SAGE will have not one, but two speakers at the Annual Conference of the Association of Legal Administrators next week in Seattle, Washington.  Speaking on topics ranging from getting more out of Microsoft Office to future trends in technology, be sure to attend the sessions Monday and Tuesday hosted by SAGE President George Nicholson and Tony Buffkin.

SAGE President speaks on Monday, May 5, 2008 from 2:15-3:30 on "Future Tech That Breaks With Tradition." He will discuss how the pace of technological change is accelerating and what that means for mobile computing, tapping into the power of the Internet computing, and managing the torrent of information that will be available to us all. George opens up his crystal ball for a fun and enlightening look at technologies being tested today that will change how we work in just a few short years.

On Tuesday, May 6, 2008 from 2:15-3:30 PM, Application Specialist Tony Buffkin will discuss how to get more out of Microsoft Office for your law firm needs. From accounting to marketing, lawyers to administrators, Tony shows ways to use MS Office to make your office more productive and capable.  He will describe new uses for old standby's like Word, Excel, Access and Outlook, and illustrate what can be done with newcomers InfoPath, OneNote, and Groove.

If you are attending the ALA national conference, be sure to sit in on George's and Tony's sessions.

Our creative director, resident futurist, and agent provocateur, Peter von Elling authored the article "Future Technology That Breaks With Tradition" appearing in the Jan-Mar 2008 issue of NoVa Network. The article focuses on technology trends currently incubating that will change how we work in the near future.

• The accelerating pace of technological change: change not only happens, that change is occurring faster than ever before. This trend holds true even for legal technology.
• Ultra-mobility where people are not just always available - like we are today - but "always capable" - able to perform any task on their mobile device.
• "Cloud computing," which is data and applications reside on the Internet rather than a desktop or laptop and accessible anywhere there is an Internet connection.
• Information management through social networking tools -- the torrent of information available will only get worse in the coming years. Surprisingly, searching, sorting, and filtering it will fall on groups of highly interconnected people and not intelligent software.

The article is currently available online at alanova.org, the web site of the Northern Virgina Chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators.

The leading article in the February 2008 issue of Wired contends that technology and personal interaction are complementary like peanut butter and chocolate, usurping the conventional wisdom that technology destroys distance. While the hope still remains that cells phones and broadband will allow introverts and traffic planners to telecommute, author Tim Harford makes a compelling case that technology makes "face-time" easier and creates more of it.

Just like how indoor plumbing and urban sanitation allowed greater density in cities, so do Google Maps, cell phones, and Facebook allow people to find other people and things in a vastly larger population. That population can be a large city, organization, or community of clients, vendors, and colleagues. Email allows someone to maintain greater communication with more people in less time, freeing up time for more meetings in person.

And face-time seems more critical than ever. If indeed the workplace is shifting to value ideas because problems and processes are becoming more complex as the author contends, then meeting face-to-face is the best way to communicate those ideas. The upshot for your business or firm, studies have found that the most productive companies have the most intra-company e-mail, which actually encourages more personal contact, not less.

In late 2006, Google purchased online wiki provider JotSpot, leading to speculation to when the search engine behemoth would launch “Google Wiki.” Fortunately, many eager for the supposed service didn’t hold their breath, because nothing has happened since. Until last week, that is, when JotSpot reemerged in a somewhat different form, to be called “Google Sites.” In short, it’s Google’s competitor to Microsoft’s SharePoint.

Before people start creating PowerPoint charts and Excel spreadsheets proving that SharePoint has many more features, understand this is Google’s vision of a SharePoint competitor much like its Google Apps are a different vision of the standard office suite. It is stripped down and networked, but goes after the same functionality: the ability to create intranets, extranets, and project management tracking sites. Just like SharePoint.

The question we have: will this be a “platform” or a “product.” SharePoint is a “platform”—here are the blocks, now build what you want—like a box of Legos. Before Google swallowed JotSpot, it was mostly wiki and collaboration products—built web applications for specific purposes—a Lego car or spacecraft kit. SharePoint suffers from the perception that it is an intranet application out-of-the-box, which isn’t the case. If Google Sites provides some instant gratification and makes it easy and secure to set up Intranets, wikis, and extranets, then SharePoint has a serious competitor on its hand.

We are conducting a survey on IT and Litigation Support and would like your input!

