May
2
I was asked to write an article for the Legal Executive Journal (April issue) on the best law blogs. I’m not into “the best” and conferring awards, but I did agree to write a piece on “What makes a good blawg”, mentioning a few of my “blawgs of note”: established law blogs that have made their mark and stood the test of time.
So here it is.
[Full disclosure: Money changed hands.]
Postscript: It continues to astound me how rapid Google is at indexing blog sites. I only just finished this post 5 minutes ago and it’s already reindexed the home page. I know I’m not that important!
By Nick Holmes, 2 May 2008
Filed under Law blogs, Blogging | 1 Comment
May
2
Internet Newsletter for Lawyers & Law 2.0 May/June 2008 issue
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In this issue:
- Towards Gov 2.0 - by me
- The impact of social networking on firms
- The ultimately flexible (virtual) law firm
- Criminal Law Week acquired by Sweet & Maxwell
- Technology for today’s courtroom
- Quick and easy custom search with Google - me again
- Protecting reputation on the web
- Irish Law Society allows first online CPD
- Out of the box intranets: Intranet DASHBOARD
- SharePoint and web accessibility
View the Newsletter. Full access + print issues by subscription.
There is a Special Summer Offer of £30 for new subs. Hurry while stocks last!
By Nick Holmes, 2 May 2008
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May
1
Corruption 2.0
Filed Under Copyright, Free culture | 1 Comment
Corruption 2.0: The Next Problem Technology Must Solve was the title of Larry Lessig’s SCL 2008 Lecture last night. But, not to disappoint the largely IT/IP law-interested audience, in the event it was a distillation of his arguments about regulation and specifically copyright regulation in Code, The Future of Ideas and Free Culture with Corruption 2.0 exemplified in that context (members of Congress “lean to the green[back]”) .
As expected, it was engaging stuff, extremely well presented; the best thing about the supporting iMac slide show was that there was not a single bullet point in sight - instead a stream of keywords and phrases punctuated by “XML” section tags and illustrated with plenty of CC and not-so-CC images and multi-media mixes. Who would have thought the law could be that fun?
Update:
Reviews:
By Nick Holmes, 1 May 2008
Filed under Copyright, Free culture | 1 Comment
Apr
18
One more glass of Rioja, please
Filed Under Law sites, Law blogs, Blogging | Leave a Comment
(The continuing adventures of Mike Semple Piggot)
From before sparrow’s fart till late into the night Mike SP beavers away producing and publishing news, comment and analysis for our enjoyment and edification. He’s recently rearranged his furniture, and to help you keep up with his whereabouts, here’s a quick run-down.
Nearly ten years ago, Norman Baird and I started a small newswire for our online students and to provide a useful resource for law students. We gave it the name ‘Consilio’. … Consilio.tv is a new venture, a new online magazine, resourced by LegalTraining.tv, totally separate from the old spr-consilio.com which is no longer available online and will have a new style, approach and personality.
I … have stepped down as an editor, on a day to day basis, but I am continuing to provide regular content by writing articles, comment on development and will be a more active participant on the discussion board where I am able to assist, comment or even, advise on matters relating to legal education.
Mike’s alter ego needs no introduction. But, as he is the first to admit, there’s not much law there. And so to …
This essentially replaces the Legal Practitioner Newswire formerly published on spr-consilio.
The insitelaw newswire is intended to provide practitioners and students with a daily online news service with comment and analysis. There is a daily news podcast and I read the papers early each day to find law stories of relevance. “Charon QC” has a different take on the law, when he writes about it. Each day, there will be a short editorial note on the leading stories or developments of interest - and this will be posted onto the insitelaw blog to enable you to participate by commenting, should you wish to do so.
This is already (2 days on) a lively site with great visuals (and podcasts of course), focussing on all the best law stories and comment from the dailies and the blawgosphere.
Still at the idea stage, REDUX Law will be a law resource principally for those studying or keeping up in contract.
Cheers Mike/Charon.
By Nick Holmes, 18 April 2008
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Apr
17
No Facebook? No thanks!
Filed Under Social networking | 4 Comments
News.com.au reports that, according to research conducted by Australian firm Deacons, almost half of those of the 700 “workers” it surveyed who use MySpace and Facebook during work hours say they would refuse a job where they were not allowed access to social networking sites.
The study found 62 per cent of respondents (that’s 434 by my calcs) had access to the internet from work (is that all?) and 14 per cent of those (that’s 61) said they used the internet to access social networking sites at work (so it’s not the norm by a long chalk). So 30 (my calcs again) said they would refuse a job if access to social networking sites was denied. That’s fighting talk from them, but I suspect a lot would depend on what else the employer had to offer. I can’t see anyone turning down an offer from a Magic Circle firm almost whatever the terms.
Nick Abrahams of Deacons advises organisations to consider creating an official policy surrounding the use of social networking sites at work, setting guidelines about the amount of time spent on the sites and cautioning people to behave appropriately and not to disclose confidential company information. Sounds just like the blogging policies being recommended a couple of years ago.
It’s a difficult one isn’t it? Social networking is clearly hugely distracting and resource-hungry but you don’t want to appear fuddy duddy and untrusting by banning it. Is there a middle way?
By Nick Holmes, 17 April 2008
Filed under Social networking | 4 Comments
Apr
14
Consultations aggregator
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Just came across Tell Them What You Think, an extremely handy site which aggregates government consultations and enables you to:
- search all current government consultations for words and phrases
- browse all latest consultations by department
- set up alerts via email or RSS to tell you when consultations of interest are published
There are several departments not supported because of the way their consultations are published; these departments need to change their ways.
