Monday, May 16, 2011

Quincy Courthouse Going Live on the Internet



Live Justice Comes To the Internet "The Boston Globe reports that an experiment in live justice is coming to the Internet, uniting citizen bloggers with the public's right to know in one of Massachusetts's busiest courthouses, Quincy District Court. Dubbed Open Court, the project will operate live cameras and microphones during criminal sessions where the court's proceedings will be streamed live over the Internet at the Open Court website to give the public an unfiltered view of court proceedings while an operating Wi-Fi network serves citizen bloggers who want to post to the Internet."

Original Boston Globe Article: Quincy court going live on the Web

Friday, April 15, 2011

Video annotation made easy with MediaNotes from CALI











MediaNotes has often been called the “track changes” for video. It allows you to annotate video and audio files similarly to how Word allows you to markup a document with comments. Here at BCLS we’ve been testing out MediaNotes within the clinical setting out at the Legal Assistance Bureau as part of an ATIG grant. While this application demonstrates a strong use for MediaNotes in reviewing interview skills, there are many other ways that this program could be used in an educational setting. 

Examples of use include;
  • Evaluation and feedback of student performances in mock negotiations or trial practice
  • Evaluation and commenting on videos used in instruction or previously recorded student performances
  • Commenting on class presentations
MediaNotes allows you the ability create fully customizable tag sets, or borrow from the CALI community. This can allow you to start conversations with students in ways previously limited to text reviews or face-to-face discussions. As a member of CALI, BCLS faculty, staff, and students are offered MediaNotes free of charge while here. 

If you are interested in using MediaNotes please contact lawedtech@bc.edu or try it out now by visiting www.cali.org.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Google's Library of Alexandria Comes to a Halt

Google seemed poised to deliver the digital version of the Library of Alexandria. For years, the company has been scanning books from libraries, amassing an incredible repository of the world's printed information. That data was searchable--snippets of text helped identify books related to search terms--and, recently, Google made it into a bookstore. Read more: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/26559/?p1=A4

The official 48-page ruling from US District Court Judge Denny Chin

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Adblock Plus, annoyance-free web surfing for Chrome and Firefox

Adblock Plus claims that it can 
  • Block all ads automatically, no distractions
  • Browse faster and safer
For free. 
Primarily within Firefox, though the Chrome functionality is improving rapidly. This little add on is the winner of the 2011 best overall (non-security) add-on for browsers, for the second year in a row. Impressive. The install took seconds, and we've been sailing around the web mostly ad free. The difference is immediate and incredible. Boston.com and Campus Technology are changed sites! 

See who Adblock Plus beat

Continue to Adblock Plus to install the add-on or find out more. 

Let us know what you think!

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office has arrived, but not for Macs.

I was eager for something like this to come along, so when I say a new post in my reader entitled "Google Cloud Connect or: Shouldn't This Have Been Built into Word in the First Place?" I anxiously clicked away. As the post will tell you;
What does Google Cloud Connect do for you?
  • Cloud Storage – Every document you create or open and save on your computer is saved both to your computer and to your Google Docs account. That means if you need to work on it from another computer, you can just go to docs.google.com and download it.
  • Version Control – Every time you click save in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel, Cloud Connect will save a new version of the document. Did you ever delete something by accident and then save the file? Or edit a document only to realize that the previous version was better? Version control can solve these problems. You can access old versions, listed by date, from directly within Word, PowerPoint, or Excel.
  • Collaboration – Just like Google Docs, Google Cloud Connect allows you to share your documents with others just by entering their email address. Your collaborators can edit the files simultaneously, and if you both edit the same part of the document at the same time, you’ll be able to decide which version should be used.
And more. There are endless benefits to a setup like this. Now you can work online or off, at any computer, and have all of the functionality of Word or the simplicity of Google Docs. This is similar to MS Office Apps, which has proven to be very useful for me many times, but will utilize the Google Docs setup I already use.