In our experience, there are many ways that IT and Litigation Support can work together for the overall benefit of the firm. There are a variety of ways that they can learn from each other and share ideas that would benefit them both. This brief survey (10 questions) asks about IT and Litigation Support issues and a forum to discuss them.

We would value your input, whether you are IT, Litigation Support, or Administration.

Please follow this link to take the survey: Click Here to take survey

Thank you in advance for your feedback. We will post the results in about a week, so please check back soon.

Here is an idea to think about and discuss. This isn’t an endorsement. Hopefully, it is the start of a conversation.

Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired Magazine and the main who coined the them “the Long Tail” has an interesting post about dual IT networks—one official, the other not—at Wired’s offices. One is the corporate network that is locked down and heavily managed to protect its core functions like accounting/finance, file storage, backup and Exchange. The second is an “open” Internet connection, providing full access to Skype, instant messaging clients, and Facebook.

Now Wired magazine is about living on the digital edge, and law firms and professional services firms are not. Law firms especially need to protect data because the professional and financial ramifications of not doing so are devastating. But innovation is required in any industry, and we have touted the many advantages of new Web applications and services like RSS, social bookmarking, wikis, and more. Giving employees a playground to experiment could lead to a better way to provide client service or an innovative approach to services via these new Internet technologies.

As Anderson mentions in his blog, many corporate CIOs are implementing or seriously considering this dual networking strategy, either with physically separate networks or virtual networks. Time will tell, however, what problems could arise from this intriguing approach. At the person and workstation level those networks converge, causing potential headaches like lost productivity to fantasy sports leagues; malware pickup up from risky web sites and apps, and random questions about obscure web applications into the help desk.

Please share your thoughts in the comments.

We have been booked for a number of speaking engagements in the next few months, and it seems they all want to know about IT trends for law firms. We thought it would be fun to crowdsource our reader’s thoughts on some of the trends we see. This is what we are following:

Server Virtualization (also tied closely with disaster recovery). Virtualization technology has matured and makes real sense for firms of many sizes. Most important, it facilitates disaster recovery and business continuity efforts that many firms are implementing today.

Data-vaulting. The future of back-ups are online. Time to throw away those back-up tapes you forgot to swap anyway.

Managed IT services. Remote monitoring and management of IT for 24/7/365 coverage. Small firms get experience, expertise, and the complete package for maximum value for their IT budget, while larger firms can get preventive measures like daily server checks that would otherwise be neglected.

Online Services. Work is moving to the web. Many applications have already moved online like accounting, IP, and CRM, and more are coming. Meanwhile, newsfeeds (RSS) and search are revolutionizing information like e-mail revolutionized communication.

Outsourcing. The timeless sturm-und-drang of in-house vs. out-source extends to practically every corner of the firm, including litigation support, facilities, and even secretarial.

Paperless. Ah, the holy grail. The paperless office seems closer today than ever, but it means some drastic changes in workflow and a rethinking of your equipment and IT.

Vista/Office 2007. From the meat-and-potatoes department, the shift will eventually happen, although no one seems very excited about it.

Give us your feedback on the comments. How would you expand on our points? What are we missing?

This great blog essay over at Digging My Own Ditch [via Found|Read] provides a primer on the value of Web 2.0 for people (or “users” if you want). Rather than being caught up in descriptions of RSS, AJAX and other technical aspects, the essay is about what “Web 2.0” dynamics mean for people, and then applies those dynamics to the archetypal IT tool: corporate email.

Here are the three dynamics that define the Web 2.0 experience for people:

• Personal expression – Web 2.0 provides people a greater ability to express their personalities to others
• Efficient connections – Web 2.0 services make meeting new like-minded people more efficient
• Information discovery – Web 2.0 software and services change how people discover information

Information discovery and efficient connections make perfect sense, but how in the world would enabling personal expression improve corporate e-mail? Turns out that as more people join communities online, they are used to posting photos of themselves (or avatars) and expressing their interests, specialities, accomplishments, and more. This aides in creating networks of like-minded people (efficient connections) that make finding information easier (information discovery).

Connections are more efficient because they are self-selected through common interests, which filters information to be more relevant and is thus more valuable. Throw in tagging, social bookmarking, and trackbacks (cross-linking)and people can find information and webs of information in ways better suited to them compared to a taxonomy or literal search engine. Applied to corporate e-mail, contacts are grouped by each person’s personal network, and e-mails are tagged for concepts that the e-mail is about but does not explicitly mention.

