Law Librarian Blog

Cheap Geek's Guide to Free Online Presentation Tools

Greg Lambert writes that he couldn't live up to my reputation as the "cheap geek" if he didn't share three free online presentation tools: Adobe ConnectNow, Present.IO and Authorstream's "Present Live" feature for PowerPoints. Check out his review on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog. [JH]

Reminder: Managing Electronic Titles and Materials This Afternoon

Richard Leiter and Brian Striman discuss the challenges of electronic titles in law libraries on their BlogTalkRadio program, The Law Librarian, today at 3:00 pm (Eastern). The call-in phone number for Managing Electronic Titles and Materials is 347-945-7183. Topics will include:

• How should electronic titles be cataloged?

• How should local cataloging records reflect remote subscription holdings?

• How should "holding" be defined with respect to electronic titles? Is the ABA definition adequate?

• If your library subscribes to all or a portion of HeinOnline, do you "hold" all those titles?

• Are OPACS the proper place to record access to electronic titles, or do we rely on vendor websites?

• How do you provide access to electronic holdings to non-institutional patrons? (Ie., members of the public)

• How do you keep track of electronic serials?

• How does access to electronic titles affect existing or future binding policies?

Should be very informative. If you can't listen to the live program, you will be able to download the podcast. [JH]

Designing Powerpoint Presentations to Accomodate Colorblindness

Check out the very useful post by Kathleen Waits (Tulsa) on Law School Academic Support Blog about selecting colors for Powerpoint presentations to accomodate viewers who are colorblind.

More generally, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell examine Powerpoint abuse and how it degrades the whole presentation experience. They offer their best ideas and tips for using PowerPoint in their Has PowerPoint Killed the Presentation? podcast. [JH]

Facing the Learning Curve with These Online Drupal Resources

Drupal, the powerful open source CMS that can be used as a back end system for many different types of websites, ranging from small personal blogs to large websites, has a fairly steep learning curve. So Sarah Houghton-Jan's excellent list of Drupal resources is a welcome guide. [RJ]

Opting Out of Google's Behavioral Targeting Ad Program

Google has launched its behavioral targeting ad program, which the Company likes to call "interest-based" advertising. Opt-in is not an option but Google does provide an opt-out choice, one that to its credit is open source. For more, see EFF's Deeplinks Blog post. [JH]

Web Design Matters: Ten Essentials for Any Library site

Thinking about redesigning the library website.  Check out Brian Mathews article in Library Journal entitled "Web Design Matters: Ten essentials for any library site".  Mathews focuses on "elements that will update your web site's appearance, improve its functionality, and make a lasting positive impression on your patrons."  He give ten places to start with excellent examples.  Check it out!  [RJ]

When a Web Resource Doesn't Offer an RSS Feed

When there's no RSS feed to subscribe to on a web source WatchThatPage is helpful for receiving alerts for content changes. The service requires regislation but it is free. WatchThatPage gives you several options for how you want to monitor the Internet. You can get all the new content collected in one email, or separated into several emails, i.e. to sort the information on different topics or importance. You can receive all changes, or just changes that match keywords you specify. You can get daily updates, or customize the updates to the weekdays of your choice.  You can install a special bookmark or button in our browser, so you can add pages to your WTP account while you come across a new web resource you want to monitor. [JH]

Worried About Gmail Losing Your Files?

GMDesk is an free application that lets you run Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Maps as a free stand-alone application to do all your mail handling, calendar event reading etc with. The little app is driven by Adobe Air. GMDesk backs up your Gmail data to your computer or attached hard drive, a plus should something ever happen to Gmail servers, but Tom Mighell reports that you can't print from most GMDesk-archived files. Hopefully an upgraded version will add the print feature. [JH]

Google Alerts Version 2.0

Google Alerts, finally a useful tool. Google Alerts now provides delivery options. In addition to email, you can choose to have your alerts sent to you by RSS feeds to your feedreader of choice. Google also now allows you to filter your sources. You can specify that alert results come from News, Web, Blogs, Videos and Groups. There is also an option for "Comprehensive." Check out Google Alert's FAQ. [JH]

Avoiding IT Project Disasters

According to Norm V. Brown, there are 11 “Laws of IT Physics.” These “laws” highlight hidden pitfalls the hurt many IT projects and help explain why some projects succeed while others fail.

1. Planning is a continuous process, not a one-time event.
2. Complexity kills IT projects since defects and security vulnerabilities increase non-linearly with increased complexity.
3. Schedules and project chaos create event horizons, from which a project cannot recover.
4. The initial requirements for any large system will be incomplete, independent of the resources expended to develop them.
5. Unvalidated requirements pave the road to project failure.
6. You can’t manage what you can’t see.
7. Poor defect management causes high rework and leads to project failure.
8. Unknown and untreated vulnerabilities originating in ineffectually implemented processes destroy IT projects.
9. Thoughtful, knowledgeable, committed people operating as a team are critical to IT project success.

Details on Tech Republic. [JH}

HotDocs for Creating Transactional & Litigation Documents

HotDocs software allows attorneys to create a template based upon a legal document they composed. When the template is created, it can be used to generate similar documents for different situations. The template is opened using HotDocs Player. Per the HotDocs site,

“HotDocs Player guides you through interview-style questions to gather necessary information and then assembles a custom document based on your answers. You can modify the custom document in your word processor.”

