Legal Technology

Apple chips

The Deal reports that Apple Inc. confirmed an agreement to buy PA Semi, a boutique microprocessor manufacturer of sophisticated, low-priced chips. Apple has yet to officially announce the deal, but if they follow through with brining chips in house, key products like the iPhone and the iPod may go in a new direction; one that may inhibit competitors from copying the designs.

E-Mail meets Web 2.0

Vendors are starting to look at e-mail in a new light. One that is more focused on dialogue and threads than one-to-one communication. One example of this is Google Mail's feature that displays a message as a conversation that incorporates all the threads to the message -- now, comes Fyreball Inc.

Fyreball has created a method, called a Fyreball, that uses e-mail to share video, pictures, games, music, text, and other content with colleagues and friends. In effect, you can create a personal blog page and share it with others, who can comment on the content and share it with others.

At the end of the day, it's all about the dialog and the conversation; and a Fyreball puts it all together. It can even display a map that shows where, across the globe, the Fyreball has traveled.

Benefits of Mac meeting Intel

Researchers with the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Cyberinfrastructure Center (NEESit) wrote open-source software that turns an Intel-based Apple laptop into a real-time seismograph. NEESit's iSeismograph software combines Apple's technology used to protect the hard drives in laptops from damage due to falls (tri-axis accelerometer, sudden-motion sensor) and the iSight video camera used in Intel-based Mac laptops for videoconferencing.

Converting paper to PDF

To meet the challenge of converting paper documents into a searchable or editable digital format, attorney Alan Pearlman recommends ABBYY FineReader OCR 9.0. FineReader includes Adaptive Document Retention Technology that can accurately detect and preserve native Microsoft Office formatting.

Sun Microsystems suffering from open source malaise?

Hardly, according to Simon Phipps, chief open source officer for Sun Microsystems in response to Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian claim that Solaris and Open Solaris operating systems are going nowhere. Novell, like other Linux-based software providers, are feeling some pressure now that Solaris is open source.

But if anyone claims they have nailed a business model for open source software, see if they are also claiming to have invented the Internet. And, at the least, make sure they aren't just selling open source software like proprietary software.

For open source software, you should be able to download the software, gratis, and use it without restrictions, like Open Solaris. Also, the object code to the free version should be available for you to help yourself without a support contract. If not, the claim to open source is, indeed, not open source.

Messaging requirements gives FCS some FaceTime

FaceTime Communications and FCS (Forensic and Compliance Systems) have brought their technologies together to archive unstructured data, including e-mail and IM. FaceTime's IMAuditor interoperates with the FCS Cryoserver Compliant Messaging Archive Appliance and offers the potential for IT departments to meet message compliance requirements and greater capabilities to perform e-discovery on all messaging systems including:

• Email Platforms: Microsoft Exchange, Novell Groupwise, IBM Lotus Domino, Sun One, Scalix and most Linux services
• Public IM Networks: Skype, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, GoogleTalk, ICQ, and more
• Enterprise IM Networks: OCS, LCS, Sametime, Jabber, Parlano MindAlign; and
• Professional Community Networks: Reuters, Bloomberg, Communicator Inc., PivotSolutions

Attention please ...

That's what the University of Chicago Law School is now demanding in the classroom. U of C Law School has removed wireless Internet access in most of its classrooms because students are surfing the Web on laptops during lectures. Dean Saul Levmore says that "Every teacher underestimates the amount of Internet surfing going on" in his or her classroom. It sounds like Dean Levmore is speaking from facts, so I hope the school's privacy policy informed students that their activity was monitored.

If you can find it ...

you can do something with it. Such is the philosophy of search as applied to the compliance industry. Both Recommind and now Autonomy are catering to the compliance office and offering up their search technology to automatically apply content policies and litigation holds.

Authomy recently announced its Autonomy Information Governance, a new product that automates content policy management for IT, legal, and any groups responsible for complying with such things as document litigation holds and retention policies. Autonomy uses its search technology to connect to content stores and automatically apply policy to content based on its IDOL understanding of what constitutes a content type, such as e-mail, document, or phone record, rather than simply applying policy based solely on metadata.

Autonomy includes numerous out-of-the-box data repository connectors that allows the retrieval and policy management of e-mail, documents, audio/video files, etc. across the entire enterprise.

Security Concerns Stop Most Law Firms From Using iPhone

The iPhone, Apple's entry into the do-it-all smart-phone market, is popular with consumers, while raising security concerns within information technology departments of some businesses and law firms. Because it's the rock-and-roll cousin of the buttoned-down BlackBerry, the iPhone is more for play than for official business right now because the iPhone can't be password-protected and its content can't be erased from a remote location when lost or stolen.

How to Safeguard Your Firm's Mobility

Mobile lawyers have a variety of tools at their disposal -- cell phones, laptop computers and PDAs -- which increase productivity but also create security challenges. How can network administrators maximize remote access capabilities while also making them secure? It's nearly impossible to keep track of all devices and keep everyone in compliance with firm policies, but your IT department must assess each specific risk and implement security procedures to take advantage of the latest technologies.