Of course, being a geek, I have to love the fact that Google releases a comic book to explain its new browser. Google Chrome, Google’s new Internet Browser, is set for an early release tomorrow, due to the fact that some within Google leaked the information out a little earlier than planned.
From the comic book, and the blog release, it sounds like they are promising the same type of performance that IE 8.0 Beta is also promising. Tab functions that are “independant” (so if one crashes, it doesn’t bring down the entire browser); more powerful JavaScript engine; make it work on all operating systems (you know those other than Windows!); and the ultimate promise of faster and cleaner regardless of your operating system.

Now I get to try out IE 8.0 and Google Chrome and test them side-by-side!

NOTE:  I downloaded Chrome today, and so far, it is pretty tasty!!  The only thing I don’t like so far is how it handles MS Outlook’s Webmail.  The folders are not displayed like they are in IE, and it is not very good to get from folder to folder very easily.  
However, it is very fast, and I love the tabs feature and the way it previews the nine most visited sites on a new tab.  There are also a few plug-ins (i.e., FLASH) that you’ll need to get for Chrome to work right on most sites, but the downloads are quick and no reboot is necessary (unlike some browsers….)
I also thought it was funny that one of the Google Beta products called “Lively” will not work at all in Chrome.  You’d think they’d make their own products work right out of the box!

[From our friends at Hogan & Hartson]
“Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 InPrivate Browsing May Affect Online Activities.”
On August 25, 2008, Microsoft announced on its Internet Explorer Blog that Internet Explorer 8, for which Beta 2 was released on August 27, 2008, included a new suite of features designed to limit the information stored or shared when users browse the Internet. Collectively referred to as InPrivate and described in greater detail in Trustworthy Browsing – Guidance for Third Party Content Providers (rev. August 21, 2008), a whitepaper distributed by Microsoft to select web publishers and content providers, these new features include Deleting Browser History, InPrivate Browsing, InPrivate Blocking, and InPrivate Subscriptions. If these new features are successfully implemented as they are presently described in Microsoft’s documents, they may have a significant impact on a number of common Internet business practices, including online behavioral marketing and web traffic analytics.
August 28, 2008
[View Article]

LinkedIn is expanding the capabilities of its Group Networks by adding some enhancements. Here is the email that I got on Tuesday. NOTE: The enhancements are ready until FRIDAY!! (I missed that part of the message and started yelling at my computer screen when I couldn’t find the enhancements.) Here’s the announcement:

First, thank you for managing your group on LinkedIn. We sincerely appreciate the time and effort you devote to your members, and we know they value it. Together you have made Groups one of the top features on LinkedIn.
This Friday, we will be adding several much-requested features to your group:

  • Discussion forums: Simple discussion spaces for you and your members. (You can turn discussions off in your management control panel if you like.)
  • Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
  • Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics which your members may choose to receive. (We will be turning digests on for all current group members soon, and prompting them to set to their own preference.)
  • Group home page: A private space for your members on LinkedIn.

We’re confident that these new features will spur communication, promote collaboration, and make your group more valuable to you and your members. We hope you can come by LinkedIn on Friday morning to check out the new functionality and get a group discussion going by posting a welcome message.Sincerely,
The LinkedIn Groups Team

Well, it looks like I’m going to skip over another one of the Microsoft upgrades. Although I’ve used Internet Explorer almost exclusively since 1996, I somehow didn’t get to use the 7.0 version at work because of the amount of “customizations” that we made on the IE 6 platform.

Now it is time for IE 8. I’m going to run home tonight and install it on my personal computer, and then see how many of my apps don’t work on it either!! There is a good review of the product on the NY Times blog today.
I’m pretty sure if IE 7 didn’t play nice with my ‘work’ apps, then 8 surely can’t plug all the holes! So, now I’m going to have to have an “over-under” bet with some of my IT friends to see how many more months I’ll have to stay on IE 6. If it is ’12’, then I’m taking the over!

Wow… there is a great “conversation” going on in the Competitive Intelligence world over the ethical requirements that law firms should require their CI professionals to uphold. Melissa Ruman Steward, Shareholder in Winstead’s Dallas office, penned a NLJ article this week as a response to Ann Lee Gibson’s article on 45 CI Tips for Law Firms. Steward suggests that law firms need to step up and proactively create a code of CI Conduct, or even go as far as having the state bar association create the code of CI conduct. Gibson has already come back with a pretty strong rebuttal to Steward’s article. I blogged earlier about whether a CI professional could actually be brought up on criminal charges using 18 USC §1030, and discussed the ethical vs. illegal line that CI pros come up against. I think that Steward seems to be a little behind the curve on what is involved in Competitive Intelligence gathering, but she’s not without merit in her arguments either. Lawyers don’t exactly have the greatest of reputations when it comes to “ethics” (after all, ethics is the shortest class we take in law school). Therefore, her argument that law firms should hold themselves to a higher level of “ethical” competitive intelligence gathering is a legitimate argument. In my opinion, the shifting of this “code of CI ethics” to a regulatory body such as the state bar association seems to be a little bit of an overreaction at this point. Again, we talked about the fact that CI professionals in the legal environment usually hit the “ethical” line long before they hit the “legal” line when it comes to CI information gathering. But, it wouldn’t take too many cases of law firms arguing that “what we did was perfectly legal” to start blurring the lines and causing CI professionals to become insensitive to the “ethical” line. Taking arguments like Stewart’s too lightly could backfire in the end. My suggestion: It wouldn’t hurt for firms to have a CI Ethics Code for their organization and make it understood that CI professionals should be very conscious of the firm’s ethical line, and make sure that it is never crossed.

