Skip to content

Law school…a place for depressives?

Monday, March 9, 2009

I’ve stopped asking myself how I end up on the pages I do, but this was an interesting blurb:

4. Law school is a factory for depressives.

It used to be that if you had a law degree it was a ticket to a high salary and a safe career. Today many people go to law school and cannot find a job. This is, in a large part, because law school selects for people who are good with details and pass tests and law firms select for people who are good at marketing themselves and can drum up business. Law firms are in a transition phase, and they have many unfair labor practices leftover from older generations, for example, hourly billing and making young lawyers pay dues for what is, today, a largely uncertain future. Which might explain why the American Bar Association reports that the majority of lawyers would recommend that people not to go into law.

The speaker is a young grad student someone put out by the dim prospects for life as an adult in the working world. She lays out the worst case scenario of graduate school and one has to agree that her perspective is probably more accurate than someone who has been out 20 years or more.

Still, I can’t help but believe that what’s missing in her perspective in an understanding about the tools law school gives the lawyer. it’s not just a matter of being chosen for a top law firm and working at the local human society.

Think of the opportunities for growth lawyers would have if they were required to take at least one business course (not from lawyers, but from experienced business people) as well as a sociology course (again, from experienced professionals)? Imagine if there was preparation for a career in the medico-legal field that did not require a dual degree?

Young lawyers deserve a greater sense of reality than they currently receive. At present, the profession fails to take to hear the fact that there is a breadth to the practice of law that can hold a lot more people. Were law schools to step up to the plate and stop the chrade of superiority and ranking, they might just start to train people accordingly.

Until then, I encourage law students to ask people outside of academia about all the cool stuff you can do with legal training in your background!

Just don’t bet the farm on it.

Filed in 24593 | | Comments (0)

The State of Document Review

Monday, March 2, 2009

No, it’s not a Second Life island.

It’s doc review and it’s being held under the microscope this past week.

Disclaimer

I do doc reviews. I like doc reviews.

And, yes, I’ve practiced law,–corporate, criminal, legal services, international, state, federal, appellate…blah, blah, blah! And that, more than any other reason, is why doc review is just fine by me.

And, yes, like many others, I do doc reviews because I have an ulterior motive. Eh…I want to master the Art of the Doc Review.

  • Do I worry about finding a job? Sometimes…but then again, there aren’t that many experienced Japanese business fluent U.S.-licensed attorneys willing to do document reviews. So, eh, I feel pretty OK with my little contribution to international dispute resolution.
  • Do I particularly care about who will win the case ? Nope. Not my job.
  • Do I stay up late at night worrying about my metrics? Nope! If they tell me to slow down or change the way I code, I will.
  • Do I miss making lots of money? Duh! But, there are other things in life and getting paid to dork out on doc review software while moving the mouse now and then sure beats *working* for a living!

timewarp

No…I’m one of those oddballs who does the Time Warp inside my head every time a new Japanese Document Review listing hits Craig’s List…more on that later.

State of Document Review

Ok, so what is the State of Document Review?

First, I would say that in terms of hiring lawyers to do the work…that’s almost near the end. But, there’s a shift that will happen that will save a few…more on this later.

Between technology and outsourcing, American lawyers will soon be completely ghettoized to the point where it makes no sense to continue to pay bar dues.

The question is whether the firms will continue to support the downward spiral in document review wages…and whether attorneys will continue to accept them after the markets pick up and clients get litigation happy feet once again.

If the ABA and other organizations step in with a stimulus package (“Document Review is The Practice Of Law”), that will slow the hemorrhage, but that’s about it. New lawyers already have nowhere to go and they’re not, therefore, as able to stay competitive when the rent man comes calling.

The professionalization of document review, in my mind, therefore, is a good thing. But, only if the rates go back up.