So what does Web 2.0 mean to businesses? Better connected employees with better access to the right information.

Here is a must have for every lawyer and paralegal in your office. The Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit organization for using technology to increase transparency in the U.S. Government, published this list of “insanely useful web sites” [via LXRR] add value to the torrents of government data making it more useful, accessible, or intelligible. These sites gravitate toward the legislative arena, but include:

• a better way to search Thomas and monitor legislation through GovTrack.us;
• DOJ Documents Search (www.trainingdb.com);
• find contractor misconduct;
• searchable database of federal spending and contracting (fedspending.org); and
• search public Congressional Research Service (CRS) documents (www.opencrs.com)

These sites provide extra value through adding newsfeeds (RSS feeds) for updates not just on news, but search queries. So every time new information arrives matching a query you created—even if it was six months ago—you are alerted through a newsfeed. Others like LOUIS search multiple sources, like the Federal Register, GAO Reports, and Presidential documents. Some synthesize data from multiple sources like MapLight.org does for campaign contributions and voting records. GovTrack, which serves as the foundation for many of these sites, allows people to create their own “monitors” for bills, votes, members of Congress, and even subject areas.

Practically every web service and site worth its salt is offering its information through a newsfeed. With Google Reader or the newsreader of your choice, here are some ways to gather business intelligence on industries, clients, and competitors.

Subscribe to feeds from company web sites. You can get press release and investor information from the likes of Pfizer. Apple has a number of feeds available. Still some old economy companies like Ford don’t have any feeds, but consumer products giant Johnson & Johnson is on the bandwagon.

Create feeds from Google News searches. Keyword search and create a newsfeed from the results. Search for the term “consumer recall” and Google News creates a feed that will update every time a news story matches the query. It works just like the “Google Alerts” feature, but without adding to all the junk in your e-mail inbox.

Even “old media” has jumped on the newsfeed bandwagon. The “Old Gray Lady” herself, the New York Times, has many RSS feeds available. In the left coast, the Los Angeles Times has scores of feeds. Local media can provide intel on local markets. (See Washingtonpost.com and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune).

What others around the Net are bookmarking. Social bookmarking site Del.icio.us can provide newsfeeds based on tags of sites its users bookmark. For instance, you can grab the feeds for “biotechnolgy” and see what people want to save to read for later, share with their friends or keep for reference.

The Job Market: Great intel can be found in whose hiring. Craigslist has feeds for Job postings by title and lets you focus on regional markets. Job listings in the classifieds of newspapers are also available as newsfeeds. Nationally, Monster.com has RSS feeds for job titles and categories, and some regions.

Blogs about clients and industries: Practically every blog comes with a newsfeed these days. And some of the best news comes out of industry blogs like Techcrunch, that leads the way in reporting on Silicon Valley. Google’s Blog Search lets you create feeds based on keyword searches just like Google News. Technorati lets you set up feeds for tags and keyword searches.

Have any more? Let us know!

We have mentioned before that employees are bringing the technology they use at home or on the road into the firm, a reversal from a few years ago when most people were exposed to new technologies at work. New technologies facilitate new ways of working. This article at Law.com discusses the ability of the “Internet Generation” to multitask and take on responsibilities that were once offloaded to support staff.

“…I inquired whether they were using their secretaries to type letters, make edits to briefs, enter time, etc. The response we got was not unexpected. Why would they give work to somebody else when they could do it just as fast, if not faster, themselves?”

The flip side is whether our support staff and IT are keeping up with them. Supporting staff should keep lawyers and professionals as productive as possible. What could be accomplished if those multitasking capabilities were not wasted on typing and entering time? What can the most connected generation teach the firm about online collaboration and building community using the Internet and digital tools? Of course, the mythic ability of young workers to multitask is a stereotype (like the other stereotypes that they require praise just to do what is expected of them), but can we afford to ignore the ideas of a generation that grew up with computers and the Internet?

What Would You Do With a Bargain Basement Supercomputer? While Microsoft continually seeks out new markets and new competitors to conquer (old Star Trek riff), they have set their sights on the supercomputing market with a “low-cost” solution for small companies. If you have a spare $50K laying around for the software alone, MS says you can get your own cluster of servers acting like a supercomputer.

