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Sep
6
Two new ebooks with CPD
Filed Under CPD | Leave a Comment
A belated plug for the two new Legal Web ebooks edited and published jointly by me and Delia Venables. The 2008/2009 ebooks are:
Topics of Modern Legal Practice
Software as a Service for legal applications
New and developing legal resources on the web
Alternative legal services - how will legal services be delivered in future?
Domain names in a legal context
Electronic presentation of evidence and digital media law
Law 2.0 in Progress
Blogging answers and insights
Social networking
Syndication (RSS)
Publishing with Web 2.0
Managing Web 2.0
Each ebook costs £60+VAT and, on answering 10 simple questions, qualifies for 5 CPD hours. A multi-use licence, enabling up to 5 people to obtain the CPD, costs £150+VAT for each course. There is a special combo price for both courses of £95+VAT; £225+VAT for a multi-use licence.
For more details, and to purchase the ebooks, go to www.infolaw.co.uk/ebooks.
By Nick Holmes, 6 September 2008
Filed under CPD | Leave a Comment
Aug
21
Behind the times
Filed Under Law blogs, Blogging | 11 Comments
Alex Wade in Times Online looks at blawging: “only a handful of legal practitioners maintain blogs”.
No way! Sure only a handful of law firms maintain firm-branded blogs, but as we on Binary Law all know, maybe half the hundreds of UK blawgs out there are by practitioners; and let’s not forget to mention the academics, pupils and others in the legal world who are blogging good stuff. Go make your case.
By Nick Holmes, 21 August 2008
Filed under Law blogs, Blogging | 11 Comments
Aug
20
A recent post on LexBlog highlights the importance of knowing what you’re doing or what others are doing for you when you seek to boost your Google juice by purchasing links or engaging in “excessive” link exchanges. In his post FindLaw gaming Google? Kevin O’Keefe reviews what FindLaw are doing for lawyer customers for $1,000 per month and quotes Google’s webmaster guidelines which suggest that’s money not just down the drain, but backing the drain up:
Buying or selling links that pass Google PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results. Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such.
Read the full post and much related discussion.
Later: Steve Matthews’ post on the topic looks at the story from a different angle. Were FindLaw just guilty of being arrogant?
By Nick Holmes, 20 August 2008
Filed under Marketing, Search | 1 Comment
Aug
19
The Free Legal Web
Filed Under Free Legal Web | 2 Comments
Spotted the new addition to the header menu? Read the Manifesto.
By Nick Holmes, 19 August 2008
Filed under Free Legal Web | 2 Comments
Aug
11
Hello Canada!
Filed Under Law publishers | Leave a Comment
I’ve recommended the Canadian-based co-operative blog Slaw before as one of the best blawgs around. Pop it in your reader now.
There’s been a recent decision to expand its coverage beyond the original “legal research” - we’ll have to see how that pans out - and to expand its membership. I’m chuffed to have been invited onboard as an Slaw contributor and will aim to provide a UK slant to some of the the core issues Slaw addresses.
Cross-posting my debut Slaw post:
I have been fortunate to have been involved at first hand in the entire modern publishing revolution. When I first started out in law publishing, authors produced copy on manual typewriters, editors used pens and literal cut and paste to hack it into shape, typesetters set the copy in movable lead type or “slugs” and made it up to page in print trays, and then the presses rolled. So there had not been much progress in 500 years!
Today I’m writing this in the cloud and when I hit “Publish” it will automatically be styled, made up to page and published instantly on the web to a global audience (blush!); it will be distributed automatically to subscribers via RSS and some of those subscribers will perhaps (automatically again) repurpose and republish it elsewhere. That’s incredible publishing efficiency: all I will do to achieve it is push a button!
Publishing is concerned with more than the production and distribution processes; it is about researching market needs, developing products and services to meet those needs and bringing those “to market”. But the web - Web 2.0 in particular - has rewritten all the rules. All aspects of the publishing process are now more accessible to more people and that has redefined markets and the relationships between publishers and users. With Web 2.0 we are all publishers now. That poses substantial challenges for the “traditional” publishers, who are no longer master of all they survey and must now to a large extent reinvent themselves to maintain their leading position, and it offers substantial opportunities to the rest of us who carry with us little baggage.
It’s been interesting and increasingly exciting to be on the ride for the last 30 years, but the fun is only just beginning.
By Nick Holmes, 11 August 2008
Filed under Law publishers | Leave a Comment
Jul
23
Dave Winer, pioneer of blogging, RSS and other publishing standards, recently posted about the importance of blogs as a publishing platform:
Publishing keeps getting cheaper. That’s been the constant push, the practical application of Moore’s Law in my neck of the woods. I’ve always been a publishing guy, and that’s always been how I viewed computers, and it’s why I got into them in the first place. Most people don’t get this, the real story of blogging is just the continuation of the process. … Blogging is the leading edge in publishing in the first decade of this century.
