The Connected Lawyer

Via Treonauts: Palm has released a software update to adjust your Treo for the new dates for Daylight Savings Time.

Palm even includes an option allowing you to install the update over the air. Palm also cautions that you should install the Microsoft DST updates before installing the Palm updates.

About a year ago Nerino Petro reviewed the Hitachi Travelstar notebook hard drive upgrade kit. Nerino gave the kit a high review (18 out of 20). Recently my 40GB hard drive reached its capacity limit and I was looking to move to a larger drive. Based upon Nerino’s recommendation, I decided to try Hitachi’s kit. After doing so, I agree wholeheartedly with Nerino’s conclusion.

It is called an Upgrade Kit because the package contains more than just a hard drive. It contains a hard drive, a hard drive enclosure, and EZ Gig II software. The setup was easy. I simply had to secure the new drive in the hard drive enclosure, connect the enclosure to my laptop via USB, and restart my computer.

The kit uses the EZ Gig II software to clone your original hard drive. The great thing about the software is that it runs from the CD. After attaching the drive enclosure and rebooting, the computer boots from the CD and starts the cloning process. The interface is simple and requires only a few clicks to start the cloning process. To clone my practically full 40GB drive took a little less than 40 minutes. Surprisingly, the “time remaining” indicator on the cloning process was very accurate.

After the cloning process was complete, I simply swapped out my old drive for a my new drive and rebooted my computer. The reboot was flawless. It was as if nothing had changed. Additionally, because the kit comes with an enclosure, I now have a spare hard drive to use as a backup or for extra storage.

Overall, I was very pleased with the kit. The entire process took less than an hour and I now have a faster (7200 rpm) larger (80 GB) drive than I had before, all without any problems.

The only difficulty that I ran into was finding the drive I wanted. I found that several different retailers carry the kits, but their stock is not consistent. Some had drives with serial connectors, some had drives with parallel connectors. Some had only 5400 rpm drives, while others had drives in either too small or too large of a capacity (of course by too large I mean that it was more money than I wanted to spend).

After looking around for a while, I finally found the drive I wanted at Pexagon Technology. I ordered it from there, and received from them in a timely manner.

In sum, I would not hesitate to purchase this kit again if I needed to upgrade the hard drive in a laptop.

The sites I have listed on my Blogroll are those that I read regularly. They are not necessarily the only blogs that I read. However, there are none listed that I do not regularly read. Some of those blogs on my blogroll include (in particular order):

The Dilbert Blog. I know this one has nothing to do with the law. Instead it deals with what Scott Adams calls Philosotainment. However, Adams posts everyday and his topic always amuses and interests me.

Acrobat for Legal Professionals is written by Rick Borstein, the legal Business Development Manager for Adobe. Rick’s blog includes great tips on how to get the most out of Adobe Acrobat in your law practice.

Ernie the Attorney is one of the pioneers in the blogging industry. His law related posts are great. In addition, he has provided some thoughtful and insightful posts on the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans.

Futurelawyer, his tagline says it all: “Future Technology for the Lawyer of Today.” I always find interesting technological items here.

I Heart Tech provides great tips on using technology in the practice of law. She provided me with one of my all time favorite tips on how to easily alternate row shading in Excel.

Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground was one of the first blogs I started reading on a regular basis. I find Evan’s posts always enjoyable and engaging.

Are you running out of room on the SD card in your Treo? Is 2GB just not enough for you?

Pretec has the solution for you: An 8GB SD card.

I know, you are saying, “But I can’t use an 8GB card with my Treo.” True enough, however, My Treo Dot Net has a nifty little hack you can use, as long as you don’t mind voiding your warranty.

Of course, if you don’t want to void your warranty, you can stick the card in your digital camera and take 8,000 pictures or so before you run out of storage.

The sites I have listed on my Blogroll are those that I read regularly. They are not necessarily the only blogs that I read. However, there are none listed that I do not regularly read. Some of those blogs on my blogroll include (in particular order):

Solo in Chicago is written by Peter Olson who is, surprisingly enough, a solo practitioner in Chicago. I know Peter. He is a great guy and his blogs are informative.

Closing Real Estate in Chicago, also written by Peter, focuses on the real estate market in the Chicago area. A must read if you practice in this area.

