Law X.0

Corporate Blogs, PR Rubbish or Provider of Insider Info

Check out what Mashable's Don Reisinger has to say. [JH]

New Practitioner Law Blogs

Drug Injury Lawyer Blog
http://www.druginjurylawyerblog.com
http://www.druginjurylawyerblog.com/index.xml

A legal blog that covers drug injury law, as well as news and events associated with drug injury and product liability law. Published by the drug injury lawyers at the firm of Pogust, Braslow & Milrood.

Indiana Injury Blog
http://www.indianainjuryblog.com
http://www.indianainjuryblog.com/index.xml

Paul Kruse, Pete Obremskey, and Tony Patterson discuss injury-related news, Indiana laws, and Indiana Court decisions.

San Diego Injury Law Blog
http://www.legalpad.com/
http://www.legalpad.com/index.xml

Randall R. Walton and D. Scott Barber are San Diego Injury Attorneys and discuss personal injury, insurance, and professional negligence-related matters.

1 Trillion Unique URLs! So Many Destinations, So Slow an Internet Connection

From Google Blog's post We knew the web was big...:

We've known it for a long time: the web is big. The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we've seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is really out there. Recently, even our search engineers stopped in awe about just how big the web is these days -- when our systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once!

But how are we going to beat the rest of the world in accessing all these web destinations when the US is so far behind so many other countries in average broadband speed? [JH]

Facebook Demographics

Check out Ben Lorica's posts on O'Reilly Radar:

• Where Does Facebook Grow From Here
• Facebook Growth By Country and the Slowdown in App Usage

[JH]

Technorati Solicits Survey Participants for Its 2008 State of the Blogosphere Study

From the announcement:

Bloggers,

Technorati has been tracking the Blogosphere for the past several years through our State of the Blogosphere study. This year we have decided to expand our study beyond the sheer size and characteristics of the blogosphere in order to hear more from you, the bloggers. How, when and why are you blogging? Is this a side business, full time job or something you do for fun? Our goal is to analyze the growth of the field as well as understand the people who make the space tick. Help us and join the study of the ongoing global conversation!

Click here to take the survey! http://v2.decipherinc.com/survey/mmc/mmc08001

We hope you will find this survey enjoyable. It should take just 15-20 minutes of your time, and your responses are entirely confidential. Be sure to check back on Technorati in late September for a summary of the results.

Thank you,
The Technorati Team

New Practitioner Law Blogs

H1B Visa Lawyer Blog
http://www.h1bvisalawyerblog.com/
http://www.h1bvisalawyerblog.com/index.xml

Covers immigration and visa law in the United States including news, and recent developments. Published by Baltimore, Maryland Immigration attorneys at the MVP Law Group.

Health Care Lawyer Blog
http://www.healthcarelawyerblog.com
http://www.healthcarelawyerblog.com/index.xml

Covers health care law, including news, events, and recent developments. Published by the Michigan health care law attorneys at the legal firm of Frank, Haron, Weiner & Navarro.

The Employment Law Chronicle
http://www.employmentlawchronicle.com
http://www.employmentlawchronicle.com/index.xml

Covers employment and labor law, including news, events, and recent developments. Published by the Virginia employment attorneys at the Searcy Law Offices.

British Businessman Wins Libel Case Over False Facebook Profile

In a test case the managing director of Applause Store Productions, Mathew Firsht, won a libel case last Thursday at High Court in London over false claims posted about him on Facebook. According to The Guardian, here's the facts of the case:

After Grant Raphael had a row with his old school friend Mathew Firsht, he wanted revenge. He disseminated a web of lies via Facebook, to cause Firsht stress and humiliation.

Yesterday Raphael was ordered by the high court in London to pay £22,000 damages to Firsht, after the freelance television cameraman created fake, malicious entries about the businessman.

Confidential details about Firsht's whereabouts, activities and birthday were "laid bare" on the social networking website for 16 days after Raphael posted the false profiles.

Firsht, managing director of Applause Store Productions, had his sexual orientation and political views misrepresented by Raphael, who also created a company profile called "Has Mathew Firsht lied to you?", from a computer at the flat where Raphael was living in Hampstead, north-west London, in June last year.

The UK court awarded Firsht £15,000 (about $30,000) and his television company, Applause Store Productions, £5,000 ($10,000) in libel damages. [JH]

Crownsourcing Cuil, the "Google-buster" Search Engine

Twitterati and many, many others have published less than stellar reviews of the just launched Cuil search engine. Will the new SE may be the latest in a long list of failed challenges to Google's search engine? Details at Twitterati Pan Launch of "Google-buster" Search Engine Cuil. [JH]

Open Web Foundation Launched

Six Apart’s David Recordon announced the creation of the Open Web Foundation at the OSCON Open Source Convention. The Open Web Foundation is a meta-standards organization dedicated to smoothing the way for large businesses to embrace open web standards like OAuth, OpenID, etc. Following the open source model similar to the Apache Software Foundation, the foundation is aimed at building a lightweight framework to help communities deal with the legal requirements necessary to create successful and widely adopted specification. View Recordan's OSCON presentation.

Should we care about open web standards like OpenID and OAuth? Yes, according to Mashable's Rob Diana:

OpenID and OAuth are needed for a better user experience. OpenID solves the problem of having far too many usernames and passwords to remember. OAuth solves the problem of how to share information between sites without giving your password from one site to another. Together the technologies may make things simpler for the user. Thankfully, users do not need to do anything to take advantage of these technologies. The one thing users can do is email the support team of each of your favorite sites and make sure they support OpenID and OAuth.

See also Mashable's Poll: How Often Do You Use OpenID to Login? [JH]

[JH]

To Do List for Bloggers

Here's a checklist of 101 activities bloggers can do to keep themselves busy when writer's block strikes. [JH]

AOL Blogs Shutting Down

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is reporting that AOL is making across the board budget cuts on its blogging properties, but one area that seems to be immune from the cuts is the Company's Tech Network (Engadget, Switched, TUAW: The Unofficial Apple Weblog, and Download Squad), which continues to generate substantial revenue. The future of many bloggers whose sole source of income comes from writing for AOL blogs appears to be uncertain.

Arrington is also reporting that AOL is "sunsetting" the photo sharing site AOL Pictures, multimedia slideshow service Bluestring, and online storage service Xdrive. [JH]