Dennis Kennedy

	Web DennisKennedy.com

« January 2005 | Main | March 2005 »

February 28, 2005

February Issue of Law Practice Today is Now Available

I may be a little biased since I'm an editor and on the board of the ABA's webzine Law Practice Today, but the February issue, with a TECHSHOW 2005 preview theme, is another good one. It's also available via RSS feed or you can subscribe to the monthly email update.

You'll find great tech articles from Dan Pinnington and Joe Kashi. Joe's article, "Is 64-Bit Computing Worth It? A Performance and Cost Comparison," will show you why I think Joe is the best writer on computer hardware you'll find among the legal technology experts, as well as saving you a significant amount of money.

You will also find a new column on Adobe Acrobat tips from David Masters, who wrote the book, a great assortment of columns, and articles on the core topics of finance, management, marketing and technology.

I've written this month's Strongest Links column on resources about disaster recovery and turned a well-received blog post into an article called "What Are the Most Common Mistakes a New Legal Blogger Makes?"

Lots of great stuff in this issue.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog)]

Posted by dmk at 09:35 PM

Firefox Security Issues - Might Be A Good TIme to Take a Closer Look

I'm getting pretty ambi-browserous these days. Because of the wildly inconsistent approaches IE and Firefox seem to take to javascript windowing especially, I never know when I'll need to switch between browsers.

As I've noted before, I tend to favor Firefox for the tabbed browsing. I'd like it even better if the tabbed browsing worked a little more consistently, but Firefox is a work in progress, and I'll accept a few quirks.

I met Tom Sherman, at JotSheet, in January at BlogWalk Chicago and have become a fan of his blog, which can be funny, irreverent and incisive. Tom has a great post today called "Mozilla Firefox security: User smugness from the Foundation's silence?" on the issues raised by Firefox's approach to security patches, which seem to take the form of quiet version upgrades, and whether that approach is appropriate as Firefox becomes more widely adopted.

I've noticed before that one of the benefits of Firefox version upgrades sometimes was sometimes listed as "improved security." I'd later learn through some of the security blogs that the upgrades contained security patches.

One, perhaps unintended, result of all the euphorious reviews and recommendations to ditch IE and install Firefox to avoid security issues is to lull new Firefox users into a false sense of security.

Consider Tom's analysis:

"Telling your users to upgrade is a viable strategy when your user base is geeks. That's not the profile of the typical FF user anymore. Furthermore, as Firefox's growth slows, we know empirically that users are downloading FF more infrequently. Besides, to the average user, what's the real, demonstrable benefit of downloading and installing Firefox 1.0.1 (which is really just a security patch, similar to a Window Update) when he's already got 1.0 or 1.0PR? In his mind, 1.0PR, 1.0, and 1.0.1 are basically the same programs. At least Microsoft makes it mindlessly easy."

Tom's discussion of this issue is quite even-handed and makes his post important reading for Firefox users.

He also adds some follow-up comments about Firefox's automatic updates being as a welcome feature.

I agree, but here's my difficulty:

The current version of Firefox is 1.0.1. My version identifies itself as version 1.0. I have Firefox set up to check for updates automatically. I also manually tried to update it just now, in two different ways. I get messages that no updates are available.

Am I running an updated version 1.0.1 that is misidentified on the "About Mozilla Firefox Screen" or am I running an version 1.0 that will not update and may have security problems? I don't know.

I might need to download the most current version and reinstall Firefox.

As Tom suggests, I'd guess that if the same state of affairs existed in IE, there'd be quite a bit of uproar.

As I said, I actually like and use Firefox, but it cannot be a good thing to leave users in doubt about security or to make it difficult to run a secure version, whether your name is Microsoft or whether it is Mozilla.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://wwww.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 08:50 PM

February 26, 2005

Congratulations to PHOSITA - Winner of Best Law Blog in 2005 Business Blogging Awards

I'm a little late on this one, but I wanted to congratulate Doug Sorocco at the PHOSITA blog on winning the Best Law Blog award in the high-profile 2005 Business Blogging Awards.

PHOSITA covers intellectual property law issues and is just one of many great IP law blogs now available.

I'm pleased to see Doug get some well-deserved recognition. This award also helps all legal bloggers by letting the rest of the business world know that there are great legal blogs out there.

A big thank you to Doug and the other nominees for carrying the cause of legal bloggers out into the world at large.

And a big congratulations to Doug for winning the award. Pretty cool!

Posted by dmk at 09:15 PM

February 25, 2005

Beyond Bullet Points - Way Beyond Anything Else You'll Read About How to Use PowerPoint Effectively

People frequently ask me for good books to help them learn to how to do PowerPoint presentations. As I posted here, I always recommend two books, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and Jerry Weissman's Presenting to Win. Interestingly, neither is really about PowerPoint.

Last year, I started to add Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullets blog to my list. Nearly every post to this blog contained great ideas and tips about presentations, using PowerPoint and telling your stories.

One day, Cliff announced that he had gotten a book deal and would be putting his blog on hiatus until he finished the book. Here's how big a fan I was of the blog – I never removed the subscription to his feed from FeedDemon. I wanted to be sure that I didn't miss the day when Cliff returned to blogging.

His return came recently and I received an email from Cliff asking if I'd like to get a review copy of the book. Would I!!!

I got an autographed copy of the book, called Beyond Bullet Points, yesterday and stayed up a little bit too late, literally reading it from cover to cover in one sitting.

My conclusion is a simple one. If you give any presentations, you have to read this book. If you want to have happy audiences, you want to implement the lessons of this book.

Last summer, I completely overhauled my approach to making presentations. I decided to move aggressively to a "rule of threes" approach and simplify my slides and approach. I also spent a lot of time thinking about a book called American Jeremiad by Sacvan Berkovitch that I read in college. Berkovitch's book analyzed the classic form of American sermon, known as the "jeremiad."

It's a familiar form that goes something like this:

1. There is a shining city on the hill to which we aspire.

2. We, to one degree or another, are sinners in the valley.

3. Here's what we can do to get ourselves back on the path to the shining city.

I decided to adopt this approach with, believe it or not, a presentation on knowledge management for lawyers.

I used the same set of slides for both a 90 minute and a 30 minute version of the same presentation.

And, it worked better for my audience and for me than I had imagined possible.

However, and this will bring us back to Atkinson's book, the jeremiad form did not fit some of the other topics I tried it with, although the "rule of threes" (three main points, three subpoints for each point, and three sub-subpoints for each subpoint) is an approach I've really grown to appreciate.

Beyond Bullet Points emphasizes some of the most important things I've learned while presenting over the years (take your audience from point A to point B, understand what your audience wants to learn, keep the focus on your message, not your slides, and the like), but it also sets out a disciplined system that makes it highly likely that you will achieve these goals.

And it gives you practical lessons and tools, including a heavy emphasis on the "rule of threes" to turn your presentations and your slides into a coherent whole that works for both you and your audience.

The organizing thread of the book is a real-world challenge - can you create a great PowerPoint presentation without using all the boring bullet points? Atkinson's efforts show that the answer is a resounding "YES!!!"

In fact, he shows you several ways to do so. For me, the most impressive is a set of slides that have two words on each slide. Astonishing!

Here's what I like. Cliff takes the ideas I was finally just beginning to intuit and develops a systematic approach that will put the best presentation techniques at your disposal through a set of structured steps and templates.

In the course of the book, however, he also demonstrates that telling a story, especially telling the story that makes sense for your audience, is the necessary foundation. Technique helps you tell a great story, but technique won't save a poor story.

The key lesson, then, is to look beyond the great techniques and work on your story.

There are so many great lessons in this book that is difficult to highlight just a few. I know that I'll be making a greater commitment to storyboarding and scripting. Cliff offers an approach to creating handouts that seems like a sure winner. It's almost impossible for me not to dispense with bullet points for my next presentations - I have to try that approach.

Where the biggest value from the book comes for me, however, is in adopting a "screenplay" acts and scenes approach to a presentation. This approach pulls together so many elements of a great presentation and gives any presentation an excellent and versatile structure.

It also focuses on the notion of "story." Atkinson sets out twelve classic story lines that we have grown to expect. If you organize your presentation along one of these story lines, your odds of bringing your audience with you will increase dramatically.

In the case of my "jeremiad" approach, I had hit on one of the classic story lines. It didn't work in all cases, but now I have at least eleven other story lines to chose for my next presentations, one of which will be suitable to my story and my audience. In fact, I saw that my next two presentations fit well into two different classic story lines.

It's amazing stuff. Lots of distilled wisdom. Structured approaches. Step-by-step instructions in using PowerPoint. Downloadable templates from his resource-laden website.

Thank you Cliff for writing this classic on the subject. It's the perfect answer to the "PowerPoint is destroying the culture" crowd. PowerPoint is a tool and I love see a great craftsperson use a tool well.

I'll be reading this Beyond Bullet Points again and again. You will see its impact in my presentations for years to come.

Ease on over McCloud and Weissman, make a little room on the shelf for Atkinson. I'll be recommending three books to everyone now. And, don't forget about the Beyond Bullets blog (better yet, subscribe to the feed) for ongoing pearls of wisdom.

[Disclosure: I'd be this much of a raving fan of this book even if Cliff hadn't sent me an autographed copy. I was already planning to buy it on the day it was first released.]

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:08 PM

Bright Eyes – Astonishing Music

I'm very fortunate to number among my best friends for many years two of America's greatest poets, Karen Kovacik and Jim McKelly. I recently learned from Karen that she'll have a new book of poems published this summer.

A few years ago, Jim and I were having our traditional annual get-together while he was in town during late December visiting his parents and his sister's family. He told me that I should go out and buy a couple of CDs from a group called Bright Eyes that had impressed him greatly.

I must have been absently nodding "yes" or being a little noncommittal, because Jim said, "Look at me and listen to what I'm saying. You have to get the CDs and listen to them. I don't usually say anything like this about any band."

That got my attention. He doesn't usually say that about any band. And he does have the fact that he introduced me to Springsteen's music as part of his track record.

So, I went out and bought two CDs: Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground and Fevers and Mirrors. I even listened to them and I became a big fan. In fact, Bright Eyes (and the driving force behind it, Conor Oberst) impressed the heck out of me.

