One constant struggle firms face is spyware, adware and other "malware" infections on computer workstations. Cleaning and removing these spyware infections cost significant time and money that can be better spent on improving IT systems. Barring more draconian measures to restrict the use of web surfing and downloading files and other media, we strongly recommend the following safe surfing practices.

Make sure the web address fits the web site.  The web site address, (or "URL") should reasonably match the web site.  For example, if you on the web site of software maker Adobe, its web site address should be "http://www.adobe.com", or "https://support.adobe.com."  Web sites that claim to be Adobe's but have addresses like "http://adobe.0012441tojay.net" are likely phishing sites or web sites designed to infect your system with malware. You can also find out information about the owner of the web site address by performing a WHOIS ("who is") search.

Know your web address. Misstyping the web address for a well-known web site or organization can lead to web sites expressly built to capture misspellings. Many of these mimic a directory of links that you may find on the site you intended to visit, but are really advertising or meant to infect your machine with malware. Also, be sure you have the domain extension correct -- entering ".net" instead of ".com" may land you on a malicious web site.   

Do not click on any pop-up windows, especially one proclaiming that you may have a virus, spyware, or other malware infection.  In fact, the intention of that pop-up is to infect your machine, not inoculate it.

Did not click on any banners, pop-up windows or web pages saying you have won a prize. Almost always it is a rouse to infect your computer with spyware or adware. At the very least, it is an attempt to get personal information for marketing or more nefarious purposes. In fact, be wary of clicking on most banner ads. You can almost always find the site running the banner advertisement on your own.

Avoid downloading software and applications from the web.  The Internet has made delivery of applications and media much easier, but stick with trusted companies, sites, and organizations. There are a host of blogs, discussion forums, and consumer web sites where people report their experiences with web sites and online software vendors to check their reputation.

When in doubt, search Google. Usually searching on the web site name or organization on Google will provide a wealth of links to let you assess the reputation of a web site and those behind it.

Just like any scam, the common sense adage that "if it seems to good to be true, than it probably is." The Web is full of great discount web sites like Woot.com, but if the price of some consumer item or software is outrageously low, likely the site is trying to scam you for your money, likely injecting some spyware or adware at the same time.  If you are bargain shopping, stick with Ebay or Craigslist.

Following these guidelines should reduce the amount of spyware and other malware. Many of the same rules apply to unsolicited emails.  Don't click on links in spam e-mails or from senders you don't know, no matter what the promises to your financial prospects or "prowess."

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.

Our post last week discussed how "time-to-restore" is the primary factor in data backups. Here are some solutions for speeding up the process.

D2D2T - Disk to Disk to Tape. Many of our clients use this solution. In the event of a server failure (and not a disaster that destroys the server room), the last backup is local and can be restored from a local resource rather than pulling it over the Internet or having devices couriered to the site. These backups complete much more quickly since internal connections (LAN, USB 2.0 ESata, Firewire) are faster than the Internet connection. Meanwhile, the remote backup can be pulled over the Internet for redundancy. 

Bare Metal Restores. When a server fails, getting the server back up and running is time consuming before the restore can even start. It might take 4 to 6 hours to install Windows and its service packs, install applications (Exchange, SQL), then install the backup agents and start the restore. This type of "rebuild" always has long time delays finding the software media as well as configuring the machine (drives, install paths, data paths). With bare metal restore capabilities you typically can boot to a CD and begin restoring the machine much quicker.

E-Week this week published their "Top 10 Disruptive Technologies Affecting the Data Center". The slideshow is a mix of heady, esoteric terms like "server fabrics" with more tenable concepts like "green IT", and closely parallels Gartner Research's top 10 strategic technologies of 2008. But what is a disruptive technology and how to respond to it?

"Disruptive Technology" is a fairly recent term coined to describe technologies that upset the current state of affairs--whether those are business models, industries, or workflow. Want some examples? The Internet has disrupted traditional media like newspapers and TV. Digital music and the iPod has disrupted the music industry. And Google is doing it to just about anything that touches the Web.

So how can you predict the next disruptive technology? Well, you can't. The fact that they come from "outside the box" means that there is little chance of seeing them coming. As this post points out, the next big thing is never a repeat. That is why disruptive technologies are unexpected and unpredictable.

So the best strategy is agility: responding quickly to this new phenomenon. This requires the ability to learn quickly and not stand on bureaucracy, parochialism, or convention. A capacity for reinvention will be a vital survival trait.

