Case Management software specialist, Eclipse Legal Systems, has become the first Legal IT provider to announce AJAX functionality.

The announcement comes ahead of the Q1 2007 release of Eclipse’s new Proclaim® v3 system, and represents the latest step in the firm’s “Open Systems Unions” ethos, which aims to allow users of its software to cleanly integrate with referrers, panels, business partners and third party packages.

This latest advancement embraces the AJAX – which stands for Asynchronous Java and XML – methodology; primarily a web development technique for creating interactive online data exchange.  AJAX further pushes Eclipse’s recently-publicised investment in Web Services technologies to enable enhanced ‘Application Business Logic’ (ABL) – in short, allowing users of its Proclaim® software to share data instantaneously in Internet environments.  

For example, several Eclipse clients are initially to use AJAX functionality in sharing selected case data – published from Proclaim® to a chosen website - with insurers and mortgage lenders who can themselves view and manipulate this data in the front-end environment of their choice (e.g. Java, “dotnet”, etc).  This dynamic real-time exchange, with the option of personalised user interfaces, presents Proclaim® users with a huge range of possibilities for furthering relationships with referrers and commercial partners.  

Virtualisation is one of the hot topics in IT at the moment particularly amongst the bigger firms carrying large numbers of servers and storage devices.

Virtualisation software allows one computer to run multiple operating systems at the same time, essentially running multiple computers at the same time. While the concept has been around for many years it has now become practical and cost effective to run on ordinary servers and allows for more efficient use of computing resources as well as significantly simplifying the administration, setup and deployment of many hardware and software installations.

VMware have traditionally been the dominant player in this market and have seen their revenue grow substantially in recent times as more people have become aware of the benefits and capabilities of virtualisation.

However, VMware are now being given a run for their money by XenSource and Virtual Iron who are offering enterprise virtualisation at a significantly lower cost.

For an interesting article on how virtualisation can reduce IT budgets look here.

Microsoft are investigating a flaw in Word which can let hackers execute malicious code on your machine if you open a Word document that has been designed to exploit this flaw.

Such Word documents would tend to come in as attachments to emails or be found on web sites. All security experts recommend that that you never open a file from a source you are unsure of, and if you follow this advice and exercise caution with other Word files you should be safe.

Versions of Word affected are:

Word 2000
Word 2002/XP
Word 2003
Word Viewer 2003
Word 2004 for Mac
Word 2004 v. X for Mac
Works 2004, 2005, and 2006

Security experts McAfee have reported a variation on this exploit which they have seen in sample documents analysed.

Although Microsoft are releasing a set of security patches this Tuesday as part of their monthly patch cycle, it is not thought that a fix for the Word vulnerabilities will be included.

WinScribe USA Inc., part of the Winscribe group, the world-leading provider of digital dictation software, today announced that it has acquired WWL Network Services LLC; a Kentucky based WinScribe Platinum Sales Partner. WinScribe will use WWL's technical competence and extensive sales experience to extend its service, support and sales capabilities to its US based Sales Partners and customers.

"We are experiencing rapid growth in many sectors of the US market so we needed to be sure we could meet customer expectations from pre-sales through to post sales support. With five years experience of selling and supporting our products, WWL was a logical choice," said Matthew Weavers, CEO of the WinScribe group. "WWL's status as a Microsoft Gold Partner further demonstrates their commitment to excellence across all areas of their business."

A thematic review by Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) has confirmed the progress made by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in moving to a common national system for managing cases. The COMPASS Case Management System (CMS) implemented by the CPS is a national strategic system and an integral element in joining up and modernising the criminal justice system.

The COMPASS system was developed in partnership with LogicaCMG

The initial rollout was completed at the end of 2003 but the system benefits for regular updates and enhancements including integration with police force systems and other systems in use within the criminal justice system. More backround information here.

Cambridgeshire County Council (CCC) has recently installed BigHand3 digital dictation technology throughout its legal department, replacing outdated analogue tape equipment.

Following a comprehensive tender process involving two additional providers BigHand3 was selected as the preferred software solution. It was found to most effectively enable the efficient management of workflow between fee-earners and secretaries, produce faster document turnaround times and develop a work sharing culture.

Prior to the implementation of the workflow solution, fee-earners dictated using analogue tape equipment with recordings physically passed to secretaries for transcription. CCC found the process to be wholly inefficient as tapes containing one or more dictations and/or vital instructions, were easily broken. The sound quality of recordings produced using outdated tape equipment frequently rendered dictations inaudible, therefore slowing up the process of dictation and transcription and adversely impacting productivity of the department overall.

Benefits experienced at the Council which have been directly attributed to the implementation of BigHand3 include:

•    Improved document turnaround times
•    Increased flexibility of secretarial support
•    Minimised cost of equipment and consumables
•    Removal of the requirement to re-record dictations due to lost or damaged tapes

According to Reuters the number of spam messages in the UK has risen by 50% in the last 2 months and worldwide has tripled since June.

