I was speaking to a colleague today. She’s a very smart lady who manages a successful IP firm. In the course of conversation I referred to a podcast. She was amazed. She had just heard the term this morning for the first time and didn’t really know what it was. Her words mirrored those of another colleague Wednesday night, who runs a successful mid-sized general practice firm. She said, “What’s the bottom line on blogs? What are they really, and why do I care?” As both of these technologies slowly appear on the radar screens of the top people at law firms, the questions are more frequently asked.
One has only to search on Google or any other good search engine, or Wikipedia, for the word BLOG or PODCAST.
A BLOG, WEBLOG, or in the case of a law firm or law-related blog, a BLAWG, ranges in scope from an individual diary to a compendium of highly meaningful information. They range in scale from the writings of one occasional author (known as a blogger), to the collaboration of a large community of writers. I like to refer to the posts on a blog as “article-ettes“, because they are usually shorter than full-fledged articles, thereby contributing useful information in the shortest possible format. They are also distinguished by having a multitude of included hyperlinks to the underlying reference material used to create the blog posting, as well as to additional materials which may be of interest.
The totality of weblogs or blog-related websites is often called the blogosphere. When a large amount of activity, information and opinion erupts around a particular subject or controversy in the blogosphere, it is sometimes called a blogstorm or blog swarm.
Many weblogs enable visitors to leave public comments, which can lead to a community of readers centered around and contributing to the blog. Because of the unfortunate propensity of some blog surfers to post obscene comments, or to purposely post extreme viewpoints to raise controversy, many blogs do not allow posting of comments and are therefore non-interactive.
The format of weblogs varies, from simple bullet lists of hyperlinks, to article summaries or complete articles with user-provided comments and ratings. Individual weblog entries are almost always date and time-stamped. Because hyperlinks to specific entries are important to most weblogs, most have a way of archiving older entries and generating a static (permanent) address for them; this static link is referred to as a permalink.
A PODCAST is a portmanteau or frankenword, (a word that is formed by combining both sounds and meanings from two or more words. ) It combines the words “broadcasting” and “iPod.” The term can be misleading since neither podcasting nor listening to podcasts requires an iPod or any portable player. Another little-used alternative is blogcasting, which implies content based on, or similar in format to, blogs.
Podcasting is a method of publishing audio programs via the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed of new files (usually MP3s). It became popular in late 2004, largely due to automatic downloading of audio onto portable players or personal computers. In simple words, a podcast is nothing more than an audio file made easily available for anyone to listen to anytime and anywhere. Think of it as an audio blog, distributed in much the same method.
I like to refer to podcasts we would subscribe to as “seminar-ettes” or “news-ettes“. Small bites (bytes?) and bits of meaningful content .
Ok, so now you know more than you did before about what these two technologies are. Now you’re probably asking yourself, like my colleagues did, “So What? Why should I or my firm care?” Here’s your answer, folks, in the plainest, simplest, most non-technical answer I can provide:
Blogs and Podcasts are about taming the information overload situation. They are about delivering useful information to you, as it becomes available, in the most usable format possible.
Let’s look at it this another way. Information is growing exponentially. Most of us are already suffering from what I call information anxiety or information overload. You know you cannot keep up. You know you are missing out on important stuff, and falling further behind. And add to that the fact that you have less and less time available to review this essential information; making it more critical that it be available to you in a condensed “Cliff Notes-type” version.
You have already identified some highly useful references. A lot of this critical information is on-line. But you no longer have the time to regularly go to dozens of sites daily or weekly to see what new information has become available. And this is precisely where blogs and podcasts come in; instead of you going out to find the information, it comes to you. And it arrives in a highly portable format (think download to PDA, iPod, laptop) and in a style usually bereft of frills and unwanted bulk.
The future is about working smarter instead of harder, folks. It’s about learning and absorbing information easier and faster. For that reason, people will increasingly subscribe to blogs and podcasts in order to stay on top of the information explosion.
Subscription to blogs and podcasts are accomplished using free tools called RSS feeds and news aggregators.
Ok, one last word because it’s time to leave for a client’s office. Thus far this post is all about what these items are and what they do for you as an end user. Now let me turn for a brief moment to why your law firm should want to know and create these tools. It’s very simple. People are increasingly going to turn to these tools and delivery methods to obtain meaningful information. Don’t you want to be the firm that creates and delivers that information? Add to that the fact that search engine rankings vastly improve with blog and podcast content on a web site, and this becomes a no brainer.
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[...] I’ve posted about blogs twice before. The first time was September 30, 2005 in a post entitled Blogs and Podcasts, in which I detailed what they are all about, and concluded the post with these words: Thus far this post is all about what these items are and what they do for you as an end user. Now let me turn for a brief moment to why your law firm should want to know and create these tools. It’s very simple. People are increasingly going to turn to these tools and delivery methods to obtain meaningful information. Don’t you want to be the firm that creates and delivers that information? Add to that the fact that search engine rankings vastly improve with blog and podcast content on a web site, and this becomes a no brainer. [...]