A few weeks ago, I heard from Jim asking if I had gotten the two new CDs from Bright Eyes, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. I made some comments about adding them to my Amazon Wish List and getting ready to buy them, but I felt a moral force coming from Jim that led me to get out there and get the CDs bought.

I've been doing a lot of listening and, once again, the songs impress me greatly.

Jim has been raving, in a low-key way, about the poetry of Oberst's lyrics. The lyrics are indeed compelling, even haunting, but I've been struck by the music, which is difficult to describe, but both quite familiar and strikingly original at the same time.

I've tried to think of analogies, comparisons. Today, I was reminded of both Jonathan Richman and Lou Reed – which really means the Velvet Underground. There's some Neil Young, especially the country-tinged Neil Young. But the analogies don’t quite work. There are elements that seem as traditional as American folk can get and yet elements that are strikingly unique and modern.

I'm also struck by the impact of some of these songs. They may sneak up on you. If you listened to one of these CDs, you might initially wonder what the big deal is. With a little patience, you will be pulled into a new world. There's a song (I'm terrible with titles) that uses the world "wild" in the refrain. My immediate reaction, before the song was even half over, was that this song was a classic "wild" song, on the order of "Wild Horses" or "Ask the Angels."

Cool stuff. And something to try if you are feeling that music today isn't what it used to be and want to take a path less traveled, one where a very large talent walks with long strides.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:00 PM

February 24, 2005

Socha and Kennedy Look into the Electronic Discovery Crystal Ball

The latest "Electronic Discoverers" column by George Socha and me (Dennis Kennedy) has been published on the excellent DiscoveryResources.org site.

In the column, called "Looking into the Electronic Discovery Crystal Ball for 2005—Predictions, Observations and Opinions," George and I serve up our images from from our looks into the crystal ball for electronic discovery in 2005 and beyond. Perhaps not surprisingly, any look into the future use of technology by lawyers brings back memories of technology discussions from the past. Interestingly, many of the lessons you need to know have already been available for several years.

I think the money quote from the column this month might come from me, for a change:

"In many ways, George, I don't see much mystery about 2005, although I'm sure that we'll see some surprises. The winners in 2005 will be those who make the efforts to learn all that they can, develop personal relationships and potential partners with those in the electronic discovery space, and, perhaps most important, seek out and listen to the wishes, concerns and recommendations of their clients. It will be a year to get out from behind your desk and work with people rather than paper."

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 01:37 PM

Looking for a Few Good Sponsors for a Variety of Events and Other Opportunities (Not for Me), Plus a Few Thoughts on Apply Open Source Business Models to Blogging

I've become involved lately in a number of projects where people are asking me if I can help them attract and sign up exhibitors and sponsors. I'm always happy to help out, but I'd prefer not to go back to the same pool of vendors over and over again.

In most of the cases, the events or publications focus on legal technology and will have audiences of lawyers, IT people, office administrators and others interested in law and technology topics. Illustrations would be the ABA TECHSHOW or the Missouri Solo and Small Firm Conference. Often these will be events at which I'll be speaking and I'm just trying to help the organizers out and provide ways to connect the audience to relevant vendors who provide useful products and services for that audience.

There are also other areas that arise from time to time. For example, consider events or publications involved in broader, though still related, topics like those to be addressed at LexThink! Chicago or even charitable or educational events, such as at my daughter's school and elsewhere.

In almost every case, I'm talking about a modest amount of marketing dollars from a vendor. For some events, I can also point out higher dollar / higher exposure opportunities. I like to ask only when I see a "fit" between audience and vendor.

I'm not looking to get involved in the process with each event or opportunity. I simply want to help match up appropriate vendors to these audiences and make vendors aware of opportunities that might be attractive and useful to them. In most cases, I'll make the appropriate introductions, route people in the right directions and step out of the process. I'm just trying to help out the nice people involved in these activities when they ask if I can help them on the vendor side.

If any of these opportunities might appeal to you or your company, let me know and I will follow-up with you. If I get enough indications of interest, I might set up a web page or other means of creating a "clearinghouse" so legal tech vendors, especially, are aware of these opportunities.

Although I'm not looking to turn this into a part-time job, I guess I'd also be willing to hear from vendors who might be looking for appropriate marketing opportunities at these types of events, publications and the like and set up something to help match up interests and events.

Please email at denniskennedyblog @ gmail.com if you have an interest in opportunities I'm already involved with or any of the "match-making" ideas I mentioned. I'd greatly prefer emails to phone calls.

Moving on to a Related and Important Point

For purposes of clarification, at this point, I'm not talking about anything that has to do with my blog, LexThink or other related projects of mine. Those will be handled differently (of course, I'm always happy to talk to you about opportunities with those projects).

As many of you know, I've spent a lot of time thinking and talking with people about advertising, sponsorships, ads in feeds and the like in connection with DennisKennedy.Blog. As I see more and more blogs covered from top to bottom with GoogleAds, I've become far more hesitant about adopting an advertising model for my blog.

Credibility, trust and at least the sense of "objectivity" (I minored in philosophy, so it's difficult for to discuss objectivity as something that really exists – we all are loaded with points of view and assumptions) are precious commodities and the going rate for advertising models strikes me as way too small a price to charge for risking a significant loss in any of those categories.

What's the answer? I'm not sure yet. My latest thought is that some kind of "relationship" model (think of the entertainment industry – a package of appearances, "endorsements," and other elements of an actual win-win relationship that places a fair value on the benefits gained) probably makes the most sense for bloggers, if it can be handled carefully and with disclosure. I'm convinced that the randomly-served ads model is a disaster for bloggers and sponsorships, which initially appealed to me greatly, have their own set of complicated issues. I'm also happy to talk with anyone about these issues, either conceptually or in the sense of something real, because they are difficult issues with significant potential consequences, ranging from impact on credibility to ability for a blogger to pay his or her bills.

I spoke last year for half a day on the legal issues involved in the Open Source licenses. I started to think that blogging had many similarities with Open Source software. For one thing, it seems that some core aspect of blogging – the blog itself, the feed (or perhaps an excerpt feed) - must be free (both as in beer and as in freedom). As in Open Source, the potential for making money from your efforts should(?) come from what you surround the free part of blogging with – services, products, "combinations/distributions," merchandising, seminars, and other things that have long been discussed by Stallman, Raymond, Perens and others in the Open Source (and/or Free Software, in deference to the distinction that Stallman and FSF make about Open Source) movement.

While I have sometime had some fun with the "making money with blogs" vs. "making money from blogs" distinction (which (surprise!) often seems to let the person asserting the distinction justify his or her commercial efforts while criticizing others), there is a core of truth in that notion and bloggers would do well to study Open Source business models (here, here, here, here and here, for starters) before jumping into advertising approaches.

I checked my web traffic stats for DennisKennedy.com recently and saw that I was just shy of 200,000 hits in December, the majority to my blog. That number is staggering to me. Two years ago when I started my blog, I was very pleased with hits in the 10,000 to 15,000 range. However, even if I were to assume a total of 2.5 million hits for 2005 (and, believe me, I know that hits is not a good number to use), I don't know of advertising models that would net me more than a few extra bucks.

On the other hand, if I write about a product or service for lawyers in 2005, it clearly has a significant impact on the level of attention and probably sales of that product or service. However, part of the reason for that impact comes from my credibility and "objectivity." The irony of the situation is that my mention of a product can help the company selling it, but to keep my independence that mention probably cannot benefit me.

Somewhere, in a place far away from advertising, should be a model that accommodates the various issues and addresses the economic realities. I'd love to find an answer that works for me, so I'm always happy to talk with people who have thought of ways to address this issue.

As I suggested, lately some variation on the "entertainment" model seems to hold the most promise.

P.S. A lot of people have mentioned me, my writing and my blog in very favorable terms lately. I greatly appreciate that and try to thank everyone (privately) by email. Sometimes that takes me longer than I might hope, so let me send a big public "thank you" to those people. The feedback on my writing I've gotten lately has been best I've ever received and I'm thrilled that many people find what I'm writing to be helpful and, in some cases, even inspiring.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 11:53 AM

February 23, 2005

Passion is No Ordinary Word

The Graham Parker fans out there will get the reference in the title.

J. Matthew Buchanan has been in a groove lately on his great Promote the Progress blog. I liked his recent comments on my recent post answering a question about the future of small firm bloggers (short answer: the future is so bright we gotta wear sunglasses).

I recommend his post, which focuses on the word "passion," in large part because he makes the point I was trying to make in a succinct and convincing matter.

Posted by dmk at 11:36 PM

February 22, 2005

By Request Tuesday – Is There Still Room for Small Firm or Solo Lawyer Blogs?

Are you serious? There's more room than ever and better prospects than ever.

The recent focus on blogging by large firms has caused some bloggers at small law firms and solo lawyers to become concerned that there will no longer be a place for them in the blawgosphere.

I must admit I had a bit of concern about whether blogs by individual practicing lawyers could survive when a number of law professor/ law school blogs launched last fall. My concern was that, given how difficult it is to maintain a consistent pattern of posting to a blog, blogs staffed with law student interns gathering the latest and greatest information would overwhelm the efforts by solitary lawyer bloggers. My concern lasted only a few weeks.

Here's what I noticed.

1. In the blog world, the clear individual voice carries more weight than a more homogenized group voice.

2. In both the law school group blogs and the big law firm blogs I've seen to-date, there is a tendency to move toward a high quantity of posts on a daily basis. At the same time, there is also a tendency to move away from assessing the importance of the information in each post. If you make 20 posts a day and do nothing to differentiate them or identify the importance of them, you reduce the utility of your blog to your readership and make your blog's feed a likely candidate for deletion from my newsreader. I've practiced law for more than 20 years, I don’t recall many days where there were 20 items related to my practice that were must-reads.

3. In a related sense, blogs staffed by students or associates often have posts that do not show an appreciation of the context of the information being presented or its importance to the audience. In other words, you may not find the experience, expertise and judgment that you find in the blog of a practicing lawyer with significant experience. Note that I used the word, "may." There are blogs that fit these categories that do a great job. If you combine heavy volume and doubts about the understanding and judgment of the posters, you have the perfect recipe for losing audience.

4. Let's face it, big law firms are looking at blogging for marketing purposes. The long-time individual practicing lawyer bloggers (and other individual legal bloggers) are blogging because they have passion for their topics and blogging itself. Blogging has become part of who they are and they understand their audiences' interests and needs. Marketing might be part of why they are blogging, but it's not the only reason – not by a long shot.

