Law X.0

BLUtube First Online Video Community for Law Enforcement

BLUtube is the first online video community for police officers and departments nationwide. BLUtube offers members of the law enforcement community a secure environment in which to view and upload videos. BLUtube includes law enforcement-only sections with video tips, roll call training segments and in-car videos.

Hat tip to Podcasting News. [JH]

Navigating Social Networking Tools

Check out Navigating Social Networking Tools: Blogs, Wikis, RSS Feeds and Beyond, by Elizabeth Geesey Holmes, University of Georgia School of Law. Here's the abstract:

What are “social networking” tools, and why should lawyers care about them? Wikipedia, itself built on social networking software, notes that social networking refers to a category of Internet applications to help connect friends, business partners, or other individuals together using a variety of tools. These applications, known as online social networks are becoming increasingly popular. This phenomenon is also known as Web 2.0. Jack Maness, a librarian at University of Colorado at Boulder, defines it as, "not a web of textual publication, but a web of multi-sensory communication … a matrix of dialogues, not a collection of monologues. It is a user-centered Web in ways it has not been thus far." In Web 2.0 the end user – you – is (or at least has the option to be) an integral part of the data. Some of the social networking tools you may or may not be familiar with are: Blogs, Wikis, RSS Feeds, Tagging/Bookmark sites, Podcasts and Vodcasts. I will discuss these tools, how to find them, how to use them, and their possible relevance for lawyers and for legal research.

[JH]

Legal Issues for Social Networking Sites and Users

Interesting article from Findlaw:

"It seems that everyone is a member of a social network these days. Whether it's your kids on MySpace and Facebook, or your colleagues on LinkedIn, people are taking advantage of these new online meeting spaces to make friends, communicate and expand business opportunities.

But what are the legal obligations that arise out of the use of social networks, both for the user and the sites themselves? The law in this area is still relatively unsettled, but some recent developments have created intriguing precedent, and legislation in motion promises to keep things interesting for the foreseeable future." 

[RJ