Nike Tries a New Medium for Advertising: The Blog.

And in reverse, i.e., if you build it, they ("My company would like to sponsor a Weblog") will come: Blogging Baby (from the folks behind Engadget and Autoblog). Big thanks to Ernie for taking time out from confblogging to send the pointer. (I've been wondering which of these contraptions to pick up. Recommendations? As Blog Bloke told me awhile back, Canada has banned the walking variety, and even the stationary ones seem to get a lot of injury complaints on Amazon.)

Some very entertaining new blawgs:

• On the premise that "federal judges are the 'rock stars' of the legal profession's upper echelons," Underneath Their Robes promises to be their Rolling Stone (well, their "People, US Weekly, Page Six, The National Enquirer, and Tigerbeat" anyway). The authoress seeks ultimately "to become a federal judicial diva," like these.
• Oriental Redneck thinks blawging may have jumped the shark. Not swing dancing, though.

Unlearned Hand, future officer in the Judge Advocate General's Corps, discusses why not to torture.

Jonas Luster knows just what to do with the new round of Gmail invitations Google recently released: "'Do no evil' is the Google motto, let's 'do some good'."

Several of the journalist bloggers linked below are posting reports from D, so I'm assuming the Wall Street Journal perhaps did the smart thing and lifted its restrictions on them, rather than trying to make the whole thing off the record?

Power Lunch just interviewed VCs Mitch Kertzman and Vinod Khosla about:

• Agami and disruptive cost structures;
• social software (Friendster, Visible Path) and new markets;
• ASPs (Salesforce.com, Five Nines [good name, but I can't find a company link], Sapius;
• second generation WiFi applications (for phones, music); and
• per Kertzman, an uptick in corporate spending on IT, with companies asserting more control over what they pay and how they buy, necessitating more pricing "by the glass than by the case."

The New York Lawyer is the latest publication to take a closer look at legal weblogs, in Practically Speaking: Lawyer Blogs.

I'm sipping WiFi and cappucino outside the Apple store, waiting for my day's featured speaker to wake up and blow more raspberries, or perhaps unveil his Next Big Thing (rolling over from back to tummy perhaps?). Also noticing how housing developments have joined the ranks of civic organizations (along with schools and courts and post offices) that fly their flags at half staff.

D2 is in full swing just an hour or so away. I couldn't get there this year because the child care balancing act didn't work, but John Battelle made the return trip, and I understand Dan Gillmor, David Hornik, Scott Rosenberg, and Chris Nolan are there too. Sounds like Steve Jobs had lots to talk about, which is what Dave Winer is encouraging folks to do here as well.

And it's not what you think. It's Doc Searls with his musings about RSS, radio, and television. Somebody get the chopper!

I don't have time to do a proper post on this just now, so I'm instead reproducing the mail on which I just copied Howard Bashman and Glenn Reynolds. I hope they and others will highlight the issue of whether and on what terms judges should be permitted to view, and if desired participate in, discussions about their skills.

To me, from "Jonathan" at Judicial Check (at which I find no "About" page telling me who Jonathan might be):

----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathan
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 15:17:31 -0700
Subject: Do you want Judges banned from JudicialCheck.com?
To: judge@judicialcheck.com

Did you see the recent feature article in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journals about www.judicialcheck.com? Clearly the Judges have based on the amount of contact we are getting from them.

Here's a letter from one of the Judges:

"Gentlepersons: I read about your site in today's Daily Journal. Since postings are anonymous, I think it would be of great assistance for the administration of justice to allow judges to read the comments that are being made of them without actually subscribing to the service. We are somewhat isolated from critical (constructive or otherwise) colloquy, and this source would be an excellent tool for us to 'self-evaluate'. Please advise your thoughts. Thank you."

The request by Judges to enter JudicialCheck.com poses an interesting question; should we allow Judges to view the site? Should we allow Judges to see reviews about attorneys and experts appearing in their Courts? Or is the correct analysis that anything that allows Judges to improve court functions and temperament paramount?

Well as the JudicialCheck.com motto states "Built by attorneys, for attorneys", as such we are letting you, the Attorneys, decide.

If you think Judges should not be allowed in, then simply reply to this email with a simple no response.

Sincerely,

www.judicialcheck.com

My reply:

Jonathan,

> If you think Judges should not be allowed in, then simply
> reply to this email with a simple no response.

What a sneaky double bind you've constructed. A no-reply is a vote the recipient might not approve of, a reply lets you know you have a live email address to continue sending unsolicited mail.

Oh well, I'll bite anyway (and if necessary add you to my spam filter later). I think every attorney and judge included—involuntarily, I might add—in your database should be allowed to view and respond to the comments about themselves on your site without registration. I have particular sympathy for members of the judiciary who have excellent reasons for not wanting their online activities tracked, and I have seldom seen a more gracious and well intended letter than the one you forward from your judicial correspondent.

