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.
Listservs vs. Twitter

I’ve subscribed to a number of e-mail listservs over the years, and have found that these are becoming less and less useful. Although I’ve hung on and still subscribe to a few choices, I find that I use them more for generic topical information, than I do for specific topic resources. What has changed?? I thought of a few things that are wrong with Listservs and how Twitter might be a better option:

1. Lazy Research:
Some of the law library listservs that I have subscribed to in the past have become what some call “lazy researcher” listservs. Those are the places where you ask for an Interlibrary loan to a list of 2500 people for an item that you probably could have requested from your local library.   Don’t get me wrong, these listservs are great resources for finding these types of things, but it seems that this type of activity breeds more of this type of activity.  Pretty soon, people forget that the listserv was set up to be an online community for idea sharing, question asking, and resource gathering.  The last item can tend to overwhelm the first two (which I find most important.)

2. Too Many People:
For anyone that has posted on a listserv on a Friday afternoon, or God forbid, during the week between Christmas and New Years, you will get a ton of “out of office” replies.  Now, this type of thing is easily ignorable, but sometimes you get the reply a few days after you sent the message — not sure how that happens, but it does.  Having too many people can also contribute to the “Interstate Effect.”  That’s the effect that makes the participant of a listserv thing that “someone else will surely come along and answer that question.”  Too many people can also contribute to a watering down of the list.  You want to ask a specific question for a few select people on the list, but you’re afraid that the other 99.8% will blast you for it.
3.  Too Diverse
I know… diversity can spring forth new creations and find patterns that can link separate ideas together, but sometimes, you can just have too many and you end up spoiling the list.  So, it is kind of like the fact that I like ketchup, and I like chocolate cake — but, I don’t necessarily like them mixed together.  Listservs aren’t set up to separate the different ingredients; you just get them all and you hope that it ends up not tasting too bad.
4.  Bad Apples Spoil the Listserv
Sticking with the food theme…  When I taught at a law school, I used to tell my students at the beginning of the semester this:
“There will always be one in every class.  If you do not know who that one is, it is probably you!”
The same goes for listservs.  There is always one (sometimes more) that feels that a listserv is a place where you can spout off with whatever it is that has ticked you off that day.  Or, talk about the latest political, or religious item that was posted on the Drudge Report, NPR, or CNN.  Then, the flame wars begin.  I have removed myself from lists specifically because the flame wars became too impossible to skip over, and frankly were clogging up my in-box.
5.  Email Is Sooo Last Century
Speaking of clogging up the email in-box…  I think we have come to a place in the Age of the Internet that we have to ask if listservs are dinosaurs?  Frankly, it is highly inefficient to have the same message going to hundreds or even thousands of in-boxes.  It is just not a good use of your e-mail — especially work e-mail.  For example, I subscribe to a few ILTA email lists, and since April, I have received nearly 4,000 e-mails from these lists alone.  Plus, I’m one of those people that the IT department will contact every so often to empty my email because I’ve reached my limit.  Although this last point is my laziness, you can immediately see that e-mail listservs may be one of the most inefficient ways of mass communications that we have at our disposal today.
Can Twitter Replace the Listserv?
Short answer – probably not.  Mostly because listservs are easy, convenient, and occasionally pretty useful, despite examples 1-5 above.  Listservs also stay (mostly) on topic.  With Twitter, the same person that posts a link to a great blog entry, will also send 15 tweets about the football game he is watching.
The biggest plus with Twitter right now is that you can start fresh and remember why it was that you wanted to connect with others in the first place.  You wanted to bounce those ideas off of others to see what they think about it.  You wanted to spur the conversation and find out if others out there have better ways of doing things.  You wanted to find a select group of people that you could eventually call your “peers” and create a lasting relationship with them so when you moved your way up the ladder of your profession, they would be moving right along with you.  Twitter can help you recapture that original concept by letting you start all over and selecting those that you think will truly be your peers.
Twitter also allows you to select peers that are outside your profession, without having to take everyone else with them.  In other words, you truly get to pick and choose your peers.  I have people I am following on Twitter that have nothing to do with law librarianship, but are some of the strongest “idea generators” out there.  Being in touch with these folks allows me to see things from a different perspective, but at the same time, not lose touch with what I’m doing in my day to day profession.  
Now, the bad news is that not everyone that is on your listservs are on Twitter.  The good news is that not everyone that is on your listservs are on Twitter!!  So now you get to select those that are, incourage those you would like to join, and ignore those you don’t want to follow.  
My suggestion is to use a tool like TweetDeck to help you organize your groups.  Here’s how:
1.  Follow your friends
2.  If your friends list gets too big, start splitting the group into subgroups and follow them that way.
3.  Use TweetDeck’s search feature to follow certain keywords that are of interest to you.
4.  Contribute, contribute, contribute.  See something that you like, mention it.  See a website you like, post it using tinyurl.com.  Read a tweet that you think others will like, then Retweet it.
5.  Remember, unlike e-mail, you’re limited to 140 characters, so is everyone else.  
If you haven’t begun to Twitter, or you need to better understand how to Twitter properly, then look at this blog by Darren Rowse about Twitter Tips for Beginners.  

