter and Facebook from the workplace. The news for the media world is even grimmer. According to an August survey by ScanSafe, 76% of companies block employee use of social networking sites — up 20% from February 2009. And social networking sites have become productivity enemy #1. Indianapolis-based Barnes & Thornburg is seeing companies block Facebook “all the time.” The firm has banned Facebook itself, and Twitter is next. I think what’s happening is social media is starting to simmer and the lawyers, PR teams, HR teams, and marketers are realizing that all these problems can occur, said one associate at Gunster Yoakley & Stewart of West Palm Beach, Florida.

I think what’s happening is social media is starting to simmer and the lawyers, PR teams, HR teams, and marketers are realizing that all these problems can occur, said one associate at Gunster Yoakley & Stewart of West Palm Beach, Florida who focuses on technology and the Internet.