5. Personality is a big part of any successful blog. Personality is hard to develop in any group blog. In an official big law firm blog – fuggettaboutit.

6. You want to know how to do a great big law firm blog? Get the star partner who really knows the stuff to blog about his or her area of expertise. Go back to the early days of the lawyers with web pages. Look at Lew Rose and his advertising law website. Yeah, it was Arendt Fox's website, but we all knew it was Lew and it showed his expertise and personality. Look carefully at upcoming big law firm blog launches and you'll see fingerprints of marketing departments all over them. That approach might work, but I'm taking a wait-and-see approach.

7. Big law firms are notorious for twice-a-year "quarterly newsletters" and other efforts that got off to a flashy start and then went . . . nowehere.

Blogging has been the realm of individual voices. The entry of "official" blogs, blogs by large firms and various group blogs with make the blawgosphere more varied, probably richer and perhaps more "professionalized," but it ain't going to displace all the individuals. Solo lawyers and small firm lawyers will continue to set the pace and drive the most interesting innovation in legal blogging.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 10:18 PM

By Request Tuesday – What's Your Take on All These Big Law Firm Mergers?

This question is sometimes asked in this way: Will medium-sized firms disappear?

Bruce "Adam Smith, Esq." MacEwen posted an important analysis of this issue a while back. I like Bruce's analysis but I'm not as positive about the megamergers.

What's my take when I read about the stream of mergers of large law firms?

Excuse my language, but I don't have an effing clue what's going on in the case of most of the ones I've read about.

Most of them seem like there's been a failure of imagination and some sense that getting bigger is the best route to take because it's better to do something than do nothing.

I'd expect to see enormous levels of lawyer attrition, IT integration headaches and puzzlement on the part of clients.

Here's one example of my take on the subject. I understand "cherry-picking." I understand going out and getting superstars to staff areas where you plan strategic growth or where clients need additional services. However, why would you pick up an entire firm to fill those needs? You are begging for attrition on both sides of the merger, and likely to lose plenty of people that you'd like to keep.

Integrating two large firms, in terms of people, systems, IT and everything else, is likely to be a long, involved process that will inevitably take most the eyes of most lawyers and staff off the ball for a significant time.

I'm a big fan of Tom Peters and his approach informs my own. Read some of Peters' comments on recent business mergers and his negative responses to some of them. I simply don't see the business case in most of the stories I see about large law firm mergers. I've never felt that combining two struggling organizations gives you any guarantee that you'll end up with one combined, successful organization.

So, I don't even pretend to understand this trend. I'd put my money on leaner, faster, client-focused firms, boutique firms and creative affiliations like consortia and even the so-called "virtual" law firms.

Just my opinion. FWIW.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 10:09 PM

By Request Tuesday – What Type of Posts Work Best in Blogs?

OK, I know that I sometimes write really long posts. My Heart of Blogness post was more than 4,000 words.

Long or short? Personal or "just the facts"? Links, reportage or commentary?

In short, whatever best fits your voice.

As a more practical matter, here are some of my observations.

Long vs. Short Posts

Short posts are usually "better" for most bloggers. It's clear that fewer people will read your posts as the posts get longer. If you were able to learn about and graph readership vs. length of post, I think you'd see a precipitous decline after a post reaches about 400 words or so.

If you write a long post, you need to assume that fewer people will start to read the post (and even fewer will read it all the way through) and that the post might be saved, bookmarked or printed, but probably not read by as many people as you might have hoped.

HOWEVER, you may well develop your most loyal readership because of long posts, some might get turned into articles and some may turn out to be very long-lived and referred to by many others. They may also fall off the cliff into the deep dark sea.

I always get people telling me that I shouldn't write as many long posts as I do. Remember, however, that I've written hundreds of articles and I'm quite comfortable in the 1,000 – 2,500 word range. Several of my long posts have been published as articles.

However, I expect and accept a greatly decreased readership for longer posts. That's why I do a mix on the lengths of my posts.

In general, I'd recommend posts of a few hundred words (or less) for most new bloggers. Then adjust the length of your posts to fit your voice. There's no magic formula, other than to note the general preference of readers for shorter posts.

If you write longer posts, think about using subheadings, bullet points and other web writing techniques that help your readers approach your article as "chunks."

In particular, be very aggressive about paragraphing.

Forget what you were taught about not using single sentence paragraphs. Get the white space in there. You almost want to break paragraphs by sight.

If the paragraph is getting long, hit two returns and start a new paragraph. That helps today's readers.

Personal vs. Objective Style.

You're asking me? When in doubt, take a personal approach and use a personal style.

Links, Reportage or Commentary.

Who are you? What do you want? Figure out what your blog will be about and what you want to accomplish and you'll get your answer.

Generally, if you are a little uncomfortable with your writing skills or are worried about how you will sound or what people might think, go with an approach that emphasizes linking and reporting news. Gradually try a few efforts at commentary (preferably something more than "that sucks") or even more personally approaches. You'll get feedback that either encourages you or discourages you.

Your approach will evolve over time. Heck, I have a much more personal and individual approach now than I had six months ago, let alone when I started this blog.

The "Perfect" Post.

As in article writing these days, you will generally get more response to a post that takes the form of "three reasons," "five steps," "seven tips" or some other numbered approach. People like this approach these days. I love posts and articles of this type. If you write a piece of this type that runs 800 to 1,200 words, you should be able to get it published as an article in print (assuming it's reasonably good) and probably get requests from other publications to reprint it. It's the sweet spot in the market.

A short post (less than 400 words) of this "numerical" style with a catchy title will consistently give you more audience and publicity than any other type of post that you do (except of course for post on celebrity gossip and other topics of enduring popularity).

In other words, you'd be making a huge mistake to model your blog posts after mine. But you'd also be making a mistake to decide that you need to tie yourself to some other blogger's model.

One other point. If you do try to follow some other blogger's model, you'll quickly notice that (1) it's much more difficult to write in that style than you ever expected and (2) your blogger model makes it look much easier than it really is.

One of my favorite examples of this is Tom Mighell at Inter Alia. It looks easy to write the kind of posts that Tom does, but it actually is extremely difficult to do so. I've tried and I can't do it. On the other hand, I suspect that you might find it far more difficult than you expect to write in as "loose" a style as I seem to use.

It's more about finding a voice than finding a technique.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 10:01 PM

By Request Friday – Given the Years that You Spent in Estate Planning Earlier in Your Career, Do You Have Any Insights into Some of the New Issues Arising Over Digital Information, Email, Blogs and Websites When Someone Dies?

Great question! And a timely one as well.

I was recently interviewed by Susan Shor on this very topic for an article that just appeared at http://www.technewsworld.com/story/40578.html. Susan's excellent article covers a good number of thought-provoking issues that are both theoretical and practical at the same time.

In many cases, the traditional rules and procedures that we use in the paper world will cover what is needed in the digital world, if only we could take a deep breath and not panic and think that "the Internet changes everything and we need different rules because the old rules don't apply."

The difficulties come in three ways: (1) the traditional processes may be way too slow, (2) there is not a history and degree of comfort with what happens in the digital world on death that you find in standard "probate" procedures, and (3) non-Internet savvy lawyers, executors and trustees can easily overlook digital "assets" and may have no appreciation of the value of digital and intellectual property assets.

Here's an example. Imagine Hunter S. Thompson had never published any books, but that all of his writings were on his blog. On his death, what value do you put on the estate tax return for the value of his "blog assets"? Trick question – of course, you want to value them at zero. However, what value will the IRS want to see and what will the IRS agree to accept?

Is your blog simply a hosting contract that should be terminated to as an ongoing liability to be extinguished or is it a potential source of income to look after your survivors?

It's not so easy, is it? What do you think the lawyer who prepared your will / living trust will say when you ask these questions about your blog, your email and the rest of your digital life and digital assets? What is a reasonable expectation for legal representation in our increasingly digital world?

A little scary, isn’t it?

It's another example how if you discuss blogging in almost any context, you almost invariably find yourself addressing very fundamental core questions.

Susan quotes me in the article on what, to me, became the most interesting issue raised during our phone call:

"More and more social relationships are people we know on the Internet," [Kennedy] told TechNewsWorld. "If someone dies, there are a lot of people who should be notified. The fact that someone has died is very meaningful and a paper address book may not have closest friends. Those people who are known mainly through e-mail or online may wonder what happened. By the time things get sorted out, the funeral is long over, and it's too late."

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:54 PM

DennisKennedy.Blog Birthday Celebration Week – Extension of ABA TECHSHOW 2005 Early Bird Discount Deadline

Good news for bargain hunters! The TECHSHOW 2005 Early Bird Discount Deadline has been extended to March 4. The early bird discount is $100.

For information about TECHSHOW 2005 and registration information, please go to http://www.techshow.com, where you'll find schedules, pricing and the new TECHSHOW blog, which has an RSS feed.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 04:06 PM

February 21, 2005

DennisKennedy.Blog Birthday Celebration Week – Free PDF Download of First Two Years of Blog Archives

I thought I'd run the Blog Birthday Celebration Week thing another day or two.

Today, readers receive the gift of a free download of the first two years of DennisKennedy.Blog posts, organized by category, in one relatively humongous PDF file (approx. 1.5 megabyte download). The PDF document runs 479 pages and includes, as bonus, a copy of my article – "Life-Altering Technology – News Aggregators and Newsfeeds." Although not quite the same as a podcast, you can even use the "Read Out Loud" option in Adobe Acrobat to have all of the blog posts read out loud to you by "Microsoft Sam" or any other voice you might have loaded on your computer.

Like many other bloggers, I still have Gmail invitations to give away. If you want one, just email me at denniskennedyblog @ gmail.com.

I have a few surprises left for tomorrow (Tuesday), the last day of DennisKennedy.Blog Birthday Celebration Week. I'll announce those tomorrow.

However, I will now announce that, by popular demand, "Request Tuesday" will return tomorrow. Email me your questions at denniskennedyblog @ gmail.com. I have a few left over from the past week that I'll try to answer tomorrow and I'll also take a stab at new questions.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 10:30 PM

Search Engine Optimization – "Bump Drafting" Your Google Ranking

I noticed what may be a new search engine optimization ("SEO") effect today. Since I spent the weekend enjoying the Daytona NASCAR action, I spent a good deal of time hearing about and observing the current NASCAR trend called "bump drafting."