Oh sure, we’ll always have small firms that can take on the big firms when they need taking on, but like that partner from Heller said recently,

“For less than $100 a month, we have all the capability we had at Heller,” Kim said. “For a small, three-person shop to have the big-firm capabilities that five to six years ago you could only get at a huge shop is a cool thing.“

What worries me is that there are so many people out of work now…what are they going ot do in the short term when teh rainmaking was down to partners like Kim adn they never got the chance to build their own client base?

Second, my prediction is that law as we know it in America is going to be re-imagined in a major way. It has already started with Obama’s transparency program. There’s nothing the big firms, solo practitioners or the ABA can do about it, because contrary to popular opinion, law is NOT rocket science. In fact, there’s very little science involved: it’s mostly method. And, computers are very, very good at methods.

Which brings me to my final point for now…

Third, it’s the technology, stupid! There are some VERY cool companies and products out there that are making legal tasks magnificently easy. There’s cutting edge work being done in document review, which will have a trickle sideways effect on the rest of legal practice. Just you wait and see!!

Have you read Serge and Brin’s thesis “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine“?

183093298_2aaa2e9523

I HAVE! And, it’s still effin’ brilliant, because it has given people permission to conceptualize data-related tasks, sort of like one of those massive firecrackers on July 4th that keeps going and going until the next one and you never get a break in the action, so you’re never sure where one ends and another begins.

[ Oh geeze. Do NOT google firecracker images. Just don't. ]

Throw in a few lines of Bekkerman and the implications are not even 1/2 fulfilled, as far as law is concerned. So, colleagues of mine: hold onto your hats!

Companies with CRAP interfaces better hold onto their lunches, though, because companies like H5 and Mimosa are taking things to the next level.

These companies truly rock. Why? Because the stuff they’re doing is me + $10 million dollars. What’s not to like?!

Richard Susskind’s New Book

Richard Susskind’s new book “The End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services” is making the rounds, and it’s a must read.

I wrote all sorts of notes on his last ones, which I’ll upload when I get the chance since at least one volume is over there on the shelf, but chances are, the foreward on the new book will have something like “Oh, well, Yes, I *did* write a book on legal technology several years ago…but this is the book you should now read.” So, why not start there and I’ll drag up the other stuff later.

To be honest, on the whole, I thought his original model was…er…eh…not all that brilliant. I actually said so in a presentation I gave to the PHP Works! conference in Toronto and got away with it, because PHP5 was much more exciting than legal software.

In other words, the programmers there didn’t give a sh*t about legal software as a service (as it is now called) even though I jumped up and down and said how cool legal tech could be delivered over the Internet…I think some of them were just happy to see a girl who wasn’t there just for lunch [sigh].

9780199541720
It was a good presentation…not it wasn’t…but it wasn’t the worst I’ve ever seen. Anyway, no sense being embarrassed: I’ll try to find at least the PDF of the slides and post it. I think I sent it to M. Susskind way back then, so I might as well stand by it!

Maybe Susskind’s work was seminal,–but then again, lots of things are seminal. That doesn’t make them right. I guess the main problem I had was that it was what I’d call “top down analysis.” I’m pretty sure I also thought the economics was off, because in my experience, the differentiator for big firms was not the technology (rapidly being brought to the average attrney), but the ability to marc=shall resources to GET THINGS DONE by throwing bodies and consolidating influence.

But, who am I? Nobody. So, get the book and judge for yourself! Oh, and read the review by the Adam Smith, Esq. Blog for an idea of what you’re getting into.

Then, come on back and argue with me!

Not much use to those of us in the trenches envisioning the tools that lawyers could use. See, the problem with any book about legal technology is that it’s old before it makes it to the bookshelves.

And, in the early 2000s, it would have been old before the final edit, because things on the ground were moving at the speed of a Yahoo yodel.

So, I’ve two books to read somehow in the next few months (hopefully I’ll get a BRIEF…a few weeks is all I want… breather between projects).

Then, we can have a nice chat about the “State of Document Review.”

Filed in Document Review, Richard Susskind | | Comments (0)

TRECing along

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Found an incredible site today, the H5 site.