Why would law or professional services firms want a supercomputer? Conceptual searching and relationship analysis for litigation support, for one. What would you use a supercomputer for?

Collaborating on the Web? Read the Fine Print. Between Lawyers has a post and comments on using online web services like conferencing or data storage. The issues include possible data breaches like when GMail was hacked and having a third party between lawyer and client.

Blame Tech Problems on the Planet Mercury: Here is a little chuckle for a Friday. Currently, the planet Mercury is in retrograde, an optical illusion that makes it look like the planet has reversed direction in the sky. For astrologers, this is a bad time of year as accidents happen, things go pear-shaped. So when Yahoo! Messenger went down on Wednesday, the culprit was not bad code or human error, but the zigzagging planet.

We are not in the hype or bandwagon business, but a follow up to our post yesterday about the iPhone’s potential place in business is in order. In an interview with USA Today this morning, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had this to say about corporate e-mail and the iPhone:

Q: What about corporate e-mail? I understand that's an issue for many consumers, who may not be able to hook up to their company networks?

Jobs: You'll be hearing more about this in the coming weeks. We have some pilots going with companies with names you'll recognize. This won't be a big issue.

There you go. If we were to read the tea leaves, likely candidates are Microsoft and Motorola (who recently acquired Good). RIM, the company behind Blackberry, is less likely because their system uses dedicated data centers. Whether the iPhone can be remotely managed and wiped still remains to be seen, but Apple apparently wants to remove any barriers to the business market.

How many times have you heard about the next great collaboration technology? We have done it before in touting out MindPort collaboration application for documents. But wikis are getting hard to ignore since they make so much sense for business. Why? They overcome the “inbox” problem. E-mail communication is great, but having multiple copies distributed throughout a dozen people’s inboxes is inefficient to say the least when those e-mails need to be referenced at a later date. A wiki provides a single, highly accessible place to coordinate activities and share information.

For the uninitiated, the Common Craft blog has a great video (a bit “campy” though) that explains what a wiki is and how it works. Applications we are seeing clients (and ourselves) implement are knowledge bases, client information, operations manuals, and project planning. There are a number of legal specific wikis covering circuit courts, tax law, IP and more. And in case you haven’t already made the connection, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is one big wiki.

There are some challenges, mostly changing the culture of writing on the wiki rather than an e-mail. Getting the right wiki software and ensuring that it is widely accessible but also secure requires some thought.

"The Revolution Will Be Syndicated in a Newsfeed!" That's the battle cry in our article on newsfeeds in this month's issue of the ALA Capital Chapter's Capital Connection.(PDF)  If you are a faithful reader of the SAGE Wisdom Journal, you already know that we are a big proponent of newsfeeds (RSS), but the article reaches a more mainstream audience who may not be on the bandwagon yet.  The article is a primer on feeds and how to use them, including our assertion that RSS and newsreaders will revolutionize information as e-mail did communication!

While the interface is still maddening, SharePoint 2007 is a quick way to build collaborative tools like blogs, wikis, and discussion forums inside your firm. Built into SharePoint 2007 are a variety or collaborative features that can be up and running with just a few clicks. While each individual app may not be best in breed, it does provide your organization an opportunity to flirt with these “web 2.0” collaborative features to see if employees will participate on the content they generate increases everyone's knowledge and awareness.

• Blogs: create internal blogs to share firm news, client personnel changes, or developments on projects so the entire firm is “in the know.”
• Wikis: have everyone in the firm become contributors and build your knowledge base or reference library organically from the ground up.
• Discussion Forums: let the conversation happen online rather than in e-mail. It is easier for others who came to the discussion late to catch up and non participants get the benefits too.

The jury is still out, however, regarding SharePoint's "document workspaces." These collaborative sites within SharePoint are fully searchable, but the real sleeper feature is that almost everything has a newsfeed associated with it. So as content is added or updated, everyone in the firm will know.

Many pixels are being devoted today to speculation over what caused RIM’s Blackberry service outage yesterday that left everyone suddenly feeling very unwired and disconnected. CNet has a good article on the possible causes since RIM hasn’t offered anything definitive yet.

