Justinian Lane - Commentary on law, politics, and tort "reform."

The iPod/iPhone Shows Just How Badly Microsoft Screwed Up

I hadn’t planned on buying an iPod Touch, but two things happened recently that nudged me into it.  First, Barbri (the bar prep company) offered a discount coupon and an iPhone/iPod only study app.  Second, I won an iPhone dock clock radio at a Christmas party.  So, I bit the bullet and bought an iPod Touch.  Its not a bad music player, but it’s far from perfect.  My two biggest complaints are: I can’t queue another song up while one is currently playing, and I don’t have any external buttons to control the iPod Touch by touch.  Ironic that a device called a touch requires vision to operate, no?

But despite its flaws as a music player, it’s an amazing pocket computer.  The app store (notwithstanding Apple’s dictatorial approval process) is a perfect model of how to serve consumers.  I’ve downloaded over two dozen free applications that work very well.  I can manage my banking, order a pizza from Pizza Hut (with a 20% discount just for using the app!), find the perfect Coach gift, download cases from Lexis, and even check to see if a picture on the wall is hanging level. 

Notice how I used the phrase “pocket computer” earlier.  I didn’t say pocket pc because the Pocket PC was invented by Microsoft about ten years ago, well before the invention of the iPod or the iPhone.  Way back in 1999 and 2000, Microsoft had combination telephone Pocket PC’s.  I don’t remember much about them, but it’s important to note that Microsoft had a decade to refine them, and they still aren’t as functional as the iPhone/iPod Touch.

I don’t know how many PC developers there are compared to Mac developers, but I’m guessing it’s an order of magnitude.  How is it that Microsoft didn’t leverage that base to come up with an App store?  Sure, way back in 2000 the Internet wasn’t what it is today… but I had a Windows Mobile phone in 2006 or 2007, and there wasn’t an app store for Windows Mobile phones then, and I don’t think there’s one now.  If there is, I bet it’s not as one-click-easy as the Apple app store.

I’m still not ready to trade my Blackberry for an iPhone because (a) I NEED a keyboard, (b) Blackberry email is better, and (c) Blackberry voice quality is better.  But I’ll tell you what I am likely to do: Buy a Verizon Mifi device so my iPod Touch (and laptop) always has a Wifi connection.  My two Windows Mobile phones that can also use Wifi will stay at home in my junk box because there’s nothing they can do that my iPod can’t.

Is Google ignoring lawyers who buy links because they spend so much on pay-per-click advertising?

Google is notorious in some circles for kicking sites out of the index or penalizing their rank for buying links.  For those who don’t know, the number one factor influencing where you end up in a Google search for “widget” is how many people link to your website.  Their algorithm assumes that your site gets incoming links because your site has worthwhile content.  Buying links breaks the algorithm. You’re allowed to pay web sites to link to you, but you’re supposed to have the linking site use what’s called a nofollow tag, which tells Google not to count that link.  If you search for “paid links” and “google penalty” you’ll find a ton of information about people who have been bitten by Google for breaking their rules.  To many SEO experts, Google is an all-knowing tyrant, watching and waiting to catch someone who breaks the rules. When it comes to personal injury lawyers, Google is more like a drunk uncle passed out in the easy chair.

Many lawyers – especially personal injury lawyers – are buying links like crazy.  I’m not going to name any names because I’m a nice guy.  But there’s one very well-known lawyer who has bought thousands of incoming links from a variety of web sites that have nothing to do with the law… like a penis pump review web site.  Others participate in paid blog rolls which to me seem like a gigantic violation of Google’s rules.  Here’s how that works: A handful of web providers specialize in blog/web platforms for lawyers.  When you join their service, you’re added to the blogroll that is on every other participant’s web site.  So an attorney who has never written a blog post will have thousands of incoming links the second he decides to blog… provided he can afford the monthly fee for the service.  Maybe I’m not understanding it properly, but that looks a hell of a lot to me like buying links.  One such service even cloaks some of the links in the blog roll, so Google will see them, but visitors won’t.  This is a blatant violation of Google’s rules… but Google doesn’t seem to give a shit. 