It’s a lot easier doing this when you have 30 industrial-strength brains to my 1 eco-friendly noggin, but OK, I’ve never been put off by a [ huge freakin' ] challenge.

[sigh]

Anyway, through their site, I found the site I’d been looking for, which talks about information retrieval from large data sets. Thank goodness I was particularly curious today, or I’d have NEVER found it! …Well, I would have, but given that I’ve been looking nearly a year, that says something about either it or me.

What was I looking for? Well, it’s the TREC site. Looking for it too? Well, here ya go!

The Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) workshop series encourages research in information retrieval and related applications by providing a large test collection, uniform scoring procedures, and a forum for organizations interested in comparing their results. Now in its eighteenth year, the conference has become the major experimental effort in the field. Participants in the previous TREC conferences have examined a wide variety of retrieval techniques and retrieval environments, including cross-language retrieval, retrieval of web documents, multimedia retrieval, and question answering. Details about TREC can be found at the TREC web site, http://trec.nist.gov.

You are invited to participate in TREC 2009. TREC 2009 will consist of a set of tasks known as “tracks”. Each track focuses on a particular subproblem or variant of the retrieval task as described below. Organizations may choose to participate in any or all of the tracks. Training and test materials are available from NIST for some tracks; other tracks will use special collections that are available from other organizations for a fee.

Might be a way to get invited to Sedona…can I get a proposal together for the Legal Track in like 4 days? Hmmmmmm…

Filed in 24593, Classification, Law 2.0+, Theory, Vendors | | Comments (0)

Got 42 billion legal documents?

Sunday, February 8, 2009

I didn’t think so.

So, I totally agree that we can do away with the Bates system for identifying unique documents in litigation and move towards hashing them instead.

Here’s why:

Question: you’re ITM and you’ve been sued 1,000 times. Probably not an exaggeration.

How often did you get a discovery request for your organizational chart? Probably about 500 times.

Which means that upwards of 500 cases, 5 people on YOUR side [ 2 lawyers, 1 paralegal and 2 document reviewers ] touched that document, meaning 2500 external touches for one document. Even at $ 1.00 per touch (HA!) that’s $500.00 per document over it’s litigation life.

Add in the internal touches, court touches and appellate level touches and I sure hope it was full of pretty colors, because if you’re ITM and you LOST that lawsuit, you’ve just paid double.

This is a technical problem, not a legal one, although the impact upon the legal/litigation community could be severe. What this means is that software developers MUST figure out a better way. Because we can.

This is a great playground to be in, –especially given the economy…

So, in looking at TinyUrl, I wondered why they only used 6 slots for their hash.

For purposes of the guess, a “close enough” estimate of how the algorithm works would be to look at the possible items that go in each slot [a-z] and [0-9] and see how many variations were available, mathematically speaking.

How a hash is generated isn’t important, because there are several well-defined ways of doing so. The only thing that really matters is that the generator interface check that a hash has not already been used and generate another one in the teeny number of exceptions when a double is created.

The math of it is fairly simple, so I’ll spare you the link clicking to Chemical-Ecology and simply give it to you:

a to z is 26 letters plus 10 digits for a total of 36 items in each slot. There are 6 slots, so the formula for this is

36P6 = 36! / (36-6) = 1,402,410,240

Then, I wondered how the total would change if I got greedy and added oooone more slot.

The formula becomes:

36P7 = 36!/(36-7) = 42,072,307,200

That is a LOT of documents. Which means that IBM might be able to fill the bucket, but very few other companies will. In fact, the Forbes top 200 might want their own buckets, which would STILL be better than the current Bates system

[ mathematical corrections are always welcome! ]

Now, according to my Outlook text files, they send the potential variations through the rook with a text version format of [ 76193731-000000DGC.eml ]

Soooo, if we then ask how likely it is that the courts will be deluged with documents on the order of 42 BILLION, then I think it’s safe to say that it makes sense to pile all documents into one bucket and assign them unique litigation numbers rather than have each party Bates stamp their own.

