Vogel Internet, Information Technology and e-Discovery Blog : Texas Internet, Information Technology, eCommerce & E-Discovery Lawyer & Attorney Peter S. Vogel : Gardere Wynne Sewell Law Firm : Dallas TX

As more business rely on cloud computing and ERP systems it is essential to negotiate contracts to suit the needs of each enterprise. Please watch my new video entitled "The Price You Pay for IT: From ERP to Cloud Computing" where many of the important IT contract topics are presented.

Videos from SmartPros Ltd.

It is an honor to be a contributor to the library of video programs for SmartPros Ltd. which I have done since 2001. I encourage you to investigate SmartPros Ltd. where my video is one of many outstanding programs for “corporate accounting, financial management, public accounting, governmental and not-for-profit accounting, financial services training, banking, engineering, legal, and ethics and compliance.”

Farr Systems/BravoTECH CIO Roundtable Breakfast

In February I had the privilege to participate in a CIO Roundtable sponsored by Farr Systems and BravoTECH and here is a summary of the topics we discussed:

Please reach out to my friends Phil Farr (Farr Systems) and Andrew Jackson (BravoTECH) to discuss important IT issues. I thank Farr Systems and BravoTECH for allowing me to participate with a group of CIO leaders. Events such as this allow IT leaders to share experiences and create thought-provoking discussion about common thorny issues confronting businesses today, including cloud computing and social networking.

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Computerworld reported that 600 tweets are sent per second - 50 million per day which is significant for many reasons. Not the least of which is that 3 years ago Twitter handled 5,000 tweets per day! As well, in early 2009 Twitter raised $35 Million in its third round of financing with no business plan. What’s not clear if 10% of those sending tweets account for 80% of the total volume. Obviously something is happening to cause Twitter’s amazing growth, and it bears watching.

Yahoo, Twitter in deal to share content

A report from the LA Times states that Jim Stoneham, vice president of communities for Yahoo! described the Yahoo! deal with Twitter:

…will enable users to take material from both sites without having to leave either one. Specifically, users will be able to access their Twitter feed on Yahoo's sites. They will also be able to update their Twitter status and share content from Yahoo. And Yahoo search and media properties will include Twitter updates.

Hopefully this will help revive Yahoo!’s fortunes and expand Twitter’s reach.

Doonesbury Character Roland Hedley Tweets with 14,000 Followers

Followers of tweets was made a little more interesting in a recent National Public Radio story of “Roland Hedley, a fictional Fox News correspondent created by cartoonist Garry Trudeau, has attracted more than 14,000 followers since he began "tweeting."” As a matter of fact, Garry Trudeau wrote a book about tweets from Roland Hedley entitled My Shorts R Bunching. Thoughts?: The Tweets of Roland Hedley. So maybe all 50 Million tweets a day are not all that serious if a cartoon character tweets regularly! Nonetheless this is worth watching given these astonishing numbers.

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After the news reports about the cyber attacks in China it’s no wonder that that more than “75,000 computer systems at nearly 2,500 companies in the United States and around the world have been hacked in what appears to be one of the largest and most sophisticated attacks by cyber criminals discovered to date.” Unfortunately those computer systems hacked included the US government, “educational institutions, energy firms, financial companies, and Internet service providers. “ Included were access to “e-mail systems, online banking accounts, Facebook, Yahoo, Hotmail and other social network credentials, along with more than 2,000 digital security certificates and a significant cache of personal identity information.” Doesn’t sound much security given these facts, and this is pretty scary since we now have a Cyber Czar to protect us.

Kneber bot

Amit Yoran, NetWitness's chief executive reported how the Kneber bot was launched in this attack on the +75,000 computer systems:

The hackers lured unsuspecting employees at targeted firms to download infected software from sites controlled by the hackers, or baited them into opening e-mails containing the infected attachments, Yoran said. The malicious software, or "bots," enabled the attackers to commandeer users' computers, scrape them for log-in credentials and passwords -- including to online banking and social networking sites -- and then exploit that data to hack into the systems of other users, Yoran said. The number of penetrated systems grew exponentially.

Clearly educating employees is critical to avoid such attacks in the future, but what’s the likelihood of avoiding these kind of disasters? Not good!

