How to rescue a drowned cell phone. |
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 Water. We can't survive without it for more than a few days. But if water is life to us, it's death to our precious electronic gadgets, especially cellphones. Drop your phone in the loo or even keep it too close to your body on a muggy summer's day and you can find yourself with an expensive paperweight. The manufacturers call this “liquid” or “water” damage” and specifically exclude it from their warranties. Many insurers won't pay out for it either.
Read more at Geekbeard Blog...
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 A year ago, the question everybody was asking was -When are you migrating to Office 2010 or 2007? The emerging questions are, "How much of Office 2010 or 2007 will you take advantage of?" and "How will you arm your users to cope with a dual-format environment?"
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 Piracy hinders prosperity. This is the united/resounding message coming from speakers at the Convention on Reducing Software Piracy organised by the Free Market Foundation (FMF) and the Information Technology Association (ITA), and hosted by Microsoft South Africa on Thursday.
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A recent survey focusing on the important role of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) in the legal process highlighted that while ESI has become a crucial part of the legal process, it has caused lawyers numerous problems over the past two years.
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 The aim of this white paper is to highlight the inefficient printing habits that are prevalent in various organisations worldwide and the cost savings and environmental benefits that can be harnessed through a proper print management system like PretonSaverTM.
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 For attorneys and law firms looking at creating or redesigning their website, the decision of choosing a specialised web design company is an important one. With the steady decline in success of print marketing, law firms are becoming more aware of the role their website will play in the future of their business.
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 The internet is a fascinating place filled with useful information, entertaining media and tools to make your life much easier. Anyone with a computer and internet connection can shop online, socialise with friends, do their banking, book a holiday and access all manner of videos, music, stories and news.
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 Nuance Communications is the leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world, incorporating Dragon NaturallySpeaking, OmniPage, PDF and PaperPort applications.
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 Speaking about social-media-related legal issues is a curious experience for me. I find that the people I speak to about these issues have some idea about them when we start our conversation, but it slowly dawns on them just how complex many of these issues can (and do) become. They also realise how much they still don't know and aren't catering for in their daily activities.
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12 Steps to ensuring good evidential quality of email |
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 In today's litigious and regulatory environment organisations must be able to efficiently and effectively discover, manage and produce their electronically stored information (ESI) to meet the demands of legal and regulatory information disclosure requirements. Organisations that archive email in a "fractured" environment risk losing control and may struggle to produce evidential-quality email evidence.Click here to view the white paper offered by Mimecast.
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The much anticipated promise of business people being able to work from anywhere as seamlessly and affordably as if they were in the office is finally a reality. This follows the introduction to South Africa of a telephony device that can make any location an extension of the company's switchboard.
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Telephony continues to remain the dominant form of communication in business today. However, traditional telephony is now being joined by IP-based telephony options to reduce the cost of telecommunications and to increase communications options. In fact, the purchases of IP communications platforms in 2006 exceeded legacy phone systems for the first time in history and according to Synergy Research Group and InfoTech, IP platforms will comprise over 90% of all enterprise telephony purchases by 2010. Additionally, the small and medium-sized business (SMBs) market is expected to grow at a faster rate than the large enterprise market and is projected to represent 43% of total IP telephony shipments by the end of 2010.
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 I have often wondered what the correct solution and method would be to clean a notebook screen. The notebook screen is not like the old CRT 14" monitors where we used to clean the them with Windolene and a cloth. The LCD screens are extremely sensitive and need to be handled with care.
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 Introduction: Best practice dictates you should use a digital certificate to access business computer systems over the Internet. To do so, you would need to register your details with a certificate authority or its subordinate registration authority, a process which can be frustrating at times. Registering with a recognised certificate authority or registration authority to be issued with a digital certificate should be a necessity; there are some real risks out there that you need to manage when transacting online.