Instead, Google rewards the lawyers who do it by giving them first and second page listings for very competitive terms. (And in some cases,  pageranks of 5 or 6, which is very good.)  Now, I know that some of the lawyers don’t know their SEO guys are buying links for them, or that they’re doing other naughty stuff.  (Eric Turkewitz would probably say, “too bad.”)  One lawyer has a very highly ranked web site that also happens to have thousands of web pages within it.  At the bottom of each page is a small graphic that looks like a copyright logo.  It isn’t – it’s a link to another client of his web designer.  That client has nothing to do with the law, so there’s no reason for that client to be linked to on thousands of personal injury lawyer web pages.  But it is, and I’m betting it is because the web designer is taking advantage of the ignorance of that attorney.  (Not many attorneys know how to check to see what they’re linking to.  Fewer know how to make sure their SEO guy isn’t buying links.)

It’s very frustrating to me because Google’s rules keep everyone on an even playing field.  In six months or so, I’ll be graduating law school and will be looking for clients.  How in the hell am I (or countless low-budget solos) supposed to be able to succeed if the top spots in Google are owned by unethical (or ignorant) attorneys who have SEO “experts” spend thousands of dollars every month on buying links?  The sad fact is that few people outside of the law will add a lawyer’s website to their blog roll.  Don’t believe me?  Use Yahoo Site Explorer to check out some popular attorney blogs.  You’ll find that 95 out of 100 incoming links to their sites come from others in the law.

What’s worse is that much of the content on the link buyers’ websites is just shit.  A popular practice is to hire people to rewrite news stories.  Here’s how that works: Some newspaper publishes a story about your practice area, like a car wreck, or a defective drug, etc.  You hire a guy to rewrite that story just enough so the newspaper can’t sue for copyright infringement.  (Newspapers can’t own the facts that make up the news.)  That sort of thing is of little value to consumers.  Nor are the endless “YOUR CITY HERE Car Accident Lawyer” tweets put out by clueless PI lawyers who think Twitter = unlimited clients.  Good personal injury lawyer content is few and far between.

And don’t even get me started about the asbestos lawyers.  One of the major sites is doing exactly what the Craigslist sex spammers do.  They have a database of city names across the country.  Then they have a database of appropriate phrases.  Then, they play Mad Libs and make web pages.  Here’s how that one works:

Assume their database has 50,000 city names in it.  The database produces 50,000 web pages, each named after the city.  (e.g. Las-Vegas-Nevada-Asbestos-Lawyer.html; Las-Vegas-New-Mexico-Asbestos-Lawyer.html.)  Then each page is dynamically constructed from the database.  Let’s say there are five sentences on the page.  The first sentence introduces the firm, the second sentence says they handle asbestos, the third sentence has contact information, etc.  The database will have five sentence tables, with each table containing say two or three dozen variations of each sentence.  Some clever programming then pulls a random sentence from each of the sentence tables, and voila!  (Not, “walla”) with a couple hours of work they now have 50,000 “unique” web pages, each targeted for someone who searches for “my city asbestos lawyer” on Google.  They do the same thing with asbestos manufacturer names and professions exposed to asbestos.  So you' get a ton of pages targeted towards “Johns Manville Asbestos Lawyer” or “Pipefitter Mesothelioma Lawyer.” 

Yes, that technique is clever.  But it’s spammy as hell.  And I wonder why Google hasn’t done anything about it.  The cynical side of me says that they’re not punishing those lawyers because (a) those lawyers also buy a lot of Google pay-per-click advertising, and (b) asbestos pay-per-click advertising is incredibly expensive.  Seriously, a pay per click ad for “mesothelioma lawyer” can go for $100 bucks!  (Yes, every time you click on one of those ads, a lawyer out there has to pay Google a Benjamin.)  Maybe those lawyers are paying Google so much money in PPC ads that Google just doesn’t care if they’re breaking the rules.  Or maybe there aren’t enough “dirty” lawyers in comparison with every other profession trying to game Google that Google figures it should target its resources elsewhere.  If that’s the case, perhaps Google should take some law students as summer interns and train them how to look for the bad eggs.  God knows that law students today would gladly do that kind of work for a summer if it gave them even a small chance of getting hired at the Big G.  (Or anywhere, I suppose.) 

One thing I find very interesting: The penis-pump lawyer ranks in the top five for a specific keyword search on Google, but closer to #50 on Bing.  Has Bing come up with an algorithm that better handles paid links?  I have noticed that some of the spammier PI sites don’t do as well in Bing as they do in Google.  It will be interesting to track that long term.

An Uncensored Discussion About Social Media for Lawyers

Most people who know me think I’m a quiet, unassuming, laid-back guy.  And I am.  Until I reach my level of tolerance.  Tonight, I reached my level of tolerance for snake oil salesmen who bill themselves as social media experts for lawyers.  Perhaps snake oil salesmen is too kind.  People who want to charge lawyers money for teaching them about social media are bullshit peddlers who hope to exploit the (presumed) ignorance of the (presumed) rich.

