Law X.0

Blogging for Business Results

Blogs have emerged as a serious project management tool according to the Project Management Institute article. Read more about it. [JH]

Topical Blog Directories Masquerading as Blog Rankings: Criminal Justice and Law School Blogs

Producers of Criminal Justice Degrees Guide and College Degree websites have realized that if they create selected topical blog directories and call them "Top [insert number] Blogs" their websites will get more visitors than if they call them what they really are. Of the two listed below, the selected directory of criminal justice blogs is better executed and may be useful.

Criminal Justice Degrees Guide's Top 100 Criminal Justice Blog Directory is organized by the following categories:

• Police and Detective Blogs
• Law Schools
• Advice, News and Resources
• Corrections and Sentencing
• Attorney Blogs
• Judges and Court
• Criminal Psychology and Social Psychology
• Individual Rights and Public Defenders
• Federal Criminal Justice and Issues
• International Criminal Justice and Immigration
• Forensic Science and Technology
• Miscellaneous

College Degree's Top 50 Law School Blog Directory is organized by the following categories:

• Law Within and Beyond Academia
• Types of Law
• Specific Law Schools
• Blogs Featuring Blogs
• Especially For or By Students

[JH]

Cuba Bars Blogger from Accepting Award in Spain

Yoani Sanchez, creator of a critical blog titled Generation Y that has received over a million hits was awarded a journalism award in Spain but she won't be going to the ceremony to accept the award. Her blog criticism is more generational than political. She expresses the alienation and cynicism shared by many Cuban young people. Listen to the NPR report. [JH]

Blogging Till You Drop

Do professional bloggers work in a digital sweatshop? Are bloggers dropping dead, gaining or losing weight, experiencing sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies from the nonstop strain of producing content for the blogosphere? According to the New York Time's Matt Richtel, yes! Check out his article, In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop. Hat tip to Ellen Podgor (Stetson), White Collar Crime Prof Blog. [JH]

Tips on Becoming a Successful Blogger

Common sense tips from the New York Time's Paul Boutin in So You Want to Be a Blogging Star? [JH]

Another New Legal Education Reform Blog

Hosted by the Elon University Law School, the Center for Engaged Learning in the Law Blog "is intended to contribute to the discourse on teaching and learning in law, from the inspirational to the whimsical, to the mechanical. It includes the varying perspectives of teachers, administrators, learners and practicioners." See our earlier Law Librarian Blog posts covering this growing body of resourses:

• On Reforming Legal Education: Cheatsheets, Required Readings, Etc.
• A Quick Look at Best Practices for Legal Education Blog
• Transforming Legal Education: Learning and Teaching the Law in the Early Twenty-First Century

[JH]

Newspaper Bloggers Strike!

The AFL-CIO Blog is reporting what may be the first ever blogger labor strike.  The bloggers are writers at The Honolulu Advertiser and members of The Newspaper Guild-CWA Local 39117. Hat tip to Adjunct Law Prof Blog. [JH]

More Chinese Dissidents Sue Yahoo!

Yahoo faces another lawsuit over its cooperation with the Chinese government. The claims include violation of international law including torture and prolonged detention, as well as unfair business practices, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment and assault.

The allegations:

1. Yahoo provided information to the Chinese authorities that led to the 2003 arrest of Li Zhi, who has served about half of an eight-year sentence;
2. When the Li Zhi arrest came to light in 2006, Plaintiff Zheng Cunzhu was living in the United States at the time and lost his property in China when he did not return for fear of getting arrested for his pro-democracy activities; and
3. A second dissident plaintiff, Guo Quan, claims he lost business when his name and that of his garment company were blocked by the Yahoo search results.

Hat tip to Rebecca MacKinnon, RConversation (citing Business Week). [JH]

Free Fouad who is searching for freedom, dignity, justice, equality, public participation, and all the rest of lost Islamic values, and for Raghad and Khetab

Several "Free Fouad websites have popped up online and a group with the same name boasts more than 900 members on Facebook, all in support of Fouad al-Farhan, a Saudi blogger who was jailed late last year remains in prison more than two months later for unspecified charges. Al-Farhan — known on the Internet as the "Dean of Saudi Bloggers" — a 32-year-old father of two was arrested on December 10 shortly after one of his blog entries was critical of influential Saudi religious, business and media figures. His blog's slogan is: "Searching for freedom, dignity, justice, equality, public participation, and all the rest of lost Islamic values, and for Raghad and Khetab" -- a reference to his two children. CNN has the story. You can sign a petition calling for his release here. [JH]

The Stress of the Blogging Life

Check out this New York Times article: Some Brand-Name Bloggers Say Stress of Posting Is a Hazard to Their Health.