The potential ROI for companies that are repeatedly sued (Forbes top 1000?) is impressive. Can you imagine how much money clients would save, if 90% of discovery documents were found to have already been assigned a number??

It’s a simple matter to ensure that the numbers are truly unique, so the next step would be to tag them appropriately. In fact, companies could keep repositories forever and provide an API to specific discovery requests, rather than actually delivering discovery.

Something to think about in these days of cloud computing!

Filed in Components, Law 2.0+, Ralph says, Theory | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Multilingual Ontologies

Monday, January 19, 2009

Something to think about, that goes beyond the issue of multi-byte data ( a problem that can be solved ).

Law is a process of communication that reflects and re-inforces what is and is not “OK.” Even though we have only a few major systems of law (Anglo-American, Civil, tribal, communist, etc), the complexity of law is why “lawyer” can stand as it’s own as a profession. As lawyers, we interpret the interpretations of culture, thereby recreating culture in an infinite loop.

So, as we think about the relationship between law and the semantic web, we see just how hard it is to develop cross-cultural ontologies. It’s hard, because defining what a group is, is one of the functions of “culture,”–that is, it’s one of the things that separates cultures.

One aspect of the Obama Administration that I most look forward to, is the manner in which Obama has that conversation with the nation, and the way in which a broader ontological approach to policy and international relationships takes hold.

In fact, both Michelle Obama and Barack Obama come from the legal elite, which means that the conversation will show a balance of the populism which characterized his communication throughout the campaign, as well as the “pragmatism,”–a form of foundational conservatism.

Finding a way to reconcile tomatoes and tomah-toes is what this article is aboot/about:development of multilingual ontologies “New Method For Building Multilingual Ontologies That Can Be Applied To The Semantic Web.”

Definitely worth a read, as is this blog by David Provost:

Solutions like Nstein’s and others can help to reduce the expense of human tagging or even introduce tagging where there’s been no human available to perform this task. Utlimately, costs can only be reduced to zero and businesses rely on revenues and profits for success. Nstein is cognizant of this fact and tries to point its customers in the right direction – for example, once a publisher’s content has been tagged it can be tailored to produce a feed based on a person, place, or thing. For some publishers this can represent a new and very welcome revenue stream. Another example is a common trait of NLP technology, which is the publication of additional content links that are related to the primary article on a given page. Again, some publishers will find the resulting performance an improvement over their current state of affairs.

Filed in 44 (Obama), Law 2.0+, Law Practice 2.0 | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Checklist Mentality

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Pilots think using checklists and mechanics don’t. Pilots need perfection, mechanics solve problems creatively.
This marks a fundamental difference in the way they process information and a reason why intercession is often necessary to make sure that the plane gets into the air and stays there until the time it’s supposed to land. And then, of course, it needs to land safely.

Following the theme of different thinking about the law, I wonder if we can also learn from a movement to get doctors to do the same thing:

A new study has found that hospitals could cut surgery complications by about 30 percent and resulting deaths by 40 percent if doctors and nurses follow a checklist of safety rules before, during and after performing surgery.

The checklist, issued by the World Health Organization last year in response to soaring reports of hospital errors, lists 19 steps that surgical teams should follow, starting with making sure that the right patient is on the operating table, the site of incision has been located, and that the proper procedure is about to be performed. “In this era of highly intense and sophisticated technology, sometimes a very simple technology, which only takes a few minutes, can have a very positive impact,” says Richard Reznick, head of surgery at the University of Toronto in Canada and co-author of the study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

It’s not going to work to simply give doctors a list of things after which they yell “check!” I would suggest that the doctor calls out the item and the techs around him or her get to answer “check!” This would instill some quality control over doctors who are notoriously imperious in the operating route.

