The Kennedy-Mighell Report sounds sort of like a network news broadcast. And so it is, albeit to a limited network of those interested in (as they state) "legal technology with an Internet focus." (Note the second name is pronounced Mile, not mig-something.) Since this is the week of ABA TECHSHOW, it is fitting that Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell start their new podcast with a feature on ABA TECHSHOW. The feature gets high ratings from me because it includes the content I view as most important- they mention my name. But seriously folks, if you are going to ABA TECHSHOW, this is a great introduction. See this article too. And we all can now look forward to many future K-M reports. We know they will be informative. Go to the site and click on the link to listen. You do not have to have an iPod to listen to a podcast.

Hat’s off to Jack Bogdanski, who has announced his plan to do podcasts of the entire Internal Revenue Code. This is great news for insomniacs and tax geeks alike. The announcement’s here and the permanent home is here, with two sections already done. Jack’s been blogging for nearly four years, but this is no doubt the project that will garner him his fifteen minutes of Internet fame.

Here are some things that I’m just not going to find time to blog in depth about this month that I think might interest my readers. April’s a busy month. ABA TECHSHOW is in April and OBA’s New Lawyer Experience launches in April. I have about a dozen papers and slide shows to finish in April, with more due in May. So my blog posts may be light for the rest of the month.

From Yale Law School comes The Truth about the Billable Hour. A few calculations on how much of your life you need to spend at work to bill 1800 or 2200 hours per year.

The new Law Practice Today features Outsourcing, yawn … er,  I mean important new trend. There is always good content in LPT and it is not all about outsourcing. (Note: link is to current issue of the e-zine.)

I also have to note this month’s Law Practice Magazine, which tries to inspire us to market outside the box. (Ditto on link being to current issue.)

Spamming is an immoral concept. This marketing plan is to waste the time of hundreds of thousands and many IT resources in the hopes of making a few sales. But just when you thought it could not get worse, Jigsaw appears. Instead of selling out your friends and business contacts for thirty pieces of silver, you sell them out for a buck a contact so Jigsaw can sell their personal information to others. Read Michael Arrington’s and Jeff Beard’s comments on this monstrosity.

Google Romance in out in beta. Goggling for love; it has such a nice ring to it.  http://www.google.com/romance/

Recently three new Oklahoma-solo practice related blogs have sprung up.
http://talkaboutsolo.blogspot.com/
http://oklahomasolo.blogspot.com/
http://www.soloestate.blogspot.com/
Interestingly, the latter two of these are written by law students who intend to open solo practices rather than lawyers.

“TailRank finds the best content from thousands of blogs so you don’t have to!” It is sort of like Google News, but with only blog content- a news aggregator that programs itself.

Blogger rights and blogger wrongs. The Shifting Legal Landscape of Blogging is a scholarly article from the Wisconsin Lawyer covering defamation, privacy, copyright law and the Communications Decency Act as they relate to blogs. (See e.g. blogger gets sued by one of her co-workers for publishing details of her sex life when it gets them both fired from their jobs as U.S. Senate staff.)

The U.S. News and World Report best law school list is released.
Let the bickering begin.
(My alma mater is #80.)

From NPR’s All Things Considered a very brief audio program that you should enjoy if you’ve ever wondered if your friends know that you aren’t really reading their blogs. It’s OK. I know. I’ve got too much to read myself. Besides, it is not that hard to skim and catch up later.

And finally to add to your Favorites, the list of current podcasts from the U.S. government. We may be from the government, but we’re hip and we can podcast.

I just got my issue of PC World today and the cover story sure caught my eye with its claim of 101 Fabulous Freebies. Here’s the online version of the 101 Fabulous Freebies story. And for those of you who want "just the facts," here’s the Freebies alphabetical list with links and brief descriptions. Of particular interest was that one could use the free tools LogMeIn and GetByMail for a free remote access system. I haven’t tried either one.

Ian Andrew Best, a student at the Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law, Columbus, has generated quite a bit of online fame for himself with his online Taxonomy of Legal Blogs. Yes, he may well be the first law student to garner academic credit for blogging. His sorted collection of many blawg names and links may be very useful to the practitioner and should be bookmarked. You never know when some day you’ll need some current information and wonder if there is an aviation law blog, a search and seizure blog or a Tenth Circuit blog. Nice work, Andrew.

Apple Introduces Boot Camp
Public Beta Software Enables Intel-based Macs to Run Windows XP

CUPERTINO, California—April 5, 2006—Apple® today introduced Boot Camp, public beta software that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP. Available as a download beginning today, Boot Camp allows users with a Microsoft Windows XP installation disc to install Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac®, and once installation is complete, users can restart their computer to run either Mac OS® X or Windows XP. Boot Camp will be a feature in “Leopard,” Apple’s next major release of Mac OS X, that will be previewed at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in August.

“Apple has no desire or plan to sell or support Windows, but many customers have expressed their interest to run Windows on Apple’s superior hardware now that we use Intel processors,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “We think Boot Camp makes the Mac even more appealing to Windows users considering making the switch.”

Read the rest at http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/apr/05bootcamp.html

I like a lot of things about my Treo mobile phone. There are also things I do not like. As I was discussing with OBA Executive Director John Morris Williams recently, one of the real annoyances of our Treo 650’s was the insufficient volume. It is really annoying that a phone manufacturer would release a product with this problem. It seems like a core phone function to me. Well, help is at hand in the form of a shareware utility called VolumeCare. You just have to put aside the fact that you shouldn’t have to buy this and be happy that you can. VolumeCare Pro is $19.95. VolumeCare Basic is $14.95. You can find positive reviews here and here. Don’t take my word for it. You can download a 15 day free trial here or here. It is time for most lawyers to have a smart phone, like a Treo or Blackberry. It is just too valuable to have your calendar and all of your contacts with you at all times and an old-style PDA means you have to carry that and the phone with you. (Of course that assumes you have your calendar and contacts on your computer so they can be synchronized with the smart  phone.)

Last week I featured 30 Boxes, the online calendar. Since then several people directed my attention to another online calendar, Trumba, which gets the nod for this week’s Website of the Week. Trumba has many advanced features like RSS Newsfeeds and subscribing to e-mail alerts. But a couple of features really caught my eye. If you see an event on someone’s calendar that you would like to add to your calendar, you can do so with a mouse click. (Five calendar types supported, including Outlook.) Even better, for a modest subscription fee, you can set it to sync with an Outlook Calendar. In other words, if you use Outlook in your organization, you can just set up an additional account and calendar entries made for that user’s calendar will automatically be posted to your public Trumba calendar for all the world to see. No special training required.

Did you know that Microsoft Outlook will calculate future dates for you easily? In a new Appointment or Task, you can type 30d and when you hit tab, the date displayed is 30 days from today. Even more interesting is that you can type phrases like "45 days from April 25th" and it will calculate those dates as well. A tip of the hat to both Adriana Linares and Brian Peterson who posted a comment to her post on the topic.

And, of course I just have to say it, you really should be using a legal specific practice management program for calendaring rather than Outlook.

Technolawyer’s BlawgWorld 2006 was released near the end of November, 2005. It was a nice little e-book profiling many popular legal blogs. I noted its release then, but many of you may have declined to download it because you had to register with Technolawyer. Now it has been released for a free, public, no-strings-attached download. You can download it by clicking this link. So if you haven’t see it yet, here’s your chance.