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Challenging the big two in legal research
There have been several new entrants to the legal research marketplace, including the now-established Fastcase, along with free alternatives like AltLaw and FindLaw. Google recently entered the picture by adding legal cases (federal and state) to Google Scholar, and now Bloomberg (known for business-focused research tools) is experimenting with a new legal research product.
January 2010 / 2 min.
Want clients? Be helpful and do good
“Be helpful and do good” is a deceptively simple strategy: just go out and help people, and clients will find you. (Just don’t forget to make it easy to be found!)
January 2010 / 3 min.
Escaping the Kindle lock-box is now easier for authors and publishers
Purchasing books on the Kindle has always struck me as a bit of a Faustian bargain: once you enter the Kindle ecosystem and purchase some books, those books are forever locked to Amazon’s e-reader. Now Amazon has made it easier for small-scale publishers and authors to opt-out.
January 2010 / 2 min.
Google and the historian
Dan Cohen gave an interesting talk at the American Historical Association meeting recently, where he discussed the benefits Google brings to historical research, as well as some pointed criticisms.
January 2010 / 4 min.
DECE seeks complex DRM that approximates the simple first-sale doctrine that consumers expect
Consumer electronics manufacturers and Hollywood studios have a problem: when customers purchase a movie online, they expect to be able to watch it anywhere – but, thanks to DRM, they can’t easily do it (unless they bought a physical DVD and rip it, or otherwise remove the DRM, which is what Hollywood is desperate to prevent). The DECE wants to change that.
January 2010 / 3 min.
Making a personal site more dynamic
As part of a recent attempt to update my personal information online, I decided to update my personal site to better reflect my current activities and background. As part of my content update, I ideally wanted my site to be more dynamic, so that I did not need to touch it very often, yet to still have it be more up-to-date and fresh. My idea was to rely on updates I would make to other sites anyway, and to leverage those updates to drive my personal site too.
December 2009 / 4 min.
Finding the diamonds in the rough in the “blogosphere”
I’ve been giving a lot of thought over the weekend to the problem of finding good content buried amidst all the noise on the Internet, especially when it comes to blog articles from lesser-known sources. (This is true for readers looking for quality content, but it’s also true for authors seeking readers.)
December 2009 / 4 min.
Why should we keep others from selling our work?
Techdirt discusses why you shouldn’t be concerned if someone “steals” your work and sells it, noting that “it’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
December 2009 / 2 min.
My top free tools for law firms and other small businesses
Carolyn Elefant recently provided her list of free tools for starting a law firm. In this same spirit, I would like to present my list of top tools, all of which I’ve used at various times myself.
December 2009 / 4 min.
Moving away from traditional publishers
As I noted a few days ago, there has been increasing attention to the idea of authors moving away from traditional publishers when it comes to e-books. Here’s more from the New York Times about one author doing just that: Ever since electronic books emerged as a major growth market, New York’s largest publishing houses […]
December 2009 / 1 min.