As a young lawyer, one of my early "finds" was the Directory of Oklahoma. The book was later renamed the Oklahoma Almanac. This thick book was published every other year by the Oklahoma Department of Libraries. It contains a wealth of information about our state, local government, geography and such. I always loved having all of the addresses and phone numbers of government officials and agencies in one book. Well, I recently learned that the Oklahoma Almanac is online in PDF format. I’d think many Oklahoma lawyers would at least want to download the ABC Chapter (Agencies, Boards and Commissions.) Considering the cost of paper and printer cartridges you might just want to order a copy for $15.00 plus $2.15 s/h. Even though it was printed in 2005, they are still in stock. You may not find a better bargain for your law library at only $8.575 per year.

Placing the information in this book on the WWW for free earns the Oklahoma Almanac from the Oklahoma Department of Libraries a mention as Website of the Week.

Self-Improvement and flat fees. What do these two topics have in common? Not much except that they were both the subject of good articles in June’s Law Practice Today.

Tom Mighell’s Strongest Links column is about web sites that help you improve. But these are not, for the most part, self-motivational websites. Rather as Tom says, "one way or another, these sites will definitely help you with something, whether it’s getting your job done faster, de-stressing from the hassles of the day, or taking a vacation." Several sites and services I use frequently are listed here and this is definitely worth a read.

I recently got to meet Christy Burke of Burke and Company LLC of New York. At the time I didn’t knwo she was an alternative billing believer. Read her article "Flat Fee Nation," focused primarily on one law firm’s experiences. The "money quote" is from Carol Cummings, Managing Director of South Carolina-based Rogers Townsend & Thomas:  "Unless you have your process systematized, you cannot survive and you cannot make money – it’s that simple."

I believe that this is critical for law firm success. There are many things in the mix for success; good client service, relationsships, and results, to name but a few. But tight, efficient and well-managed systems to deliver the work and the client communications are key for a Twenty-First Century law practice.

Well, honestly you couldn’t have a more plain and simple looking interface than Google’s. But maybe a bit more can be even more simple, or at least more functional. Check out Simply Google. Thanks to Debbie Foster for this tip. This page also led me to visit Google Current for the first time. Google Current is a Web news show (TV style) from Google based on recent popular search terms.

I know that many of you could not care less, but this article, BIOS A to Z, was highly recommended to me and might be quite useful for those who like to tinker (or those whose equipment is forcing them to learn.)

The article begins: "The Basic Input Output System – aka BIOS -resides in a small Flash EEPROM memory module on the motherboard. It’s a form of read-only memory, but may be rewritten or programmed when the right tools and techniques are applied. During PC startup, the processor on the motherboard always executes the program stored in the BIOS as its first major maneuver.

"When a PC dawdles through the boot process, the system runs slowly, Windows crashes, or the hardware fails, a badly configured BIOS may be at fault. In this article, we show you how to manipulate the switch center of your PC, to make your system run faster and work better."

Tom Mighell and I were discussing digital cameras at the recent New Orleans technology conference. He mentioned something that I at first thought was more of a humorous story than a true tech tip, but after thinking about it and sharing it with others, I have been encouraged to post it here. (Maybe they just want to make fun of me.)

Now that many of us own phones with cameras included, have you thought of the idea of "temporary pictures" could be taken by your camera phone, held for awhile and then deleted. Here are a few ideas:

You travel a lot and have trouble remembering your hotel room number, take a picture of the door (with number visible)  the first time you see it and delete it when you check out.

Look up a number in a phone book you just need for a while, take a picture of the page to hold until you don’t need it. You want to have a cab take your back to a hard-to-find address the next day

You need to remember a large dollar amount or any number you are viewing for a temporary basis.

There are many others, but you get the idea. The idea of using the phone to take a quick image for recall when I don’t have pen or paper handy is an interesting one.

About a year ago I wrote an article on utility software programs. Since then I stumbled across this web site "I want a freeware utility to …" listing 450 free utilities. Lincoln Mead of the Utah State Bar reminded me of nonags.com with more free utilities. These lists are worth having in case you need to accomplish something unusual and hate to pay for a tool to do something for one time only,

Today I am at day two of a program called New Orleans, New Law- Community Revival with Technology. This program has focused on law office technology in two ways. First we’ve had a who’s who of legal technology speakers and, secondly, software vendors have donated loads of software for these Lousiana lawyers trying to rebuild their practices. Check out the generous supporters listed at the site linked above. There is a very positive spirit at this conference and the lawyers have expressed their appreciation to us all. We’re all just glad we could help a little.

The new version of Windows, now named Windows Vista, is slated for launch in early 2007. Who knows when it will be released? But you wouldn’t want to buy an new computer now that didn’t meet the requirements without upgrade. So if you are in the market for hardware, visit Microsoft’s new Windows Vista: Get Ready page. Call me cynical, but I bet I’m not the only one who wonders if offering five editions of Windows Vista is more about wringing money out of the buying public than than it being "designed to fit the way you intend to use your PC."

There’s been a discussion of Microsoft keys on our state bar member’s only discussion board, the OBA-NET, led by Oklahoma City attorney John Brewer and Tulsa attorney Ken Bodenhamer. When you install Microsoft products, you must have the key, which is printed on a label on the sleeve the CD comes in or on the CD. With pre-installed software it is easy to overlook the importance of keeping that disk and key safe and handy. But you will need it should you have to reinstall the software.

My first thought is that you need a special colorful CD storage box that says Original CD’s on the outside for all of your original CD’s and sleeves. The CD that comes with each new application, printer or camera goes right into that storage box along with the Microsoft CD’s in their sleeve. In a situation with several computers, you should either have such a storage box for each computer or note the particular computer on each CD or sleeve. The vigilant would photocopy or write down each key and store that information offsite.

There are utilities that can help you if you have lost your key and need to reinstall the software. One is a freeware program named ProduKey v.1.05.  "ProduKey is a small utility that displays the ProductID and the CD-Key of MS-Office, Windows, Exchange Server, and SQL Server installed on your computer. You can view this information for your current running operating system, or for another operating system/computer – by using command-line options. This utility can be useful if you lost the product key of your Windows/Office, and you want to reinstall it on your computer."

Another freeware product is Magic Jelly Bean Keyfinder. "The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder is a freeware utility that retrieves your Product Key (cd key) used to install windows from your registry. It has the options to copy the key to clipboard, save it to a text file, or print it for safekeeping." Testing revealed that MJBK beta 1.5 would find some keys that 1.41 would not.

The interesting point from the discussion is that these two now keep these utilites on every USB thumb drive they own, in Ken’s words, "just to keep it handy before I start messing with a computer."

There’s another product, that does all of this and much more: Belarc Advisor. It generates a report of MS keys, computer serial numbers, type of circuit board, memory installed (and open slots), all installed software licenses and versions, Microsoft updates installed and security benchmark score. It is only free for personal use and there are other products from the company for commerical use.

Now hopefully you will not lose these keys!