If a guy with a J.D. is trying to make his or her money from teaching other lawyers about social media, you can be sure that he or she is a failure as a lawyer.  Lawyers who are good at rainmaking have one thing in common, no matter whether they do their rain dance for plaintiff or defense firms: They’re rich.  They don’t try and teach others how to be rainmakers because (a) they don’t want the competition, and (b) they don’t need the money.  Every time I get a Facebook, a Twitter, or a LinkedIN spam from some lawyer offering to teach me everything I need to know about rainmaking via social media, I know I’m dealing with a first-class failure as an attorney.  Insert some more epithets if that “lawyer” is wanting to charge me money for his or her teaching.

You know what social media is?  A giant cocktail party.  If you couldn’t get any business at a cocktail party, then you won’t get any business via social networking.  Let me share with you a self-effacing story.

Nearly a decade ago, I ran my own internet consulting business.  Through some connection or another, I managed to get myself an invite to the annual party of some association of general contractors.  It was a really big deal for me, because I assumed that my door pass would get me to the President of the organization, and I would therefore be able to make an awesome deal.  I was half right.

I went to the party and spotted the President of the organization.  He was holding court with a group of guys who were obviously in the construction trade.  (I, on the other hand, look like I can barely handle a hammer.)  I sauntered up to him and his group, and he was telling some dirty story about how he had to evict some porn store from a strip mall.  I laughed right along with the rest of the other guys, and he turned to look at me.  To this day, one of the most awkward moments of my life was this guy and his buddies looking at me like I just made a pass at their wives.  It was obvious I had nothing in common with them, and was only there hoping to get business.  I brought nothing to the table, and they smelled it on me.  Shortly thereafter, I left with my tail between my legs.  I never got a call from any of the dozen or so people who I forced my business cards on.  My attempt at networking was a big fat fail for several reasons.  First, I looked like an outsider.  Second, I didn’t speak their lingo.  Third, I wasn’t interested in anything but their business. 

There is a lesson here for lawyers.  If you show up at a social networking group looking and acting as out of place as I did, you too will look like a Grade A Asshole.  Seriously, there’s nothing more pathetic than a lawyer trolling the net for clients.  Do you honestly expect that being hip enough to be on Twitter or Facebook will somehow translate into people deciding you’re the lawyer for them?  I’ve got a bunch of lawyers as friends on Facebook, but only a handful of them would ever get my business if I needed legal services.  The rest of them are friends because they friended me and I was nice enough to friend them back.

Keep that in mind when some dickhead with 20,000 friends on Facebook promises that he knows the secret to Rainmaking with a capital R.  The odds are, 19,950 of those “friends” are people he just randomly added, hoping they were kind enough to reciprocate.  Yes, as I write this post I have one particular douche in mind.  No, I’m not naming him, but the fact that you know who I’m talking about says it all.

The rules of rainmaking through social networking are the same as rainmaking in real life: Only join groups you’re genuinely interested in.  Don’t join a group because you’re hoping for business.  Don’t obviously troll for referrals.  Don’t spam.  (In real life, it’s not called spamming.  It’s called talking about yourself incessantly, which is also known as being an arrogant asshole.  No wonder so many lawyers do it.)

If you really want to know about social networking, here’s what to do: Just do it.  Get on Facebook and find your old high school/college friends.  Get on LinkedIN and find the people you worked with fresh out of college.  Start a blog.  Play around.  Explore.  Have fun.  And for God’s sake, don’t worry about the “right way” to do this.  There is no right way, but there is a wrong way: The wrong way is to be a self-promoting ass who spams everyone on his friends lists about Rainmaking.

No, I’m not interested in your shitbag SEO company

You know why I’m not interested, and why I know you’re a shitbag?  Because you’re filling out forms on my websites trolling for my business.

Real SEO companies don’t do that.  Real SEO companies don’t follow a Glengarry Glen Ross cold calling routine.  Clients come to them.

Similarly, real SEO companies don’t have email addresses that end in gmail.com.  Real SEO companies pony up the five bucks it costs these days to register a domain.

Whenever an “SEO company” contacts me through an email form with some lame offer to provide me a proposal, I know that they:

1. Don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.
2. Haven’t mastered any SEO techniques besides link farming and comment spamming.
3. Don’t have any paying clients that aren’t running some lame home-based business.
4. Will want me to put spammy code on my web site to turn my site into a part of their link farm.
5. Are probably on a first-name basis with some Eastern European credit card hacker.

