Creating a quality website with little or no knowledge of HTML or other programming languages is no longer the challenge that it once was. With the evolution of blogging platforms, wikis and other web-based content management systems, you can now build a web presence for your organization or projects with little more than some [...]

I've repeated this story enough times that I'm no longer sure it is even true: Way back in 1995, at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries, we introduced volume one, number one, of legal.online, the first-ever newsletter about how lawyers could use the Internet. And as we stood there in the exhibit hall, the first librarian to come by and actually purchase a subscription on the spot was Genie Tyburski, a law librarian at Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll in Philadelphia.

Not long after, Genie launched The Virtual Chase, a site devoted to teaching legal professionals about legal research -- particularly online legal research. As I wrote of the launch in my book, The Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web, she "quickly made it a top destination for legal researchers." In the book, I gave The Virtual Chase five stars, my highest rating.

So it was as if I was losing an old friend when I read Genie's announcement, posted on the front page of her site, that she would be closing The Virtual Chase. Here is what she wrote:"To paraphrase Shakespeare, the inaudible and noiseless foot of time passes almost without notice. Indeed, the past 12 years, spent writing about research strategies and resources, flew by in no small part because of the fun I had doing it. Yet change is the essence of the times, making 12 years rather a long stretch.

"Saying goodbye is never easy. I've enjoyed the generous support of Ballard Spahr for my creative endeavors. I've received much encouragement over the years from the legal community. My peers have kindly awarded my efforts.

"But the demands of managing a Web site increasingly took me away from my first love -- providing library and research services to lawyers. Now I have an opportunity to return to working closely with Ballard Spahr's lawyers and library staff. Starting today, I will be library manager, overseeing all services and assisting the director of the library.

"While the decision to close The Virtual Chase was not made lightly, I'm convinced it's the best choice for both the firm and me. I will take down the site gradually over the next several months unless I find someone willing to archive it or continue its development. I anticipate that the site will be completely offline by no later than May 2009 (and quite possibly, sooner) except in the event of a new owner."Over the years since that first meeting with Genie in 1995, I've come to consider her a friend and her site an invaluable resource. I wish her the best in her new position, but I'll be sorry to see The Virtual Chase go.

beSpacific provides the heads up to the Google Blog announcement of the launch of Knol: "Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. ... The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of information resides in people's heads: millions of people know useful things and billions more could benefit from that knowledge. Knol will encourage these people to contribute their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone.

"The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good." Hmmm. Smells like a non-wiki competitor to Wikipedia. A search for "law" found no articles -- but Knol welcomes contributions. Here is your chance.

Get the skinny on all the emerging technologies reshaping social change and nonprofit advocacy. As our pals over at NetSquared (a project of TechSoup) pointed out last week, you can now watch sessions from N2's year three conference on FORA.tv.

I’ve been collecting lots of little bits and pieces of information with the hope of turning them into full blog posts, but I haven’t. So today, instead of depriving you of these valuable tidbits any longer, I’m throwing open the doors and inviting you to enjoy the smorgasbord. 100 Unbelievably Useful Reference Sites You’ve Never Heard [...]

Last month we wrote about Lawyers and Twitter, pointing out some of the interesting ways lawyers and other legal professionals are using the micro-blogging tool in their professional lives. Now we’re joining in: you can follow the LTRC on Twitter. We’re constantly adding new content to our site, publishing articles, and giving presentations on legal technology issues, and we’ll be using Twitter to announce all of those great resources.

If you’re already on Twitter, following us is as easy as visiting our Twitter page and clicking “follow”. If you don’t have an account yet, you can either sign up by clicking the big green “Join today” button (it’s free, and fast!), or you can use the Twitter RSS feed to pipe our updates directly to your favorite feed reader.

Here’s today’s second pointer to a segment from WAMU. This time, the segment is from The Kojo Nnamdi Show and focuses on the implementation of municipal broadband projects and why so many projects have failed. Again, you can listen to the recording on the WAMU website. - K

WAMU, one of the great NPR affiliates in DC, had a segment on non-profits and the slowing economy. You can listen to the recording on their website. - K

If you’ve been dragging your feet on implementing a backup strategy, you aren’t alone. According to Macworld, “if Apple’s figures are correct, less than four percent of Mac users perform regular, automated backups”. Mac OS X (Leopard), the latest operating system upgrade for Apple computers, comes standard with a backup application called Time Machine that is nearly effortless.  Apple boasts during Time Machine setup that “Time Machine keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac.  It not only keeps a spare copy of every file, it remembers how your system looked, so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past”.

In reviewing Time Machine, Macintosh News Network notes that “when a fresh drive is connected to the system, Time Machine brings up a prompt asking whether or not the drive will be used for backups. If the drive is formatted for Windows (FAT32 or NTFS), the drive must be reformatted before Time Machine will use it for backup. About the only extra detail required is choosing which volumes to exclude from the backup, such as a Boot Camp partition, or drives holding non-essential data…”

The first backup is a comprehensive one of everything on the drive.  This initial backup takes the longest so you might want to begin this process right before you go to bed or leave the office for the day.  After the initial backup, Time Machine performs incremental backups hourly, copying just the files that have changed since the previous backup.

