Archive for the ‘news’Category
Ahh … that New Lexis Smell
Today LexisNexis unveiled a partnership with Microsoft at LegalTech NY – the result is meant to foreshadow the complete revamp of the Lexis research system due out later this year, and dubbed New Lexis. In short, the company’s answer to WestlawNext, which was unveiled at LT NY yesterday. As a result of the partnership, a LexisNexis tab can now be integrated into the ribbon that Microsoft began using in Office 2007 and continues to use in Office 2010 beta as a substitute for the profusion of button bars in Office 2003. Users can conduct legal research, Internet searches on Bing and Google, even Sheppardize, all from within their Word, Outlook, or SharePoint document.
According to Clemens Ceipek, vice president of New Lexis, our customers spend their time … in e-mails or in Word creating or reviewing documents. That is exactly what we are doing. As a lawyer you no longer need to go to a separate, dedicated site to get the information.” Ideally this means that a user reviewing a brief in Word can click on the Shepard’s tab and confirm the status of all cases in the document at once. If the user wants to read the cases, clicking on another tab splits the screen and pulls up the cases. This same integration of information could extend to items within a firm’s own network or document management system in addition to items from Lexis databases or the Internet.
via abajournal.com
02
02 2010
Is Twitter really changing the news?
In “How Twitter is Changing the Face of Media” @Mashable guest poster @SorenG shares his take on how the micro-blog phenom is affecting the 5th Estate. In his estimation the big changes brought about by Twitter are
- Our News – items get around via reTweet – more immediate than RSS or Blogs
- People Power - “news” is no longer just what “they” say it is; now it can be what the mob says it is
- Competition – just because it comes from a given source doesn’t make it news; everyone is a source today
- Personality – news is more pesronal when it is local and affects your narrow interest or interest group
- Interactivity – reaction and interaction could be more important and interesting than the story itself
I should be all for these changes. Strangely however, I’m on the fence. Here’s why. People-powered information sounds great and has the potential to be much better for society than information being in the hands of the newserati. But when it comes to us in an immediate, raw, unfiltered feed, news still should be vetted and processed before it is trusted. The alternative could easily be panic caused by a cascade of misinformation.
Still, that’s the democracy of Twitter – everyone has a chance to succeed and an even bigger chance to fail.
01
12 2009
got Wave invitation (no thanks to Google)
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).
17
10 2009
It’s better to burn out … rust never sleeps
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.
14
10 2009
Fed 2.0
The O’Bama administration has demonstrated a surprising commitment to cloud-based or SaaS computing with Apps.gov; the portal that makes cloud-based services such as Google Apps available to federal agencies. The extent to which agencies will take the administration up on its challenge is open to debate: making technology available is not enough to change government culture. But the fact that the administration was willing to to put its money where it’s mouth was says a lot. Overall Apps.gov seems like a worthy follow up to such innovations such as Congress.org and the steady march of appellate court opinions available in RSS-friendly .xml format. Suddenly I have hope for the future of government.