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 Last week we saw another scam doing the rounds claiming to be from Standard Bank, so that you can confirm your account with them to avoid fraudulant activities on your account... nice! Here is a tip to work out if the email came from the bank or from somebody trying to rip you off!
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 We all get attached to our cellular or fixed line numbers, maybe not for sentimental reasons, but practical reasons. I changed cellular providers in January this year and ported my number across to the new network - through my experience and others using different providers, I can now help you make a better informed decision on cellular number portability.
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 Every now and then I hear about a law firm that decided to develop its own practice or case management software. In nearly all cases, the project has failed, but not before costing the firm a few million Rand. So just what makes a law firm get into software development?
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White Papers | Tech advisor - Tech4Law
 If you have found yourself wondering why you or your company should invest in a website presence when you already have a more traditional marketing strategy in place, then perhaps you have not considered all the motivating factors that others have already found useful. Surveys conducted¹ have ascertained that people logging onto the Internet do so primarily for information, communication and research. Entertainment is the last check-box to be ticked.
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White Papers | Tech advisor - Tech4Law
What is Social Media? Still considered an emerging idea, and still relatively in its infancy, social media is something that is difficult to define. Social media is a general term covering interactive broadcasts such as blogs, as well as social networking web sites (think of Facebook). Why should you use these tools in your business?
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Three tips for more effective e-mailing |
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 We have days for lovers (Valentine's Day) and for heroes (Memorial Day), so why not a day for e-mail (Information Overload Awareness Day)? The Information Overload presentation was about far more than just e-mail, but e-mail leads the deluge of information for most workers. So let's deal with the deluge, use addressing fields correctly, and look at e-mail writing from the bottom up.
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 In the United States alone, over 60 million information workers employ the Internet and e‐mail in their daily duties. Most now view e‐mail as more important than the phone as a business tool. Yet, as indispensable as these tools have become, they expose most organizations to increasing risks, especially as it relates to the transmission or posting of documents. These documents are often published with hidden business data or confidential text not intended for the recipient or outside world to review.
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 Targeted attacks, social networking threats, mobile device security and the proliferation of attack toolkits are top growing trends to watch in today's threat landscape.
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 South Africans love email so much they will work around any and all corporate policies to get to it. Mimecast's Generation Gmail Report has revealed that rogue emailing - using personal email accounts to send and receive work documents - and the associated information security risk is exacerbated by the laissez-faire attitude of most South African employers.
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 New Open Value Subscription customers have the opportunity for greater savings through the Up to Date (UTD) promotional offer due to the expansion of qualifying Microsoft products.
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 Recent events have seen a very unfortunate confusion arising between the Protection of Information Bill and the Protection of Personal Information Bill. Due to the similarity of the names, for the purposes of this article, it will be easier if the former is referred to as the "State Information Bill" (which, it is submitted, is a more accurate description in any event). Hopefully, this short article will assist readers in clarifying the distinction between these two instruments of proposed legislation.
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 Johannesburg - 20 September 2010 - Three decades have passed since Gary Thuerk <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Thuerk> sent the first unsolicited email to around 400 Arpanet users inviting them to see Digital Equipment Corporation's new System-20 computer. Thirty years on the Digital Equipment Corporation has ceased to exist, Arpanet has morphed into the Internet, and spam has grown in volume.
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Since the social networking boom in 2007, hundreds of new networks have sprung up. Some are general, like Facebook, while others focus on a specific community or interest. How do you know which one to choose? Here's a rundown of the top three social networks and what they're best for.
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 Copyright licenses have received a lot of attention recently. The internet has created a space that allows anyone to share content across national boundaries and without incurring high costs. With copyright infringement becoming a greater concern, this new environment has caused people to rethink how copyright does – and should – work. Here is a breakdown of the three categories that copyright can fall into, and how each one works.
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 Firstly, no bank nor the Receiver of Revenue will ever send you an e-mail requesting you to amend/update your banking details or "test" your account. Be suspect of any e-mail that asks you to log on and enter your user name and/or password on a link in an e-mail or asks you to open an attachment.