Want even more good news? The pace of change is accelerating. Look over the past ten years since e-mail went widespread: now we have Blackberries and iPhones with word processing, cameras and GPS. Imagine what the next ten years will bring. So industries once isolated or downstream of innovative industries will have to react quicker as disruptive technologies will sweep through like wildfires.

We all sleep better having more back-up options, with disk and online either complementing tapes or replacing them altogether. Because these options offer greater reliability, security, and performance, no longer do we ask whether we can back-up. Now we ask: how fast can we recover? The new bottleneck is bandwidth: how much data can we move between the back-up and our restored systems. Recovery takes time; sometimes a long time.

Moving gigabytes and sometimes terabytes of data though LAN or Internet/WAN connections means that backups can sometimes take 24 hours or more. Disk and online back-ups are a blessing and a curse. We back up more data, which means there is more to move. So even when you do everything right and have multiple back-ups in various locations, you may still be down for a day or more just because you are moving data around.

How to address this issue? The obvious but difficult solution is to continually cull data. Remove unwanted files, e-mail messages, and the like. While the cheapest solution, it is the most difficult since it requires asking stressed out professionals and staff to take time out to manage their files. Other solutions like SANs (Storage Area Networks) and real-time backup and replication become real expensive real quick.

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.

The sales numbers have come in from Windows Vista, and they are not good. Despite Microsoft's spin on Vista sales, it is not the blockbuster product it was touted to be, whether in sales or capabilities. That has left many tech and business pundits to ponder why: Was the previous version XP that good that there is no reason to switch? Is Vista that bad? Or is the technology and industry shifting to reduce its relevance?

Here is a question to ponder in the New Year: Is the operating system as important as it once was?  And will it continue to be so in the future?  In fact, it could be argued that operating systems have diminished in the public's psyche while the web browser has ascended. Most people use online e-mail applications like GMail and Yahoo! Mail, while headline grabbing social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace exist only online. Applications once only found on PCs have been migrating to handhelds -- like e-mail. While Apple's iPhone stole the spotlight from Vista in 2007, business people have been e-mailing like crazy on Blackberries while Gen Y is all thumbs sending billions of SMS messages. Then there is the success of Salesforce.com and the many applications hosted over the Internet, whose only interface is the web browser.

There are more reasons why the days of powerful, high profile operating systems may be on the wane. Basic staples of computing like word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations going online with Google Docs. If you are part of the 94% of Americans who have no idea what Google Docs is, you may still use Word or Excel remotely via Citrix over the Internet. New virtualization technologies allow that same hardware to run multiple operating systems, and different operating systems simultaneously. (This article was written in Google Docs on a Mac that has a virtual copy of Windows XP running on it.)

So will 2008 mark the decline of the operating system?  We will see.  Share your thoughts in the comments!

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.

Here is another episode from our series “The Devil is in the Details.” This time, our setting is online data backup, that may be part of the larger world of managed IT services. Whether looking at online backup vendors or when it is bundled as part of a managed IT service, here is an important feature you should insist upon: Real time view and access into your backed-up data.

You want the ability to view and manage your backup data without needing an intermediary. For instance, you want to see your files and restore a file without needing to place a support ticket that someone fulfills for you most likely in a manner not-described as “timely.” You have options in online backup, decide on the one that gives you the greatest flexibility for the price.

Another day, another prediction from uber-research firm Gartner that software licensing costs will fall significantly over the next decade. The study cites seven reasons; one is software and applications delivered via a web browser through the Internet. Such services are usually priced on a subscription basis-either monthly or annually. This is definitely a trend to watch as it will save you money and overcome disadvantages of traditional

Software by subscription has been called by various names, such as ASP (Application Service Provider) and SaaS (Software as a Service), but are defined by provisioning through a network (such as the Internet) and usually on a subscription basis (monthly or annual). The advantages are:

• the software is dynamic – constantly improving and changing without having to wait for a shrink-wrapped release and launch party. No need to wait 18-36 months for a box with new features and updates, they become available when the developer has them tested and ready.
• No deployment to desktops and laptops.
• It is available anywhere there is a web browser rather than trapped on the office desktop or the laptop you left in the hotel room.
• Sometimes subscription fees can be tax deductible if deemed an operating cost (insert standard disclaimer about talking to your accountant or tax lawyer).

