Apr
27
What’s wrong with this life?
Filed Under Virtual worlds
Last week Field Fisher Waterhouse became the first ever major law firm to open an office in Second Life, the virtual three-dimensional world.
The press and blogosphere have not been slow to pick up on this.
Nearly Legal counsels “Please, No. It’s just wrong.” I tend to agree.
The firm’s argument goes like this. Big brands such as […]
By Nick Holmes, 27 April 2007
Apr
26
Internet Newsletter for Lawyers
Filed Under Newsletter
I’ve been busy the last few weeks, with Delia Venables, producing the May/June issue of the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers and putting the finishing touches to its new home on the web. As joint editor and publisher I hope to apply my complementary skills to build on the terrific work done by Delia over the […]
By Nick Holmes, 26 April 2007
Apr
17
A victim of his own success
Filed Under Search
I used to follow John Battelle’s Searchblog closely for news and insight into the web search business. It’s still the place to go and I’m trying to stay interested, but wonder if I should bother. Not if he continues to dish out posts like this:
Bezos at Web 2 Expo….S3 Data
Jeff Bezos just gave out some […]
By Nick Holmes, 17 April 2007
Apr
16
Feed yourself
Filed Under Feeds
Nearly Legal points us to Feedity, a terrific widget that generates an RSS feed from any web page:
Feedity has a proprietary data mining algorithm, which has been designed on the principles of self-learning agents. The native parser performs low-level content analysis, and it picks-up the most “prominent cluster” of hyperlinks. The renderer engine then automatically […]
By Nick Holmes, 16 April 2007
Apr
14
Long tails, short change
Filed Under Copyright
John Lanchester in the Guardian writes a lengthy article on the copyright issues surrounding books in the digital age. He concludes with an interesting proposal: let copyright endure for only a reasonably short period but guarantee the creator a percentage from further sales for a lengthier period - a lesser “royalty right”. Makes sense to […]
By Nick Holmes, 14 April 2007
Apr
13
Lawyers are necessary shock
Filed Under Trade marks, Miscellany
Thanks to Kevin O’Keefe for pointing us to the Federal Court of Appeal’s decision that Martindale-Hubbell’s lawyers.com domain name is not sufficiently distinctive to qualify as a trade mark, saying:
For better or worse, lawyers are necessarily an integral part of the information exchange about legal services.
See TTABlog for details.
By Nick Holmes, 13 April 2007
Apr
13
Thanks to the vigilant Charon QC for first spotting that the Bar Council has a blog on its new-look website. That’s to be welcomed; the more conversation the merrier, I say. But I do think the launch of a new blog by such a high profile “corporate” should have been handled with a little more […]
By Nick Holmes, 13 April 2007
Apr
11
When all else fails
Filed Under Miscellany
My muse being dormant, I fall back on the blogger’s stand-by, the meta-post:
Following cyber-stalking and death threats directed at A-list blogger Kathy Sierra, A-list blogger Tim O’Reilly and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales came up with a proposed Blogger’s Code of Conduct. What a dumb idea. Whilst I would deplore abusive and threatening behaviour and think […]
By Nick Holmes, 11 April 2007
Apr
4
Geeklawyer to toe the line
Filed Under Blogging
Hot on the heels of Petite Anglaise’s success at a Paris Employment Tribunal whereat she was held unfairly dismissed simply for blogging and being an employee at the same time, Geeklawyer has enjoyed somewhat more modest success in being permitted by the Bar Council to continue blogging and remain a barrister provided he mends his […]
By Nick Holmes, 4 April 2007
Apr
4
Official Documents feed
Filed Under Feeds
TSO are publishing a feed of new documents added to their Official Documents site. This includes the last 10 Command and HC Papers.
By Nick Holmes, 4 April 2007