By Nick Holmes, 14 April 2008
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Apr
11
Blogs vs wikis
Filed Under Wikis, Blogging | 2 Comments
A chain of people in my orbit seem to agree that a simple test as to when to use a blog and when to use a wiki for collaboration is: one or two people providing content, use a blog; many people providing content, use a wiki (Mark Miller > Doug Cornelius > KnowledgeThoughts > James Mullan).
I can’t agree with that at all. Blogs and wikis are quite different tools and the number of people providing content is not the test. Sure most blogs are authored by individuals and a wiki for just one or two contributors would be an odd choice. But what about group blogs? They’re very effective collaboration tools for particular purposes - to progress conversations and develop ideas. In our blawgosphere, just look at Slaw and law.librarians for example.
But for all their merits, blogs don’t produce a collaborative result; wikis are designed for that.
In my brief research on this topic I came across a page by the folks at MovableType usefully Comparing Blogs to other Communication Tools, which distinguishes blogs and wikis thus:
The biggest distinction between blogs and wikis is that wikis are designed to create a single collaborative result, the sum total of the efforts of everyone who can view that web page. … But sometimes you want to share some information and be the owner of that information. Blogs are perfect for these situations: They only allow people to respond or react to the information you’ve shared, but they can’t modify it themselves.
By Nick Holmes, 11 April 2008
Filed under Wikis, Blogging | 2 Comments
Apr
8
Taking the juice out of Google
Filed Under Search | 4 Comments
When Google launched it’s Custom Search Engine service 18 months ago, I expected thousands of CSEs to pop up all over. That’s happened, but I’m not aware that any in the areas I monitor have made a mark. Why so?
In the UK legal arena I know of only a few CSEs:
- I put together a number focussed on UK blawgs, cases, legislation and government sites.
- Nearly Legal’s LawSearch includes selected statute and case law, government guidance, reports, commentary, other resources and help and law blogs
- More recently Struan Robertson at OUT-Law launched LawTrawlUK which currently includes 95 major law firm sites and some significant public sector sites
I’ve also tried out a number of others in related fields and, without exception, they all disappoint. This is not to detract from the genuine effort that has gone into them. They fail to excite because either one doesn’t know sufficiently precisely the scope of ones search, or if one does, one would prefer a different selection of sites, or the results feel unbalanced; and all the time one knows one will be missing some key results and those unexpected nuggets that a well-crafted global Google search would serve up. Narrowing the domain searched often takes away more than it gives.
For those reasons, when setting up my experimental CSEs, I figured that CSEs with tightly defined scopes might be a fruitful path to follow; within some I spent time pointing to specific folders and folder patterns rather than just the sites; and for some I added tags so that results could be refined. I did not get into weighting the results; that was time I wasn’t willing to spend initially.
Most CSEs I’ve come across are fairly basic, including just a selected list of sites to be included in the results. But to produce a CSE that does the business does require considerable thought and time implementing the advanced features: carefully and methodically selecting specific folders and/or file types using lists or wild cards, labelling the entries and weighting them.
By Nick Holmes, 8 April 2008
Filed under Search | 4 Comments
Mar
26
They’re working for us (dot org)
Filed Under Society, Democracy, Public Sector Information | Leave a Comment
The folks at mySociety are really moving on Society 2.0. mySociety is a charity which builds natty Web 2.0 sites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives. It also aims to teach the public and voluntary sectors, through demonstration, how to most efficiently use the internet to improve lives.
The most mature project to date is TheyWorkforYou which makes sense of Hansard and enables you to keep tabs on what your MP is saying and doing in your name. To further this cause they have now launched a Free our Bills campaign - a “Nice Polite Campaign to Gently Encourage Parliament to Publish Bills in a 21st Century Way, Please. Now.”
Bills are, like, so much more important than what MPs spend on furniture.
The problem is that the way in which Bills are put out is completely incompatible with the Internet era, so nobody out there ever knows what the heck people are actually voting for or against. We need to free our Bills in order for most people to be able to understand what matters about them.
Head on over and support the campaign.
Another mySociety project still very much in its infancy is the FoI request helper site WhatDoTheyKnow - lifting the lid on the UK public sector.
Far from the arcane world of Parliamentary bills and PSI is the mySociety project concerning your blocked mains, fly tipping, dangerous pavement slabs and all those other things that are wrong with your street. Got a problem with yours? Nip over to FixMyStreet and report it; in my experience you’ll get a reply from your council pronto. And of course you can take a peek at the problems your neighbours have reported and comment on them and even set up a feed to alert you to local problems. Why on earth would you do this? Well, it’s a lot more efficient in resolving your own problems than wading through your council’s website red tape; it’s informative about what’s happening in your community and it’s fun!
By Nick Holmes, 26 March 2008
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Mar
14
Who’s driving Gov 2.0?
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We’re fortunate to have a new encumbent as Minister for Transformational Government at the Cabinet Office who really gets it - Westminster über-blogger, Tom Watson. His vision is encapsulated in his recent speech at the Transformational Government Event.
And his plans for the immediate future are ambitious:
I see my job as helping you to accelerate the pace of change. Over the next few months, we will be:
- pushing through the closure of our hundreds of unnecessary websites
- improving our online content, including minimum standards for the content of remaining websites
- ensuring that all content held on government web sites is fully accessible to the major search engines
- embedding data mash-up into thinking across all of government not just the early adopters within departments
- driving through the cultural change in all our communications that sees the internet, mobile and other new media as the norm
- ensuring better innovation and much faster implementation. Build stuff small, test it out then iterate, iterate, iterate
- capturing the skills, talent and energy we need for change - from within the public service and from outside …
- using new media to engage more directly and more effectively with individuals and communities.
By Nick Holmes, 14 March 2008
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