Busted!

Ever wondered what the harm is in borrowing a few images from the web to liven up your Powerpoint slides? After all, it's not like you are going to publish them online so who will know?

Well... trawling through my (soon to be defunct) Google Reader feeds today, I saw a post on the Gull Dinghy sailing blog. I used to sail a Gull and I still follow the blog as I retain a bit of a soft spot for them.

Centre-stage in the post is a photo of a talk given by David Henshall at this year's RYA Dinghy Show on the history of the Mirror Dinghy.

Something about the photograph on the rather large screen behind him looked a bit familiar though... And I quickly realised it was taken by me a couple of years ago!

It is featured on the old Gull website gallery (clearly credited to me) and I can only assume it has been borrowed from there. Unlike a lot of my stuff it wasn't licensed even for non-commercial use (under Creative Commons or similiar).

It doesn't seem to be attributed, although to be fair I can't really be certain from the photograph so it could be.

I'm not a professional photographer, and the photo is used in a talk on sailing history (rather than selling copies of the Daily Mail or something) so ultimately I can't say I'm too bothered.

However, if Mr Henshaw stumbles across this post a credit would be appreciated in future and maybe a tenner in the RNLI collection tin next time he passes one as a "licensing fee"... and if I were a professional I probably wouldn't be quite so relaxed about it.

It would certainly make me think before I borrowed images to use in a public talk where people may be taking photographs even if you don't intend to put your material on Slideshare... you never quite now where these things may end up!

HonestyBoxx

Nearly two years ago, I posted about CubeSocial, a new social CRM system founded by Linda Cheung and Mark Bower.

For 2013 the dynamic duo are back again with another start-up: HonestyBoxx.

HonestyBoxx is aimed at advisers, consultants (or anyone who trades on the benefit of their knowledge and experience) and the concept is fairly simple.

You install a widget on your blog or website which allows people to ask you questions. The questioner sets the price and you respond (or not presumably depending on the price!) and get paid. Payments are handled via Paypal so there is no need to worry about setting up payment methods.

HonestyBoxx takes a cut of the price, but doesn't charge any up-front fees.

Set up from the blogger's end is very straightforward... You may notice I have added it to this blog to see how it works and it only took a couple of minutes. I would say it is no more difficult than installing Google Analytics code, provided you have the ability to add HTML snippets to your site (which Squarespace makes very easy).

I haven't been asked any questions yet (since yesterday!) so I can't comment on how that aspect works.

It seems like a great concept. However, I suspect it may be more suited to the "independent" blogger or consultant as I can't see myself being able to use it to provide legal advice / answer legal questions.

You do have the ability to set your own terms and conditions, so in theory the SRA requirements for an engagement letter could actually be dealt with fairly easily.

The issues for an employed solicitor or partner in a firm are more that:

1. The firm's Professional Indemnity insurance won't cover you if you are providing legal advice (and getting paid) in your own name; and
2. Your employer may also not be terribly happy about your side enterprise.

This isn't a criticism of the service... After all, there is nothing to stop the firm from adopting HonestyBoxx themselves. Could it be an interesting way of capturing those queries which aren't involved enough to merit opening a file for (and therefore in the real world generally just get dealt with for free)?

You could also argue that general legal answers aren't advice and don't give rise to a retainer - although personally I don't think I would feel too comfortable with this... it may be a difficult argument if you are getting paid for your advice.

In any event, I guess I will find out if there is an untapped market for (non-legal) advice on productivity, iDevices and general techno-geekery!

OmniFocus Mail Drop and iCloud Mail

David Sparks at MacSparky wrote an excellent post on how to use the Omni Group's new OmniFocus Mail Drop service to automatically create OmniFocus actions from incoming emails.

I wrote a while back about automatically creating new OmniFocus actions to process business cards I had uploaded to Cloud Contacts.

David's post gave me an idea for using OmniFocus Mail Drop to streamline this even further so that it can be done completely server side (i.e. without me having to have a Mac switched on somewhere running Mail rules).

David mentions in his post that:

"There are several local and web-based mail services that can forward an email for you."

What I hadn't realised initially is that one of these mail services is iCloud.

If you use an iCloud email account, the iCloud.com service allows you to set up basic server side mail rules. I have never seen these promoted much as they are pretty basic (delete, forward or move to a folder).

The big advantage though is that they are processed on the iCloud server before mail hits your inbox (so no need to have that Mac switched on 24/7).

I only need a simple forward to get Cloud Contacts automation working so the iCloud rules are perfect. I have just set up a simple rule as follows:

Forward email from xxx@cloudcontacts.com to @MyOmniFocusMailDrop

The email from Cloud Contacts then appears as an action in my OmniFocus inbox when the cards have been processed.