"Bump drafting" is a form of traditional drafting in which, as crazy it might seem, the following car actually bumps the lead car. The "bump" pushes the lead car forward and while the following car falls back a bit, it can apparently take advantage of the airflow dynamics so that both cars end up going faster. It's a little dangerous, not surprisingly.

What does this have to do with SEO?

Today, Denise Howell, who coined the word "blawg," posted about her finding that there were 299,000 instances of "blawg" in Google. I ran a few test searches and drew some tentative conclusions.

If you run the "blawg" search, you may get a slightly different number. If you eyeball the results, you'll see why people now think that Google's rankings put a strong emphasis on placement of words in page titles. For example, The Blawg Channel is the #4 ranking.

On the other hand, none of the results will immediately show Denise's role in coining the word "blawg."

If you do a search on "dennis kennedy" (but without quotes), you will see 1,750,000 instances of the term. Hey, I'm the first one and two. In fairness, the name "kennedy" will generate a lot of instances. So, I searched "dennis kennedy" (in quotes). Slightly over 60,000 instances. Interestingly, you will see the priority given to placement of words in the page title.

I also took a look at searches on "blawg," adding the word "dennis" and then the word "kennedy."

Here's the bump drafting concept. In both cases, posts on Jim Calloway's blog that had my name in the title were the #1 ranked items. My blog was #2. As you may recall, when Jim launched his blog, a good number of legal bloggers, including me, mentioned Jim's blog (because we like Jim so much) and his blog shot up the charts in Google. In a way, we gave Jim the "bump" and drafted in behind him in the rankings. It's a fascinating phenomenon. The irony is that, in some cases, you might "bump" someone else farther ahead of you than you expect.

I want to do a little more research on the concept to see if it is a real effect or just an anomaly.

I will note that in the blawg + dennis and blawg + kennedy searches, you will find my post mentioning Denise as the coiner of the term blawg.

Another interesting development. For the first time, I made the first page of responses on a search on the name "dennis." It's unclear whether that's a blog effect or a reflection of a downward trend in the popularity of Dennis Rodman.

By the way, none of this increases my confidence about the use of Google to actually find the information I want.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:00 PM

February 19, 2005

DennisKennedy.Blog Birthday Celebration Week - Bargains for You

Who doesn't like a great bargain?

I thought I share two of my favorite bargain websites, each of which makes RSS feeds available. If, as J. D. Lasica has famously said, RSS is "news that comes to you," then RSS feeds from shopping sites must be "bargains that come to you."

My two current favorites are:

DealNews - http://dealnews.com

More Stuff for Less - http://morestuff4less.com/

Don't forget about Kevin Kelly's fantastic Cool Tools, also with an RSS feed, for reviews and recommendations of great products.

Another supremely cool tool comes from Watchcow.Net, which allows you to create an RSS feed based on your Amazon Wish List so you can be automatically notified when prices change. Imagine being able to spot when an expensive item you pine for becomes available from a third party "used and new" seller for a fraction of its usual price.

A few bargains I spotted this morning:

From DealNews: "MicroCenter.com offers the Kensington SaddleBag notebook bag, model no. 64079/4, for $19.99, as a reader found. It's the lowest price we know to be available by $9. Add $5 for shipping." (Fantastic price for a great bag - I've used one of these for years after a recommendation from Neil Squillante.)

From DealNews: "The Craftsman 60-piece Mechanics Tool Set is back at $29.88 at Sears.com. It's the lowest price we've seen. Add $5.25 for shipping or order it online for in-store pick-up. <http://dealnews.com/newsdaily.html?article,81179>"

From DealNews: "ZipZoomFly.com offers the Western Digital Caviar SE 320GB IDE 8MB cache hard drive, model no. WD3200JB, for $205. With free 2-day shipping, it's the lowest total price we've seen for a drive of its size. <http://dealnews.com/newsdaily.html?article,81190>"

From DealNews: "The Lexar 1GB USB 2.0 JumpDrive Secure costs $69.99 at Fry's Outpost.com. A $15 mail-in rebate, ending today, drops the net price to $54.99. It's the lowest price we've seen by $5. Shipping starts around $6. <http://dealnews.com/newsdaily.html?article,81100>"

From Cool Tools - Knipex Cobra Pliers

Have fun!

Posted by dmk at 10:16 AM

February 18, 2005

Heart of Blogness: My Journey into Scoble Country

[Note: I wrote this back in December, but hadn't posted it because I wanted to do some more work on it (and probably shorten it). In honor of Robert Scoble's well-earned vacation from blogging, I've decided to post it in its original form. Some references may be slightly dated.]

Posted from Scoble Country - December, 2004

Although definitely not by design or intention, I spent the past month or so deep in the heart of Robert Scoble country. Scoble, as you probably know, is one of the best and best-known of all bloggers.

What he is most known for is the amazing number of blogs he monitors on a daily basis. While my research at SharetheOPML.com and other places, suggests that an accurate estimate of the number of blogs monitored is in the 700 range, you will often see reports that Scoble monitors more than a thousand blogs, suggestions that the number is closer to 2,000 and some speculation that Scoble has his eyes on all 4 or 6 million blogs in existence.

I use the word "monitor" for a reason. Like many longtime bloggers, Scoble doesn't visit each of the blogs he reads. Instead, he subscribes to the "feeds" of these blogs, using a newsreader. It's the only way you can realistically keep pace with that many blogs. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, take a look at an article I wrote on the subject last year in which I tried to explain RSS feeds and newsreaders in plain, non-technical language.

I've forgotten which newsreader Scoble uses, but I use FeedDemon, which is my choice as Software Product of the Year. Nick Bradbury, the individual behind FeedDemon, is my choice for Most Valuable Player in the Blogosphere. FeedDemon is that good.

By any standard measure, I'm a "feed-dominant" Internet user. RSS feeds and newsreaders have completely changed my Internet experience and my long-established Internet habits. For a long time, I've gotten a chuckle when bloggers post about how they are "addicted" to RSS because they are subscribed to 50, 80, even 100 feeds.

Still, I didn't think of myself as being in the land of Scoble.

In fairness, if you check me out in SharetheOPML, I once reached number 11 in number of feeds with 732, but I thought of that as a kind of stunt.

About a month or so ago, I lost a bit of discipline and started to subscribe to every feed that seemed interesting or that someone recommended highly – just to check them out. Let me note that I subscribed in a responsible fashion. I never subscribed to feeds using any kind of automatic updating where I hit a blog server automatically many times in a day. In fact, I generally updated all my feeds once or twice a day.

At some point, I know see, I found myself in Scoble Country, getting a glimpse of what Scoble's daily life must be like. Let's just say I was well north of 600 blogs/feeds that I monitored.

A few days ago, I was aggressively cleaning and organizing folders in FeedDemon and ran into some problems that helped me decide that it was time to leave Scoble Country and take a more refined approach to feeds.

However, it was a glorious experience in a strangely beautiful land. I'm not Scoble, but I feel I got a glimpse of his world. I can't recommend the trip to everyone, but, if you are adventurous, it's quite a place to be – at least for a while.

For those who know better than to make that expedition (thought question: is being afraid that you'll enjoy it too much really a legitimate reason not to try it?), let me share some of my observations.

1. Scoble Really is Amazing. I know that I'll shade the truth and underestimate the time commitment involved in reading feeds, so I suspect Scoble does as well. Let's just say that you'll not be spending any less than two hours a day reading feeds. And I'm a really fast reader. To sustain Scoble's level for the period of time he has done and still produce the output that he has is mind-boggling.

2. Consuming Lots of Feeds Leads To A Strong Feeling of Being Tapped into the World, Aware of What's Happening and Attuned to the Action. Unfortunately, the same feeling makes it extremely difficult to step away. It's not exactly addictive, but there's both an urge to stay current and an urge to expand the world that you monitor.

3. The Number of Excellent Bloggers Will Consistently Surprise You; So Will the Number of People You Know Who Have No Familiarity Whatsoever with Many of the Bloggers You Read on a Daily Basis. My approach, like Scoble's is to be as expansive as possible in the types of blogs/feeds I read. I don't understand people who monitor only blogs in their small area of interest.

4. Although Many Blogs Have Feeds, Not All Feeds are From Blogs. From newspapers to the Old Farmer's Almanac, many traditional resources have RSS feeds, although they are not blogs. There are also some well-known blogs that do not have feeds. Those blogs ceased to exist when you become "feed-dominant." For example, I want to read Andrew Sullivan's blog, but since I can't find a feed, his blog is no longer part of my daily world.

5. Most of the Talk of VCs and Others That Focuses on the Business Potential of Blogs in Isolation from Feeds Seems a Little Silly Once You Live in the RSS World. I've come to believe that the Weblogs, Inc. model of blogging falls apart in a newsreader world. I've unsubscribed to all of the feeds I've tried that machine gun 20 posts a day with little or no effort to identify which ones are most important. I have some ideas that I think will work over the long-term, but blog-focused business models may be recipes for creating another dot-com bubble. As someone shouted on one of the business shows on cable this weekend, E-A-R-N-I-N-G-S.

6. Increasing Feed Input Necessarily Reduces Blogging Output. I understand why Scoble uses a link blog. I got a lot of great ideas to post about, but I generally ended up with a "To Blog About" folder that had hundreds of items in it. Go to Scoble Country when you are in a cycle where you want to listen more than you want to talk.

7. In Scoble Country, You Can See Many Patterns in Blogging. It's fascinating to see stories work their way across many different areas of the blog world. It's fascinating to see new areas of blogging appear and become dynamic. It's fascinating to see new bloggers burst on the scene. It's fascinating to see bloggers who spent months criticizing Bush on a daily basis announce that, after much deliberation and even though it might come as a surprise, they are endorsing John Kerry.

8. There is a Relentless Movement Toward the New in the Blog World. I straddle the fence on this issue, but I tend to be a critic of the emphasis on the new. It's pretty common to see ten or twenty mentions of a new blog or new blogger (or, in the case of Judge Posner, one or two hundred mentions). If you stay with these blogs for a month or two, you'll see that many of them dry up and disappear. On the other hand, Sabrina Pacifici at BeSpacific.com can do a consistently excellent job, be widely respected, and rarely receive a mention.

