Law Technology News announced the winners of the 7th annual LTN awards for technology innovation and implementation at LegalTech in New York this week. (As reported by LawFuel.)
Of particular note is West KM's win for the best knowledge management system and MoFo's prize for the most innovative use of technology for their AnswerBase system. A demo of Answerbase is available on the MoFo web site.
Congratulations to all the winners!
I've played around with wikis a bit for both personal and professional reasons. I like the concept, but I really don't care for the special wiki markup. Sure, it's fairly easy, but if I haven't visited my wiki for a while, I forget...how do I create a bulleted list? Where's bold? So I've wondered whether there were any wikis that offered WYSIWYG editing. All I ask for is a bold button, maybe a little link for creating URLs.
I no longer need to wonder. WikiMatrix tells all about 78 different wiki programs. If you need help choosing, there's even a Choice Wizard. Guess what? There's at least 33 different wiki programs with WYSIWYG editing. Life is good.
Developing programs and web applications can be a difficult process with sometimes questionable results. The people that have the knowledge of the content or the work flow aren't typically the same ones that are doing the programming. What may make sense to a programmer may seem like obfuscation by the end user.
So there's a disconnect that's only getting worse. In the past a power user might have been able to put together a database or web page. A end user creating their own stuff goes through an iterative process, tweaking things until they make sense for the task at hand. With the increased sophistication and technical requirements, higher expertise is often required.
That gets me to paper prototyping. Thoroughly thinking through a project, and effectively communicating user needs to a programmer increases the chances that the goal is reached and the application used. But it's not easy to do. And programmers need to test their ideas on users before spending hours and hours toiling over their computer to create something that no one wants.
Paper prototyping can be done by anyone, technical or not, because it's as low-tech as you can get. Take a piece of paper, some tape and some scissors and start laying out a screen, analyzing functionality, and gathering input from users as to how things should work. Do all this BEFORE the programming begins, and the developers get attached to ideas that don't make sense. For an excellent introduction to the topic, see "Paper Prototyping by Shawn Medero.
At lunch the other day, the conversation turned, as it often does, to the current state library automation vendors. (I kid you not, it does happen, though admittedly, and fortunately, not that often.) Just as an intellectual exercise, I was trying to remember all the different names and iterations, as a result of buyouts, mergers and what have you, of the company currently known as Sirsi/Dynix, the purchase of which was just recently completed.
If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you can always consult the Library Technology Guide's chart tracing the library automation industry back to the beginning of time, which would be 1973.
If the software fairy didn't endow you with fancy-smancy software for creating library newsletters, you might want to try LetterPop, a web application complete with templates and drag and drop elements to help you make a fast and easy email, web or print newsletter. I haven't tried this, so if you do, report back to all of us.
[Spotted on LifeHacker]
It's official. YouTube has something for everybody. Here's a selection of not to be missed creative efforts that have been making the rounds of lawyers, law librarians and anyone else who cares to watch.
My personal favorite is the Westlaw Stress Toy video. Yep, you heard me. See for yourself.
From "referencelibrarians", here's Legal Research - The Movie. Maybe you'll see someone you know. [Spotted on Robert Ambrogli's Law Sites]
To round up this group, here's a music video that takes place in a law library. You might want to turn the volume down. Warning: Cards from the card catalog are thrown around willy-nilly. Stay calm, no cards were harmed during the making of this video, and all that information's probably in the OPAC anyway. (Thanks, Joan!)
I've talked about the advantages of newspaper web sites over the "major vendors" in terms of breaking news. Barbara Quint, in "Newspapers on the Run" (Information Today, Dec. 2006), points out other reasons to use web sites instead of the costly premium services.
For one thing, most newspapers produce web-only content, while the premium online services typically only carry the archive articles that appear in the hard copy paper. Even their coverage of the hard copy often comes with certain exceptions such as letters to the editor and syndicated columns, among other things. In addition, web sites typically include links to sources and comments from readers, which, often aren't reflected in the costly archives of the aggregators.
What does all this mean? According to Barbara, "The bottom line is that if a searcher (end user or information professional) goes after everything that a newspaper has published on a topic, the expensive fee-based services could not honestly promise to find it." All that money spent for limited coverage? How long can that last?
I've been seeing all sorts of announcements of new features and products created as a results of the Federal Rules of Evidence on eDiscovery; this one from Recommind iust one of them! See the Newsbreak article Recommind Adds eDiscovery to Mindserver for further details.
I'm a big believer in casting a broad net when you search, at least at first. But it can be hard to sift through the zillions of search results that you may get from the mainstream blog search engines. There's just SO much. So specialty search engines, such as BlawgSearch, that searches only the legal blogs, can be handy.
If you're looking for stuff that's strictly library related, you have another option, Libworm. LibWorm searches over 1500 library-related rss feeds. You can also browse a list of subjects, or feed categories and view a Libworm tag cloud. You can even create an account and using MyLibWorm as a sort of RSS reader, albeit a very limited one.
LibWorm is currently in beta, so there's hope that there could be improvment in the relevancy ranking. Many of the categories, such as the Law Libraries category, simply don't return useful results. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm also unable to find a list of the blogs that are searched. A blog directory, organized by topic, might also be a handy addition.
If one of your New Year's resolutions is to tread a bit more lightly on our planet, you could start by painlessly saving some trees using a plug-in reviewed in the Wall Street Journal Personal Technology Column by Walter Mossberg (Dec. 7, 2006) called GreenPrint.
The basic idea behind the product is this; when you print a web page, you'll get the information you need, but typically you also end up with a page with some unnecessary stuff such as, say, the copyright notice. ( Okay, maybe the copyright owner doesn't think it's unnecessary, but the rest of the world could live without it.) GreenPrint is dedicated to reducing the number of wasted pages printed from a web browser by analyzing your print jobs, and offering to eliminate things such as the last page with just a URL, banner ad, logo, or legal jargon.
Greenprint isn't free, but it is cheap; a mere $35 will help you feel like you're doing your part for the environment.
If you're reading this blog, you're probably already familiar with RSS. But if not, here's a couple of great resources for you to help you get started.
Tom Mighell & Dennis Kennedy wrote an article for Law Practice Today called "RSS Resources You can Use: Automated Web Surfing for Lawyers." It's a very nice introduction to RSS, and lays out all the basics.
If you're more of a visual person, and my guess is that most of us are, you might also like to take a look at the RSS Tutorial for Law Librarians, by Jason Eiseman, Computer Automation Librarian at Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt. In a little over a half an hour, you can find out all you need to know to get started with RSS.
No more excuses!
