RIP Audioblogger

Well, while killing off Small Firm Life, I found this notice which related to one of my first posts about putting audio on a blog. Goodbye again!

Hello,
As of November 1, 2006, Audioblogger will no longer accept phone calls. MP3s made with the service will continue to be hosted and served but you will no longer be able to use Audioblogger to post new audio.
Audioblogger is an independent product, run by Odeo, Inc., a small startup company in San Francisco, CA. We are not affiliated with Google or Blogger except that we operate and provide the Audioblogger service.
Given our limited resources, we have to make tough decisions about what projects to focus on. And we've come to the difficult decision that Audioblogger demands too many resources, time, and money for us to continue its operation.
However, there are several other services that offer similar functionality. Odeo is not affiliated with any of these services, we only suggest them only in hopes that one or the other will be a good alternative for you.
Gabcast.com is a free service for recording by phone Hipcast.com has a seven day free trial and lots of features Gcast.com is another free service for phone recording
All of the phone posting services listed above are compatible with Odeo in that they produce podcast feeds, which can be imported to Odeo. Any audio file at Odeo can be posted on a blog by copying and pasting some embed code.
Odeo would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who has tried Audioblogger. If you are interested in keeping up with our other blog-friendly projects, please have a look at Twitter.com and our customizable audio players.
Thanks,
The Odeo Team
Links:
Gabcast - http://gabcast.com
Hipcast - http://hipcast.com
Gcast - http://gcast.com
Odeo Importing - http://www.odeo.com/create/addfeed
Twitter - http://twitter.com
Players - http://odeo.com/channel/102054/embedded_player

Goodbye Small Firm Life

If anyone's read this blog from the beginning, they'll remember that it was started to explore the possibilities of blogging and to support my column "Small Firm Life" for the New York Law Journal. Well, I've had a couple of life changes that have led me to conclude that I won't be continuing to blog under this title.

Most significantly, I joined a firm. I am partner number 14 in Dunnington Bartholow & Miller LLP. My offices are now on the rather swanky Madison Avenue and feature plush conference rooms, the largest of which has a great view of St. Patrick's Cathedral. And while arguably we are a small firm in the cosmic mix of things, my point of view no longer quite fits the title.

In recognition of the change, the title of my New York Law Journal column will be changing to "Trial and Error". I think I'll probably just write the column, rather than blog about writing it. That may change, but for now it's how I feel.

Another change is that my book, Copyright Litigation Handbook has been published by West. They've put a rather nice author profile of me on their website. The first edition of these books is like a Beta version of software. I need to write next year's update by March 15, 2007. So the race is on to try to get comments, criticism and to follow new developments in the law. I have some ideas on how I'd like to expand the work, but rather than wait until the last minute, I'd like to set myself the regular task of taking it in bite sizes. A blog seems the perfect way of doing that while it's all fresh.

So you'll find me at Copyright Litigation. I won't try to cover every late-breaking development in copyright law or new controversy that arises. But I will be looking for lessons in little-noticed decisions or little-noticed procedural goodies in famous cases that people are discussing for other reasons.

If you're a lawyer new to blogging, I recommend reading this blog (Small Firm Life) from the beginning - following my mistakes and frustrations should help you avoid a few of your own!

Copyright Litigation Handbook

Well, my first book is on its way to the printer. The process, from proposal to finish took 3.5 years. It was a full year of waiting for the proposal to be approved, then two years to write it, then six months of the editing and additional writing process.

If you would like to order it, please use the OFFER NUMBER 523571. You can find it on West's website here If you use the offer Number, it helps West to track the sales and tell what strategies are working. Obviously people who live in the blogosphere will want to indicate to the company and the publishing world that a mention on a blog is just as important, if not more important, than a mention in the conventional media.

West's web site has a description of the book's contents. I think the book will be very helpful to anyone who needs to litigate (or oversee the litigation of) a copyright case. On the one hand, the book's approach is very nuts and bolts in terms of how to put together pleadings (checklists). On the other hand, I think I really take on some big substantive difficult procedural issues and make them accessible to both the beginning and advanced practitioners.

Copyright litigation is extraordinarily complex. My goal was to simplify it. I didn't succeed there, but I hope I succeeded in showing a few strategies for cutting through it all and saving time, energy and money.