vote | Advocate's Studio

Well, whaddya know? My little piece of the Web got nominated for an AWARD. I got an email from the American Bar Association that someone actually nominated Advocate’s Studio for inclusion on the ABA’s Blawg 100 – and it got a few votes! And, as far as I can tell, it wasn’t me, my friends or family doing the voting! Woot! If you head over to the link above and register, you can vote for it too!

The blog is listed in the ABA’s Legal Technology category, which is fitting since comparative religions and philosophy isn’t what I am writing about here. I am all about making the job faster, easier and more fun with technology. I have to admit, it makes me quite happy to see that someone is reading my blog. While I do write for the sheer pleasure of doing so – I really love digging up tech tips, tricks, new tools and applications and reporting on them here – it is always great to get some positive feedback.

My blog has come a long way from its humble origins on WordPress.com in early 2008. I had a lot to learn, and find I am still learning. Lots. Shortly after I started blogging, I read on the Web that other professionals were concerned that there were no blogging women lawyers out there. I found this interesting – my decision to blog was a direct result of finding some particularly fantastic female bloggers in the space (Susan Cartier Liebel, Nicole Black and Carolyn Elefant, to name a few) and getting inspired to try it myself (here is the blog post I wrote in response to C.C. Holland’s inability to find us). And I haven’t always been kind to the ABA in connection with the Blawg 100 – last year I did criticize the process due to the lack of female representation in the tech category in particular (here is my mini rant on that one). I am happy to say that there are now three women-operated blogs in the tech category – 33 1/3% of those listed. That’s progress. Last year, less than 10% were represented across the Blawg 100’s entire list. But lets not stop there – we still have some ground to cover.

But much like an actor dissing the Oscars until being awarded one of the golden statues, bottom line is, here I am, grateful for the honor. I am going to keep on writing as long as I can, and your readership and interest help keep it all going.

Oh, and thanks to mom and dad for the unending support and encouragement, my dear husband who periodically needs to retrieve me from tech hell, and my kids who, despite the fact they have no idea what I am doing typing away furiously on the computer, think it is pretty cool anyway.

Peace out. 🙂

What do you get when you cross the now, apparently, defunct Socialmedian and social-question-site darling Quora? Well, I am not sure, but it might look something like XYDO. If you like your news crowdsourced, timely and with a healthy side of friends, then XYDO might interest you. Instead of using algorithms to filter news of interest, XYDO prompts you to use your trusted friends to sift the good stuff to the top of your web page. You create an “activity stream” of content by choosing fairly fine-grained topics of interest and friends to follow from your social services. This content is pulled from links shared by these users. Further break down this content by stories that are trending, newest or top in the past 24 hours (or current). If you want a broader view of the news, step back and peruse the front page, so to speak, which pulls top content sitewide. Each news story offers some interaction as well, in the form of a voting option (which looks a lot like Quora’s answer voting mechanism), the identity of who shared the story, the categories the story belongs to, how and when the story was shared and a process for commenting on or discussing the story within the news blurb displayed on your XYDO page. And, when you check out a story, note the related articles showing in the right hand column – you could dig yourself pretty far down into a given topic pretty if you are following the right people and subject matter. And it isn’t all tech – some of the early closed beta adopters set up some legal channels in XYDO, so the topical content is not strictly tech-oriented (although I don’t mind that particular orientation myself).

Follow content, follow sources, contribute your own sources to existing topics. Trending updates on a story can show back up in Twitter from XYDO if you choose to follow them there or keep tabs on the highly interactive, clickable, information-laden XYDO page. But don’t forget to leave a trail of popcorn – if you are a news junkie like me, you might need some help getting back out of the forest of information.

When all is said and done, I like XYDO’s take on news delivery, post-information explosion. It seems the best options for filtering content these days are either leveraging high tech algorithms or leveraging people you know and trust. No matter how you slice the “behind the scenes”, any filtering, tagging and sorting of the vast quantities of content is a GOOD thing. Cheers to XYDO – hope they keep it flying.

This week, XYDO opened its closed beta doors to the public. Go check them out at the link above and add your own voice to the mix – the more quality curators hopping on board, the better this crowdsourced news mecca will become.