What has been revealing about the incident is the fact that RIM has only two data centers that handle all the Blackberry traffic in the world. So two points of failure exist. If one data center is disrupted, the other could fail because of the increased load as well. According to the article, this is the price of the added security and convenience. Furthermore, it raises questions about RIM’s ability to maintain service quality as its subscriber base booms since going after the mainstream market.

So once you all stop feeling lonely and twitching from withdrawal, are you staying with Blackberry or looking to other options? Please leave your comments

Mark Chandler, the General Counsel of Cisco Systems, Inc. threw down the gauntlet to big law firms and rising rates in a recent speech. He asserts that law firms have not changed their practices while the technology has changed the ease of access, acquisition and use of information. As a result, law firms have become roadblocks because they restrict access through the inefficient “billable hour.”

“The legal industry has spent millions on IT to up speed access to information. But the only way I can get that information is through an individual billing me by the hour. My in-house team often has more sophistication than the associates who mine the knowledge management system to generate a memo. We’re just not allowed to access the information without paying for someone’s time.”

In his eyes, this failure to make information more accessible to clients, will be the downfall of big law firms unless the remedy the situation. Chandler warns that standardized legal information systems like Google Patent Search will spring up to challenge the current model of “one-to-one consultative advice.”

The driver is cost. Chandler says that when law firm’s raise rates, they are oblivious to the cost pressures corporate America face every day, and misperceive the value of their services.

“From the law firm think perspective, “sales” too often means a one to one relationship with a lawyer who bills by the hour. As a client, I can tell you what I want to buy is access to information, strategy, and negotiation, and, in the case of litigation, to courtroom skill as well.”

Think he is crazy? Cisco does almost all of its legal work on a fixed fee basis, and has been paying less each year rather than more. He works with law firms in a number of ways to reduce costs, create efficiency, and improve service. Now how are you going to respond to his model before someone else does?

We are thrilled to announce that for 2007 we are sponsoring ALISM, the Association of Legal Information Systems Managers. This deepens our support for the IT and legal community in the Washington, DC metropolitan region, as we already sponsor ILTA and the ALA Capital Chapter, as well as our membership in the LFVA. We are fully behind ALISM's mission to facilitate learning and communication among its members.

We'll be attending ALISM's meeting this Wednesday, January 24, 2007.  Also look for SAGE experts at ALISM meetings throughout the year.

In ALISM's own words:

ALISM facilitates the exchange of information regarding the technical and management problems peculiar to the legal automation environment, and to improve the standards and qualifications of information systems managers and their staffs. ALISM provides an environment where members share their experience with other members of the legal IS community and learn about new technology trends. ALISM members learn what other firms are doing, how other departments are run and networking with colleagues.

We are glad to be on-board and look forward to a great year with ALISM.

If the Apple iPhone’s innovative “multi-touch” interface stands up in real world use, it may usher in the shift in computing from desktops to handhelds. Laptops are already poised to overtake desktops the business world in the next few years, and sales have surged for smartphones like the Blackberry and Treo. The iPhone promises to overcome the last hurdle to widespread adoption of handhelds for most computing tasks: the interface.

We’ve discussed handheld devices and the supporting “information cloud” of data, information, and reference material that Blackberries/Treos make possible. Even laptops cannot compete with the mobility afforded by fitting snugly into a pocket. High speed cell networks and Wi-Fi have solved the bandwidth bottleneck, so the last hurdle to accessing the information in the cloud on a handheld was the interface: the stylus, small keyboard, and small, low-resolution screen. According to one tech pundit:

“[Apple CEO] Jobs is breaking the tyranny of the keyboard and trying to break the tyranny of the cursor as well. We've been able to get computers into our pockets for a very long time, but the issue has always been, 'what do you do with it?' You don't have a keyboard, you don't have a stylus and your thumbs are too big to type. This is the first serious attempt to break the tyranny of input. Until now, everybody's always focused on output -- is the screen big enough or sharp enough -- and the screens are high-resolution and bright. We've conquered that. Now the limiting factor is input.”

Simple input, fully capable high-speed web browsing, and reading documents on a widescreen display are all major advances in handheld computing. So whether you think the iPhone is the real-deal or over-hyped, if you or your employees want to be unchained from the desk, you should be rooting for the iPhone to succeed.