HotDocs Player is free to download and use. There are free HotDocs templates available at LexisONE Automated Forms. ( Free registration is required to use LexisONE.) There are also free templates available at NPADO.org for non-commercial use only. See A2J Author Blog post. If you want to turn your document into a HotDoc, you must purchase software to do so. [SA]

Google SE Syntax Changes

A Google search for foo-bar is not the same as a Google search for "foo bar" because Google no longer ignores punctuations marks between words. Hat tip to Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian, Jenkins Law, who reviews some other features of Google syntax in this blog post. [JH]

CiteGenie for Bluebooking Westlaw

CiteGenie is a new extension for the Firefox web browser that creates Bluebook formatted pinpoint citations from Westlaw. Haven't tried it yet but Marc Hershovitz gave CiteGenie a fairly comprehensive test drive. He reviews CiteGenie and explains how to install the FireFox extension in his LRRX article, Review of CiteGenie - Automatic Bluebook citations when using Westlaw. See also the CiteGenie FAQ. Looks very promising. [JH]

Is Your Life a Blur of Social Media and Web 2.0 Tools?

Aliza Sherman's life is. Check out her Web Worker Daily post about her daily routine. [JH]

Google Reader in Plain English

The folks at Common Craft have put together a nice introductory tutorial for Google's RSS reader.  Check it out.  [RJ]

Extend Firefox 3 Contest Winners Offer Great Add-Ons for Online Researchers

Mozilla Labs has announced the winners of its Extend Firefox 3. The three grand prize winners in the Best New Add-On go to (1) an open source tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping called Pencil; (2) Tagmarks, a one-click bookmark tagging add-on; and (3) HandyTag which provides a complete set of most relevant keywords in the bookmark’s edition panel.

Best Updated Add-On grand prize winners are (1) Read It Later which allows you to save pages of interest to read later, thereby eliminating the cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest; (2) TagSifter for browsing your bookmarks by their tags; and (3) Bookmark Previews which adds previews to the tooltips in the bookmarks sidebar.

See the Mozilla Labs blog post for download links. [JH]

Demystifying the SSRN Process for New Law Profs

Susan Duncan (Louisville) has made her Demystifying the SSRN Process: How To Make It Work for You Powerpoint available. She used it for her presentation at the Legal Writing Institute’s conference in Indianapolis in July. The Powerpoint introduces and explain the benefits of SSRN, and provides step-by-step instructions for using SSRN. Helpful for newbie law profs who are starting their careers this academic year and may not know how to publicize their scholarship.

SSRN Features, New and Those Still Needed: Matt Bodie (St. Louis) slow pitches questions to CEO Gregg Gordon about new features recently implement by SSRN on PrawfsBlawg. How interview-lite? Think Bob Costas interviewing President Bush about China at the Olympics. In a comment to Bodie's post, James Grimmelmann (New York Law School) asks:

Now how about direct downloads, no watermarks, and allowing outside URLs? If your policies have changed in those areas, I'd love to be able to post a revised version of SSRN Considered Harmful [bepress] talking about the progress SSRN is making in addressing my concerns.

[JH]

Tips for the LinkedIn and Twittering Lawyer (and Librarian)

New Law Librarian LinkedIn Group

Launched for subscribers to the Law-Lib listserv. Join here.

The LinkedIn Lawyer blog is devoted to answering lawyers' questions about LinkedIn. It is written by Boston attorney David A. Barrett, "the world's most lawyer-linked attorney." Hat tip to Robert Ambrogi's LawSites.

Martindale is reporting that it has entered in an agreement with LinkedIn that will allow Martindale users to use their LinkedIn relationships when conducting searches. More about "Martindale 2.0" at Martindale-Hubbell Gets a Makeover.

And for those who haven't given up on Twitter: Check out Steve Matthews's tips on Law Firm Web Strategy Blog: Lawyer Marketing with Twitter. More Twitter tips from Wired. See also Christina Laun's Twitter for Librarians: The Ultimate Guide

LinkedIn's recent site traffic. According to Nielsen Online's Top 20 Social Network Sites for June 2008, LinkedIn's unique visitor traffic in June grew more than 20 percent from May, to 9.5 million. Year-over-year, that represents a growth rate of 187% for the professional social networking site. See this recent Mashable post for more about recent traffic trends on social networking sites. [JH]

Create Content Once, Broadcast to Multiple Web Destinations

Aliza Sherman has a great Web Worker Daily post on tools you can use to aggregate your social networking sites for the purpose of broadcasting a message to multiple places. Sherman calls them "social aggregation broadcasting tools" (SABTs) and categorizes the available tools into active, passive, integrated, and narrow SABTs. Very helpful. [JH]

Ways to Quickly Create Excellent Presentations Online

Great article from ReadWriteWeb: "It's no secret that not everyone can afford to buy Microsoft Office to create brilliant PowerPoint presentations for any event. While affordability plays a role, so does OS compatibility. Well, worry no more. ReadWriteWeb has a list of great services you can use to create presentations on the fly without downloading a thing. All you will need is an internet connection and a bit of creativity."

Hat tip:  Ellyssa on Web 2.0, iLibrarian [RJ]