Tech Talk by Roland Schorr & Tower

There's a new site that's been launched with information about Microsoft Office for Lawyers. Not surprisingly you can find it at: http://www.officeforlawyers.com. There isn't a lot of content there just yet, but more content is being added every day.

Check it out.

-B-

I know you've all been looking forward to this opportunity for ages but...if you are going to be in San Francisco this week for the American Bar Association Meeting, so am I. Don't be shy about coming up and saying hello!

-B-

If you haven't yet registered for the HSBA Small/Solo Firm Conference now's the time! It's going to be a terrific show with at least two tracks of law firm technology content.

Yours truly is the keynote speaker and I'll be doing two other sessions during the day. There will be exhibits and a great lineup of speakers. You'll go back to your office energized and enthused about improving your practice.

-B-

I've posted before about my concerns about Software as a Service (like using Google Apps for your word processor instead of Word or WordPerfect). One of the fundamental questions with it was nicely illustrated for me during a systems administration podcast I was listening to the other day -- one of the hosts was essentially doing the show alone because his cohost, who generally participated via voice over IP, couldn't get connected because Comcast was experiencing extended outages.

The week doesn't go by that I don't hear about somebody, often an IT professional, who has suffered a prolonged Internet outage.

What would happen to your law firm if you couldn't start your word processor because your Internet connection was down?

-Ben-

I heard a Chinese fellow postulate today that there are a lot more Chinese who read English well than understand spoken English well. He said this in the context of speculating why the Chinese government has been far more effective at censoring and even banning web content than it has been at censoring or banning podcasts.

Of course that blade cuts both ways -- if there are fewer censors in the government who understand spoken English well enough to determine if a podcast should be banned then there are also fewer potential listeners who would successfully understand the podcasts.

Still, it's an interesting theory. Perhaps in the future folks producing content that they hope will evade the censors will opt to try producing it as a podcast rather than in written text.

-Ben-