I too am a “publishing guy” and continue to promote here the merits of the blog as a publishing platform for the legal world , as does Kevin O’Keefe - most recently:
Whether you’re Thomson West publishing legal treatises, ALM publishing legal periodicals, a law firm publishing newsletters, or a law professor publishing law review articles, you ought to be looking at blogging as a very cost effective means of publishing. In addition to reduced costs, blogs offer a means of distributing content. Content that is also more timely than that published in traditional fashion.
Dave and Kevin link to supporting comments from Clay Shirky (of Here Comes Everybody fame). Clay’s argument was that the concept of blogging would become less important as the range of publishing activity enabled by the blog platform expanded.
The word blog itself is going to fade into the middle distance, in the same way words like home page and portal did. Those words used to mean something relatively crisp and specific, but became so overloaded as to be meaningless.
But it’s interesting to note that Clay’s comments are actually from an interview in April 2004. So, in the context of that time, he was clearly wrong: “blogs” and “blogging” exploded thereafter. His assertion makes more sense today - now that blogging has become “normal”. But while it’s true we’re less likely to talk of newsletters, collections of articles etc as blogs just because they use blog technology, to my mind “blogging” will live on as the term used to define the “naked conversations” which have popularised the medium.
By Nick Holmes, 23 July 2008
Filed under Blogging | 1 Comment
Jul
14
Internet Newsletter for Lawyers & Law 2.0 July/August 2008 issue
Filed Under Newsletter | Leave a Comment
In this issue:
- Alternative legal services
- Why email newsletters?
- Getting the best from RSS
- Clicks are not enough
- New Legal Web ebooks with CPD
- A new search engine for employment law – ELISE
- Software as a Service for barristers
- The law publishers and Web 2.0
View the Newsletter. Full access + print issues by subscription.
There is a Special Summer Offer of £30 for new subs. Hurry while stocks last!
By Nick Holmes, 14 July 2008
Filed under Newsletter | Leave a Comment
Jul
10
As regular readers will know, one of my pet subjects is unlocking the power of public sector information, and I’ve actively campaigned for it as it relates to legal information.
The ball is now really rolling on this with the introduction of two new services from government:
From OPSI - Public Sector Information Unlocking Service (beta)
As the regulator for public sector information re-use, we know that people can encounter difficulty from time to time getting hold of the information they need in the formats they want. Such difficulties can include issues with charging, licensing or the data standards that public sector information is provided in.
These issues are not about access (which are dealt with under access legislation, such as the Freedom of Information Act or Environmental Information Regulations), but all the other pitfalls which can occur when you want to do something with public sector information - copy it, remix it with other data or add value and republish it. If you are trying to re-use some public sector information, but the data you need is locked-up, this service is for you.
You can post a request describing the PSI you want unlocked for re-use. Provided it’s approved as on topic, it will be added and others can see your request and support it, either by adding a comment or by voting. OPSI will contact the PSI holder and see what can be done to unlock the information for re-use.
From the Cabinet Office’s Power of Information Taskforce - Show Us a Better Way (Tell us what you’d build with public information and we could help fund your idea!)
This is a competition about information, about communication and above all about making government information more useful.
The government produces masses of information on what is happening around the UK. Infomation on crime, on health, on education. However, this information is often hidden away in obscure publications or odd corners of websites. Data tucked away like this isn’t of use to the ultimate owner of that information YOU.
The Power of Information Taskforce want to hear your ideas on how to reuse, represent, mashup or combine the information the government holds to make it useful.
The Power of Information Task Force was established by Cabinet Office Minister Tom Watson MP in March 2008 with a remit to advise and assist the government on delivering benefit to the public from new developments in digital media and the use of citizen- and state-generated information in the UK, including those identified in the Power of Information Review.
To give the more technically minded some raw material and a head start on getting any prototypes up and running, the site includes a listing of the huge quantity of information already available for reuse.
By Nick Holmes, 10 July 2008
Filed under Public Sector Information | Leave a Comment
Jul
8
Vote Binary Law for a better future
Filed Under Binary Law | 4 Comments
Fame of a sort beckons. Would all my readers form an orderly queue and cast their votes here:
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| in Law Blogs |
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By Nick Holmes, 8 July 2008
Filed under Binary Law | 4 Comments
Jun
29
Going to Barbados
Filed Under Miscellany | Leave a Comment
By Nick Holmes, 29 June 2008
Filed under Miscellany | Leave a Comment