Back in January I wrote about Readtwit, an application that grabs links from your twitter stream and turns those links into one nice RSS feed. It hasn’t been perfect, but there is definitely some value in that.

Unfortunately, today they announced that they are closing up shop.

So, anyone know of any other tool doing something similar that I should be checking out?

I found myself in a precarious position today, having to remove a redaction reason from hundreds of images in Summation. As it turns out, there is no official way to do that in the program itself, short of editing every single redaction one by one.

Luckily, I was able to find the bit of text in the annotation file that tells Summation what text to put over top of a redaction, and so I was able to “fix” the problem of coders leaving in the default redaction reason instead of blanking it out, but I needed a tool to make that change across those hundreds of files at once.

Luckily, I found Replace Text (Formerly ReplaceEm), a free tool which is designed for exactly this type of scenario. Once I had the proper term to look for, all I had to do was point the tool at the Markups folder in Summation, and problem solved!

I’ll have to write up the details of what I needed to locate in the annotation files and submit it to Summation. It’s not a supported fix, but at least they’ll know what to look for in those files!

It’s tomorrow. I wanted to take part, I really did. I even talked to a coworker about signing up for the same one. I hesitated, only because I knew it’d be a week from my trip to Ireland and Scotland, and there’d be an outside chance that maybe there would be some last minute things to deal with. Barring that, though, I figured I could manage it.

Then the last two weeks happened. The normal “must wrap up before going on vacation” stuff, on top of having to get all my ILTA conference speaking stuff turned in before I go, and one mess of a case on a tight deadline have had me working most evenings, and much of last weekend. Yes, I’ll be working a little this weekend as well, but also doing a couple of social events, and still doing those last minute things that need to get done this weekend. In short, even if I tried to squeeze in a photowalk, I’d spend most of it thinking about all the other things I need to get done. Not good for creativity, eh?

Oh well, I’ll make up for missing tomorrow with some time photowalking myself around Dublin, right?

As someone said on Facebook this week, when I’m on vacation, this will all be worth it. Wise words.

If you’re interested in taking part tomorrow, check the website for a walk near you!

I’ve searched the blogs, and the forums and don’t see where anyone else is having this issue, but over the last few days I’ve saved a number of links to Delicious, but they don’t show up in my list of bookmarks, nor are they included in the RSS feed of recent bookmarks. (Thus they don’t update the list on the side of the blog, nor in the daily RSS feed of the blog)

However, if I go back to the same page and try to save it again using the Delicious Firefox extension, it shows as already having been saved. Saving it again changes nothing.

Anyone?

I saw Craig Ball’s review last week and made a note to look at it further. I do agree that there is definitely a place for an easy to use, and inexpensive write blocker. Just think of all those times when an attorney just wants to look at what’s on a drive, but has to wait patiently (ha, right!), for you to make a copy to work from in order to preserve the original. With this little beauty, you’ll be able to take a peek on the drive without fear of anything getting written, within a matter of a few minutes.

That might be worth remembering when it comes time to make some budget decisions. Seems like a nice little tool for a nice little price!

Anytime I travel, I take my camera and make exploring and photographing the area a part of the plans. Usually that results in getting some good photos, and capturing better memories of the places we see, or the things we do once there. On the other hand, when traveling, taking photos isn’t always the first priority, so I don’t make bringing all the equipment I might need. (Besides being heavy to carry around, I want to enjoy the place, and the people around me, not just see it through the eyepiece.

So it was last weekend, when we found ourselves walking around downtown Cleveland, and deciding to go check out the fireworks display. I had my camera with me, but no tripod, and no zoom lens. Oh well, carrying all of that would have made dinner with my wife, and walking around, more difficult, not to mention making the whole evening more “planned” that I wanted it to be. We would have spent more time scoping out the best place to setup the tripod and everything else that goes with a photo-shoot, and that wasn’t in the plans.

So, I guess my point here is really, that sometimes it’s ok to not have taking photos as your highest priority, but if you have a camera you can still get yourself some quality shots. Other times, you’ll want to make it a priority and do what you have to do make the photos great. I love photography and enjoy trying to get great photos, but sometimes, I’d rather spend save the “planning” and explore. You never know what you’ll find that way.

You can see all the photos I posted from the trip over at Flickr.

So I’ve seen a number of the techie folks writing about how they’re removing their Facebook profiles, due to various policies of the Facebook team, or the lack of stability in some of the features, etc. I can’t say that I agree with everything the Facebook folks do, nor am I in love with all the games and other features of the service, but this past weekend was a great example of why I’m most definitely not giving up on it.

I’m not walking away from the place where dozens of my friends and family got to be part of my birthday celebration, even though the wife and I were traveling. The place where I got to watch video of my 4 year old niece sing “Happy Birthday” to me, and the place where I learned my cousin gave birth to a little baby girl, who I will share a birthday with from now on.

Over the last couple of years of using Facebook, I’ve gotten to know coworkers better, learned about the adult lives of kids I grew up with, gotten back in touch with extended family that I had done a crummy job with keeping in touch with over the years, and connected with various folks that I’ve only known online.

Like all social networking tools, it’s not the technology and it’s not the policies, it’s the people. I want to keep up with the people I’m connected to on Facebook, and the technology makes it easier to do exactly that. Removing my profile would hurt me a whole lot more than it will hurt Mark Zuckerberg.

You might feel differently, you might not be getting the value I get from it, or you might be able to get the same value with another tool, and that’s fine. We all have to make our own decisions, and far be it for me to try and decide how much value you are getting from your Facebook connections, but do take a minute to think about whether those contacts are maybe more important than a little annoyance about policy and procedure.

In the span of two days this week, I’ve noticed that Seagate is coming out with a 3TB drive for $250, and then over at the Bowtie Law Blog, a challenge to make using hosted ediscovery review tools less expensive.

So let’s see, I can buy 3TB worth of storage for my machines, for a measly $250, but if I get sued and need to send my documents to an attorney to review, it’s going to cost me $760 per month for just a few GB? (Using Josh’s estimate, which doesn’t seem far off compared to what I’ve seen quoted)

Does anyone else see a problem here? Technology is making it easier, and cheaper, to store data. The legal industry, however, is making it more and more expensive to be involved in civil litigation, mostly due to the amount of data there is. Somehow, our industry needs to catch up and find efficient ways of dealing with data. The lawyers and vendors who do this, will survive, while those who don’t, simply won’t.

Still think you can continue to practice law the same way you have for 20-30 years? Not likely.

Well, besides the integrated inbox and threaded conversations that we’re highlighted as new features of the iOS 4 mail program. Apparently, the Gmail integration also changed the default action of “trashing” an email. Nope, doesn’t delete it from your Gmail accounts, it archives it. Whoops!

It’s not nice to change the default action without telling anyone!

Read more about how to change it, if you want to, here at the Apple site.

That was my first thought when I saw a link to the ESI Calculator. Why are we still comparing GB’s of data to how many printed pages it equals. It’s irrelevant, and seriously, look at the totals on that page. You are not printing any of that, how many pages it is has nothing to do with anything!

Alas, I also live in the real world. The world where too many people see a disk, and wonder why one little disk has so much information, or why that disk (a DVD) has so much more than that other disk (a CD). Or what a 20GB collection means compared to an 80GB drive. This little tool might make people “see” the difference in their own terms, even if printing isn’t something you’d ever really do.

Of course, it will also be a nice tool to point those people who think they really do want to just print everything to as well.

Still, I can’t help but despise the fact that we’re even talking about electronic data as if it was something different. It’s data, not pages. Learn the difference, or maybe dealing with electronic discovery isn’t for you.