Here are a series of posts over at The Wired GC about law firm rate increases that ends with a harrowing set of conclusions for law firms:

• Profit motive appears to be the primary factor; and
• Customers are getting the same thing as before, only it costs more. That means the customer is getting less value.

Click on the blog post to comment on the merits of the author's argument, but we will point out that perceptions quickly become reality. Are your firms offering extranets, easier access to files, or other services to offset the negative value of rate increases?

Internet and digital technologies remove many of the constraints to providing niche services and reaching audiences across much wider geographic areas. For small and medium-sized law and professional services firms, especially “Boutique” firms that specialize in niche areas, this means that the advantages many large firms and their superior resources once enjoyed are diminishing.

Broadband Internet, Wi-Fi, and VoIP allow small firms to communicate easily with customers that may be half the world away. Collaborative technologies like extranets, web conferencing, and Skype makes servicing far flung clients practical and efficient. Using social networking services like LinkedIn, the cost of acquiring a customer drops dramatically, eroding another advantage of large firms. As access to information and other resources becomes cheaper, the resource advantage large firms once held is shrinking daily (think of the Google vs. Lexis/Nexis subscription for basic research, or RSS feeds compared to costly clipping or news aggregation services).

The phenomena rapidly attracting the public’s attention is “The Long Tail:” large numbers of small sales and niche services that looks like a tail when viewed on a graph of demand. The point is, the Long Tail rivals the “hits” at the head in revenue and profitability. Apply this idea to law and professional services firms, where big firms are the “hits” at the head, and small and medium firms are the long tail. Before the Internet, that tail was much shorter, and couldn’t rival the big firms for revenue in the aggregate. But now, that’s changing.

Reputation and quality of service become deciding factors over sheer resources in many cases. There are still instances throwing lots of people at a problem are warranted, but that’s is becoming less so everyday. As part of the “Long Tail,” small and medium firms can often rival the giants.

This post over at Legal Blog Watch talks about some reasons why lawyers and law firms don’t collaborate to the extent that Corporate America does. Citing culture, training, and nature of the work, the authors suggest the command-and-control structure of firms discourages intra-firm collaboration. We would add the conservativeness of the legal community toward new technology.

We don’t see law firms as the dinosaurs the post suggests. Law firms are slowly adopting extranets like MindPort for collaborating with clients, co-counsel, and experts. But if the deck is stacked against lawyers themselves, collaboration should be widely encouraged for other firm employees like paralegals, practice support staff, and other professionals and support personnel. As we have mentioned on the blog before, sharing knowledge and information is vital to productivity and work quality. Demolishing silos where information and expertise is locked up in practice areas or functional groups should be a top priority for any law firm administrator and management.

While many firms have been down the Intranet route (often poorly), extranets that are so successful externally can be applied to many projects and situations internally. New ideas in collaboration such as Wikis, social bookmarking, RSS, and more are coming to the forefront that are often inexpensive and easier to implement.

The Thanksgiving Holiday brings out the Charlie Brown holiday specials, and “Pig Pen” makes his annual cameo in the cartoons. Pig Pen has the cloud of dirt and dust that follows him wherever he goes, but what if that cloud was information, instead?

Look no further than someone carrying a Blackberry or Treo and see a whole new generation of high-tech Pig Pens followed by a cloud of e-mails, contacts, documents and more. The new mobile workforce is no longer restricted by their own memory or brain power since they have access to tremendous information resources at the push of a button. Handheld computing and wireless technologies have untethered knowledge from bulky reference items like PCs, dictionaries, file cabinets, etc. Now add GPS, RSS feeds and web services like Del.icio.us or Google Notebook, and information is at the fingertips of anyone with a smartphone.

For example, Del.icio.us bookmarks can be an RSS feed, subscribed to through Google Reader, that has a mobile version accessible through any smartphone’s web browser. On the other hand, one SAGE employee visited a museum over the weekend where he ran into a person using his smartphone’s camera to photograph the plaque so they “could read them later.” With cameras on cell phone’s reaching 3 megapixels, each cell phone becomes a handheld scanner.

The challenge to IT in facilitating making all our workers like Pig Pen is thinking beyond secure VPN and Citrix, but how to use RSS and services to not only feed information, but also store and share with co-workers from practically anywhere.

