RegulationsAs I was riding in on the bus this morning, I was reading the paper (over one of my fellow passenger’s shoulder, of course) and saw an article in the Houston Chronicle titled “Skip the cuteness on e-mail.” Being too far way from the paper to read the details, I started making up the story in my head about some of the “cute” things I’ve tried to do in e-mail, blogs, and on Twitter that have backfired on me. When I started thinking about why it backfired on me, I realized that it was because:

  1. I wasn’t clear on my message
  2. I thought everyone that reads my message knows me personally (and my personality)
  3. I forgot that sometimes sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek comments don’t translate well to text (even with cute smile icons!) 😉

So, when I cross the imaginary line, I’ve found that there are some pretty, shall I say – “un-shy” people out there that will quickly call you on your faux pas and I’ve found myself typing out an apology for my lax in social web protocol. This type of self-regulation of the social web keeps honest people honest, and reminds you that your message is hitting a broader audience than you think.

Since I’m not too ashamed of some of my screw-ups and immediate dressing-downs, I’ll list some examples of what I’ve done, and a couple of other “self-regulated moments” that I’ve seen from others. I’ll start with the benign and work my way up to the more malignant goofs:

The “Joss” vs. “Josh” Whedon Mistake:
I’m a huge Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Dr. Horrible fan, and was so excited that Joss Whedon has a new show called Dollhouse coming out next year. So excited that I wanted my Twitter friends to see the new wiki that was out there about the show. So, I fire off a tweet, but made the fatal mistake of typing “Josh” instead of “Joss”. Well, any fan worth their weight knows this is a major mistake in the Whedonverse, and it didn’t take long for someone to step up and let me know that I was obviously an idiot and must not be a true fan. Of course, being a true fan, this made me feel a little sick at my stomach that I made this typo. So, I quickly over-geeked myself with an apology to the Whedonverse and hope that they can forgive my mistake and let me back into the fold.

The “Spying” Joke Blows Up:
Okay… if you take anything away from this posting, remember this, “INSIDE JOKES TEND NOT TO BE FUNNY.”

Case-in-Point – I’m a Competitive Intelligence professional, and I do a lot of public speaking on CI as it relates to law firms. Well, one of the things that we joke about is the fact that some people think that we are basically spies, and that there is a certain ethical gray area that we work in. Of course, we are not spies, and it is something that we fight all the time. Well, my friends and I are always joking about this misconception, and bringing it up during our presentations, and we try to make light of the situation by injecting some humor. Unfortunately, I was welcoming a new member on Twitter, and made the mistake of joking about other CI professionals being in here “spying.” Doh!! Well, it didn’t take long to get a full-force rebuttal from another person explaining exactly what CI professionals do, and that spying is not one of them. I know better, I know better, I know better. But, I slipped up and tried to be cute, and it ended up making me look like I didn’t know what I was talking about. So, another self-regulation that worked. I immediately apologized, and promised myself to watch out on the “inside jokes” via Twitter.

The “If it was offensive when someone else said it – You probably shouldn’t repeat it” Regulation
Earlier this week, a well-known Legal Marketing guru retold an elevator pitch that a partner in a law firm uses, but probably should never have been used in the first place, and definitely shouldn’t have been repeated. I won’t repeat the pitch here, but let’s just say that it didn’t go over well with his readers, and it quickly got out via Twitter, and the posting was removed and replaced with a heart-felt apology. So, here’s a rule that you should remember before posting something. If you were to say the same thing out loud to one of your colleagues, and you have to look both ways to make sure no one else hears the joke, then don’t post it!! Inappropriate comments get ratcheted up exponentially on the social web. If you intend for a dozen people to read your post, expect that there are a dozen times as many that will, and if you post something inappropriate, start multiplying that number as well.

Social Web Self-Regulation is not the Political Correctness Squad
Some of you reading this are probably rolling your eyes and thinking that this is the PC Police gone wild on the Internet. Well, it really isn’t. You can have sincere disagreements with your fellow social webbers all the time. In fact, it is actually encouraged. I’ve seen many a good battle out on the social web and have enjoyed even chiming in a time or two arguing my point. But, when you make mistakes, it is kind of nice to know that others are out there ready to point it out to you, so that you can either clarify your position, or as in most of my cases, apologize for letting your fingers get ahead of your brain. I’d rather have someone let me know than have my comments sitting out there waiting to come back and bite me later. So, “Regulators, Mount Up!!”

