If the lawyers at your firm are clamoring for iPhone support, look no further than Christopher’s invaluable advice.”

TechnoLawyer Blog: How to deploy and support the iPhone in a law firm

By creating a new folder in Windows 7 and renaming it with a certain text string at the end, users are able to have a single place to do everything from changing the look of the mouse pointer to making a new hard-drive partition.”

Gizmodo – Understanding Windows 7’s ‘GodMode’

The Ars Technica staff recently held an off-site at a Chicago-area hotel. When we found that the hotel wanted to charge us $250 for a broadband connection to the conference room, we decided to do it ourselves on the cheap. We found the CTR350 at Amazon for $99, ordered it, and had it in hand two days later.

…at the end of the day, the CTR350 does exactly what it advertises: shares a single 3G broadband connection over 802.11b/g to up to 16 machines at a time. Its small size and ease of configuration are a plus, and the advanced routing features are a nice bonus if you actually need them. We would have liked to have had a bit more documentation, and the connection difficulties we experienced were irritating until we were able to sort them out. But if you’re looking for a way to quickly and securely share a wireless broadband connection on the cheap, the CTR350 is worth a try.”

ARS Technica – Sharing 3G on the cheap with a mobile broadband router

‘We ran the 3DMark 2003 graphics benchmark on each laptop, comparing optimized and non-optimized settings. For two of our samples, the Gateway and Toshiba, performance changes were negligible. On the Asus laptop, however, optimized tests actually scored about 32% worse than the non-optimized setup. We have been unable to isolate the source of this performance change. On none of the three tested laptops did the optimized settings give a performance boost in our test.”’

Lifehacker – In-Store “Optimization” is Usually Useless, Often Slows Down PCs

” ‘With networked computers now cast by all organizations, including the financial sector, into the role of wizard-behind-the-curtain, we all live in Oz. It’s long past time we pull back the veil and call a halt to the mindless application of this supreme and supremely dangerous creation before the damage gets any greater.’

In the age of zero-price computing power, it’s far too easy to cut corners and trust in black boxes. What’s more, it’s incredibly difficult for any regulator to audit such things: I don’t think the Fed or the SEC has a department of relational-database integrity. Maybe they should think about starting one up.”

Reuters Blogs – Felix Salmon: The role of the database in the financial crisis

”…On the JD Hacker blog, Will Geer posted “Do You Really Need Practice Management Software?” His answer was no, but I’m not so sure – I think his post missed some of the big reasons to have practice management software.

Geer opines that most lawyers purchase practice management software for document management, but that this is a ‘ridiculous’ reason for making this purchase. He sets out a system for storing documents in your operating system, which is the default method for most solos and small law firms (and even some mid-sized firms). He goes on to describe this system, complete with folders for each client and subfolders for individual document types, as well as his naming system for those folders.

While this system sounds logical and can work for a while, as a practical matter, it has a number of pitfalls which I have, unfortunately, witnessed first-hand both in the law firms I worked in as an associate and as a partner, but also in the law firms I work with as a consultant.”

Legal Ease Blog – Do Lawyers Really Need Practice Management Software?

”You may bang on the legacy airlines, but American Airlines has a good thing going here with Gogo. The outfit has just completed installation of in-flight WiFi on 150 of its MD-80 aircraft, and in order to give you a better idea of how to prepare, it’s now launching an online widget that’ll let you know if your bird will enable web surfing when you get on.

The tool is completely web-based, so any PC or smartphone can access it; the only real knock is that it only informs you of a “yes” or “no” 24 hours prior to departure, so it’s still impossible to book a flight 3 months out and know for certain if you’ll be able to hop online.”

Engadget – American Airlines launches online widget to sniff out WiFi-equipped flights.

”Tired of fiddling with scanned pages to remove borders, correct alignment, and otherwise prettify them before storing or emailing them? Then Scan Tailor could be right up your alley.

This free app splits two-page scans into single documents, converts text to black and white without disturbing images, and cleans stray specks off pages.  Scan Tailor even gets rid of that pesky shadow down the center of a two-page scan that occurs when you lay an open book face down on a scanner.”

Lifehacker – Scan Tailor Cleans Up Scanned Pages

Scan Tailor

”When times get tough and belts get tight, one of the first things many companies do is begin casting about for ways increase efficiency and raise per-worker productivity. Many businesses turn to free and open-source tools to meet these needs, and at some point in such discussions someone invariably suggests a wiki for some internal project. But the wiki idea often gets rejected soon after it’s floated, typically because wikis are perceived to be insecure, inaccurate, or difficult to use; either that, or someone in the discussion has gone the wiki route before, only to see their wiki languish from lack of interest and participation.

These perceptions and experiences that lead companies to reject wikis are rooted in a common problem: the vast majority of the public has formed 100 percent of their expectations about what a wiki can and should be based on the single example of Wikipedia. Few have ever seen wikis used creatively and successfully in a real-life business context, so even when IT professionals attempt to implement wikis in their own companies they lack real experience and good examples to imitate.”

ARS Technica- Wikis in the workplace: a practical introduction

”Holiday season air travel just got a little less crappy—freebie access starts today, and runs through to January 15. Read on for the full list of airports, and info on free Wi-Fi promos from Yahoo and Microsoft, too.