After posting yesterday on LinkedIn Does KM, I went back to further investigate the Company Groups tool to see what else I could learn about it. But it was gone! I came up with five possibilities.

1) Someone had flagged me as not employed by The Firm. Possible, but not likely since relatively few people had formally joined the group. I contacted my co-bloggers and the link had disappeared from their pages as well.

2) Another company had reacted to the tool and “suggested” it be removed. Again … possible, but so few people knew about it, not likely.

3) A developer uploaded code to the production server instead of the development or testing servers. Possible, but again not likely since companies like LinkedIn typically have very well-defined protocols for software process management. And they wouldn’t leave it up for five days.

4) The Company Groups tool was supposed to be loaded only on the “for fee” side of things. Maybe. If anyone who is paying for premium service can see this function, please let us know.

5) The Marketing and Programming departments don’t communicate well. This would mean the programmers followed their software development protocols, but didn’t keep marketing in the loop. Again … possible but doesn’t make sense.

In the end, I am left quite curious. The only information I have is what I found when I went into my History and found the Group page:

You are not authorized to view this page LinkedIn takes privacy and security seriously. We want to provide spaces for groups of professionals to discuss news, ask questions, and share information. To find out more, you may contact LinkedIn customer service.

Thanks for your understanding.

I also sent an e-mail to one of the few addresses I found on LinkedIn’s site asking about this. No word back yet.

Halloween was yesterday, but we’re still left with a mystery.

We’ve been keeping our eye on LinkedIn with the basic assessment that it
has great potential, but needs more tools. A network of valuable
contacts becomes truly valuable when you can actually do things with it.

Recently LinkedIn took another step in adding just these types of tools.
When I logged in I noticed some new items on the left-hand nav menu.
Near the top is “Company Groups” followed by the name of my firm.
Following the firm name link, I am greeted with a higher functioning
LinkedIn Group that is already populated with firm contacts. Tabs
across the top include: Overview, Q&A, News, Updates, Members and Settings. The
Q&A tool allows Fulbright contacts to ask and answer questions within
the group. This is a basic KM sharing tool, allowing information
requests to be posted and shared.

So LinkedIn has deployed a KM tool to our firm. Makes you go …
Hmmmmmm. My first reaction is positive at having a great tool available, but then reason takes over. From the LinkedIn User Agreement:

You do not have to submit anything to us, but if you choose to
submit something (including any user generated content, ideas, concepts,
techniques and data), you must grant, and you actually grant by
concluding the Agreement, a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide,
perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid up and
royalty-free right to us to copy, prepare derivative works of, improve,
distribute, publish, remove, retain, add, and use and commercialize, in
any way now known or in the future discovered, anything that you submit
to us, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or
any third parties.

Fitting for a Halloween theme. I know I’m scared after reading that.

So now I have a powerful KM tool sitting under the nose of 407 firm
employees. And if they use it, we risk giving a license to firm IP away
to LinkedIn. Now I’m conflicted.

Another possible red flag – when you select the “Members” tab you are greeted
with the following:

Security Reminder: Only current employees of (the Firm) should
appear below. If you see a person that does not belong to this company
group, click “Flag this person as…” to anonymously remove them from
the group.

Again, I start off with a positive thought. We can remove anyone
falsely claiming to be part of the firm, especially if they appear as an
attorney. But then reality comes back. This means the false contacts
can flag me for removal. Crap.

Which leads us to the bottom line. Even though these are great tools,
they are in full control of LinkedIn and not our firm. For lawyers,
with a duty to protect client information, this arrangement is
problematic.

I have to do some more thinking about all of this since I hate to pass
on good (and free) technology. Maybe there are ways to resolve the issues I raised.
In any event, LinkedIn is charging ahead and taking steps to expand its
value to its true potential. We’ll keep watching with anticipation, but
also with a dose of common sense.

P.S. LinkedIn added an “Applications” option too. More on that later.