What are the downsides? The Internet connection become even more important, although the new Firefox 3 browser and Google Gears are developing ways to work offline. Web interfaces have made tremendous strides in the past year, but still have a ways to go before the match their desktop brethren. Finally, let the bean counters look at the long term costs and whether it makes sense compared to traditional upfront licensing fees (don’t forget the service agreement at 20% annually)!

For some of our web site clients (Washington Express and GigaBiter, for example), we have been following the dust-up over Google’s alleged change to PageRank. PageRank is the mathematical algorithm that ranks web sites in the almighty Google search engine. According to some informed speculation, Google is fighting back against people trying to game its system for higher search engine rankings, dinging the rankings of some popular sites like the Washingtonpost.com in the process. No matter what the actual cause, this is a never-ending war raging between Google and those seeking every advantage when their companies live or die by their Google ranking.

What has been our advice? Don’t get caught up in the arms race--it can only hurt you. You can’t win. Only Google knows how PageRank works and can change it at their whim. Everyone else is guessing, often badly. Trying to game the system will only lead you to do bad things, like “link farms” and writing geared for Google’s search bots rather than real human beings. The first can get you blacklisted from Google, the second from your potential customers.

What can you do? PageRank is still about links coming to your site, and the sites that link to yours. Maximize links to your sites, especially from large directories and media outlets that have a ton of incoming links to them, too. Blog. Ask your customers and partners to link to you. Work the public relations and get stories about your firm and people in trade rags, web sites, and the local/regional media. Write a case study for your customer that links to your site. Also, find a respected SEO (Search Engine Optimization) adviser, one that makes sure the basics are covered, doesn’t offer frivolous services, and offers prudent measures that don’t overstep the line. Lastly, don’t believe that the SEO firm can deliver you to the top of the charts with some cold cash but no hard work.

This Tuesday, we spoke to the Small Firm Management section of the ALA Capital Chapter on IT trends for small firms. What we encounter is that small firms have many of the same IT challenges of large law firms, just not on the same scale.

Both small and large firms alike are paying close attention to these IT trends:

Getting more for your money – Everyone is looking to stretch their IT dollars, so small firms are looking to managed IT services and large firms look to outsource basic tasks like daily server checks and monitoring. Firms are also looking at application services providers (Internet providers) for critical systems like time & billing, backup, e-mail and spam filtering.

Virtualization of desktops and servers – flexibility and ability to recover from disasters quickly makes this one of the hottest trends to watch.

Data vaulting – whether the firm administrator is tired of bringing back-up tapes home every night or an integral part of a disaster recovery plan, data vaulting—online backups—are the way to go.

Mobility – Including remote access, laptop and handheld computing, staying in the office is so last century.

Security – While constant struggle against malware rages on, now everyone should also pay attention to stopping data breaches that can cost your firm both money and its reputation.

What are the IT trends where small firms are sitting on the sidelines? WANs; desktop management and software deployment; and Storage Area Networks (SANs).

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 off the blogging for a week, so if you were out over the long holiday weekend like we were, here is what you may have missed.

Windows Server 2008 Delayed too… 2008. Surprise! Microsoft has delayed the launch of a major operating system.However, this slip pushes back other Microsoft products, like its Viridian Hypervisor for server virtualization that is supposed to get them into the virtualization market in a big way. And as we all know, it means that much longer until the first service pack is released, which is when most people make the jump to a new operating system.

Speaking of Service Packs: Vista SP1 Coming Winter 2008. Rumors of its arrival have swirled for a few months, but Microsoft makes it official, hoping that it will drive sales of the troubled OS. Shortly after its release, Microsoft is expected to release Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.

…Speaking of the Virtualization Market.This EWeek article has a rundown of the latest developments in the industry where VMWare had a successful IPO and is flush with cash, Citrix bought XenSource, and Microsoft is still looking to make inroads.

The Next-Gen Web Application, in Five Easy Steps. AJAX, Web Services, Dynamic Data, Offline Availability and data flexibility are hallmarks of the next generation in web applications. Indeed, now is a time of great experimentation in web sites and web applications and each of these characteristics are in use today to varying degrees. Combine these with the next generation of mobile devices like Apple’s iPhone, and the Web will be where you work, no matter where you are.

Sure, the Annual ILTA Conference is the premier legal tech event on the calendar, but we don't blame you for avoiding the August heat in Central Florida (not near a beach). We sent our rep to seek out knowledge and air conditioning, but with blogging, you don't have to.