Howard and Glenn, this might be of interest to you as well. For context, please peruse the send to which this responds, and the (unlicensed?) reprint of the Daily Journal article Jonathan references available at the Judicial Check site: http://judicialcheck.com/news.asp?ID=25

--
----------------------------------------------
Denise M. Howell * dhowell@gmail.com
http://bagandbaggage.com * [phone omitted]
"Fire alarm sounds like 'Whoop Whoop'"

The California Lawyer looks at legal weblogs in its June cover story by Susan E. Davis: Rants, Rulings, Recipes: Lawyers and other legal professionals speak their minds on the Web.

Kevin Heller mined Craig's List and found a casting call for a "last lawyer standing" reality TV show à la The Apprentice. Turns out, as Kevin describes, both Fox and NBC have such shows in the works for fall. Truth is unquestionably stranger than fiction — let's just hope it's more entertaining, too.

The Gucci iPod Case. Wilde would love it.

In my comments, Westy, in addition to providing some great WEP and networking tips, points to a Slate article by Jack Shafer, E-mail Confidential, in which the author turns his "175-pound Samoan attorney" loose on the "extraordinary 114-word 'disclaimer' sloshing around at the bottom" of an email from a Time, Inc. journalist. Pithy observations abound, such as "[S]ending a confidential or valuable message via insecure e-mail is a funny way to preserve a secret," plus there are links to the disclaimers dubbed the longest, most PC, and most incomprehensible by the Register in 2001.

[Update:] Speaking of disclaimers—

Someone should do this with babies (hell yes there's a market; we play music for them in utero, for Pete's sake), and this with bloggers (wherein you could at least get a taste of the real OC).

Well, this provides no immediate solution to my problem but looks exciting, "PARC Aims To Smarten, Lock Down Mobile Tech:"

Aiming to tackle the time and effort required to log on securely to WiFi networks — which have become popular but also have been hampered by security concerns amplified by user resistance to encryption and authentication schemes — PARC pointed to its secure wireless technology as a straightforward way for home and corporate users to achieve robust mobile security.

Bob Ambrogi points to two games that let you unleash your inner client, both from out-law.com: "Zap the suits, save the pizza aliens and dotty millionaires," and "Beware: Lawyers at Work." 'Cause smacking a lawyer has roughly the same universal appeal as puppies.

Jenny Levine spotlights a picture blog from the public library in lovely San Marino, CA. Who will be the first law firm or law school with a mo- or photo-blog? I double-dog dare you. Send links.

Along these lines, kudos to Rick Klau and Matt Homann for challenging the legal field on its invariably ponderous (and sometimes felonious) path toward innovation. Matt is setting up a wiki and engaging in other tree-shaking activities:

In weekly posts, I'll ask five people — who are experts in their fields — to give me five ideas on a given topic. Every week, the five people will come from a different (usually non-legal) discipline, but the topic will always focus upon the innovative marketing, pricing, and delivery of legal services. [...]
[H]ere is my weekend agenda for renewing my creativity and recommitting myself to making my practice better...

Good stuff. I give my own practice about a B+ on this front, partly for our good actions and partly for our good intentions. We can and should all do better.

I've spent too much of this Memorial Day wrestling with my husband's ThinkPad in an effort to get it to connect to our wireless network in a way that would ease the minds of our respective law firms' risk management aficionados. I'm about done trying broker accords between XP and OS X. Any insights into the following will be greatly appreciated.

Whither WEP? When WEP's on, the ThinkPad's offline. Period. Only way it will connect is if our packets are lolling out the windows like so many Amsterdam call girls. (This is with an Airport Extreme and v. 3.1.1 of the software.)

Paper Please. Is it too much to expect the ThinkPad to see the fully compatible USB printer attached to the Airport?

Serendipity to the rescue, however. My misery always loves Dr. Weinberger's company, and he offers this splendid account of why he had to take back his daughter's Samsung-Napster MP3 player:

I had a bad feeling about the Napster from the moment I started installing the software. It kept adding layers and layers of cruft, forcing me to upgrade my Windows Media Player, bundling in a CD burner, forcing me to register at Napster.com...window after window of incomprehensible files and DLLs until I wanted to scream that it ought to take its over-educated, over-engineered supercilious ass to the mountains and take up goat herding. And, sure enough, although Windows recognized the Napster device, the Napster software didn't. After four hours of trying, I gave up.

Plus, while moments ago Googling "callgirl" and "call girl" to get the preferred usage, Belle de Jour, Diary of a London Call Girl, popped up in my search results. Would that this could last: she's presently number — you guessed it — 69 in Technorati's Top 100.