January 2011 Archives

The new Samsung 9 laptop has PC enthusiasts going gaga.

Many computer users complain that they have so few choices when it comes to stylish, lightweight computers made from strong materials. The Samsung 9 may be the computer that fits the bill. It is lighter and thinner than the Apple MacBook Air. It packs a 1.4GHz second-gen Core i5 processor and a battery that lasts up to 6.5 hours, along with 4GB RAM, a 128GB solid-state drive. Gizmodo said that with its "black metal finish and sleek curves, it looks like it belongs on the deck of the Death Star."

The material used for the body looks very unique, so you might be interested to learn just what the 9 is made of. The material is called Duralumin, and it's typically found in high end aircrafts and is twice as durable as aluminum. It looks freaking awesome, as well.

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet.

The European Union is conducting an investigation of Google to ascertain whether the Internet search giant has committed antitrust violations, according to a recent New York Times article.

Specifically, the EU antitrust investigation is seeking to find out from companies that advertise via Google if they were asked by Google to increase their advertising spending on the site in exchange for better prominence in Internet search results. Furthermore, an effort is being made to understand whether Google sought to get in the way of companies that sought to take their advertising business to other places on the Internet.

Apparently, a confidential questionnaire was sent to companies who advertise on Google and that is intended to find out if Google played with search results to maintain advertising business and to cause detriment to online Internet search and advertising competitors, as reported by the New York Times and supposedly reviewed by The International Herald Tribune.

It's official. The iPhone is finally coming to Verizon. After being tied to the AT&T Network since 2007, many people have longed for an iPhone on the Verizon network. Now that we know it is finally happening, smartphone consumers are moving on to the next reasonable question: what will some of the differences be?

There are actually quite a few, so here are some highlights:

We have already sung the praises of cloud -based backup site Dropbox. Now Rocket Matter, a cloud-based time keeping, billing and practice management application, is offering an exciting new feature: integration with Dropbox.

With the new integration, attorneys will be able to backup client and law firm documents and synchronize them through a Rocket Matter Dropbox folder. The two services will work directly with each other, meaning that once a file is saved in Dropbox, it is already accessible in Rocket Matter, and vice versa. In addition, Rocket Matter now has a new feature that will allow attorneys to set permission levels for individual folders, so that different files can be accessed by different people as the attorney sees fit.

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet.

Microsoft previously released a security bulletin that addressed various vulnerabilities with respect to the parsing of office file formats by Microsoft Office. And, according to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, just a few days before the Christmas holiday, the Center came upon a “sample” that takes advantage of a specific vulnerability such that it then can execute malicious shell code that can download other malware. What does this mean and what can be done?

As explained by the Center, this particular Microsoft vulnerability can be triggered by the utilization of a specifically designed RTF file with a size range that is larger than expected. Significantly, this vulnerability is present in the ubiquitous Microsoft Word.

Is RSS over?

There has been a lot of chatter recently about whether RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is dying. But it turns out that RSS is alive. While many attorneys make use of the technology to organize what they read online, a post from UK-based web designer Kroc Camen sent RSS lovers into a bit of a frenzy. The post was picked up by Hacker News and re-tweeted quite a lot. The article was titled "RSS Is Dying Being Ignored, and You Should Be Very Worried."

Tablets, baby.

The Consumer Electronics Show is rolling in Las Vegas and tablets are everywhere. The conference is expected to bring in 120,000 people, who are hungry to see the next big thing in technology.

While the iPad was clearly the tech item of 2010, Apple has lots of competition this year. Android-based tablets are clearly going to be a big trend. Among the 2011 tablets are manufacturers Samsung, LG, Motorola, and Cisco. But the CES tablets include newer, more surprising arrivals, such as BlackBerry and Vizio, which is best known for flat panel TV's.

We've featured a lot of the ways that iPhones can help you run your law practice, but one that isn't recommended is for robbing restaurants. For whatever reason, Jerome Taylor thought that he could rob a Connecticut restaurant with just his phone, NBCConnecticut.com reports. To some extent his plan worked. The cooks seemed to believe he had a gun. To another extent the plan did not work. The cooks pulled out their large knives and threatened Taylor.

Jerome Taylor didn't have an answer, or an app, for that.

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet.

Right before the start of the last decade, the chief tech concern was Y2K and the worry that computers worldwide would crash as we rolled into the year 2000.

Well, what a difference a decade makes! Not only did Y2K not materialize as the huge problem that had been feared, the Internet has grown up in a major way and some of the issues we are dealing with now were not even on the radar screen in the days of Y2K paranoia.

In 2010 alone together we covered a number of interesting topics concerning new technology and legal Internet developments that are helpful with any 2011 technology predictions you may have.