Either that, –or force hospitals to send doctors to semi-annual trainings to ensure that they comply with the established operating procedures…

Filed in Design, Product Reviews | | Comments (0)

Oxo as a Model for Law 3.0

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

I was thinking today about the prospect for a program that refits the homes of the elderly (while they’re off visiting the grands or something) so that they can be self-sufficient longer.

A very good reason to move to Florida.
But, then I started thinking about Oxo products (which I use and love). Since I think they had a great, simple idea, I decided to look at their mission statement, as a way to take a working-break from devising the mission statements for my own projects. This is what I learned:
oxo_1141000_3a_1

OXO is based on the concept of Universal Design. But what is Universal Design and how does it benefit users? In simplest terms, Universal Design means the design of products usable by as many people as possible. In the case of OXO, it means designing products for young and old, male and female, left- and right- handed and many with special needs.

“Universal Design“? Cool. This phrase deftly encapsulates my dreams of master-minding a revolution from the perspective of legal technological innovation. Wish I had thought of it myself. Here’s one articulation of the Principles of universal design:

PRINCIPLE ONE: Equitable Use

PRINCIPLE TWO: Flexibility in Use

PRINCIPLE THREE: Simple and Intuitive Use

PRINCIPLE FOUR: Perceptible Information

PRINCIPLE FIVE: Tolerance for Error

PRINCIPLE SIX: Low Physical Effort

PRINCIPLE SEVEN: Size and Space for Approach and Use

BWAAAHHHAHHHAAA~!

Here’s what one path looks like:

Step One: learn something about the law. Check!
Step Two: impatience with the inanity of legal practice becomes intolerable. Check!
Step Three: understand that my highest use is NOT chasing clients. Check!
Step Four: Battle with middle-class demons for 15 years. Check!
Step Five: Say, what the hell! I gotta be meeeeee! Check.

So, when Ron Gruner asks, as he did in his White paper, “What’s Holding You back?” I can sum up the answer in 4 words: A Team To Execute

That’s all and that’s it.

Now, in solving that problem there is a major dependency, called “money.” But, money is not the first consideration when it comes to “getting stuff done.” The Amish don’t need money to build barns, they need people.
oxo_1064374_3a_1
The dirty little secret of capitalism is that there are a LOT of people who are not money-motivated. Most of them work long hours for other people. They’re not motivated by money,–they’re motivated by the things money can buy, their own limitations and their fears.

People aho are not money motivated are usually people with experience having lots of it. They know money doesn’t buy happiness and having “enough” money is relative to one’s perceived needs. That’s one of the lessons that allows our veterans to survive on the street,–the military taught them that survival isn’t about money, it’s about resourcefulness.

One thing I know is that there is a deep pool of people who have passion and who would gladly trade a Lamborghini and 100-hour work weeks for a satisfying 60-hour work week (let’s be realistic). Those are the people I need to find.

I find them, then I find someone with money to pay them to execute the visions.

That’s it and that’s all.

Filed in Design, Product Reviews, Theory | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Bono, The Lawyer

Sunday, January 11, 2009

This news is bit old, but it’s never too late for good cheer!

welcome to the profession, Boyo!

From the press release:

21 May, 2008
Bono, U2 lead singer and anti-poverty activist to receive Honorary Doctorate from Keio University

Bono will also deliver a lecture to Keio students

Keio University will confer the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Law, honoris causa, upon Mr. Paul David Hewson, who is known as Bono, in recognition for his work in the fight against poverty and AIDS in Africa. The Ceremony and a lecture will be held on Tuesday 27 May from 16:20. Please cover this story. Please note that this release is embargoed at 6 pm 27 May 2008. (Japan standard time).