Inside Legal Opinions and LexBlog have the rundown of people blogging from the conference. Thanks to these intrepid folks, you can get the latest news and ideas from the conference while sipping your coffee while wearing that comfy, ratty t-shirt in your home office after the kids are in bed.

Via the Legal Blog Watch, some law firms—or at least some web savvy people inside them—are going all Web 2.0. They are creating social networks on Facebook and updating their Wikipedia entries. Some even appear to have succumbed to the temptation to edit the Wikipedia pages of the competition to cast them in an unfavorable light!

While law firms are notoriously conservative when it comes to technology, this is a rather quick adoption rate in an industry that just migrated to Windows XP in the last couple of years. Networking and research seem perfectly logical arenas for firms to try out these new forms of web interaction. So how long will it be before videos go up on YouTube?

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 our Friday installment of what is being said on the Internet that administrators and IT pros at law and professional services firms should know.

Where did my Excel commands go? The transition to Office 2007’s new “fluid interface” is causing some consternation with many who have become accustomed to the keyboard shortcuts and menu commands in Excel 2003. Computerworld published this handy cheat sheet mapping the old locations for commands from Excel 2003 to 2007. For more on what has changed and what is new in Office 2007, check out our free online webinar “Compelling Enhancements in Office 2007” on August 15, 2007 at 2:00 p.m. EDT.

Businesses cautious on Vista upgrade. A new poll says that only 2 percent of businesses are running Vista, and only 9 percent more planning on upgrading in the next three months. Now, we know firms that just went to XP last year, so this wait-and-see attitude doesn’t surprise us. Some reasons cited include old hardware that won’t run Vista and training.

Contracts online, should lawyers be worried? Business 2.0 has an article on a Spanish company putting contracts online to cut out the lawyers. More than that, they are throwing in some value-added with their dashboard that has a timeline of negotiations, comments, and more. Inside Opinions sees the move as complementary rather than completely disruptive.

Census Bureau information to your newsreader. Following up on our post on great government web site mash-ups, Robert Ambrogi points out that the U.S. Census Bureau has RSS feeds and podcasts on a number of statistics like “Aging Population,” “Foreign-born Population,” and more.

For more stories filtered for administrators and IT pros in legal and professional services firms, get our supplemental newsfeed, available here through Google Reader.

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.

Better Google Searching Tips: We humans are lazy. That is the genius behind Google. By just entering a keyword or two into a search box, it works really well. For those of us who don’t have the luxury of laziness, like paralegals, this article at Law.com’s Legal Technology has great advanced searching tips in Google.

• Choose or exclude search results from particular web sites;
• Choose the number of results per page;
• Learn how an asterisk can “fill in the blanks”; and
  
• find all the web sites linking to page or site.

30 Acrobat Tips: It’s only for Version 8 and it is promoting an online webinar for Adobe, but this PDF of 30 tips in Acrobat has some gems.

• Better conversion of TIFF and PowerPoint files;
• Choosing sheets from Excel files;
• Search PDFs in a directory;
• Optimizing file sizes; and
  
• Comparing documents.

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!

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!

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

We at SAGE are excited about all of the advances in web technologies.  Between Outlook Web Access, LegalKey's Attorney Desktop , Google Maps and GMail, we all know that today's web is nearly a replacement for desktop applications.  That realization will shape much of the thinking we do for future software and hardware deployments. 

So that's the good news.  The bad news is that the more sophisticated the web gets, the less we know about how secure it really is.  In the early days of the web, the technology was so simple, that there were very few security implications - it was a "READ ONLY" web.  Today, not only can websites allow you to read and write data (thanks in large part to the AJAX revolution), but they can do so without you knowing it.  Hackers picked up on this pretty quickly and there are now many Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks that plague unsophisticated web developers.  The biggest problem with XSS is that there is nothing you can do to prevent the problem, since the problems the hackers are exploiting are actually the very features in web that make it so useful today.

What should you do as an individual?  The web is here to stay.  You cannot avoid it: clients require it, coworkers prefer it and, chances are, you have too much invested already (family photos on line, personal email, etc).  So the best advice is to always visit reputable web sites that take security to heart, such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.  Those companies have headed the hackers off at the pass and have all but eliminated XSS vulnerabilities in their products.

What should you do as an IT Professional?  Ask your web-based vendors what their web security strategy is and what measures they have against XSS attacks. They should be happy to share with you the details of their approach.