You may also remember that Google already said it would foot the bill for Virgin America Wi-Fi during the same period.

The catch? Once you log into the network, you’ll be pestered if you want to set Google to your homepage or try Google Chrome. But that’s it. I can deal with that. You’ll also have the option to make a donation to Engineers Without Borders, the One Economy Corporation or the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.”

Gizmodo: Google Serves Up Free Wi-Fi at 47 Airports for the Holidays

Now before we begin if you want to use this feature you will need have Windows 7 Ultimate (or Enterprise) edition installed.

How do I encrypt a USB device?

Step 1. Insert your USB device you want to encrypt into your computer.

Step 2. Right click on the USB device in Windows Explorer and click on the “Turn on BitLocker…”

Step 3. Tick the “Use a password to unlock the drive” and then type the same password in the two password field’s and then click “Next”.

Note: As it says, you should try an make this password as complicated as possible with a combination of lower and upper case letter, numbers, spaces, and/or symbols.

Step 4. You are now FORCED to either save a file or print the recovery key for the device. This ensures that you have a copy of the 48 digit recovery in case you ever forget the password.

Note: You cannot save the recovery key to the device that you want to encrypt as this would be obviously be useless if you were to ever forget the unlock key.

Step 5. Once you have saved or printed the recovery key you will be able to continue by pressing “Next”.

Step 6. You are ready to encrypt the drive and all you have to do is click “Start Encrypting”.

Warning: This can take a LONG time especialy if you are encrypting a very large drive via a USB connection (My Western Digital 1tb USB external hard drive this process took about 12 hours).

First thing the encryption process does is install the BitLocker to Go reader application that will let you read the the device on down-level OS’s such as Windows XP and Vista.

Now the drive will start to encrypt.

Note: You can pause this encryption of this device and remove if it is taking longer than you thought but from this point you will need to enter the encryption key to access the data on the drive even though it is not fully encrypted. The other thing to note is that the drive will be read only until the encryption process has been completed.

Once completed click “Close” and the drive is now encrypted and ready to use.

The way to tell if a drive is encrypted in Windows Explorer is by the padlock symbol you can see on the drive icon (see belwo against “Nano (E:)”). An open grey padlock represents an unlocked drive and and closed gold padlock represents a locked drive.

How do I unlock and encrypt a USB device?

Step 1. Insert the USB device into a Windows 7 computer and you should be automatically prompted for a password to decrypt the device. Then just type the password in the password field and tick “Unlock”.

Note: If you tick the “Automatically unlock on this computer from now on” then the unlock password for this device will be stored on the registry of the computer so be very sure you trust this computer before using this option.

Step 2. Your DONE! the drive will now behave exactly as per normal.

Alternatively if the device is already connected and you need to unlock it, just right click on the drive in Windows Explorer and click the “Unlock Drive…” option. You will then be prompted with the same unlock drive dialogue box as seen above.

By Alan Burchill

Twitter at @alanburchill

Blog http://abskb.spaces.live.com

”In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice. The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .pst file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties.

This documentation is still in its early stages and work is ongoing. We are engaging directly with industry experts and interested customers to gather feedback on the quality of the technical documentation to ensure that it is clear and useful. When it is complete, it will be released under our Open Specification Promise, which will allow anyone to implement the .pst file format on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way.”

I think this is going to turn out to be big news for folks in both the IT and e-Discovery fields.

Interoperability @ Microsoft – Roadmap for Outlook Personal Folders (.pst) Documentation

”The Arizona state Supreme Court has ruled that the metadata attached to public records is itself public, and cannot be withheld in response to a public records request. Such a ruling on file metadata may not seem like a huge win for open government advocates, but it definitely is, given that metadata has unmasked more than one lobbyist’s effort to influence Congress.”

ARS Technica – Lobbyists beware: judge rules metadata is public record

”Picture this: It’s late at night, you’re sitting at your computer playing a game or working on a project when, suddenly, Windows freezes completely. All your work is gone, and you find a blue screen full of gibberish staring back at you. Windows is dead, Jim, at least until you reboot it. You have no choice but to sigh loudly, shake your fist at Bill Gates and angrily push the reset button. You’ve just been visited by the ghost of windows crashed: the Blue Screen of Death.

Also known as the BSoD, the Blue Screen of Death appears when Windows crashes or locks up. It’s actually a Windows “stop” screen, and is designed to do two things: tell you the reason for the error, and to calm your nerves, hence the use of the color blue (studies show it has a relaxing effect on people). Though Blue Screens are difficult to decipher, all the information you need to figure out what caused it is right there in front of you in blue and white—and that’s where we come in. We’re going to show you how to dissect the blue screen error details, so you can fix the problem that’s causing them.”

Maximum PC – Blue Screen of Death Survival Guide: Every Error Explained

”The indexing service that powers Windows search can now perform OCR of TIFF images. Though not enabled by default (due to resource usage constraints), installing it gives full-text searching of TIFFs. Scanned documents and faxes are the main target for this capability.”

See the Microsoft TechNet page for installation info.

ARS Technica – Hasta la Vista, baby: Ars reviews Windows 7 (p.14 of 15)