Mac users will have to wait, from "Google Cloud Connect moves Microsoft Office files to Google Docs, as long as you're not using a Mac"
"Due to the lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac, we are unable to make Google Cloud Connect available on Macs at this time," Sinha said. "We look forward to when that time comes so we can provide this feature to our Mac customers as well."
To find out more, or start using connect, go to Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Multilingual Zotero with Duplicates Detection

Recent improvements to Zotero make it easier and more accessible for you to use. 


Adhering to detailed bibliographic rules is a hefty task that Zotero makes easy by automating the creation of bibliographies and citations. What if, however, you are a multilingual scholar, working with materials in more than one language? There are special challenges here that will soon be met, thanks to the efforts of Zotero community developers who are nearing the final testing phase for Multilingual Zotero, a groundbreaking tool that can automatically capture, organize and correctly format items enriched with translated and transliterated multilingual data.
Finish reading and watch a screen cast at the Zotero blog.  

Mobil Security and Free, Lookout

Do you have a smartphone? Well many more of us do now, than did before. One thing that rarely crosses anyone mind, other than with they fall prey to an attack is protecting your mobile device. If you check on your bank balances, provide password information, download apps, or even check email -- you could be at risk. Lookout provides you with an option to keep yourself protected for Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile smartphones.

Try it out!

Lookout: Free Mobile Security for Smartphones

Thursday, March 3, 2011

eBook User's Bill of Rights -- will it work? #ebookrights #HCOD

With the restrictions on eBooks placed by hardware creators and publishers, it was only a matter of time until we would see something like this come about. The "eBook User's Bill of Rights" surfaced this week on the LIS Librarian News website. After a quick search on Google, Sarah Glassmyer filled in a bit of the background on this recent addition to the dissatisfaction with restricted rights on eBooks in her post, "HCOD, eBook User Bill of Rights, and Math".

One interesting quote from the Bill of Rights stood out as being very reminiscent of the music debate in the not so distant past. 
Digital Rights Management (DRM), like a tariff, acts as a mechanism to inhibit this free exchange of ideas, literature, and information. Likewise, the current licensing arrangements mean that readers never possess ultimate control over their own personal reading material. These are not acceptable conditions for eBooks.
Has this held you back from joining the eBook revolution? And do you think this will work? 

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

'Mexican Legal Dictionary' App

From, "Thomson Reuters Rolls Out 'Mexican Legal Dictionary' App"

In response to the growing demand for information on Mexican law, Thomson Reuters recently developed a Mexican legal dictionary app. The app includes English and Spanish audio pronunciations as well as definition of legal terms from the company's Mexican Legal Dictionary. It also includes other information like sentencing guidelines and reference guides to the role of certain Mexican government advisory councils.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Here comes XOOM

The Motorola XOOM is now available for pre-order and is being hailed as the first real iPad competitor. It runs a new version of Android that is designed specifically for tablets, super fast, and a bit pricey. Is this what you've been waiting for? 


Read more about XOOM.
Visit the Motorola XOOM site.  

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

New citation app

A new smartphone application takes most of the grunt work out of citing books in scholarly papers. 
Quick Cite, which costs 99 cents and is available for both iPhones and Android-based phones, uses the camera on a smartphone to scan the bar code on the back of a book. It then e-mails you a bibliography-ready citation in one of four popular styles—APA, MLA, Chigaco, or IEEE.


Click to read the full article


We're interested in hearing how this works for you, please share your comments. 

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Have you ever wanted to print from your phone?

With Gmail, now you can. 

Let’s say you need to print an important email attachment on your way to work so that it’s waiting for you when you walk in the door. With Gmail for mobile and Google Cloud Print — a service that allows printing from any app on any device, OS or browser without the need to install drivers — you can.


To get started, you’ll first need to connect your printer to Google Cloud Print. For now, this step requires a Windows PC but Linux and Mac support are coming soon. Once you’re set up, just go to gmail.com from your iPhone or Android browser and choose “Print” from the dropdown menu in the top right corner. You can also print eligible email attachments (such as .pdf or .doc) by clicking the “Print” link that appears next to them.
Read more about this at the Gmail Blog.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

What does running out of IP addresses mean to you?