NOTE: No sooner did I post this, than I found out that I messed up again! I incorrectly credited the wrong author of a social media blog posting last night. And, the correct author just clued me in on my mistake. Here’s to Gerry Heidenreich for setting me straight!! And to Craig Niedenthal for saying he’d still take the credit for Gerry’s article. I’m sure this isn’t the last time (today) that I’ll be corrected!!

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I just had to go ahead and try it. 3D-Xplorer just called to me when I saw the posting on CNET this morning that Avatars to run Altadyn business meetings. Then when I saw that Mike Elgan also reviewed this product, I knew I had to go out and test it.

Take a look around and let me know what you think. Use your mouse and arrow keys to move around.  NOTE:  The app runs in your browser using JAVA.  It may take a while to load the first time you try it.  You can cancel the user login, or login anoymously by picking an avatar gender and entering in a name (such as Guest) if you want to see what the avatar looks like in the room. 3geek VR-Room

(click image to launch 3 Geeks VR-Room)

My take is that it is that I like the fact that you don’t need to download anything to use it – although it uses JAVA to do all the hard work; it works in the web browser without any special ports (at least that IT has found to block yet); and it isn’t all that difficult to play with (although, if you really want to play, you have to pay to get the really cool tools – around $49/month for the online meeting tools.) So, for the time being, I’m playing with the free version, and having some fun.

There have been a few law firms out there that have taken a slow approach to Twitter, but I ran across one today that has taken Twitter straight to its homepage and says “Follow Me!!”

Jackson Walker, a 300+ Texas-based law firm has created a number of Twitter accounts based on the type of law that someone may want to follow. Here is what they have so far:

Jackson Walker(News about the firm)

JW Law(Legal updates in all categories)

Entertainment Law

ERISA

Financial Recovery Solutions

First Amendment

Health Care Law

HIPAA

Intellectual Property Law

Labor and Employment Law

Litigation Alerts

Media Law

Real Estate Law

Tax Law

I have to say that I’m impressed with JW taking the Twitter bull by the horns (or would it be the Twitter dove by the tail feathers??).
I’ve run across a couple other firms that have Twitter accounts, such as @fulbright, @weilgotshal, and @WCSRtwit but none have made the leap like Jackson Walker. It will be interesting following this to see if JW finds this to be a way to bring in new business.  (Here is a growing list of big law attys on Twitter – thanks to @SecuritiesD.)
Toby and I presented on the topic of Privacy and Technology at the Houston Area Law Librarians (HALL) 2008 Fall Conference.  I’m pretty sure that after we were through scaring the bejesus out of those who attended, they all went home, disconnected themselves from the Internet, and are now living in a commune somewhere in the Idaho panhandle.  
For those of you that missed the presentation (that would be you, since you’re obviously still connected to the Internet) – we’re posting the PowerPoint slides here on the GeekLawBlog.

One of the best things about writing a blog, is that one posting can stimulate a conversation in a way that not even the writer expects.  Take Toby’s post from Tuesday, Good Technology Is Magic.  Toby’s discussion of e-discovery and semantic searches got a comment from one of the readers who actually works on a product that does semantic pointed us to his product called Cluuz.  Well, any one that has read my postings knows that I’m a search fanatic (I am a librarian, you know…), so I thought I’d take a look at Cluuz and see what I could do with it.

