Put Down Your Devices and Look Around, People

I believe that I have the world’s greatest commute. I board the ferry at Larkspur Landing in Marin County, California and travel thirty minutes across the water to the Ferry Building in downtown San Francisco.

Friday morning was a gorgeous day. The sun was shining, the sky was crystal clear with the moon still hanging high, and the water was sparkling.

From the ferry ride, there were gorgeous views of Mount Tamalpais, Angel Island, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the Bay Bridge, San Francisco, as well as Berkeley and a bit of Oakland.

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Spam Email Costs Billions But Yields Far Less

Most of us hate unsolicited commercial email – aka spam. Notwithstanding spam filters and federal and state laws prohibiting spam under various circumstances, we nonetheless continue to receive these annoying emails in our in boxes.

One might think that the spammers are making fortunes as part of their predatory practices.

But a recent study indicates that while the societal cost of spam is phenomenally high, to the tune of $20 billion, the revenue derived from spam is a fraction of that, only $200 million.

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Social Networking Can Bring Big Profits To Businesses

Some people wonder whether social networking is a passing fad that will diminish in importance and attention over time. However, a recent social networking study by the McKinsey Global Institute concludes that more than $1 trillion can be realized annually by the value chain of social technologies. When used across enterprises, these technologies have the potential to raise the productivity of high-skilled workers as much as 25%.

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Electronic Discovery Can Save Litigation Costs

Partner Sheila Raftery Wiggins was featured in an article on eDiscovery in NJBiz. Here is an excerpt:

Sheila Raftery Wiggins, a partner at Duane Morris LLP, says people communicate more from home, while traveling and over the Internet, creating more possible evidence for companies to store.

During litigation, the process of electronic discovery — reviewing and identifying what electronically stored information, out of potentially millions of documents, needs to be turned over to the opposing party — often is cumbersome and costly for companies, but a recent court ruling might lead to the more widespread acceptance of technology that could save companies money and time.

Read the rest of the article on the NJBiz website.

Trouble In Password Paradise

Many people use the same password for all of their accounts. Why? Because it is easy to remember just one password across all accounts.

But is that a good idea? Nope. If that password were to fall into the wrong hands, it potentially could be used more pervasively to the disadvantage of the true password holder.

And this is not a hypothetical concern. Indeed, recent press reports are rife with disclosures of major password hacks/leaks.

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Long Live Tech In 2012

Happy New Year! We’re just a week into January, but 2012 seems to be firing on all tech cylinders.

The other night, I went to a shopping mall with my family. While most of the traditional retail stores were not terribly busy, the Apple store was an amazing hive of activity.

In the one room that makes up the store, I literally counted as many as 40 Apple employees who were swamped fielding questions from and helping a never-ending parade of customers. It seemed that everyone and their kid brother and sister was hunting for the latest iPad, iPod, and Apple computer.

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Ever Feel Like Unplugging From All This Technology

Information technology overload can be a very real thing. Don’t get me wrong – technology is fantastic. Instantaneously were are on top of fast-breaking news developments. And we are in immediate and constant contact with our “friends.”

But sometimes doesn’t it all seem a bit too much?

Do you ever just want to turn off, take a breath and simply observe the real world around you?

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Geotagging and Other Electronic Tracking – Worth the Risk to Privacy?

Congress is currently considering a bill to prevent the abuse of location data collected by electronic devices. In the mean time, we all have to question how much privacy are we willing to give up to get the types of services and apps we have come to love?

For example, did you know that when you take a picture with your smartphone and post that picture to the web, that photo could be tagged with geolocation data (i.e. Latitude and Longitude). Automatic geotagging is generally enabled by default on smartphones. While it sounds desirable to know where and when you took a vacation photo, consider the adorable photo you took of your children playing in your backyard and posted on line or the expensive piece of jewelry you just posted on e-Bay. Do you really want to give your location to everyone online?

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The opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author and are not to be construed as legal advice.

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