Have you ever thought about how many IP addresses exist, and what you would do if the world ran out of them? Me either. Thankfully, others have and with the rapid increase of internet capable devices we should be thankful for the foresight. Now we don't have to worry that our next internet capable gadget won't be able to connect. 


How will this effect you? An interview on NPR explains.  

BLOCK: So, the transition from IPV4 to IPV6, are you anticipating that that will be pretty smooth or are there lots of potential complications there?
Mr. SHANKLAND: I think it's going to be more in the area of hiccups and some unpleasantness, than catastrophe. That's why I think the word IPocalypse is a bit overblown. A lot of money is going to have to be spent, but I don't think the Internet is going to come to a screeching halt, for example.
Websites will get slow in some cases because when you're trying to get data from some server on the other side of the Internet, the data might have to get translated from IPV4 to IPV6 and then back to IPV4. That has to happen every time a little packet of information goes from one place to another.
So I think we'll see some delays in the performance of the Internet as we make this gradual transition from IPV4 to IPV6. 


Read the transcript or listen to the interview.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

A new way to use your RSS Reader

"Keeping Up, 2.0 Style" introduces a useful way to utilize RSS Readers, that many may not know about. 

The majority of database vendors (such as EBSCO, ProQuest, and Elsevier) provide RSS feeds that will deliver the most recent tables of contents of journals in their database to your reader.
This means that instead of searching through databases for new search results, as well as keeping up with your RSS Reader, you can incorporate them in one place. The ease of staying up to date just got a little bit easier. While this feature may not be ubiquitous at this time, it certainly has the likelihood of becoming a sought after user request in the near future.  


Like the author of the article, I use Google Reader for my RSS Reader of choice, what do you use? 


Read the full article here

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Finding the right context

"Being Articulate and Finding Context" offers some great thought provoking comments on how important it is to find a way to communicate with people using a context they can relate to, which hopefully piques their interest. There is always this concern about technology and trying to decipher what the best way to communicate it to our patrons, you. One interesting way the author recommends follows, 
I think we have to stop thinking only about the issue itself and start thinking about how to make it relevant to people. We should speak in words that make sense and use them in a context that people understand. Perhaps the answer is telling stories. Stories can be a powerful way to share experiences and raise awareness.
To read more, visit the blog post here


Whether the conversation revolves around java issues, malfunctions, or low batteries -- we strive to put it in a related context!  

Monday, January 10, 2011

Collaborative Writing Project







The Collaborative Writing project from Fall 2010 is complete. We've created a short video to demonstrate how we used Google Docs and Blackboard Vista to accomplish this with Professor McMorrow. This project was intended to fill two class meetings, hoping the students would use the time to engage in team learning by creating a memo that would advise entry level lawyers on legal ethics in a practice area. The areas were determined by Professor McMorrow.

Students were allowed to select their topic of interest and were placed into groups from there by filling out an entry survey created on Google Docs. This collaborative project would simulate the workplace – working with different people, different levels of proficiency, picking up where someone left off, etc… To accomplish this we created a shared space for each group, which also allowed Professor McMorrow access to drop in anytime, through Google Docs. From here the students had an opportunity to review each other’s work by downloading a copy of another group’s memo and then reposting it with comments and feedback by utilizing a Blackboard Vista discussion forum.
Finally, a final evaluation survey, also created in Google Docs, and revision history, another helpful feature in Google Docs, allowed for Professor McMorrow to obtain feedback on the collaboration, technology, and the overall assignment.
If you would like to explore opportunities for creating collaborative workspaces please contact us at lawedtech@bc.edu.



Thursday, January 6, 2011

A legal friendly Adobe Acrobat X arrives soon

Adobe Acrobat X will be available soon. However, this isn't just any typical upgrade. As Lawyerist.com reports there are many enhancements that are specifically targeted for the legal audience. 


Improvements include; Easier interface, Improved redaction, and Metadata removal tools. 


To read the full report see, Adobe Acrobat X Brings New Lawyer-Friendly Features.