1. Conferring the Honorary Doctorate of Law Bono has been involved in the fight against poverty for more than twenty years. Both as a musician with U2 and in his lobbying of international leaders, he has worked to raise awareness and promote effective political action to eliminate extreme poverty and disease, especially in Africa. Through his music and his activism Bono has helped to deliver results for the poorest people in the world. He will continue that work during his visit to Japan during Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) conference and in the lead-up to the G8 in July. Bono is co-founder of the ONE Campaign, which has more than 2.4 million members engaged in the fight against poverty. Keio University, which was established 150 years ago in 1858 under the principal of dokuritsu jison (independence and self-respect), has aspired to establish a true “ public realm” of civil society, independent of the bureaucracy. Keio has continuously nurtured leaders of civil society. In recognition of Bono’s outstanding leadership as an activist who appeals to our human conscience in the fight against global poverty, Keio University confers on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Law.

I’m not sure if grade inflation is responsible, but I’m pretty sure that a history of 20-plus years as a rock star, social networking genius and entrepreneur won’t help on the Multi-State.

Too bad every video of his acceptance speech seems to have been pulled from the web!

Anyway, the legal profession (even if it’s just honorary) is all the better for the addition of one more … eh… member.
:o ))

Filed in Law Practice 2.0, Product Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

The imPERTinence of Law 2.0

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Law 2.0 and it’s bratty little sister, 3.0 is a form of apostasy, the beginning and maturation of a fundamental shift in the way legal services are conceived, produced and consumed.

Law is a type of religion,–much like science. There is a technique to legal analysis that one learns in a “law seminary.” Catechismic competency is perfected state by state, with national definitional certification possible through tests such as the multi-state and professional ethics exams. The bar number is proof that one is ordained to wax on, wax off in arenas from the court room to Court TV.

There’s yet to be a law school that develops its curriculum with the idea of training lawyers to think differently about the law. Indeed, the only people who are allowed to think differently are professors, who are granted tenure based on the combination of connection and disconnection from orthodoxy. And, of course, their ability to pull alumni dollars. Such is the nature of accreditation.

However, the argument can be made that once one has spent 20 years outside of academia, its high time to start thinking about the way law could be improved. That’s why I’m obsessed with Law 2.0 / 3.0 technologies. There aren’t many of them, but we’re starting to see some really great stuff, alot of which is chronicled on Wired GC. I’ll try to open up a dialogue with the Vallex Fund, as well, since it states that it has an objective of investing in legal technological innovation:

The Vallex Fund will encourage entrepreneurs to consider the legal industry as a major, new opportunity. “Big Law” alone is a $100 billion industry whose clients are increasingly dissatisfied with the ever increasing costs of legal services. This is not a new trend. Over the last forty years many studies and surveys have been conducted chronicling the problems, inefficiencies and even abuses within the nation’s civil law system. Yet many, both inside and outside the legal profession, believe improvements have been far too slow in coming. A new approach is needed. As experienced entrepreneurs, the Vallex Fund’s management and investors believe an entrepreneurial approach can help expedite change and fresh thinking as it has so successfully done in other industries.

If law is a car, Law 2.0 deals with connection between dealers and manufacturers(efficiencies), dealers and consumers(reputation) and used car economy (mashups). It’s time for a bailout.

And, to get that bailout, Law 3.0 is here to find out what goes on under the hood,–and what should go on when you turn the key. It’s a revisit of the engine(Wankel, Diesel, Electric Hybrid). It’s a way of reclaiming the auto shop for the high-school fix-it guy. It’s not stopping to ask permision to rebuild a car from the spare parts and junk yards, rather than being forced to source parts from the manufacturer.

At the base of Law 3.0 is a soulful revisioning with respect to the concept of “car” from a semantic point of view, taking the car as an algorithym and figuring out which problems it solves and whether there are better ways to solve it.

In this revolutionary approach to manipulation of the rules and processes upon which law is premised, there is TREMENDOUS opportunity.

To get a handle on this, one way that the Obama Administration is poised to help us is with its Project Management approach to problem-solving. Few lawyers would argue that litigation management is as much about managing the process as about managing the content. So, it’s time for us to heal ourselves and let the geeks help us by creating analgies between the problems we face and solutions that already exist, so we can innovte rather than regurgitate.