9. One of Most Common Blog World Patterns is the Brushfire. If you monitor a lot of feeds, you'll see stories that simply take off and blaze across a large number of blogs over the course of a few days. Because of the emphasis on the "new," most of the hottest stories burn themselves out in pretty short order. Many "hot" stories fade away, often without any resolution. That's one reason you see some discussion about the need to search for "conversations."

10. The Blog World Has Many Pockets, Each with Its Own Culture. Not surprisingly, I'm most familiar with the world of legal blogs, commonly known as blawgs. The blawg world has its own culture. It's quite different than other pockets of blogging. Here's one example. In large part because most of the long-time legal bloggers know each other very well, we have developed a model where if one legal blogger posts a story, the rest of us will usually not repeat the same story (i.e., we step away because Denise or Ernie or another blogger already "covered" it). We blog with the sense that readers of our blogs read all of the same blogs. There's an unstated group dynamic at work. If a legal blogger writes about the same story or topic another legal blogger writes about, it almost always involves giving credit (and usually a compliment) to the original blogger, and then an expansion on the story rather than a simple reposting. In contrast, in the world of marketing and PR blogs, bloggers commonly post on the same topics or stories. As a result, it is easy for an outsider to see what stories are most important simply by counting the number of mentions. In blawgs, it can be more subtle – a big story might have only a few mentions.

11. The Blog World Can Be Surprisingly Insular and References to "The Bloggers" Really Do Not Make Much Sense. Again, let me use legal blogs as an example. It is quite rare for posts from lawyer bloggers to be picked up outside the group of legal blogs. In fact, the legal blogs are subdivided into law professors, practicing lawyers, law students, law librarians and, to a limited extent, consultants to the legal industry. There is not as much crossover among these subsets as you might expect. Of these subsets, I'll tell you that the law librarian blogs are the most valuable. The law professor blogs probably get the most play outside the legal space. In the case of practicing lawyer blogs, you can almost always trace movement into the blog world at large through Ernie, Denise and, more recently, Matt Homann. In the rest of the blog world, you will also see a number of "nodes" that connect various groups of bloggers. Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Doc Searls and the group commonly referred to as the "A-List Bloggers" are important nodes and gateways that help move content out of specific blog realms and into the blog world at large. Very few other bloggers have the same impact, but there are other significant nodes. Steve Rubel is just one recent example.

12. Reading Blogs (Not Unlike Reading Newspapers) Places a Premium on Being Able to Read Critically and Assess the Reliability of Information. Being able to read critically and assess what information you can rely upon has become, if it wasn't already, the most important skill an Internet user can have. Children in school can be taught to improve these skills. What happens to those who have long left the education system? I see the increasingly important rule of librarians, but I'm not sure where we are headed. In Scoble Country, the sheer number of points of view can help you evaluate information or it can leave you confused. However, relying on one source will only become more problematic.

13. The Feed-reading Experience is Vastly Different from the Blog-reading Experience and Many People Do Not Appreciate the Difference. This point is one to think carefully about. When in Scoble Country, you rarely visit a blog in the traditional sense. RSS has been described by J.D. Lasica as "News that comes to you." Those five words contain the revolution. I'm a regular reader of many blogs that I rarely, if ever, visit. I couldn't tell you what they look like, what ads or blogrolls are there, or any other details. I make no value judgment about that; it's just the way it is. If you accept that bloggers like me are important opinion influencers, this fact is something that you'll need to understand and adjust for.

14. There are Two or Three (or More) Very Different Newsreader Experiences. I started out reading RSS feeds in a newsreader called Amphetadesk. The experience was very much like visiting a huge, long web page that collected all the posts in the feeds you subscribed to. You scrolled through the page to get your information. In that world, full-text feeds and graphics were bothersome, especially if you weren't interested in the post. I enjoyed writing clever (at least to me) excerpt feeds, which were perfect for Amphetadesk. Later, the Outlook-style three-pane newsreaders like FeedDemon became more dominant. Some people criticized me for offering only excerpt feeds because I was "forcing them to visit my blog to read my posts" unlike the consumer-friendly full-text feeds. I looked at a three-pane reader and immediately saw the problem. A bit wistfully, I moved to full-text feeds. So many people use Bloglines as a newsreader service that it makes sense to be aware of their user experiences. RSS feeds may now be handled in Firefox or on MyYahoo.com. Three-pane newsreader users tend to use folders and subfolders to organize feeds. Dave Winer prefers an undifferentiated mix of feeds in reverse chronological order. Your visit to Scoble Country might be vastly different than mine and I generally try not to make a lot of assumptions about the universality of my experience with feeds.

15. If You Don't Understand the Difference Among Headline Feeds, Excerpt Feeds and Full-text Feeds, Your Blog May Fail Without You Ever Understanding Why. The rules on the selection of types of feeds have solidified. If you generate headline feeds, you lose. No one likes them. When I decide to streamline my feed subscriptions, I use the common rule of unsubscribing from headline feeds. Poof, you're gone. There is a general preference for full-text feeds these days. If you use excerpt feeds, you must have compelling content or give a good description. If you don't, your audience will tend to move on rather than click-through to your blog to read the full post. In Scoble Country, I got very close to using a "delete all excerpt feeds" approach when pruning my number of subscriptions. Unfortunately for many the new blog-focused approaches initiated by established media companies, generating a headline feed to "protect your content" or "drive traffic" to your ads probably guarantees that the bloggers with the most influence will not become part of your site's audience. In general, you want to go with a full-text feed or give a choice of full-text and excerpt. For me, I favor full-text all the time.

16. Feed-Readers Turn Some Traditional Blog Expectations On Their Heads. Remember that in Scoble Country I'm rarely visiting your blog's site. Lots of the features of many blogs no longer are in play. I've gotten a fair amount of criticism for my policy of not enabling comments (and I've recently turned off trackbacks as well). I have my reasons – they may or may not be compelling to you – for not allowing comments. They apply to my current blog and what I want to do with it. Comments might well make great sense in other blogs I might do and they definitely make sense for other people. However, in Scoble Country, comments don't really exist. I'm not going to visit your page to check the comments. Again, I make no value judgment; it's simply a fact of life when you are monitoring hundreds of feeds. Some people do feeds of their comments – I find them the most confusing things in the world. If you live in the world of comments and trackbacks, Scoble Country might not be for you.

17. Plenty Of People Seem to Have Found The One True Path Of Blogging – None Of Them Agree – But Most of Them Are Happy to Lecture Others. Follow a lot of blogs for even a short period of time and you'll see plenty of examples of people telling other people how they are violating the fundamental principles of blogging. For example, some will tell you that I don't even have a blog because I don't enable comments. Others say that having an RSS feed is the key element. Lots of people are trying lots of different tools at lots of different levels of skill and experience. I say, let a thousand flowers bloom. You will see a lot of this "inside baseball" talk – the amount of it will surprise you. I remember several times over more than nine years I've had a website when someone would send me an email blasting me for using the "wrong" font or the "wrong" size of font on my pages and generally trashing me. I would usually wait a day or two and patiently explain to them how their browser settings, not my barebones HTML skills, were the cause of the problem. None ever apologized or said thank you. I highlight this point just as small effort to get people to calm down a bit and be a little more polite this time. Bloggers are doing the best they can. We're happy for any help or advice, but accusing people of heresy in your first contact generally does not work well.

18. Newsreader Collection Tools Are OK, But What the Heck Do You Do with All That You Collect? FeedDemon has several good tools to tag and collect posts that you want to keep. I really like its News Bins, for example. I'm intrigued by the Omea Reader's approach to organizing, managing and linking info that you collect. Onfolio is another program I hear a lot about. The simple fact is that you can easily get overrun by the sheer volume of collected materials. It's difficult to take action on them. A folder you call "To Blog About" could easily have hundreds or thousands of items in it, which makes it something you can laugh about, but not something that helps you post to your blog. This area is a prime laboratory for personal knowledge management tools.

19. I Started to Understand the Notion of Memes. In Scoble Country, you start to see trends before they become trends and ideas before they become ideas. You also see how they travel, coalesce, take shape and change. That's memes.

20. There Are Some Big Names Who Blog. When I think about it, I move slightly away from the "News that comes to you" approach. I don’t disagree with it, but I change the notion of "news" a bit. I'm now getting the writings of people whose books I've read, who've influenced my thinking and who are the kinds of people you simply enjoy reading their thoughts and ideas. In many, many fields and areas of interest, you will find significant thought leaders appearing regularly in your newsreader. Business guru, Tom Peters, and science fiction legend, William Gibson, are just two of my examples. In narrow areas, you may well find the leading authority in the field showing up in your newsreader. That's cool.

21. The Monetization Debate Looks Different From Where You Stand. There's a lot of discussion these days about ways bloggers may appropriately derive financial benefit from their blogs. In my opinion, almost anything has to better than the current wave of prominent bloggers begging readers to leave a few bucks in the tip jar so they can get a new laptop computer or pay for hosting. I'm very careful on these issues because of the role of lawyers in Internet history, starting with the lawyers who invented spam. The hottest issue today is "ads in feeds." Dave Winer, for example, is a big opponent of ads in feeds. Once I realized how he consumes feeds, his point of view was much easier for me to understand. In comparison, if you use a newsreader like FeedDemon, adding a sponsor logo or small add at the bottom of each post in your feed seems quite reasonable, especially if you give a subscriber a choice of an excerpt feed with no ad or a full-text feed with an ad. Keep the ad non-intrusive and I have no problem at all – I'm happy to see you make some money to support your blogging habit. Put an ad in an excerpt feed and I'm gone. In a newsreader that does not separate feeds into separate folders, it would not take many ads before your experience would be degraded. I'm now more understanding of Winer's approach, but my thinking is more affected by the interest I've already had for putting ads (or, really, small and tasteful logo graphics with a tagline) into my feed.

22. Scoble Country Reminds Me of the Pre-Yahoo World. In the early days of the World Wide Web, before the heyday of search engines, you built your own paths into the web, collecting links to useful sites and resources and trying to find knowledgeable guides. It's very similar in Scoble Country. Scoble is certainly an excellent guide. I trust his pointers, and those of others I've found, far more than any of the search tools. Again, keep your eyes open for those librarian blogs and feeds.