Privacy at Home? - School Official Defended in Webcam Spy Case

The Lower Merion School District (in suburban Philadelphia) acknowledged that the District remotely activated webcams inside students’ homes, but the District claimed it was only to find missing, lost or stolen laptops. However a student and his parents filed a federal civil rights suit alleging violation of wiretap laws and violation of privacy. Among other problems created was that allegedly the District thought a piece of candy was a pill and that the student was selling drugs. This reminds me of Big Brother from George Orwell’s 1984. he just missed the year!

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EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) filed a complaint with the FTC that Google’s new Buzz significantly breached “consumers' expectations of privacy.” Many complaints were made after Google’s recent launch of Buzz, because Buzz automatically created “public circles of friends for users based on their most frequent Gmail contacts.” EPIC wants the FTC to order Google to make Buzz “opt-in.” What this means to Google’s social media evolution will be interesting to watch.

HEADLINE: “Facebook directs more online users than Google”

At the same time that Google’s social media is taking center stage a report was released that indicates that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is being replaced with Social Media Optimization (SMO):

“According to Web measurement firm Compete Inc., Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites.”

There’s no rocket science to understand that Facebook’s 400 million friends have changed communications forever and SMO’s impact of search engines and SEO cannot be ignored. As Facebook rolls out its Titan email system SMO is certain to expand.

Aardvark joins Google!

At the same time of this Buzz controversy Google purchased Aardvark which is interesting since Vark.com “has defined a new kind of social search: sometimes you want a person, not a web page, to answer your question.” SMO and SEO are in the middle of Google’s evolution. This is a lot to digest at one time. Stay tuned.

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Hard to believe that Facebook turned 6 with another milestone- 400 million friends! According to Facebook 50% logon on any given day and 35 million update their status each day. Since it took Facebook 4 ½ years to reach 100 million friends in August 2008, the current growth rate is pretty incredible. What this portends is hard to image, but growth sure seem likely.  Just look at these statistics from Facebook:

Facebook’s Project Titan – Gmail Killer?

In the meantime reports came out that “Facebook is completely rewriting their messaging product and is preparing to launch a fully featured webmail product in its place… unofficially and perhaps over-enthusiastically, the Gmail killer.” Whether Titan is the Gmail killer is probably beside the point as the critical issue here is that Facebook is expanding into webmail to help its 400 million friends communicate more efficiently.

Gmail Adds New Features

Not so fast for Titan being a Gmail killer as reports also came out that “Google Inc. is taking a swipe at Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. with a new feature that makes it easier for users of Gmail to view media and status updates shared online by their friends.” One might wonder if Google was watching Facebook’s Titan and needed to offer new Gmail services to compete. Interesting dynamics for Web 2.0 which this blog will continue to monitor!

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My “Pool Ball Theory” is that if pool balls are not moving on a pool table the probabilty that a ball will fall in a pocket is ZERO, and my business opportunities will be ZERO if I don’t continually network. The Internet has expanded networking, and thankfully I started this blog in 2008 as part of networking. As well I actively participate in LinkedIn, Facebook, and other Web 2.0 activities….so the pool balls keep moving on the table!

Real Lawyers Have Blogs

While in New York this week for LegalTech I had breakfast at my favorite deli, The Stage on 7th Avenue, with my blog host Kevin O’Keefe (CEO at LexBlog) and Jake Ludington (VP of Product Development at LexBlog). Over breakfast we discussed the “Pool Ball Theory” and lots of other topics about how Social Networking is changing the practice of law and society. Overall LegalTech was a great experience as I got to see many old friends and make many new friends.

Pool Ball Theory Not Related to Mike Shamos

Dr. Michael Ian Shamos is a graduate school colleague and friend of many years who teaches eCommerce courses. Mike is the Distinguished Career Professor, Institute for Software Research International and Language Technologies Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. But Mike is also a world renowned Pool and Billiards expert who houses the largest library in the world about Pool and Billiards in his home. As well he is the author of a number of books on the subject including The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Billiards. Just so there’s no confusion, Mike had nothing to do with my “Pool Ball Theory!” Nonetheless Mike’s participation in the evolution of the Internet has been longstanding and I know that he uses the Internet to network as much as I.
 