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 There is a short discussion on social networking in the Tech4Law forum and while typing my response I realised that it would be a good idea to write an article on social networking, maybe to educate everyone to begin with and then at a later stage to report on some practical applications.  (smiley face in social media communications)
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LTNY: “Removing Paper from the Office” |
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 I have been asked recently by several attorneys how my firm is able to maintain a paperless (or at least an almost paperless) office. It may seem far-fetched to some, but we do, keeping paper only when necessary.
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 The Why: Don't fool yourself. Seeking feedback from clients is important. It's the most direct route to finding out what it is you're doing wrong. Finding the most effective way to obtain this information may depend on the kind of business you have and the nature of the particular client.
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 If you're like many other law firms out there, you probably aren't too worried about losing your information. But, according to DataPreserve, an online backup vendor overseas, "Nineteen out of twenty firms that lose their data due to a hard drive crash, tape malfunction, fire or other data disaster, will file for bankruptcy."
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 So you think that your legal vendor systems only need the internet to work if your use a SaaS (Software As A Service), like GMail? The answer is "no", many applications use the internet to function, even though they reside on your PC desktop.
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 Security Polices are a necessary evil in today's workplace. Without a comprehensive Security Policy, you are vulnerable to commercial piracy and phishing attacks. In this article, I will look at the measures that should be put in place to implement an effective security policy. Each policy should be flexible to satisfy your organisation's requirements. It's important that you know each will be unique in content, but defining it should follow some kind of model. In this article, I will highlight the fundamentals in defining your own Security Policy.
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 Bulk email marketing is one of the most cost effective online methods for keeping in contact with clients. Thanks in large part to the introduction of spam mailing into our lives, bulk emailing has developed a bit of a bad reputation over the years. However, having said this, it should not be dismissed as the powerful (did we mention cost effective?) marketing tool that it is. If used correctly, bulk emailing can build trust, loyalty and develop your brand name with your clients.
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 The majority of law firms use document assembly simply to insert merge fields into documents. Of course that makes sense, since for most legal document templates this is all that's needed, and in fact simple merge fields or ‘stop codes' as they were called in the old days also bring the biggest gain in productivity from document assembly. But there are also those who don't think document assembly is necessary. For example, there is a perception in the profession that Microsoft Word® can create templates just fine on its own. In fact, many of the document assembly vendors themselves believe that document assembly software is only required for complex documents. Personally, I disagree.
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 Law Firms are agents of Banks in respect of many transactions they perform, and thus hold the personal information of those Banks customers in their electronic and paper records. Data Privacy Assessments and Audits from banks on their third parties should be expected by Law Firms who do Bank work. An assessment is a good chance to answer some difficult questions between the Business and the Information Technology stakeholders. The outcome of an assessment should be some remedial action to be taken to address weak points.
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 Cache in browsers are generally a good thing, as they store data on your local computer, so that the browser does not have to go and download them off the web again, each time it needs the data. For example think of a logo on a page, and every page on the site has this logo, instead of fetching the logo each time, and downloaing it via the internet, would it not be faster to fetch the logo off the hard drive? Yep it would most definately be faster. Over time these become very large in file size, and for want of a better explanation the indexing of this cache can become corrupt, which will play havoc with your favourite banking site. Here are the steps to clear this area, should you encounter problems browsing, or should you run out of disk space.
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Guide to Practice Management Systems: Top Ten To-Dos Before You Take the Plunge |
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 A good article written by Kate Curfiss on whether you should change Practice Management systems or stay with what you have. Her conclusion? "I once heard a colleague of mine and well trusted legal technologist say that a practice management system is like a marriage. You do not throw it away when you hit a rough patch. Rather you forge through because of your investment. Think of the the needs analysis score card as a marriage counselor. It will help you determine whether it is worth the effort to keep what you have or find a new practice management soulmate."
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