Cluuz is Clean
The first thing you see when you visit Cluuz, is that it has a clean user interface.  Much like the simplicity of Google’s search page.  Right away, I like this approach.  I try a few simple searches at first (basically Googled, er, `Cluuzed` myself and added in the phrase “competitive intelligence.”)  What I got back was pretty interesting.
First of all, I see from the URL that it seems that Cluuz is using Yahoo search to do the initial search, and then Cluuz itself is using its front-end to display the results.  Here’s a link to the results if you want to follow along: “Greg Lambert” “Competitive Intelligence”
The results page also looks very clean (I know I’m sounding like a character from the Beatles’ Hard Days Night with all the “it’s a clean page” talk, but I think that describes it best.)  I get a brief overview of the following:
  1. Number of results (First 10 of 41 results)
  2. Top Clues – A snapshot of what key terms seem to be mentioned the most in the results.  I personally think they should be a little more geeky and rename these “Top Cluuz”.
  3. Top Linked Entities – The to 10 most linked words in the results page.  This is a pretty good result since it names my workplace, my associations, and my blog.  You can click on any of these and add this to the search terms.
  4. A Semantic Graph – This is the bread and butter of Cluuz.  The graph is definitely brain stimulating, and is a nice way of laying out the information found in the results page in a way that can display a tremendous amount of information without getting too overwhelming for the user.
  5. Results List – This seems to be the basic Yahoo results list, along with a few things that Cluuz has added on: There is a “Cluuz It” link that opens the page with a Cluuz frame at the top.  Not really sure what value this adds, in fact some of my results wouldn’t show up because it would give me a Yahoo Search Page Error.  So, at first look, this doesn’t seem to do what I think they are trying to get it to do. On some of the results, there are Key Terms from the results page that you can click on to add these terms to the search string.  This is actually a good idea, plus it allows the user to see some of the key terms without having to open the page itself. Next, there is a Cluuz Ranking using 5 connected puzzle pieces.  This is interesting, but I’ll need to dig a little deeper into Cluuz to see what they use to rank the results.A synopsis of the page is listed.  I think this is pretty much straight from Yahoo. Finally, there are pictures from the results page.  I like this as well, because it gives the user information from that page without having to actually open the page.
More on the Semantic Graph

As mentioned earlier, the Semantic Graph is the crown jewel of Cluuz.  I think a lot of users will like the visual representation of the results, and will be able to interpret the information quickly.  The graph opens very quickly, and doesn’t use Flash or Java to display, so it easily displays in IE, Firefox and Chrome.  One of the things I would like to see is the ability to shrink the graph by levels so that it doesn’t become to unwieldy.  But, overall, it produces a great visual.
What’s the Potential?
Cluuz is in beta right now, so I know that Michael and the others over at Cluuz (and the parent Sprylogics) would love to hear comments about what they should do with this product.  Here are a few from me:
  • Make the graph collapsible
  • Perhaps give the user the ability to use Google results rather than Yahoo
  • Better explain what the “Cluuz It” option is supposed to do for us, and make sure that it works with the results
  • Offer this as a product I can use inside my network.  I think Toby mentioned this in his comments.  Perhaps this could be a pretty good e-discovery tool, or at a minimum, a good desktop or network enterprise search solution
  • Keep it clean!  
Overall, it is a pretty good looking product with a lot of potential.  I look forward to seeing it roll from Beta to production!  Good luck!
 

“Read the EULA” is a common phrase among security and privacy groups. EULA = End User License Agreement. This is the case since so many Web 2.0 sites have EULA’s where all IP rights go the the provider. I recently posted on this issue re: LinkedIn and its less-than favorable EULA for its users.

Well … that got me thinking. What about the EULA for Google’s Blogger tool (a.k.a. the one we use for 3 Geeks Blog)? I vaguely recall reviewing this when we first set up the blog, but last night falling asleep I got to thinking about it.

Your Intellectual Property Rights. Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services.

I should have looked this up last night. I would have slept better.

Kudos to Google and remember, Always Read the EULA!

I’ve previously noted that keyword searching has seen better days. Numerous recent e-discovery court cases and KM blogs provide worthy critiques of keyword searching as an inadequate way of retrieving knowledge.

Recently I have taken a more in-depth view of the next-generation of search, known as concept, natural language or semantic search. The basic goal or purpose of semantic search, is creating structure out of chaos – thus the title of this post.

In the e-discovery world the challenge is finding the right knowledge within massive data stores. A lawyer can only present a relatively finite set of information at trial. So the trick is getting to the best information cost effectively. Given terabyte and larger discovery challenges, this is no small feat. An effective semantic search tool is the next answer to this question.

At its most basic level, semantic search tools are able to analyze human language and make sense out of it (like a human does). For instance, they can determine what a period is in a sentence versus a decimal point. For us humans this is a simple task. But this is well beyond a keyword search engine’s ability.

At this point in my thinking, I am crossing from one paradigm into another. For so long we have been focused on extracting structured data from data bases and making that knowledge universal. This has been the promise of XML. But the real magic comes when technology can find structure in unstructured data. This may sound very geeky, but it is definitely a real world problem.

For KM, it may be THE real problem. Most of the knowledge we seek to manage is buried in unstructured BLOBs. Tools that makes sense of this chaos and deliver the results in human-understandable ways will be very powerful.