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Google added two new links for “My social circle” and “My social content” that permit Social Networking searches! This blending of the most popular search engine in the US with social networking is getting more interesting since “Google is striking real-time deals with both Facebook and MySpace. Updates from public pages on Facebook will appear in Google real-time search, as will any publicly posted comments on MySpace.” In the future hundreds of millions of friends on Facebook and MySpace will use Google to search.

Google “Show Options”

Many people may not have noticed that when you do a Google Search the results displays “Show options” which includes the following:

So whenever you do a Google search you can click on “>Any time, Latest” and you will find information that just happened seconds before. This service now permits real time searching rather than purely historical.

Twitter on Google and Bing

To make things a little more interesting Google just announced that it will add live results from Twitter searches. However Bing already has an early version http://www.bing.com/twitter. With the tremendous growth of Social Networking now blending into search engines seems logical and inevitable. Even though Google gives pointers on how to protect oneself with these new social network searches, Google still keeps searches for 18 months. It makes one wonder how private everyone’s information really is on Social Networks or Google.
 

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Last week I posted as a guest blog at on Karl Bayer’s Blog about Dispute Resolution concerning Allison Skinner. Victoria VanBuren who works with Karl has posted a guest blog on this site about the Enron database.

Recent surveys indicate that there are over 210 billion emails sent each day, which does not include the more than 1 trillion text messages sent in 2008. eDiscovery has impacted every lawsuit in every courthouse, and with this unbelievable number of emails and text messages litigation will never be the same.

After the Guest Post last November about Allison Skinner’s Brilliant idea about eMediation, Allison and I have received great feedback about the eMediation idea. Judges and lawyers throughout the country are excited about this new use of the Mediation process to solve the biggest problem in litigation today, eDiscovery.

Get CLE Credit and Learn about eMediation and Special Masters

So join Allison O’Neal Skinner and me on our webcast when we discuss “how-to” conduct eMediations and when a Special Master should be considered for eDiscovery. The TexasBarCLE will broadcast this webcast live on February 16, 2010 from 2-3:30pm (1.5 hours CLE credit).

On the webcast Allison and I plan to discuss:

• The benefits of eMediation to effectively manage eDiscovery in a unique and productive way.
• How and when to use an eMediation.
• The various functions the Special Master can serve for the parties and the Court.
• The comparative effectiveness of an eMediator versus a Special Master at different pre-trial stages.

Also I’m happy to report that Allison is teaching a course this spring on eDiscovery at her alma mater, the University of Alabama Law School.

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With all the press about the disaster for Google in China somebody had to benefit, and it turns out the predominant search engine Baidu will be the big winner. Baidu had 63.9% and Google had about 31.3% of China’s search engine’s market before the December attacks. Ironically Baidu was started by Li Yanhong, a.k.a. Robin Li in 2000 when he raised $26.2 million in venture funding including a modest investment from Google. Today Baidu has 7,000 employees and market value of $16.2 billion, however Google sold its stake in 2006. Google entered China in 2006 with an agreement to censor certain topics.  But whether Google departs or not, Baidu is sure to grow since many users of Google are worried about security. Of course that is ironic since many in China believe that Baidu censored a great deal more than Google.cn. 

Attack on Google

Apparently the attack on Google was through a security hole in Microsoft’s browser Internet Explorer (IE) including these versions:

IE 6 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4 has the bug. Moreover, the flaw exists in IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8 on supported editions of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, plus Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Some pundits are wondering why Google was using IE rather than Google’s browser Chrome, which is an interesting issue aside from the attack.

Microsoft's Ballmer: We're Staying in China

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer committed to stay in China even though Google appears to be ready to leave. “Google has been in China since 2006 operating under an agreement with the government that has the search giant purge banned topics from its Chinese search results. But the recent attack has Google saying it will no longer censor results per Chinese law and the company is threatening to pull out of the country altogether. “ Since Microsoft recently announced its plan to grow its search engine Bing in China it’s no wonder that Microsoft may stay notwithstanding censorship and vulnerability with IE.

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