Ark KM conference recap from Strategic Legal Technology

The Strategic Legal Technology has an interesting series of posts recapping of last week's Ark KM conference. KM is hot in law firm IT, but many people, including myself, have a hard time of wrapping there minds around it.

In fact your firm might already have a KM system and you might not even know it. Case management software is a KM function, so is document management, and even, the killer app of the internet, email.

While it's been reported that only 49% of large law firms have someone in charge of KM (knowledge management), many firms already have the building blocks in place (see above).

KM seems to be a hotter issue in Canada and England, than here in the U.S., or at least they seem to be blogging about it more. Here in the U.S. I've seen a trend where IT is being renamed KM, and people with broader backgrounds, finance, litigation support and law librarians, are being named KM mangers, while still overseeing the IT function.

What does KM mean to you? Does your firm need a director of KM?

Technorati Tags:
Law Firm IT, KM

The Billable Hour watch

As seen on Seth Godin's Blog. I don't bill anymore, but I wouldn't mind having one. This watch would also be useful to IT consultants who must keep time.

Via Ernie The Attorney.

No Black Friday for RIM

CNN reports No BlackBerry shutdown, for now. All of us in law firm IT can enjoy our weekend thanks to the judge.

Tags: Blackberry, RIM, NTP

BlackBerry: A 'reasonable' settlement

On Friday, one week before RIM is faced by a court order shut down, CNN.com reported BlackBerry maker open to 'reasonable' settlement. The last offer on the table was $450 million. There has been reports that NTP has asked for closer to a billion dollars.

I guess we will see on Friday if we will see Black Friday and RIM has to resort to its software workaround. The workaround is reported to be tricky. Internet News reports:

Implementing a solution may also take a month or longer for some companies with a heavy investment in Blackberry devices to make the entire transition. The transition will require modifications in RIM's own network operations center (NOC) software and downloaded firmware upgrades for each and every Mobile mail device, said a research note by Gartner.

"To achieve the change, RIM must modify the NOC software and provide firmware upgrades on each Blackberry," the report noted. "Enterprises must then qualify the workaround and upgrade their devices."

Tags: Blackberry, RIM, NTP

I Heart Adriana Linares at I Heart Tech

I Heart Tech is new to the blogroll. Thanks to Bob Coffield at Health Care Law Blog for pointing this one out. It's a gem: well written, great site design and great tech tips for the end-users.

The blog is written by Adriana Linares of LawTech Partners.

Adriana says:

Until launching LawTech Partners in January 2004, I spent seven years in the technology departments of two of Florida's largest law firms, Broad & Cassel and Akerman Senterfitt. I was charged with establishing firm-wide training programs and technology development initiatives. I really enjoyed working extensively with individuals and groups to identify and address their specific needs.

Tags: Law Firm IT

Windows Defender

Mike McBride over at Out of the Frying Pan, and into the Cube reviews Windows Defender.

Tags: Windows, sysadmin, security, spyware, software, tools

Measure Map

Google has acquired Measure Map, an analytics system for blogs, from Adaptive Path. This free tool is now in beta. You can ask for an invite by going to the Measure Map homepage.

More coverage via the Google Blog.

Tags: Google

MS wants to replace the Blackberry

First Microsoft wants to product a iPod killer, now they want to replace the Blackberry. Both will be uphill battles. The idea is to use Outlook Mobile Access (OMA) as a replacement for the Blackberry server. Past releases of OMA have been much more of a bandwith hog than the Blackberry server.

Exchange Server 2003 promises to be more usable in SP2 because it uses Outlook Mobile data compression. MS claims a network bandwidth savings between 35 percent and 50 percent.

Tags: Blackberry, RIM, Microsoft

Slaw: IT and Lawyers — Can’t We All Get Along?

Joel Alleyne over at Slaw.ca tries to answer the age old question: IT and Lawyers — Can’t We All Get Along?

Tags: Law Firm IT

Health Care Law Blog: Blawg Review #44

Blawg Review #44 is up over at Bob Coffield's Health Care Law Blog. Bob did a good job. I'm thinking about hosting Blawg Review sometime this year, if they will have me.

Tags: Blawg Review, Charleston, WV, West Virginia, Blawg, Blog

Lawyers: Beware Google's desktop search

Robert Ambrogi says beware of Google's desktop search.

Got shells?: Google Desktop 3 says:

What are firms doing about the latest version of Google desktop? Apparently, if you enable the Search Across Computers function, Google will upload copies of documents to Google's servers.

Tags: Google, Privacy, Security

LexBlog Blog : Blog and website links should not open new browser window

I agree with Kevin O'Keefe: Blog and website links should not open new browser window. All those open window are a huge pain.

Tags: Kevin O'Keefe, Blawg, Blawgs, Law Firm IT

Blawg of the Day

Law Firm IT has been named Blawg of the Day by Tom Mighel on inter alia today. Unfortunately there was a major Blogger outage today, and this blog was unreachable most of the day.

Hi Tom. Thanks for the link. For the record, my name is Bill Gardner and I'm a network engineer at a mid-size law firm in West Virginia. I've taken some flack in the past from Kevin O'Keefe about using my old school hacker name for this blog.

Tags: Blawg, Blawgs, Law Firm IT

Today's Blackberry news

Howard Bashman at How Appealing has today's Blackberry News.

"BlackBerry shutdown worries feds; Justice Department repeats nervousness about potential impact on government workers": CNNMoney.com provides this report.

And The Toronto Globe and Mail reports today that "RIM wins key battle in patent dispute; Fifth NTP patent rejected as court hearing looms."

Tags: RIM, Blackberry