23. Amazingly High Quality Information is Readily Available. I'm tinkering with my business plan for next year. I have a folder with an absolutely amazing collection of advice, tips, discussions and other resources that will help me. How about tips on using Microsoft Office from members of the Microsoft Office design team? There are rich resources out there. The more people think that the blog world is the realm of teenage diaries, the more competitive advantage I have and the more cool stuff I can learn that others won't bother to learn. You do it your way and I'll do it my way.

24. When You Leave Scoble Country, You Can't Assume People Are Familiar with the Same Information You Are. When I was in law school at Georgetown, I often found that I would get swept up in the Washington controversy of the day that was gripping everyone. I'd talk to a friend in another part of the country and find that they hadn't even heard of the issue. Watch for that phenomenon when you are in Scoble Country. Not too many people know the same players and it's a relatively small number of people who are conversant with issues that may be front and center in the blog world. Go to a party and start telling people that Robert Scoble says such and such and count the number of people with blank looks. Or use Adam Curry and podcasting in the same sentence at your office holiday party and see the reaction you get. It might be a different story next year, but you have to keep this blog thing in perspective.

25. About Those Clever Blog Names. The cute blog names make sense when people visit your blog and see the context, but they lose a lot of impact when you are in Scoble Country. For many feeds I get, I cannot see what the name of the author is. The tendency of bloggers to refer to each other in their blogs by their first names compounds the problem. Believe it or not, I put a lot of thought into picking the name, DennisKennedy.Blog, because I wanted the blog to be big enough to let me do anything I felt like doing. Picking a name like Legal Technology Blog or Technology Law Blog would have been too limiting for me. There are only a handful of blogs that prominently use the blogger's name in the title. Check out how your blog title appears in a newsreader. OK, I admit I like my approach, but Jeff Beard has a good approach because his feed is labeled "Law Tech Guru by Jeff Beard." I may start another blog one of these days and I lean toward calling it something like "Dennis Kennedy's CleverBlogNameGoesHere Blog" just because of how I want it to appear in news readers.

Concluding Thoughts on My Trip to Scoble Country.

I tip my hat to Scoble. I had a great time in Scoble Country, but I'm glad to be back. I'm not sure when or if I'll return. To no one's surprise, I learned that I'd rather be Dennis Kennedy than Robert Scoble, or anyone else for that matter. Now we all know that, but it's good to learn the lesson again from time to time. Keep on Scobleizing, Robert, but be sure to think about taking a little break one of these days. We'll keep it going while you're away, but you have to promise to come back from that break.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 01:34 PM

The Law Professor Blog Tour Continues – Today We Visit TaxProf Blog

I've gotten a good number of private emails in the last few days - unfortunately, none of them from law professors - from my recent, and increasingly desperate, attempts to attract the attention of the law professor bloggers and to prove that the current divide between law professors and practicing lawyers is not as absolute as it may seem and that, in fact, my outreach efforts can help bridge the chasm.

The emails are from practicing lawyers lamenting the split between academia and the practice and generally telling the story of one perceived slight or another. It's kind of sad.

Other emails are of the nudge-nudge, wink-wink variety and suggest that I really do know and have conversations with many of the law professor bloggers and that the Law Professor Blog Tour is, in fact, an elaborate joke. If only that were true.

I will admit that I have at various times over the years met a few of the law professor bloggers or been on the same email lists with them, including a short conversation with the captain of the A-List law professor blogging team, Larry Lessig. (Does anyone think that Professor Lessig's occasional struggles with relatively straightforward technology issues (see comments to this post for a few of many alternatives) undercut his credibility on technology law issues?)

But, I digress.

On the tour today, we visit Paul Caron's unfailingly excellent TaxProf Blog. I must confess to having been a tax lawyer for more than ten years of my legal career, so I may find more appeal in this blog than others do. But it is getting to be tax season.

Caron's blog is the model I would point any law professor considering a blog to study as part of the preparation for launching his or her own blog. It's informative, it's interesting and it has a great mix of academic materials and popular materials, along with links to great resources. Again, I'm not sure Professor Caron has tenure (he definitely should), so I hope I'm not blowing his chances by making favorable comments about his blog.

Interestingly, Caron has a recent post on the issue of the taxability of money received via "tip jars" on blogs. He sums up the issue and the relevant case law nicely and it's a very good introductory discussion of the legal issues.

However, I'm not really persuaded by the arguments or the academic analysis that urges that these "tips" are not income for tax purposes. They might not be, but the case law analysis gives me little comfort.

My approach is both more practical and more simple. It goes like this:

1. Does Amazon send you a 1099 or other IRS form reporting the tips as income? I admire the courage of anyone who files a return using different numbers (or not including numbers) reported to the IRS.

2. It's called a "tip" jar, not a "gift" jar.

3. Waiters, waitresses and others have onerous requirements and procedures for reporting tips. Not to make class arguments, but should professor bloggers soliciting tips by tip jars be treated any differently? Why? If I like a waiter's service and tip 20%, is he entitled to treat the amount over the standard 15% tip as a "gift"? I don't think so.

4. Bloggers with tip jars actively solicit funds and the language used by bloggers when telling their audiences about "tip jars" almost invariably refers to helping the bloggers "monetize" their blogs or cover costs.

5. In my experience, the IRS will not roll over an play dead when you cite a law review article or two in support of your decision not to report income or take an aggressive stand on a tax issue. Hoewever, you might get lucky and find an agent who is so inclined.

As I've always said, I'm the practical kind, especially on tax issues, but I'm always interested in learning good ways to save money on taxes. If I used a "tip jar," I'd be reporting the income. Of course, the tax on the extra $5 of tip money I'd be fortunate to get is not all that big a deal.

The TaxProf Blog – highly recommended, even for people who are not tax lawyers.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 10:26 AM

February 17, 2005

The Law Professor Blog Tour Continues - The Yin Blog

I suddenly realized that there might be a chance that the law professor blogs might actually notice my blog before I got the chance to mention all of my favorite law professor blogs, so I decided to accelerate my pace a bit.

I wanted to be sure that I mentioned my absolute favorite law professor blog - The Yin Blog. I'm not sure that either Tung Yin or his co-blogger, Kevin J. Heller, have tenure yet, so I'm hoping that my favorable mention of their blog doesn't hurt their chances for getting tenure. My apologies in advance.

I don't think that I can give a higher compliment than to say that here are law professors that you actually would want to sit down and have a beer with. Although they (in fairness, that's Kevin's gig on the blog) can get a little too political for my taste (about one political post a month usually does it for me), they cover a lot of topics with great style and a sense of humor (Oops, now that may have cost them tenure).

Not to cause dissension among the co-bloggers, but the blog is named after Tung Yin and he's clearly the star. I'm so impressed that I'm now telling prospective law students that they need to consider going to law school at Iowa, and I've added Iowa to my mental list of top 20 law schools. It's the power of blogging at work.

Tung and I share some common interests in science fiction and TV. This post on spy TV shows is brilliant and my views are quite similar. Hmm, maybe that's the reason I think the post is brilliant. I'm assuming that his silence on the new season of MI-5 reflects my silence because of the unspeakably horrifying plot directions that have all-but-gutted the show we knew, and from which there is almost no chance of recovery.

So, I give you The Yin Blog, a truly great law professor blog, no joking around.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/).]

Posted by dmk at 09:13 AM

Springsteen Announces New Album for DennisKennedy.Blog Birthday Celebration Week

I must admit that for more than 25 years there's never been much news that's more exciting to me than the news of a new Brice Springsteen album and tour.

I'm thrilled to tell you that Bruce has chosen DennisKennedy.Blog Birthday Celebration Week to announce the April release of his new album, Devils & Dust, and a follow-up tour.

Here's the text of the press release from Columbia Records:

"Columbia Records will release Bruce Springsteen's nineteenth album, 'Devils & Dust,' on April 26. 'Devils & Dust' features twelve new Springsteen songs.

'Devils & Dust' Track List

1. Devils & Dust
2. All The Way Home
3. Reno
4. Long Time Comin'
5. Black Cowboys
6. Maria's Bed
7. Silver Palomino
8. Jesus Was an Only Son
9. Leah
10. The Hitter
11. All I'm Thinkin' About
12. Matamoras Banks

'Devils & Dust' was produced by Brendan O'Brien, who first worked with Springsteen on the acclaimed CD, 'The Rising.' The new album was recorded at Thrill Hill Recording Studios in Los Angeles and New Jersey with additional engineering at Southern Tracks Recording in Atlanta.

Springsteen is planning a tour to accompany the release of the album. Details will be announced shortly.

* * * * *

www.brucespringsteen.net"

Stories indicate that this will not be an E Street Band album and Bruce may be working with other musicians, including the phenomenal Steve Jordan, who played drums on and produced Patti Scialfa's 23rd Street Lullaby album, my runaway choice as album of the year for 2004.

Jim and Dr. Jeff - Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta, Birmingham, Milwaukee?

I may offer a $1,000 discount on my speaking and seminar fees to organizations that have me speak on concert dates and provide me with good tickets to shows.

Good news indeed.

Posted by dmk at 08:50 AM

DennisKennedy.Blog Birthday Celebration Week - Let's Go Racin'

Well, today is my birthday. Dennis, that is, not my blog. I was born in 1958, so that makes me, hmmm, 47. Hard to believe.

Beating the sleep apnea problem last year has made a big difference for me and I look forward to this year with great optimism.

I'm also pleased to announce another special benefit for readers of DennisKennedy.Blog. I've arranged for readers of DennisKennedy.Blog to get a special viewing of two NASCAR qualifying races for the Daytona 500 today! All you need to do is to tune in to the FX Channel at 12:00 Central time and you will get a "private" viewing of two special 30-lap races this afternoon, presented as a token of appreciation for readers of DennisKennedy.Blog in honor of my birthday. No password required.

I have been overwhelmed by the number of people asking how to give me a gift for my birthday. As you may know, I've set up a special Amazon wish list to help you select and send a birthday present to me - just one more useful service from DennisKennedy.Blog.

I'd like to send a special happy birthday message to my birthday mates, Michael Jordan, Jim Brown and the rest of the February 17ers.

It's hard to believe that I normally am about as low-key as you can get about my birthday. Give someone a blog and look at what happens!