We need to take another look at process, and figure out new ways to solve the problems faced by, e.g. The Rules of Civil/Criminal Procedure and Code of Military Justice. We need to ask whether they really work for us,–a collaborative discussion that will make itself clear as the Obama Administration works it’s way through the closing of Gitmo.

Rather than an economic approach (which I fear is the legacy of the Chicago School) to law, I urge The Deciders to consider, instead, a Project Managment approach. This means replacing the fundamental premise of scarcity and supply/demand curves with the analysis of problems and steps needed to reach a solution. This requires tools like PERT:

PERT was developed primarily to simplify the planning and scheduling of large and complex projects. It was able to incorporate uncertainty by making it possible to schedule a project while not knowing precisely the details and durations of all the activities. It is more of an event-oriented technique rather than start- and completion-oriented, and is used more in R&D-type projects where time, rather than cost, is the major factor. [ Wikipedia ]

PERT is brilliant stuff. And, it’s something that the techno-geeks around us understand fantastically well, because most are familiar with tools like agile development and scrum.

They.get.stuff.done.and.stuff.works.

We were to take some of those processes and appoaches, the refrain “Yes, We Can! after January 20th will be (with apologies to Montell Jordan ) “This Is How We Do It!”

Filed in Function, Theory | | Comments (0)

It’s Getting Hot In Here, So Take Off All Your Clouds!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

There are some tres, tres cool apps out there. It’s not like I discovered them, but I found ‘em, so I’m passing them on.

The first is KloudShare, an up and coming “platform as a service” provider. PaaS is a value-added service which allows you to contract out platform development functions.

Who wants to work on the platform? Not me. I just want the darned thing to work, so I can go about building my application.

Examples include Amazon Web Services, something I signed up for today, just to see what it is, and Google’s App Engine. Very cool idea. Provided the data is secure and uptime remains ast 99.99%, what’s not to love about this, from the perspective of small business.

I am waiting on tippy toes to find out how KloudShare intends to contribute to cloud application development, but they’re in stealth mode for now, so I’ll walk through their stuff when they provide stuff to walk through. But, from what I can surmise from the blog, I like it though. I really, really like it for the legal space.

akshaykumar

And, then, there’s Gnip. Hysterical tag line (go read it for yourself). I LOVE their simple way of getting around the captcha problem. =====/

Simple and it works. Hello!

high-level-architecture1
And …oooohhh!!….this lovely diagram of how one company is walking along the bleeding edge. I can’t possibly the only one who finds this stuff Akshay Kumar + Alex Bogusky yummy!

BTW, Alex takes Brad Pitt’s place due to his Clintonian definition of “cheating.” I’d call him a schlub, cuz I like the way it rolls off the tongue…but he’s clearly the opposite, by definition. Plus, I could really care less what he and Angelia got up to: Mr. & Mrs. Smith was hysterical.

alex_bogusky_microsoft_fast_company_cover

Want help deciphering the PJTERN stack?

Python: the octopus that grabs stuff from disparate data sources; simple language to learn, making it sing is another matter; foundation language for building web apps on the cheap

JRE 1.6 – uses Java’s Runtime Environment for the business rules to make web data requests of the managing hardware + software (server)

TerraCotta – “shared memory for clustering/redundancy” seems to mean that it takes the tasks that relational databases don’t do well, and does it for them.

Ejabberd : instant messaging server written in Erlang (a language I’d never heard of until today) that apparently makes it easier to write “concurrent” applications (think 7 dwarves all carrying Snow White)

Ruby: the New Old black. It’s a highly configurable platform for building agile application development…hunh?…ok, it’s GOTTA be on your dev’s resume somewhere, if you’re exploring web apps; foundation language for building web apps on the cheap

Nginx – a Russian HTTP and mail server, that permits load balancing

This is all pretty low level tech, which is why I don’t deal with it normally. But, the picture was pretty. I was curious. And, there you go. It’s amazing what you can do, when you don’t have to BUY the foundational components of your web application! Prolem solved!

Filed in Components, Function | | Comments (0)