I think the next time I get some crappy spam like this, I’ll use a fake gmail account and ask them to provide me with a proposal.  I figure that if I have to waste my time, they can waste theirs.

Oh, and if you hire SEO spammers, I hope you get food poisoning for Thanksgiving.

PETA is full of fail

Instead of demonstrating a new high-tech way to painlessly kill lobsters, they end up letting hundreds of them get boiled.  Lame.

The animal rights group PETA bought two of the lobster devices and paid for Mr. Buckhaven and his wife to fly to the Arizona event last Saturday to demonstrate the technology.

Unfortunately, the courier service lost the two machines and the animal rights people had to look the other way as volunteers killed hundreds of lobster in boiling water for hungry supporters of the resource centre.

Source: Don’t boil a lobster, give it a zap instead - Nova Scotia News - TheChronicleHerald.ca

What if cell phones do cause brain cancer?

Right now, I don’t believe cell phones cause brain cancer.  I started using a “brick phone” when I was in middle school or high school, and choosing to give up say, my pinky finger or my BlackBerry would be a tough choice.  But, I see that lawsuits alleging that cell phones cause brain cancer are crawling forward:

In a ruling that has grabbed the attention of the product liability and telecommunications bars, the D.C. Court of Appeals last week revived a series of lawsuits by individuals who say they were harmed by cell phone radiation, reversing a lower court decision that found the claims were blocked by federal law.

The court's opinion in Murray v. Motorola added yet another wrinkle to a debate within U.S. courts over whether national regulations trump state laws when it comes to issues surrounding cell phone safety. In dismissing parts of the cases while preserving others, including a set of consumer protection claims, the decision gave both sides of the case fodder to declare victory. But while the plaintiffs still have a long road before getting to a jury, some lawyers familiar with the decision said the ruling could lead to the filing of even more suits against cell phone companies in Washington's trial court.

Source: Law.com - D.C. Court of Appeals Resurrects Cell Phone Radiation Cases

What if they do cause brain cancer?  This intrigues me because cell phones are so much a part of modern life that I can’t imagine our government letting lawsuits put the future of cell phones in jeopardy.  As much as I love my cell phones, if they do cause cancer I’d want the victims to have their day in court, but from a policy perspective, should they?  How would we deal with it going forward?  Would we put huge warning labels on the phones when they’re new?  Ban them for minors?  Setup a government compensation fund?  Interesting public policy fodder.

Thanks for breaking my network, Microsoft

So today my home network started acting very weird.  I couldn’t connect to my server (I’d get a message about not being able to authenticate) and my connection to my Exchange server would drop every 30 seconds or so, then reconnect.  I couldn’t remote desktop into the server, either.

After I uninstalled the security updates from last night on my server and workstation, everything started working again.

Still, I’d rather spend hours troubleshooting my problems than snort enough smug to buy a Mac.

Apple Files Patent For Evil

But they don’t call it that.  They instead call it a patent for operating system advertising.  Follow the link and see just how evil their plan is.

Gene Quinn, patent attorney and founder of IPWatchdog, says Apple has file for a patent on "Advertisement in Operating System." Sounds harmless at first but wait until you guys get a load of the wording on this one

Source: [H]ard|OCP - HardOCP Computer Hardware Reviews and News

(I accidentally published this at my other blog.)

Of course it has to do with food and sex

The article linked below talks about how a new DVD player may use technology derived from an Australian species of shrimps’ eyeballs.  After talking about how great the shrimps’ vision is, the article has this useless quote:

Just why the mantis shrimp needs such a rarefied level of vision is unclear, although researchers suspect it is to do with food and sex.

Source: Mantis shrimp eyes basis for super DVD player | The Australian

When you’re speculating as to why an animal developed a certain trait, it’s always a safe bet to say “food and sex.”  What else was it going to be, “to help the shrimp in the competitive job market?”  Talk about a journalistic punt.

I wouldn’t trust this study, either

Just like I won’t trust a study funded by pharmaceutical companies about their own drug.

Researchers Say Tetris Is Good For The Brain

A new study out by a nonprofit group has found that Tetris is good for the brain. They have scientific data, like graphs, charts and pictures of a brain (some with fancy colors) to back up these claims. Seemed reasonable to me until I read the part about the study being funded by the company that owns the rights to Tetris

Source: [H]ard|OCP - HardOCP Computer Hardware Reviews and News

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