You here something once – you notice it. You here it twice and it catches your attention. You start hearing it everywhere and you better pay attention.

This is the case with virtualization (a.k.a. Virtual Private Server). This 80’s mainframe concept is back and back in a big way. So much that it’s even touching the legal technology world. The concept is very simple. Virtualization means creating multiple virtual servers on a single piece of hardware. The technology has evolved to the point that one physical server can host many different servers. Different to the point of having distinct operating systems and the ability to separately reboot.

For law firms and anyone else, this means a sharp reduction in server hardware. And it means a firm can set up a server for any number of reasons (e.g. testing, demo’s, etc.) very easily. As might be expected, not all software providers fully support virtualization, but most are there or headed there soon.

To give an idea of the potential impact of virtualization, the State Bar of California plans on cutting its power bill by $60,000 per year by taking this approach.

Needless to say, I strongly suggest you check into virtualization and explore how your organization, be it small, medium or large, can best benefit from it.

My hat is off to the library at Thompson Coburn in St. Louis for putting a spin on getting rid of their entire National Reporter Set (you know those tan books with all the cases in them….) I had to read this article twice when I read how they announced that they had a “completely electronic case law system,” and that they “freed up 1,500 linear feet of shelving” in the library so that attorneys could “access [the cases] through their terminals.” Now that is some impressive marketing phraseology!!Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been saying that we are moving to a completely electronic case law system all the way back in 2001 when I talked about it in the AALL publication Beyond the Boundaries. But, we called it by it’s less popular name of “getting rid of the books” and “moving the attorneys to Westlaw/Lexis case law searching only.” If only I had such a turn of the phrase that some of my colleagues have, I could have put that lipstick on the pig years ago!!Hmmm…. I wonder how I could spin the outsourcing of legal jobs to India in such a positive light?? Anyone have a suggestion??

Well, I’ve been testing the waters of online social networking and have decided to start my first NING site (but not my last!)
If you haven’t used a NING before, the concept behind it is really simple: An online resource that allows you to post messages, events, build sub-groups, and generally share information with others that have similar interests. With my interests being Law Libraries, I joined the lawlibraires ning. This NING was set up by Jim Milles of Buffalo (who is one of the true braintrusts of law librarianship.) And currently, it has over 300 members.
So, borrowing Jim’s idea of using a NING for bringing librarians together, I decided to build a NING for my Texas Chapter of the Special Libraries Association. A few minutes (okay, maybe a couple of hours) later, I have the SLATexas NING!! I sent out my invites to my list of members, and within 24 hours, we have 60+ members, 5 or 6 subgroups, and a number of other messages flowing between the members. Not too shabby!! Of course, I drafted Barbara Fullerton in on the whole mess so that she could point out the do’s and don’ts of an online community.

I think this is going to be a pretty good tool!!

Legal KM, like all KM, has two major aspects: 1) Capturing knowledge well, and 2) Making that knowledge easy to access. I found a blog recently that help put #2 into a new light. The blog is called Search Done Right and is produced by Vivisimo, the maker of search engine Velocity.

Self-serving as the concept may be, this is a great blog with practical hands-on search tips. These tips are more for KM professionals than users.

The light that went off for me as this relates to KM, is that searching is an art as much as a science. Having great KM systems is part of the formula, but adding in the eye of a search guru makes sense. My thought is as a good KM system comes together, it will make sense to bring in a search expert to give input and advice on balancing simplicity with results (a.k.a Google vs. a good librarian).

The E-Discovery World is suffering from a lack of search genius by it’s own admission. In this example, just using key-words to search is coming up well short of the need to obtain focused search results.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this blog and watching for further search technique learning opportunities. In the meantime, check out the blog.

I always get inspired whenever I watch a presentation from the TED website. After watching a presentation by Johnathan Harris on collecting and telling stories, I feel that there is a great opportunity for changing the way we collect information. Specifically, I was thinking of how to change the way we do surveys and come back with a way to really tell a story from the results of the survey. You’ll have to forgive me for my stream of consciousness here, but I’ll try to at least bullet-point my thoughts.

  • Create a list of questions just like you would any other survey — say a generic survey on available online resources provided by the library
  • Have the participant create an avatar — no restrictions on the avatar, just point them to a webpage or software that allows them to create an avatar (I’m still trying to find a free/no-registration avatar website… )
  • Instead of rating things on a scale from 1 – 5, create a slider bar that represents the scale of the response. For example, a question could ask “How happy are you with the current set of online resources?” And the scale could start off at “highly depressed” and go to “I’m so happy I nearly wet my pants!”… (or perhaps something more professional if you feel.) If possible, the range should also have a color variation going from blue to red (based on a rainbow scale.)
  • Depending upon the anonymity needed for the survey, you could also track such things as the city, state, and/or region of the respondent. Maybe see if you can capture the environmental variables — hot/cold; cloudy/sunny; day/night etc…

The results of the survey should do at least two things:

  1. Tell a story
  2. Allow the reader of the story to interact

To see a sample of what I mean, you can visit another Jonathan Harris site called We Feel Fine. I’m hoping that I’m just scratching the surface of this idea, and can actually come up with a prototype of this survey method — and then sell it to a big vendor like Thomson Reuters or LexisNexis!!.