More to come on this topic I’m sure, as my research continues.

Here’s a different look at the law firm marketers that I’ve listed on an earlier posting. These are the web sites that they’ve listed on their Twitter profiles. Some are marketing blogs, some are personal blogs, some are firms or businesses they work for, and, some are just personal web pages that they seem to like. So, don’t take this as the definitive resource for law firm marketing web pages… just enjoy the view and see if you luck across something of use!!

Searchme View in searchme: full | lite

In a press release on Thursday, Contact Networks (now owned by Thomson Reuters) annouced that it is adding LinkedIn data into its Enterprise Relationship Management (ERM) software. Here’s the meat of the press release:

ContactNet automatically maps a firm’s entire external relationship network, uncovering whom the firm knows and calculating the strength of each relationship. This relationship knowledge is of critical value to professional services firms seeking to win new business, retain clients in a difficult market, cross-sell services, or collect competitive intelligence. With the new LinkedIn integration, ContactNet now also includes the relationships that a user has within their personal LinkedIn network. Companies are now using ContactNet’s powerful enterprise software to find and rank relevant relationships firm-wide while leveraging employees’ LinkedIn networks, accelerating their ability to reach all the most valuable contacts and key business introductions.

Now, as interesting as this is, I actually got to see a demo of a few of the Thomson Reuters products (that are now in Beta or Alpha production.) The new version of West Monitor (aka Firm360) has some good functionality for competitive intelligence purposes, and they have sped up the reports considerably. The new release (scheduled for around the first of ’09) also is supposed to integrate Web Part functionality for SharePoint integration (this will be a very, very good function for things like client pages.)

The best demo I saw was one for Contact Networks that is scheduled for release around April of ’09. Contact Networks is developing a web browser plug-in that will look that the web page and create hover windows for information that matches your Contact Networks ERM data. In other words, if a client’s name appears in the web page, you can hover your mouse over that name and you’ll get a pop-up window showing some basic information about the client and who the contacts are within your firm. You could then click on the information and launch a report from Contact Networks giving you additional information. Apparently, this will also work on people names as well (but I’m imagining that this may have some quirks that may need to be worked out first.)

This sounds like a great enhancement, and a very useful function to pass information quickly to the attorneys or others within your firm. From what I could see in the demo, it looks like it is set up to work in Internet Explorer (but could possibly work in other browsers as well.) But, most firms are IE focused, so it may be an IE only tool.

So, if you have Contact Networks, it looks like there is some great additions coming your way next year.

One of the new LinkedIn Apps is a monitor of Twitter postings that lets you know when someone has posted a Tweet on your company.  LinkedIn is naming this app “Company Buzz.”  This sounds like a great idea, but I have to admit that at this time, the app leaves a lot to be desired.
Here’s what LinkedIn says about the app:

Ever wonder what people are saying about your company? Company Buzz shows you the twitter activity associated with your company. View tweets, trends and top key words. Customize your topics and share with your coworkers.

The basic structure of the app is that it allows you to look for the keywords of your company’s name.  Say your company is “Widgets USA” — LinkedIn would set up a simple Twitter feed that would search “Widgets” and “USA” and give you back the results.  Very simple process, and you can modify the terms to help narrow or expand the results as you need.  However, the edits only allow you to add words that have to show up in the post.  So, if your company is spelled a couple of different ways, or has an acronym as well as a full name, then you would have to set up different searches for each of the variations.  

In other words, you couldn’t have it look for either “UPS” OR “United Parcel Services”.  So, that’s kind of a bummer, and kind of a big deal that can really limit the functionality of a pretty good idea.  I’ve fired off a question to the LinkedIn Customer Service group, so hopefully, they can either show me how to do it, or can get this message up to the powers-that-be and add this functionality to the app.
I also couldn’t find a way to “share with [my] co-workers” as the promo tells me I can do.  (If I’m overlooking the way to do this, someone let me know!!)
I do like a couple of the things that LinkedIn’s Company Buzz does do:
1.  Buzz Words –  Simple resource that points out the words that are mentioned the most in the results list.  Click on any of these, and it will limit the Tweets to those that have the buzz word in them.  
2.  Trends – Another simple tool, but useful as well.  This shows the timeline of Tweets and how many were posted on each day during that timeline.  
Now, neither of these makes up for the lack of search functionality, but I think that this is a good idea in the making, and hopefully will get better with time.