Sanders Media

President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, could become the first Supreme Court justice to have a history of precedent-setting rulings on cyberlaw issues. Her nomination is key as cyberlaw issues continue to show up in this country’s courtrooms.

Her experience includes time as an IP (Intellectual Property) lawyer. As a judge, she’s ruled in cases involving Netscape and the New York Times. She’s known for her feisty demeanor and hard hitting questions.

Right now, it is hard to know which way she would lean in her rulings. Regardless, Judge Sotomayor’s nomination is a welcome development. Too many judges have too little understanding of cyberlaw issues, thus making them susceptible to the propaganda of special interests. We live in a digital world, and we must have lawmakers who understand the issues involved.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Twitter lately. Here are some basics about the popular social network.

• Tweet: This is the act of posting to Twitter. A post is a Tweet.
• Retweet: This involves posting or quoting another tweet in your own post.
• Follow: This is where you follow other users feeds or “tweets”.
• @user: This is your address on Twitter. For instance, to contact me on Twitter, simply send a message to @sandersmedia.
• Twitter Client: While you can follow your Twitter feed on Twitter.com, many people use a Twitter client. It’s like Outlook for your Twitter account.
• Short URL: You are able to post links in your tweets. However, since you are only allowed 140 characters for each “tweet”, you’ll want to shorten the URL. Tinyurl.com is an example of a service that will do this for you.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. You can also Google “twitter basics”.

That sure seems to be the case now. The web has long been an integral part of our lives. In the last couple of years, however, the web has moved beyond our computers. With that in mind, I want to talk about a new term being thrown around: Web 3.0.

Web 3.0 seems to build on 2.0’s use of “cloud services”. Since Apple released the iPhone, there have been a plethora of mobile apps that are location aware. So, rather than just accessing information from the cloud, we are seeing applications that pull information that is relevant to where a person is in the physical world. 3.0 is not just about pooling information, but about pooling relevant information.

With smartphones being the big growth market among mobile phones, a lot of software development is going into mobile platforms (Windows Mobile, Google Android, iPhone OS, etc.). This is where we are really seeing the emergence of Web 3.0. Take Yelp.com, for instance. Yelp has long been a source of user reviews and recommendations via its website. Now, with Yelp’s mobile app, you can find restaurants, hotels and entertainment right in your immediate vicinity. This is incredibly useful in a city that’s unfamiliar.

This next evolution of the web seems to be about giving the ‘net a brain. With so much information available, we need it parsed for us. These early attempts at Web 3.0 look promising.

It’s a slow day, so I thought I’d talk about my current favorite things going on in the tech world. Here’s my Top 5.

1. iPhone: The so-called “Jesus Phone” is still a wonder. I’ve had both editions, and it’s still new and fresh. None of the copycats have come close to equaling it’s ease of use, sleek look and great features. I am really excited about the iPhone OS 3.0 due out soon.
2. Xbox 360: Despite it’s hardware issues, Microsoft (against all odds) has created a terrific gaming ecosystem. The online Xbox Live community is vibrant, and the game library is immense. The addition of Netflix streaming to Xbox Live has made it a can’t-live-without device in my home.
3. Gmail: I was once a Hotmail user who paid $20 a year to get a miserly 2GB of storage. Now, with Gmail, I get over 7GB for free. While there are some services that provide unlimited for free, I haven’t found any that match Gmail’s features. The creation of labels instead of folders is a great organization tool. I am also able to use Gmail as a web-based email client. It checks all of my email accounts, and brings the email to one place.
4. iTunes: This is still the best music organization tool for your music. iTunes enabled me to bring my music together better than any service I’ve come across. The recent move to DRM-free music, the App Store and the availability of movies and TV shows has made the iTunes store the best place to buy digital media.
5. Skype: This service has been around for awhile, but it’s still one of my favorites. I love being able to keep up with family in North Carolina and Colorado. In both places, there are new little ones that I’m able to watch grow up.

I’m sure I’ll think of 20 more things I love as soon as I post this, but it’s a good start.

Wikipedia defines RSS as (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication”) a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. In this day of constant status updates, the RSS feed can be used to spread your message across multiple platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) quickly.

My first introduction to the concept of RSS came from my use of Google Reader to pull all of the content I wanted to read into one place. I could check the sports pages, world news and weather in one place. I now use RSS to feed this blog to Facebook. Twitterfeed uses my RSS to post links to this blog on Twitter.

I have a client who uses a template service for her website. She posts quite a bit to the blog portion of her site, but the template service does not provide an RSS feed for the blog. This makes it impossible to effectively spread her posts across multiple platforms. Due to SEO concerns, she can’t simply re-post in each place.

Make sure your website has an RSS feed. It will improve your branding, and spread your message.

This is a question that has recently received a large amount of attention. In early 2009, Facebook came under fire from its users for a new terms of service (TOS) that seemed to allow Facebook to own any content posted on its website. After large scale user revolt, Facebook decided to revert back to it’s older TOS. I can’t say that I remember another online service ever being this sensitive to its users concerns. They have now held a user vote on what the new TOS should be.

The entire episode makes me wonder if any of what we put online remains ours. For me personally, it should be. While I understand that anything I upload or write will likely no longer be private, I feel that I should at least retain ownership.

However, it’s unclear how this will play out legally. We are used to ignoring the TOS for online services. This needs to change if we want to maintain ownership of our digital “stuff”.