The workflow is detailed in my earlier post, but basically it runs as follows:-

1. Take a photo of the card using Quickshot
2. Picture is automatically uploaded to a folder in DropBox
3. Wappwolf emails pictures saved in the folder to Cloud Contacts (and deletes them)
4. Cloud Contacts processes the card and emails me when done
5. iCloud Mail rule forwards the email to Omnifocus Mail Drop
6. Mail Drop creates a new action in my Omnifocus inbox

My only involvement is taking the photo. Everything after that happens in the background with no involvement from me or a local device.

I appreciate this is a little (actually a lot!) on the geeky side, but it works really nicely for me so I thought I would share it in case anyone else is trying to find a similar solution!

Hello Thomson Reuters PLC?

As announced yesterday, and debated since then by the legal twittering classes, Thomson Reuters is to acquire the US and UK arms of The Practical Law Company.

PLC have featured a few times on this blog so whilst this is being billed by a lot of commentators as consolidation in the "legal publishing" market it's probably not a surprise to hear that I think the implications are wider than this.

Law firms in the mid market have outsourced a lot of their professional support and know-how creation to PLC over the last few years, but they have also managed to create almost a de facto standard for documentation to a much greater extent than lawyers have ever really managed themselves.

This obviously gives them quite a powerful position in this market and the idea of control of this being consolidated into TR is an interesting (or maybe even worrying?) one.

As Jon Busby pointed out in his post on Legal 2.0, integration is the key to the success of this (and indeed any) merger... however, I can't be alone in hoping that the PLC guys are left with scope to carry on doing what they have managed so well over the last couple of decades.

The question which has really been interesting me this morning is:

"Did any PLC documents get used in the deal?"

Given the firms involved I'm guessing the answer is no, but you can always hope!

White Christmas

There have been virtual tumbleweeds blowing through this blog recently, for which I apologise.

I blame the third house move of this year (and hopefully the last one for a long time!) and some busy times at work, but I aim to find time to get things back up to speed in the New Year.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a bit of festive excitement...

As some of you may know, before I moved down to Suffolk this year, I set up the Wirral Ukulele Orchestra.

This was a venture which started with some social media promotion on Twitter and quickly spiralled into something much bigger (and more fun) than I was expecting... we had nearly 40 people at the first meeting in January 2011.

The signed uke which the guys gave me when we moved on has pride of place on the wall at home, but more excitingly the Christmas single we recorded last year was played by Chris Evans on Radio 2 last week.

They have details on the Facebook page and you can still catch it on the iPlayer for the next couple of days.

Obviously this was the most exciting thing I have ever heard on the radio, but it is also interesting to see what has grown out of those early Twitter messages... I'm pleased that the WUO are still going strong and gigging. Do go and see them if you get the chance!

This is pretty much it for 2012, so it just remains to wish everyone a fantastic Christmas and New Year... in the words of the Wirral Ukulele Orchestra (and Irving Berlin):-

"I'm dreaming of a White Christmas!"

MS Word: beyond the Surface

A couple of seemingly unrelated items caught my attention this week.

Firstly, Brian Inkster (famous as Scotland's first tweeting lawyer) has acquired a Microsoft Surface tablet. After a degree of persuasion on Twitter he has also posted a review of the Microsoft Surface from a lawyer's perspective.

Part one of the review gives a good general impression, but it doesn't cover in detail the only area which would sell the Surface to me... How good is MS Office on Windows RT for editing complicated legal documents? I'm hoping Brian will touch on this in part two.

Reviews I have seen (for example this one from Guardian Technology) suggest the experience may not be great.

The main criticism seems to be that opening MS Office bounces the user into the "classic" environment rather than the tablet-friendly Metro one. In essence, Microsoft have done exactly what I was concerned about in last year's post on MS Office for the iPad. They have tried to shoehorn the full desktop version of office into tablet form.

On a similar subject, The Verge report that Microsoft Office is coming to iOS (again). This falls into the category of "believe it when I see it" given that these rumours have been bubbling away for over a year.

The interesting thing though is that the screenshots and details in the Verge post are almost exactly what I suggested in my post:-

• start with a solid reader app which can display all Word formatting
• follow up with a stripped down editing interface designed for a touch form factor

If Microsoft also manage to sell a lot of Office 365 subscriptions to iPad users along the way (which seems to be a pre-requisite to the editing mode) then it won't do them any harm.

If these rumours are true though it poses an interesting question. Will Microsoft really launch an iOS app which shoots down the only unique selling point of the Surface for lawyers and many other business users?

(Others may disagree that this is the only selling point for the Surface, but for me the inability to edit complex legal documents in MS Word is the only thing which would stop me using the iPad full time.

Any tablet without built-in 3G is also a non-starter for me as the "instant on and instant internet" is one of the biggest reasons to use a tablet. Having to find WiFi on trains etc. sucks.

I already have an external keypad and a stand for the iPad and I don't really see the "Type Cover" as an improvement on these. Some of the other praise of the Surface I have seen verges on the ridiculous... The best one to date is that the lack of apps available mean that "it is easier to find the ones you want"!

