See if you can tell who Foursquare is targeting in it’s first TV Spot
First Google, now Foursquare. Hot on the heels of Google’s first search-related television ad during the Super Bowl, location-based social network-as-game sensation Foursquare
is gearing up to do the same thing tonight on cable network Bravo during the show Sheer Genius from 9 to 10 PM. It’s a 20-second spot in which Foursquare highlights its recently announced partnership with the network. The idea is to show users real-world locations for Bravo’s show.
Now this is hardly a piece of legal or even legal-tech news, except that Foursquare is the embodiment of the casestreaming concept I wrote about in this TechnoLawyer piece over a year ago. Oh, how the times have changed. And now that location-aware apps are all around us, including Twitter of course which got geolocation capabilities last year, we’re all that much closer to being forced into acknowledging colleagues in our vicinity whether we want to or not. I think I just felt a chill run down my spine.
Posted via email from practice (redux)
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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).
Earlier this year in my Smalllaw column I wrote about the use of location-based services and Twitter to create a real-time feed (posts, dockets, hearing outcomes, files, research, etc.). Let’s call it a Casestream. And while location-enabled applications such as Brightkite, Twinkle, and Loopt have been with us for a while, the advent of Google Lattitude means everyone can experience and potentially adopt such services. Just look at the potential of applications such as Foursquare. How much longer until the legal profession gets into the act?
Making Pacer User Friendly
Friday I stumbled on Recap and was impressed. How impressed? I downloaded it immediately and signed the online petition to make federal case-law available for free. Yeah – that impressed. Recap seems to have impressed some others as well; it has even enlisted top-shelf talent like the lawyer-activist-millionaires over at Justia (you might be more familiar with their last project, Findlaw).
How it works: Recap saves every document you view on PACER, adds meta-tags and other features, makes the item easier to find, and posts it to a central locale. The next time a user goes to PACER and wants that document, if it’s already been “liberated” then the user can download it free of charge.
Granted, you end up paying the 8 cents per page, which means that someone else gets a free ride, but the idea is that someone else could be doing the same and so on. Of course the fact that Recap exists begs the question of why we Americans must pay to view the fruits of our own justice system. Westlaw and Lexis figured out that answer a long time ago.
To use Recap you must use Firefox, the open-source alternative to Internet Explorer. But I suggest you download Firefox even if you don’t download Recap. It’s just a better browser.
Feedback: If you’ve used Recap or have an opinion sound off in our comment section or contact me, Hacker in Chief, at mhedayat@mha-law.com
Yesterday Facebook, the application that convinced a generation of soccer moms it was okay to post semi-candid pictures of themselves no matter how disturbing, bought Friendfeed, the best social application you’ve never heard of. When I read the news I wept. No, seriously. I wept at the end of an era.
Freiendfeed makes me feel smart. Facebook makes me feel like I need a shower. Friendfeed brings out the best in users. It promotes discussions about cutting-edge topics and insights. Facebook brings out the worst in users – many of them highly placed people who should know better – by soliciting the mundane and celebrating the average. See the difference?
I hope Facebook leaves Friendfeed alone, but I have no illusions. As it stands I’m positive that hordes of Facebook users will thunder into Friendfeed, choke it with pointless chatter, and leave it a disaster area when they move on a few weeks later.
If you find something online that’s worth keeping I hope you feel a little sad when it gets “discovered” and you know it’s about to lose its special character. That’s how you know it was worthwhile in the first place.
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