Doug Cornelius .com

The Telegraph is reporting that two-thirds of London firm’s are blocking access to Facebook and similar sites: Facebook banned by City firms. The Metropolitan Police is reporting that “access to some websites is blocked as there is no business need for employees to access them. Facebook is one of them.”

Maybe the Metropolitan Police should take a look at what the police of Belmar, New Jersey are doing: Cops May be Watching Your Party Blog. The Belmar police are monitoring social network sites and blogs to keep a lid on rowdy group rentals.

There is an application in Facebook that posts the releases from the Toronto Police. There are Facebook groups for Applicants for University of Maryland Police, the British Transport Police, the Delaware State Police Cadets, and the St. Andrew’s Police Department. [Facebook registration required].

I posted back in May that the London firm Allen & overy had to lift their ban on Facebook because of staff complaints. [Facebook at Law Firms: Cannot be Banned]. That firm stated that there was a business purpose for Facebook.

Maybe the Metropolitan Police need to rethink their position.

Thanks to Stephen Collins at AcidLabs for pointing out the Telegraph story.

Dale Arseneault seems to bee enjoying his summer since he is using golf to compare knowledge management: How Knowledge Management is like Golf

TechnoLawyer put together BlawgWorld 2007. It is also combined with the Technolawyer Problem/Solution Guide.

BlawgWorld is 77 blog posts from 77 legal bloggers. The Problem/Solution Guide matches up vendors and their products based on the problem presented.

Judi Sohn posted on Web Worker Daily: 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally.

Facebook is one of those technologies that is incredibly interesting, but I am not sure how useful it is. After reading through the twelve ways, I did not find any that would warrant use of Facebook in a business setting. These are more about being more professional in Facebook.

I still question where Facebook is headed. Its strong tie-in with college students indicates that Facebook’s users are going to be poring into the business community in the next few years as they graduate. But will Facebook crumble under the weight of bad social behavior like MySpace or dominate as a communications platform? If it is going to crumble, we can ignore it. BUT, if it becomes a dominate communications platform we cannot ignore it.

Looking back many years to the adoption of email, businesses ignored it for awhile. Eventually, they had to adopt it in order to communicate efficiently. Now, college-age students use Facebook to communicate; they use email sparingly. Facebook has become the new email for the college-age crowd. Will it become a new communications tool for business?

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court allowed a commercial landlord to enforce a liquidated damages clause against a tenant for non-payment of rent in Cummings Properties, LLC vs. National Communications Corporation (SJC Docket 09778. July 17, 2007).

The tenant had argued that the liquidated damages clause was unenforceable under Commissioner of Insurance v. Massachusetts Acc Co., 310 Mass. 769 (1942). That case barred enforcement of a liquidated damages provision that, by the terms of the lease, could apply to both trivial as well as material breaches.

A contract provision that clearly and reasonably establishing liquidated damages should be enforced so long as it is not so disproportionate to anticipated damages as to constitute a penalty. If, at the time the contract was made, actual damages were difficult to ascertain and the sum agreed on by the parties as liquidated damages represents a reasonable forecast of damages expected to occur in the event of a breach, it will usually be enforced. TAL Fin. Corp. v. CSC Consulting, Inc., 446 Mass. 422 (2006).

A rent acceleration clause, in which a defaulting lessee is required to pay the lessor the entire amount of the remaining rent due under the lease, may constitute an enforceable liquidated damages provision so long as it is not a penalty.

The SJC modified “their holding in Commissioner of Ins. to the extent that in the case of a commercial agreement between sophisticated parties containing a liquidated damages provision applicable to breaches of multiple covenants, it may be presumed that the parties intended the provision to apply only to those material breaches for which it may properly be enforced. This modification is consistent with the goal of resolving disputes “efficiently by making it unnecessary to wait until actual damages from a breach are proved” and helps to eliminate uncertainty and costly litigation. Kelly v. Marx, 428 Mass. 877, 881 (1999). It is also consistent with the intention of the parties in the present case as expressed in the language they agreed to in the liquidated damages and severability clauses of the lease.”

With the summer associates getting ready to finish up their program, I thought it would useful to get their take on the use of social network sites. The summer associates consist largely of law students who will be graduating from law school in 2008 and starting at the firm as attorneys in the fall of 2008.

I am still gathering data from the survey, but I though I would put up some preliminary information.

• More than 80% have a Facebook account
• Of those, 2/3 check Facebook at least once a day
• Only 25% have a LinkedIn account
• Of those, only 10% check LinkedIn once a week, with the rest answering rarely
• Only 20% have a MySpace account
• Of those, 1/4 check it once a week, with the rest answering rarely

One of the questions I always have with a blog is whether anyone is reading it.

As I posted earlier [Why Blog? My Reasons] I use this blog as a personal knowledge management tool. I put links to articles that I want to refer to later, along with my reaction to the article. I post to gather my thoughts on a subject. I find this blog to be a great technology tool to help me gather, organize and search my information and my thoughts.

Shortly after I started the blog, I noticed that people were reading it. Then curiosity got the better of me and I started tracking site visits. As a devoted fan of RSS, I realized that tracking site visits did not capture those who were reading posts through a feedreader.

Several weeks ago Google purchased the FeedBurner. The first sign of the companies integrating came out: FeedBurner Integration for Blogspot Blogs. Since this blog is based on Blogger, I made the switch to see if I could could get a better sense of the number of subscribers. The changed resulted in a tenfold increase of the number of subscribers.

I did not realize there was so many of you. Thanks for reading.

I starting watching the Tour de France several years ago. My wife had knee surgery in June of 2001 and was laid up on the couch all summer. She got sick of watching talkshows and stumpled across the coverage of the Tour de France on the Outdoor Life Network (now called Versus).

She got hooked and got me hooked. I never realized how much strategy goes into the race. Since then, I have always looked forward to the voices of Paul Sherwen and Phil Ligget during July.

For those first five years, we were watching Lance Armstrong dominate the race. (Sure, my watching was captured by having such a recognizable American win the race.)

I was even more intrigued last year, when the field should have been wide open without the dominance of Armstrong. It was huge disappointment when many of the top contenders did not participate in the race because of the blood doping found during Operation Puerto. Knocking out Basso, Botero, Sevilla and the Astana team. We thought it would result in a clean Tour. But the amazing comeback by Floyd Landis was marred by his testing positive for testosterone.

This year, it was once again a wide open field. Sadly, it has fallen apart again. Vinokourov, who won two stages, was booted out of the race for doping. Yesterday, the wearer of the yellow jersey (the race leader) Michael Rasmussen was kicked out for failing to report for drug testing prior to the race.

It was great watching Rasmussen, Contador, Evans, Leipheimer and the other contenders battle for victory in the Pyrenees. I am sad that the brave battle by Rasmussen on the slopes of the Pyrenees and his spectacular defense in the time trial is tainted by doping.

I am happy that the Tour is catching the cheaters. I thought last year’s crack down would have made the riders realize that they can’t get away with cheating. Perhaps next year the riders will realize that they will be caught if they cheat and therefore won’t cheat.

The national Law Journal has an article on how law students landed jobs by blogging: Blogging may be ticket to a job (subscription may be required).

For students, it allows potential employers to see their writing ability and knowledge about a subject. It also shows that the student is “motivated, innovative and takes initiative.”

Law.com – Legal Technology has an a new article: KM Attorneys Seek Calm in the E-Mail Storm.

I like Michael Mills statement of what a knowledge management lawyer does: “Our job is meta-lawyering instead of lawyering. It’s taking one step back to think about advanced technology and organizing information based on the culture of the firm, and how we serve our clients.”