Note to bloggers: If blogging is stressful, maybe it's time to get a life. [JH]

Belated Happy 10th Anniversary Weblog

The BBC is reporting that the word "weblog" was coned ten years ago on December 17 1997 by Jorn Barger to describe what he was doing with his pioneering Robot Wisdom web page. And that blog is still online! [JH]

Did Practitioners' Blog Lead to Judge's Downfall?

According to Julie Kay's Judges Feel Legal Blogs' Glare, the Justice Building Blog (JBB Blog) was started in August 2006 by a group of criminal defense lawyers fed up with the way things were being run in the Broward (FL) courthouse. She reports, "in May, Dale Ross, chief judge for the Florida circuit court in Broward County for 16 years, stepped down following a year of embarrassing scandals, gaffes and bad behavior by his judges. Although pressure was building for Ross to resign for years, many legal observers say it would not have happened if not for the new Broward courthouse blog, JAA Blog."

Hat tip to Mitchell Rubinstein, Adjunct Law Prof Blog. [JH]

Yahoo Settles Suit Over Jailed Chinese Dissidents

Details about yesterday's the Yahoo!-Shi Tao settlement from CNN and the Wall Street Journal. [JH]

The 2007 Weblog Award Winners

Over 500,000 votes cast in 49 categories, here are the winners of the of The 2007 Weblog Awards. The Best Law Blog for 2007 goes to Above the Law. [JH]

Bloglines Beta - Now Open to the Public

From the Bloglines Blog:

"Blogliners we're proud to introduce a beta of our latest redesign of Bloglines. Our About Beta overview outlines the key features a personalizable home page, 3 reading-views and drag-and-drop foldering in an Ajax interface. We're inviting you, the Bloglines fans, to the new Bloglines beta in the redesign cycle to provide us feedback. We look forward meeting you in the forums or at conferences to brainstorm on ways to make Bloglines an even better feed reader.

The current Beta is available for Firefox and IE 7 browsers. Of course, the full-featured original Bloglines will still be available during the Beta period."  Check it out!  [RJ]

Bloggers Consider Forming Labor Union

AP is reporting that at the YearlyKos Convention, the Committee to Protect Bloggers is trying to band blogggers together to form a labor union the Committee hopes will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards. From the article:

The effort is an extension of the blogosphere's growing power and presence, especially within the political realm, and for many, evokes memories of the early labor organization of freelance writers in the early 1980s.

Organizers hope a bloggers' labor group will not only showcase the growing professionalism of the Web-based writers, but also the importance of their roles in candidates' campaigns.

Professional association, maybe. Union, not likely. Hat tip to Adjunct Law Prof Blog. [JH]

Library of Congress Tackles Selecting Blogs to Archive

The Library of Congress is interested in preserving blog content because it is a potentially important record of our time for future generations. But as with other forms of digital data, LC can’t hope — and, really, doesn’t want — to save all of the content being published in blogs. Read more about it in Computerworld. [JH]

New York Times Hires Popular Student Blogger as Media Reporter

The New York Times has hired recent college graduate Brian Stelter of TvNewser fame as its newest reporter according to Editor & Publisher. Poynteronline has the details. Can this be an example of how law student bloggers find employment?

Hat tip to Insert Tech Here. [JH]

Shucha Identifies 116 Blogs by Law Librarians

Bonnie Shucha, Head of Reference, University of Wisconsin Law Library, has updated her directory of law library blogs and blogs by law librians or law library associations. Check it out. [JH]

2007 Webby Nominees Announced, Vote for Your Favorites

The Nominees and Official Honorees for the 11th Annual Webby Awards have been announced. See them all and vote for your favorite Nominees until April, 27th. Congratulations to JURIST for being recognized as an Official Honoree in the Law. This is the first time in the Webbys' 11-year existence that an academic legal website has taken a distinction two years in a row. [JH]