Peer to Peer Magazine

March 2011

The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association

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Are Tablets Ready for Prime Time? In general, the tablets’ functionality via individual applications or the browser exhibited much the same behaviors as their desktop counterparts. Combine a few Cloud-based services with a PDF reader, and an entire law practice — from billing to trial presentation — can be run on either platform today. If Only There Was a Crystal Ball App for Tablets Foretelling exactly how tablet technology will evolve is difficult, but, one thing is certain: tablets will become lighter, faster, cheaper, and offer higher storage capacity as they become increasingly ubiquitous. Based on their rapidly increasing popularity in both the consumer and business markets, law firm adoption for them will surely increase exponentially over the next two years. ILTA Rakesh Madhava is the CEO at Nextpoint, delivering cloud-based technology products and services to preserve, store, process, and manage sensitive, business-critical information. He can be reached at rmadhava@nextpoint.com. Outlook Social Networking Connectors by Natalie Huha I n the latest release of Outlook 2010, users are embracing features such as Conversation view, Group Schedule view and Quick Steps. However, nothing has taken center stage for discussion more than the Outlook Social Connector (OSC) in the People Pane. The OSC brings a view of your clients’ and colleagues’ social activity straight to your Inbox. The OSC is a simple add-in that creates a place to gather activity from Microsoft-partnered social networking websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and, as of July 2010, WindowsLive. As you read your e-mail messages, you can glance down at the People Pane to view an aggregated collection of the recipient’s social activity. Keep in mind, the social activity displayed is based on which sites you have permitted to connect via your individual social networking account(s). The ability to stay socially connected creates a dynamic and immediate picture of your contact’s activity. This could prove to be extremely beneficial for developing, maintaining and building relationships in a new world of social communications. On the flip side, it is important to understand the public and privacy settings of these sites. Two key areas to understand, as referenced on Microsoft’s Outlook Social Connector website are: • Social networks can only match the e-mail addresses if they are already known to the social network (i.e., a social network such as Facebook won’t know a person’s e-mail address if it is not already associated with an account on Facebook). • The information from a social network that ’s available in Outlook is based upon the person’s privacy settings for that social network. For firms planning to migrate to Outlook 2010, the decision to implement the Outlook Social Connector should be based on firm policies, culture and business needs. Users will also require proper training and education. However, if you choose not to implement social communications via OCS, think about what happens if your competition does choose to implement it. ILTA Natalie Huha, Principal and Co-Founder of JustEngage, Inc., has over nine years of experience in the legal industry. Natalie specializes in social business development, collaborative technologies and training. Natalie currently serves as the VP of Content Management for the local Delaware Valley chapter of HelpDesk International and was a past ILTA Steering Committee Representative for User Support. She can be reached at nhuha@justengage.net or on Twitter @ legalerswelcome. Peer to Peer the quarterly magazine of ILTA 49

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