Nerino Petro’s Compujurist. Nerino is the practice management advisor for the Wisconsin State Bar Association. Nerino is recognized legal technology expert and he always has great technology tips.

Practice Management Blog is the official blog blog of the law practice management section of the DuPage County Bar Association. The blog was started by Mazyar Hedayat and he continues to oversee it.

Mazy Hedayat also writes the Bankruptcy Blog, which focuses on discussing bankruptcy decisions from around the country.

Here are 20 tips to help secure your computer and protect your information. The tips dealing with email are things that you should be aware of.

A man has sued IBM for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act when it fired him for using an adult oriented chat room while working. The man claims that he is a sex and internet addict that deserves protection under the ADA.

I am no expert on the American’s with Disabilities Act. Therefore, I will not comment on the viability of his claim. I will say, however, it certainly makes for an interesting story.

I received some questions on the Bug Me Not aspect of my favorite Firefox Extensions post. Therefore I will go into Bug Me Not a little more extensively.

Bug Me Not describes itself in its FAQ as:

BugMeNot.com was created as a mechanism to quickly bypass the login of web sites that require compulsory registration and/or the collection of personal/demographic information (such as the New York Times).

In a nutshell some users register for websites that require registration. These users then share the information with the Bug Me Not website, which makes it available to anyone who uses it site. This means that anyone can access the particular site by using the other information rather than having to register for themselves.

According to the Bug Me Not website, the most popular site include the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and IMDB.

Some people may question whether it is ethical to use a service such as Bug Me Not. If this question interests you, you should join the discussion. On the flip side, Bug Me Not will voluntarily block a site from its service if:

• The users pay to access information on the site; or
• The site requires users to register to post comments, but does not require registration to view information; or
• There is a risk of fraud.

I myself take a two pronged approach. On sites I regularly use that require registration (for example Chicago Tribune) I fill out their registration. I figure that they are regularly providing me with information. I can provide them some information about their readership.

If, however, the Dayton Daily News has a interesting news story one day, I don’t want to have to fill out a complicated form to read a single news story in a newspaper that I will never read again.

To use Bug Me Not, you can go to their website and search for the website you are using. Alternatively, you can install the Firefox Extension for Bug Me Not. This extension allows you to log in to website simply by right clicking in the user name field and choose Login Using Bug Me Not.

Both the extension and the service are easy to use. If you have ever been frustrated by one of those mandatory registrations, then this extension and service are for you.

Treonauts has a great post detailing the release of Palm GPS Navigator Smartphone Edition 3. If this is something that you are thinking about purchasing, or if you are thinking about upgrading from Edition 2.

The post also includes a handy chart detailing the differences between the two editions. He also points you to a handy link to allow your Treo 670 and 750 to work with the Tom Tom 6.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my favorite aspect of Firefox is that I can customize it using Extensions. Below are my favorite Firefox extensions, provided in alphabetical order.

Bug Me Not (the extension) allows you to use Bug Me Not (the service) to access websites requiring registration without having to divulge your private information or completing the annoying registrations.

Colorful Tabs makes each of your tabs a different color. Sure this extension has no practical purpose, but it sure does make the browser prettier.

Copy Plain Text allows you to copy text from web pages and paste it as plain text.

Down Them All allows you to download several files from a web page at once. A nifty extension that is absolutely invaluable in those situations where it is needed.

Forecast Fox places information in your status bar at the bottom of your web browser to tell you the current temperature and the forecast.

IE Tab allows you to open a web page in Internet Explorer in a Firefox tab.

IE View allows you to open a particular web page in Internet Explorer. You can also mark certain pages to always be opened in Internet Explorer. This extension is necessary because some short-sighted people refuse to make their web compatible with Firefox.

Image Zoom allows you to zoom in or out on a particular image.

Map+ allows you to easily view a map of a selected address.

Tab Mix Plus provides you with several options to customize your tabs. One of the best customizations is the ability to put a close tab x on both the tab and the tab bar. This extension may disable other tab modifying extensions that you have.

Tiny URL Creator allows you to create a Tiny URL simply by right clicking on a web page. I use this extension all of the time when I am sending links to other people.

Track Package allows you to track a package from a web page or email simply by selecting the tracking number and selecting track package. It currently works with UPS, USPS, FedEX, DHL, and a couple of other services.