Much of this is generated by criminal gangs who hijack computers to send out emails selling drugs, sex and stock tips.

It is estimated that spam costs companies hundreds of pounds each year in terms of lost user productivity and the computer resources needed to manage it.

Many of the tools which have helped defeat spam in the past are loosing their effectiveness as spammers develop increasingly sophisticate techniques to spread their message. It is now common to see images containing the spammers main message embedded within emails that contain random text pulled from books such as Lord or the Rings.

Images are notoriously difficult to scan and the inclusion of such random text makes it hard for the spam detection systems to detect patters in email and therefore block them.

It is likely that this problem will get worse before it gets better and so selecting the right tools and suppliers to help you defeat this problem is increasingly important.

The lack of posts to this blog over the last week is largely due to the fact that my broadband link was out of action for 6 days.

Working perfectly at 10:00pm one evening last week, yet totally dead the next morning.

Calls to the technical support team at my ISP initially resulted in the usual "have you got it plugged in" type questions. Once it became clear that is was not my equipment or connection at fault it was then passed to BT for "diagnostics". I am not sure what diagnostics BT performed but it was bounced back and forth between BT and the ISP a few times with me being asked to retest the link each time.

The "diagnostics" revealed nothing and my ISP then blamed my previous ISP (who I had migrated from about 8 months previously) for putting a "cease" order on my line. Apparently there was nothing they could do about this and it could take "months" to resolve!

A few heated calls to my previous ISP resulted in strenuous denials that they had done anything to my line. I then managed to get a contact number for BT Wholesale who normally only deal with ISPs directly but were more than helpful in telling me that my previous ISP had done nothing; no changes had been made to the service provision on my line and therefore it must be a problem with my new ISP.

So back to my new ISP! After 5 days they eventually get a BT engineer here to run some tests. He tests the line from the office then goes back to the exchange and discovers its not a problem with the line but a problem higher up the chain with BTs transmission equipment. Within a couple of hours he gets a transmission engineer out who finds a dead card in the exchange which is replaced and we are back up and running.

There are are few morals to this story:

1. Until you loose your Internet connection you don't realise how dependent you are on it. Although I have a backup dial-up link and a 3G wireless link, these are slow and expensive and practically useless for sending and receiving large files. Email on a dial-up link was taking 2.5 hours to download!

2. Although the technical team at the ISP were VERY helpful they appeared to lack the tools, processes and information they needed to find out the root cause of the problem and get it resolved quickly. This is from an ISP that is generally rated very highly by business users and to whom I switched because their support is rated so highly. They employ technically proficient people whom it is a pleasure to talk to.

3. If you have a problem like this it is important to keep up the pressure on the ISP, BT or whoever can get the problem resolved. It would appear that problems such as this can easily get lost in a black hole and you need to keep chasing otherwise the problem could potentially take a long time to resolve.

4. The BT engineer who came on site was excellent and got the problem resolved within hours. Yet it took 5 days to get a BT engineer on site and the initial BT "diagnostics" are obviously useless in that they failed to pick up a dead card in the exchange which apparently was affecting a number of people.

FloSuite, a provider of Microsoft-centric BPM solutions to the global professional services sector, today announced a £2m R&D programme that will underpin the delivery of its next-generation of process-centric applications.

The programme will encompass development of advanced case management capabilities within FloSuite’s core BPM platform, and extended support for new features included within Microsoft’s latest Windows Vista operating system and Office 2007 application suite.

These key advances will provide the basis for delivery of a next generation of sophisticated FloSuite BPM solutions, which will enable professional services organisations to manage various types of case-based workloads more easily within a true BPM-driven framework – with the added ability to work seamlessly from within Microsoft Office 2007 interfaces.

By building deeper integration capabilities with Vista and Office 2007 interfaces, business users and managers will have extended options to launch and interact with FloSuite processes from within their everyday Microsoft Office working environment – including applications like Outlook, Word, Excel and SharePoint.

This latest round of investment comes only months after the completion of a two-year project to re-develop and enhance FloSuite’s existing Microsoft Visio-based application design environment, .NET Web Client and existing Outlook and SharePoint user interface options.

 
 

Top-25 Dutch law firm Van Benthem & Keulen Advocaten has competed the roll out of BigHand3 Digital Dictation Workflow software across the firm reporting a significant improvement in team work and document production.

Lawyers at Van Benthem & Keulen can send their dictation instantly to their own secretary or a secure box. Each secretary can share their workload with their department via the department box, or even with all secretaries in the office by way of the ‘Van Benthem Box’. This has had a very positive effect on team work during peak times.

In January Van Benthem & Keulen will also be implementing the BigHand3 EmailGateway module, allowing lawyers to send dictations into the office workflow via Outlook or Outlook Web Access.