If you are an Apple user, this tool will help to create and maintain a consistent backup program.  If you are thinking about making the leap to a Macintosh system, Time Machine gives you another strong reason to consider.

Resources:
Macworld - Leopard first looks: Time MachineMacworld Magazine’s review of the Time Machine feature

Ross’ Great Truths About Data BackupAttorney Ross Kodner discusses the importance of data backup

FYI: Data Backup
The ABA Legal Technology Resource Center presents a variety of backup options

We recently updated our credit/debit card processing services discount program that the National Processing Company (NPC) offers U.S. nonprofit organizations and public libraries through TechSoup Stock. Check it out!

For 8 hours only today, boost your fundraising with NOZA and receive a special discount! This is your best opportunity to try a new method of researching and finding potential donors with NOZA’s easy-to-use database of charitable gifts. Search and download 4,175 records of giving to U.S. charities for the specially discounted admin fee of $99 (the retail value is $250). Place your request.

Legendary Wyoming trial lawyer Gerry Spence is now also on the road to becoming a legendary blogger. Earlier this month, he launched Gerry Spence's Blog, explaining in an introductory post that he has done a "miserably inadequate" job of using the Internet to share his thoughts and lessons. "I have learned things about our broken judicial system I want to expose to you," he writes. "I have ideas about our condition in this slave-hold under which many decent Americans suffer."

I came across this fairly interesting legal blog, Domain Name Shame, that tracks WIPO arbitration decisions in domain name cases. The posts are straightforward in their synopses of the cases and devoid of comments that anyone would consider highly critical or inflammatory. Yet the blog is published "anonymously," with no identification of the lawyers or law firm who write it. This confuses me because, given the absence of any obvious reason for anonymity, this firm appears to be missing out on an opportunity to promote itself.

Even stranger is that the firm has not fully masked its identity. A quick whois search shows the blog's domain name is owned by a Garden City, N.Y., law firm, Moritt Hock Hamroff & Horowitz, and that IP partner Alan S. Hock is the contact. As far as I could detect, nowhere on the firm's site is there any mention of this blog, just as the blog never mentions the firm. The blog is listed by the ABA Journal as anonymous and by LexMonitor as written by "Tucker Carlson."

It all leaves me wondering whether this is a half-hearted but sincere attempt at anonymity or a missed opportunity for marketing a practice area. If the former, I suggest the firm give it up. Anonymity works when its fueled by controversy. This blog lacks that kind of controversy. But it does have worthwhile, substantive content that speaks well of the firm, if only it would be upfront about its identity.

If there’s one common denominator between the major branches of the law, it’s the importance of writing and writing well. While most of the emphasis in writing is placed on grammar, spelling, word choice, prose style, and of course content, it’s important not to neglect another element of good writing: text style. Wayne Schiess, the Director of Legal Writing at UT Law School, brings some guidance to this issue in a recent post on his Legal Writing blog: Schiess’s basic document design for lawyers.

Rather than adjusting the style for each document you create, however, you can automate the process by editing your default “Normal” template or by creating custom templates for the different documents you create on a regular basis. For more information on templates, check out these resources:

    Changing the Normal Template in Word 2003 (Microsoft.com)
    Changing the Normal Template in Word 2007 (Tech Republic)
    Creating Microsoft Office Word 2007 templates (Microsoft.com)
    Template Basics in Microsoft Word (Addbalance.com)
    Introduction to Word Templates (About.com)

An interesting AP article on the rise in use of downloadable divorce/dissolution forms and how Ohio courts are coping with large increases in self-represented litigants. -M

The ABA Law Practice Management Section is gearing up for the annual ABA TECHSHOW, the world's premier legal technology conference and expo. They've just updated the ABA TECHSHOW 2008 web site with full descriptions of this year's sessions. New tracks this year include Mac Track, Client Relationships, Going Green, and Large Firm/Corporate Counsel. There'll also be a complimentary luncheon and keynote as well as an After Dark Networking Bash.

ABA TECHSHOW 2008 will be held March 13-15, 2008 at the Hilton Chicago. Registration is open now (and discounted until 2/1/08).

Learn how a new online service can help you access millions of potential individual and corporate donors.

For the do-it-yourselfers out there, Roxer beta looks like a simple way to build a nice-looking Web site. It is all done within your browser and no knowledge of HTML is required. In fact, to demo the site, you can remake its front page -- just click on the padlock icon in the lower left corner. Your finished Web site has to sit on Roxer's servers, but you can set it up to use your own domain name. Basic version is free but allows only five pages maximum. The "power" version is $7 a month for up to 100 pages.

From Brian Lawlor, Regional Counsel at LSNC: “Legal Services of Northern California has launched the Findability Project, a TIG-funded initiative to demonstrate how a Google Search Appliance, integrated with a SharePoint Server, can be used as a core technology for implementing enterprise-level search, and as the basic building block of an organization-wide knowledge-content system.” To keep up-to-date [...]

My friend, John, pointed out this interesting image of how a wiki can simplify collaboration. It really hit home for me. Perhaps it can help you in your battle to get your colleagues to start using wikis. - K