Posted by dmk at 07:55 AM

February 16, 2005

Scoble on Getting Attention for Your Company, Product or Service

The renowned Robert Scoble has one of the best explanations I've seen about the importance of bloggers in helping you get out your story about your company, product or service.

Set aside some time to read Scoble's post a few times and to think about it and its implications. There's a bit of "inside baseball" stuff in the post (but I concur that Buzz Bruggeman is amazing) that you can skim over for now so you can focus on the main points.

I've made many of these same points to people in private for the past year or so.

Consider these comments from Scoble:

"But, demonstrate you read our blogs and that you have something of value for our readers. Keep your message short and conversational. Don't expect us to talk about you. Just present it as something that we might be interested in."

If you've read my blog, especialy my posts about reciprocal link requests, you'll recognize that Scoble and I have a similar approach.

When you consider the big picture, Scoble is absolutely right - bloggers can help you get the word out about your company, your product, your service.

That should raise some important questions for you. What can you do to help bloggers in return? What is a fair exchange? Does some notion of the Golden Rule come into play? Is it fair to pay someone more to empty your waste baskets than what you might spend to help bloggers who can create legitimate "buzz" on your company, product or service? Do I have to bring Hayek into the picture for you?

I don't have the answers for you. You've got to decide how you run your business and live your life. I simply suggest that you think carefully about these questions and Scoble's post.

The last thing I want to do is to turn my blog into something where people need to pay to get mentioned, and I hope that my comments are not construed in that way. That's not what I'm about and I don't believe it's what the medium is about. However, I don't think that it's unreasonable for me to ask you to at least think about ways you might help me accomplish things I want to accomplish in my business and my life if I am able to help you accomplish things you want to accomplish. I am a little surprised that I feel the need to say aloud this very basic principle.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:57 PM

The Hayekian Structure of Blogging

As part of my continuing, and increasingly desperate, effort to reach out and attempt to get the law professor blogs to take notice of practicing lawyer bloggers (especially me), I again highlight one of the law professor blogs I read on a regular basis.

Larry Ribstein's Ideoblog is a regular read in FeedDemon for me. Some people believe that I am having fun with this series of posts on law professor blogs (and perhaps I am), but the truth is that I am mentioning blogs that I regularly read the feeds of and find quite valuable.

Today, Professor Ribstein made an excellent point that I probably would have never otherwise considered in his post called "The law and economics of blogging."

Here, at least for me, is the money quote:

"[T]his sort of blogging (I'm still deciding what to call it) involves at least two characteristics: (1) a Hayekian system for creating knowledge; and (2) an alternative incentive system for spurring this creation. . . . By a Hayekian system, I mean that the web is a decentralized information market, where nearly infinite inputs, each perhaps inconsequential, create valuable knowledge."

While some other practicing lawyer bloggers might use words like "impenetrable" to describe this passage, I, on the other hand, after an initial bout of dizziness, am quite intrigued by Professor Ribstein's approach and his conclusions, which I like:

"This leads to some specific applications.

+ We should be wary about creating broad vicarious liability for co-bloggers. This is not the sort of business in the conventional sense that generally gives rise to partnership-type liability, even if the blogger does take ads.

+ "Loss-leader" posters should not face the sort of professional liability that is triggered by conventional professional advice.

+ Bloggers should get journalist-type (though possibly at a lower level) first amendment protection, e.g., as from testifying in the Plame case."

Here's my interpretation: Look, bloggers just want to have fun and we are having fun (even the lawyer bloggers are having fun!), so, for God's sake can we go slow on having the non-blogging lawyers and legislators move in and ruin the fun for everyone.

If it takes a Hayekian analysis to keep the fun in blogging, then, by all means, bring on the Hayek. Can I get Hayek's works on iTunes?

Professor Ribstein's post sets out his thoughts for an upcoming presentation next month. Illinois is close enough to St. Louis that I might actually attend this presentation.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 08:52 PM

DennisKennedy.Blog Birthday Week – ABA TECHSHOW Discounts!

OK, I can’t really give you my own special discount on the ABA TECHSHOW 2005 registration fee. But I can let you know that there is an early bird discount of $100 that expires on Friday. It makes a difference.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 08:18 PM

February 15, 2005

DennisKennedy.Blog Birthday Week – Get Your Gmail Invitations!

Like others with gmail accounts, I've found that I have a stash of gmail invitations; it looks like I have 98 of them.

For readers of DennisKennedy.Blog, I'm offering an invitation for any reader who requests one, until they run out. Simply email me at denniskennedyblog @ gmail.com, with your real name and contact info and I'll send you an invitation. I'll do this as long as I have invitations to give away.

A personal note or words of encouragement are not required, but will be appreciated.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 10:53 PM

Celebrating the Second Blawgiversary of DennisKennedy.Blog – Fun! Prizes! Gifts! Discounts! Surprises!

On February 15, 2003, I launched DennisKennedy.Blog using a quote from Babylon 5 as the title of my first post: "And so it begins." As my friends like to point out, I'd been thinking about and talking about a blog for a lo-o-o-ong time before I launched it.

The blog was an early birthday present to I gave myself in 2003. My birthday is February 17. One of the interesting things (at least to me) in my life is that I have a surprising number of very close friends who have birthdays in the few days before and after my birthday.

I wanted to celebrate my blogging anniversary, my birthday and my friends' birthdays with a special week-long blog party, from February 15 through February 21.

Here's what you'll see in the next few days:

+ Special free downloads! Including a PDF archive file of all my posts.

+ Gmail Invitations!

+ Discounts! On non-legal services, products and seminars ordered this week.

+ More Answers to Your Questions!

+ Acceptance of Your Linked-in Invitations!

+ Chances to Donate to SOme of My Favorite Charities! Use this link to donate to my favorite charities.

+ Chances to Buy Me Presents! See this special Amazon Wishlist.

+ Sponsorship Opportunities! Publicize your company by sponsoring a day of DennisKennedy.Blog Birthday Week.

+ Surprises!

Watch for more information and details each day! Email me with best wishes, questions, requests for info about sponsorships and whatever else is on your mind at denniskennedyblog @ gmail.com.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 10:31 PM

The Most Dangerous Move a Driver Can Make Around a Cyclist?

I haven’t gotten a lot of chances to ride my bike this winter. Blame the weather, my inability to get connected with my winter cycling buddy, other burdens and distractions.

Today's ride gave me a chance to shake off some of rust, both physically and in my riding skills.

I was barely three blocks from home when a large SUV slapped the rust off with a move that is truly one of the most dangerous things a driver can do around someone on a bicycle, or any other non-automobile set of wheels. My bicycling guru, Howard Smith, took great pains several years ago when I got back into riding to warn me about this situation. I haven't seen it in quite a while, but it is shocking when it happens.

I mention this to help you think about the situation and, I hope, avoid it.

Here's the scenario:

I'm riding my bike on a through street, watching for traffic coming from the side streets.

Here's the sequence of events:

1. A car approaches from behind as I approach I side street where I've already seen that no cars are waiting at the stop sign. There is no question that the driver of the approaching car has seen me.

2. The car passes me, swinging a little wide. The little bit of a wide swing actually contributes to the problem, because I start to believe that the driver is considerate and giving me extra space.

3. As the car passes, I start to accelerate after slowing slightly as the car approaches.

4. With no signal or other warning, the car makes a right turn across my path onto the side street. If you mapped out the scene, I was probably at the epicenter of the driver's right side blind spot.

5. I hit the brakes hard and, although I'm not saying that I did this, someone without maximum self-control might start yelling at the driver, using language some might find inappropriate. The driver, looking in the rear view mirror and oblivious to what has just happened, wonders what my problem is.

6. (Optional) The cyclist spends most of the rest of his or her ride composing a blog post about the dangers drivers of large SUVs pose to cyclists.

What is shocking about this move is how sudden and unexpected it is and how horrified the driver of the car would be if he or she realized or saw what he or she had done. I'll also note that I was much closer to the car when I hit the brakes than you might expect from the just-the-facts tone of my narrative.

For me, being three blocks into my ride, it actually helped get the blood and adrenalin flowing so I didn’t need much more warm-up.

So, I spent a good chunk of the rest of my ride thinking about safety. It's a big issue because it seems like driver's education classes dropped the chapter on sharing the road with bicycles many years ago. Many drivers simply do not know what to do around cyclists and unnecessarily place cyclists into danger. There is another set of drivers who are aggressively hostile toward cyclists, and proud of it. I actually know some of these people. I will not ride my bike in their neighborhoods.

My conclusion is that I can do nothing less than take on 100% of the effort on my safety and not rely on drivers to accept any of the burdens. It's not that I ride super-cautiously, but I also assume that I am the one who will need to make the extra effort a meeting between and a driver.

Obviously, I believe that wearing a helmet is essential. I also will not wear headphones or listen to music while riding. Being able to hear cars and other dangers is a must.

What I've decided is the biggest danger is unpredictability. That's the key element of danger in the scenario I sketched out above. The car simply does something much unexpected and, unfortunately, in a way that leaves little time to react. A pothole, grate or broken glass is not a big issue if I know where it is or see it far enough in advance. If I don’t know about it in advance, any of these can turn into a big problem.

What I've noticed lately is that it’s the large SUVs that often cause the biggest problems.

A common, easy-to-understand, problem comes with drivers of new SUVs who don't have a good sense yet of how wide they are. They'll often come much closer to a rider than they probably believe they have.

The other thing is the surprising number of times a driver of an SUV will look right at you and pull right out in front of you. It's an amazing phenomenon that used to catch me off guard. You know that the driver is sitting up high enough to see everything and they are looking right at you, but they still pull out in front of you.

After a few of these experiences, I realized that looking at you is a far different thing than seeing you.

Now I have a "safety factor" I assign to any encounter with a car. It works like this:

Safety factor = (looking at you + paying attention + expectation + recognition)

Let me explain.

I wanted to end up with a number for the safety factor between 1 and 100. You might play with the weighting of the elements, but I give each of the four elements a possible score of 25 points. The higher the score, the better.

I think that you need to consider all four elements. Looking at you is not the same as seeing you. The driver must also be paying attention while looking and they must recognize you as someone on a bicycle they need to be concerned about. Recognition improves as expectation increases.