In our post on “Musing on the Coming Web Desktop,” we mentioned one hybrid scenario where web apps with desktop functionality reside on the firm Intranet, rather than the Internet itself. John Milan’s post yesterday over at Read/Write Web discussed another type of hybrid, a cross between a web app and a desktop application.

That got us thinking: we have done precisely that! MindPort+Review, our online document review and collaboration tool that integrates with our MindPort extranet solution, is indeed that sort of hybrid. With MindPort+Review, the data—in this case, documents and their metadata—reside in a MindPort project, which is an online repository. The MindPort+Review tool is a desktop application that provides enhanced functionality for searching, sorting, filtering, and grouping documents. The desktop app also has tools for creating and maintaining custom coding (metadata) and advanced retrieval tools like pick lists, saved searches, and search folders. Since the data is online, people can collaborate on the documents anywhere they have an Internet connection.

When we created MindPort+Review, we just thought that was the best method to provide collaboration and the functionality of a desktop. Because the solution worked, we didn’t consider that it is pretty far out there on the leading edge of web technology.

Earlier this month, we posted on how to use social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and ma.gnolia to capture the collective intelligence of your employees and turn them into news feeds for everyone to see. Today we will discuss how you to use social bookmarking to put your firm, organization, or department at the heart of your network of clients, colleagues, or employees.

Sharing bookmarks through del.icio.us provides an easy and low-cost way to keep up a constant stream of valuable information. Some examples are:

• Keep employees aware of tips,tricks, tutorials, workarounds, or reference materials.
• Stay in constant contact with clients by feeding them important developments or identify opportunities and potential hazards.
• Attract prospects and establish your expertise with them.

Since del.icio.us creates newsfeeds (RSS feeds), everyone in your network stays current without the need for update e-mails that might be ignored or trapped in spam filters.

Social bookmarking also allows you to tap the collective wisdom of your network. With del.icio.us, you can invite each member in the group or other colleagues to share their bookmarks with you. Be sure to edit those bookmarks so they fit your purpose or theme. Everyone benefits from having more eyes keeping watch, and more brains thinking of useful and thought-provoking content.

As the fountainhead, you will become firmly established as the hub of your network, and will become indispensable to your clients, employees, and colleagues.

The hype-o-meter is twitching recently over porting common desktop apps like word processing and spreadsheets onto the web. EWeek and others have been declaring that web-based applications are coming of age. Google appears to be taking up the standard, leading a host of smaller developers in pushing the envelope of online applications. In fact, I am writing the first draft of this post on Google's "Docs & Spreadsheets ."

So should law and professional services firms head online for word processing?

Not quite yet. But for e-mail, many firms are already using Outlook Web Access (OWA), a web-based application. In fact, e-mail went web way back with Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo! Mail. Web-based apps tend to be more focused and have less features, largely because of the technical hurdles they face being online. Inline spell checking, drag and drop, and tracking changes are there, but forget mail-merging, if you care. This simplicity has won many adherents frustrated by how complicated desktop word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications have become. Online apps play to their strength--collaboration--where anyone with a web browser and the right privileges can edit, update, or otherwise provide feedback on a document. That same opennes, however, should scare the briefs off of any lawyer worth her salt.

But the road ahead holds a lot of promise. We envision a hyrbid scenario where apps reside on a firm's intranet, rather than the big-bad World Wide Web. Some of the advantages of online apps include:

• Easier deployment and seamless upgrades.
• Less expensive equipment on the desktop.
  
• Simpler licensing.
• Less configuration for managed environments.
• Built-in DMS: the documents are natively on the network rather than a local drive.
• RSS integration for new documents, updates, and document revisions.
  
• Microformats to reuse chunks of information rather than whole documents.

Under such an environment, the servers and connection speeds become critical. What is interesting, if web-based applications take off, it will mean that the pendulum will  have swung back toward a variant of the mainframe/terminal model of old.

Sharing bookmarked web sites within an organization can be tremendously valuable because it unleashes the collective wisdom of its people. Each person probably has a few gem web sites or pages that others would find very useful. Unfortunately, those gems are locked up in each person’s web browser.

Using the web service Del.icio.us, however, those bookmarks are freed from the browser and can be shared quickly and easily across the firm. Those shared bookmarks are then turned into RSS feeds that can be easily distributed.

Here’s an example. An employee finds a news article on a web page that discusses developments in your