Expectation is a very important factor. During the winter, drivers simply do not expect to see people on bicycles. It's cold and it's not summer. During the winter, I assume a score of zero on expectation. This means that the best safety factor I expect when encountering a car in winter is 75 out of 100. In other words, I simply have to be more careful in the winter.

In the classic SUV pulling out in front of you scenario, I score a 25 for looking at you. I mean, they are looking right at me. Where the problem arises most often is in paying attention. If you see a cell phone in hand, you might as well drop the paying attention factor to zero.

Finally, the driver has to put the whole picture together. They must recognize you as a bicyclist who they must deal with as another vehicle on the road. I ride a red bike and usually wear bright colors, but I often notice that drivers do not recognize that I exist or will be surprised as if I appeared out of nowhere. The issue is one of recognition. If a driver is not expecting someone on a bike, they will generally only see cars – that's what they are looking for.

So, I ride toward a large SUV ready to pull out from a side street. I see that the driver is talking on a cell phone while looking right at me. Assume it is winter time. My safety factor calculation probably goes to 25 and I give serious thought to stopping the bike, getting off of it and standing on the sidewalk or grass until the SUV driver has turned onto the road and gotten out of range.

Another element of safety is position. I can generally do a good job with things that happen in front of me, especially if they occur at a distant beyond the distance required for me to stop. I can also do a pretty good job reacting to things behind me, especially if I'm not wearing headphones or listening to music and if I use a rearview mirror.

The danger comes from something that happens beside me or a very short distance in front of me. I almost have no control over the situation. The "right turn after passing you" scenario involves both of these things.

Let me bring this to an end by talking about the three biggest dangers when riding on a bike trail, or, more accurately, a multi-purpose trail.

I actually found myself in the most dangerous bike trail scenario today, but it is a relatively common one.

In reverse order:

#3. Encountering anyone wearing headphones. It takes ears and eyes to be safe. Walkers, roller-bladers and cyclists listening to music on headphones have a tendency to "zone out." A common effect is that they will "drift" on the path and, unaware of you, put themselves directly in your path.

#2. Inadequately supervised small children who are unfamiliar or unskilled in riding whatever set of wheels they are riding. Please notice all of the qualifiers. The problem is not the children – they are just being kids. It's a parental problem. The closest I've ever come to hitting a child while riding a bike happened on a trail when I had all but come to a stop and a child did the most unexpected move that he could have made (the child was walking). The parents were walking close by, but not close enough and it was almost a real problem, even though I was barely moving and had moved almost as far out on the wrong side of the path as I could move.

#1. Dogs on any kind of long leash, but especially those reel-em-up leashes. Talk about the ultimate unpredictability. Many trails now seem to post rules on this issue. I like dogs (although I'm allergic to them), but they will do unpredictable things, especially if they encounter another dog. Giving a dog enough leash to let the dog cross the dividing line on a two-lane path is inviting a collision. The concept of a reel-in leash is a good one, but you need to know to use them. In my incident today, the owner had about 15 feet of leash out and the dog crossed over the lane right in front of me, bringing me to a stop while the owner figured out how to reel in the leash. A collision between a dog and a bike will not be a good thing for anyone, but tangling up a dog and a roller-blader would be very bad indeed.

As they say, hey, let's all be careful out there.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 10:23 PM

Bicycling Grant's Trail

I celebrated the second anniversary of my blog today in two ways that were just about perfect.

First, is there a better way to celebrate the anniversary of your blawg than with a long phone conversation with the legendary Ernie the Attorney? It was great to do a little catching up.

Second, I took advantage of an unseasonably mild February day in St. Louis to go on a long bike ride to and on the nearby Grant's Trail. With a cold front heading our way threatening to take 40 degrees off today's temperatures, I couldn't resist. The temperature hit 74 degrees today, with not a cloud in the sky. Even the stiff headwind that knocked about 6 to 8 miles an hour off my speed on the return trip could not detract from this ride.

I enjoy having a nice bike trail nearby. Grant's Trail is named for President Ulysses Grant and you pass by some historic Grant landmarks and Anheuser-Busch's Grant's Farm attraction. It's a relatively flat, paved trail with two lanes and friendly people walking, running, biking and roller-blading. It's five miles in length, with expansion in the works.

One of my favorite things about the trail is that it is next to the stables and grazing areas for the Budweiser Clydesdales. Many of them were out this afternoon and I noticed one very young colt.

If I ride the trail early on summer mornings, I'll sometimes happen on a scene with the early morning sun shining off the remnants of a mist rising off the grass and the Clydesdales kicking it up in the fields. It's quite a spectacular thing.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 10:20 PM

Are Posts About Group Blogs as Partnerships Ads in Feeds?

As part of my ongoing commitment to reach out to law professor blogs, I highlight another of the law professor blogs I read regularly - Stephen Bainbridge's excellent ProfessorBainbridge.com, which covers coporate law and a multitude of other topics.

Professor Bainbridge may have given us the first clear example of the use of an ad in an RSS feed with his post called Are Group Blogs Partnerships?

This ad for his book on corporate law is a good model of the tasteful informercial approach to advertising in RSS feeds that bloggers might adopt successfully. It avoids pop-ups, animations and other intrusive ad techniques. I, for one, got most of the way through the ad before I even realized that it was an ad for the book - a tribute to the professor's writing skills.

For those, especially those in academia, fundamentally opposed to ads in feeds, I recommend this ad as a good example to study for a model of the types of tasteful and informative ways bloggers can use ads in RSS feeds as a way to monetize blogs.

I have two specific comments about this use of an ad in a feed:

1. Professor Bainbridge neglects a simple addition to the hyperlink to his book that will increase the commission he will receive on purchases through the Amazon Associates program. I'd be happy to share this technique with him.

2. Does this use of advertising undercut the credibility of Professor Bainbridge's analysis of the legal issues that he discusses in the text of the article? For me, it does not, in part because his analysis is well-reasoned and I'm sure would be echoed by other professors and commentators. However, others might disagree.

This use of advertising in RSS feeds gives us food for thought and an excellent example of a real-world use that can be discussed as part of the "ads in feeds" debate.

As he concludes in his ad, er, post, go buy his book (but preferably from my Amazon Associates link).

Note: The ad appears to be working - only four copies of the book were in stock at Amazon.com when I published this post.

[This post originally appeared on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/.]

Posted by dmk at 09:28 AM

February 14, 2005

Susan Crawford Praises Amateurism in the Blogging Context

One of the law professor blogs I enjoy reading is Susan Crawford's blog, which I highly recommend.

Sometimes, as I've commented before, you can read the law professor blogs and get the feeling that practicing lawyer blogs don't even exist. I figure that it's all a process of education and it's always good to extend the olive branch (or maybe wave it wildly so the profs notice it) to those in the ivory towers of academe.

Susan penned a Valentine's euology of sorts for Benjamin Franklin and a mini-ode to amateurism today that very much captures the feeling of energy and potential that I feel in the blogosphere these days.

Unfortunately, at the same time, her post reminded me of the disconnect those of us in the practice feel when we think of our brothers and sisters in academia. The professors praise the amateur ideals of blogging, while those of us outside the walls of academia think of ways to turn pro with our blogs and earn a few dollars for our time and efforts in blogging. The irony, of course, is that we often talk about becoming a professor as one way of turning pro while some professors (and I don't consider Susan in this group) see themselves as the Platonic ideals of amateurism. Go figure.

It's no wonder that (1) the Matt Homann for Top 20 Legal Thinker write-in campaign has drawn such interest and (2) you don't see my name on the list of Top 20 Legal Thinker nominees - I don't seem to be capable of making these "fine distinctions." I'm the practical kind.

Posted by dmk at 09:20 PM

Jerry Lawson is Back in Form and We All Benefit

The best news in the legal blog world is that Jerry Lawson has increased the volume of his posting to his blogs. It seemed to me that he slowed his pace substantially after a serious car accident a while back (perhaps a year or more) involving Jerry and his wife (I believe that both are now doing well) and a period of heavy work demands.

If you hadn't heard the story, Jerry was driving around one of the major circles in Washington DC when a tree fell into the circle and hit his car. Jerry's wife took the brunt of the impact and I know that her recovery has taken a good deal of time.

I've known Jerry for many years and had the pleasure of writing columns and articles with him for a good number of those years, as well as the book project we recently pulled the plug on. I've never found anyone who "gets" the implications of the Internet for lawyers (and others) more than Jerry does.

Well, I noticed Jerry has been linking to a number of my posts lately with favorable comments about them - that means a lot to me.

Yesterday, Jerry wrote about one of his long-time favorite topics - narrowcasting. It's fascinating to me how many times I'll see people grappling with what seem to be new ideas and realize that Jerry spoke and wrote about them in clear, yet sophisticated, ways several years before.

For me, reading Jerry's blogs is like going to the best school I can find. And it's free. I recommend that you find time to attend as well.

Posted by dmk at 08:31 PM

February 13, 2005

You'll Want to Be Sure to Read This New Blawg from Reid Trautz

A good number of legal bloggers have been twisting the arm of the DC Bar's Reid Trautz to start a blog. Our efforts have paid off with the debut of the cleverly-named Reid My Blog!

Like Jim Calloway, Reid is a well-liked and well-respected authority on a variety of law practice management topics and his regular insights will be a welcome addition to the blogosphere. Reid is an excellent speaker and a frequent author who widelyknown for providing great, practical information.

The debut of Reid's blog ramps up the pressure on a number of other highly-regarded law practice management experts who are very close to launching blogs. Watch for new developments in this area. I'm seeing seeing the faint outlines of the initials "DP" in my crystal ball.

Welcome aboard, Reid.

Subscribed!

Posted by dmk at 09:58 PM

February 11, 2005

Colorado Law Firms Have Great Opportunity to Hire Well-known Young Legal Blogger

From the Math Class for Poets blog:

Tim Hadley, the author of the well-known legal blog, Math Class for Poets, posts about his availability, experience and credentials as he begins his hunt for a new legal position. It's rare that a young blogger with Tim's history (blogging since mid-2003) and stature becomes available on the job market. Law firms in the Denver area, especially any law firm contemplating launching blogs in the future, have the chance to pick up a gem.

Check out Tim's post and, even you you aren't in a position to interview Tim, let's see if we can help him out in his search.

[Originally posted by Dennis Kennedy on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/).]