However, I am a self-diagnosed Apple fan so I freely admit I may be a bit biased here.)

Passbook

One of the (potentially) most interesting features in iOS6 was the introduction of Passbook. As billed by Apple this promised:-

"Your boarding passes, cinema tickets, vouchers, loyalty cards and more... all in one place"

In the UK though, there was one glaring problem when iOS6 was launched in September. Passbook is really just a wrapper for third party apps to integrate with... and at launch in the UK only two airlines had bothered.

Things have moved on a bit since then though. Starbucks have updated their mobile app to work with Passbook and you can also use it for your Eventbrite tickets and iHotels reservations.

There is even a (non-TFL affiliated) app to let you check your Oyster Card balance in Passbook. I haven't tried this as it seems to require you to hand over your account name and password... which doesn't seem like the greatest of ideas.

It would be good to see some other big names adopting Passbook (Tesco Clubcard and Nectar cards spring to mind), but the services which have launched are enough to see why Passbook is worthwhile.

The key point is that the better Passbook apps are time and location aware. The Starbucks app allows you to set your favourite stores and the card then appears on your lock screen when you are near them. Eventbrite does a similar thing on the correct day for your event.

It doesn't sound like a big thing, but being able to flip out your phone in Starbucks and bring up the barcode to scan from the lock screen does cut out a lot of messing about. Imagine if this was scaled up to cover all your loyalty cards, vouchers etc.

There are a couple of organisations I already wish would adopt this.

-We are members of English Heritage and it would be great if your card showed up on the lock screen when you were in the vicinity of one of their locations.

The other is Cineworld who already have an iOS app which lets you check movies and book tickets... surely Passbook should be a no-brainer?

The real killer feature of Passbook though is focus. Rather than the usual filing system based around the email inbox, it should let you clear out the emails whilst still having all your important details to hand then the time or location make them relevant.

In this context (and as an avid GTD user), the concept behind Passbook makes a lot of sense. Dump stuff into it and forget about it until it is relevant to you - at which point it comes straight to hand.

That is the theory anyway... it does still need companies to adopt it, but I suspect that will happen as developers get accustomed to the API and customers (at least those with iOS devices) start to demand it.

I also wonder whether it will help to level the playing field for mobile payments? Maybe soon it will be as easy for your local coffee shop to run a mobile payment and loyalty system as it is for Starbucks?

Ad-free, or just free? The app.net perspective

Last week I signed up for app.net after reading that they had introduced some new pricing structures.

For the un-initiated, the closest analogue to app.net (or ADN as it is usually referred to by users) is Twitter. There are three immediately obvious differences though:

1. ADN posts are limited to 256 characters rather than 140
2. ADN isn't free. Pricing is currently $5 per month or $35 per year
3. There are no ads (or sponsored posts) on ADN. It's funded by user subscriptions

Like Twitter, the starting point is a web interface, but there are a number of clients available for different platforms using the API which ADN have made available to developers.

As a long-term aficionado of Tapbot's Tweetbot client for Twitter the natural choice for me was Netbot, which is their version of Tweetbot for ADN.

The interface is familiar to anyone who has used Tweetbot and it also has some interesting features like optional cross-posting of your ADN posts to Twitter.

It is early days for me as an ADN user, but the implications of the paid model are already starting to become clear.

Firstly, there is a lot less traffic (and fewer users) on ADN than on Twitter. According to my profile on NetBot I am user 25,000 or so. ADN still has the option to view the "Global Stream"(the firehose of posts from every user) and it is clear from this that the traffic is minimal compared to Twitter. The same users pop up over again and it is actually possible to keep up with the global feed (try doing that with Twitter!).

The flip side to this is that the signal to noise ratio is incomparably better than Twitter. There seems to be virtually no spam (when accounts costs $5 a pop the economics make mass spam accounts unviable) and a very high level of conversation, rather than broadcasting.

The overwhelming impression is that people care a lot more about the service and the ADN community because they pay for it.

There is a heavy bias towards developers and technical people (perhaps unsurprisingly given the origins of ADN), but the community certainly isn't limited to these fields.

It seems unlikely that ADN will ever reach Twitter of Facebook levels of adoption, but in many ways that could be the secret of its success. It certainly seems to be a lot more fun and engaging than Twitter is these days...

If you haven't tried it out yet then I would recommend investing $5 and giving it a shot. You may just find that ad-free and spam-free beat plain old free hands down.

State of the social media union

As I posted earlier in the week, I hosted a series of round table discussions at the Lexis Nexis "Alternative" Legal IT Conference on Tuesday.

The format was four 40 minute slots with a different group each time (attendees choosing from a variety of different sessions). This worried me for two reasons:-

• What if nobody showed up for my one?
• The prospect of having to effectively repeat the same presentation four times if nobody got involved in the discussion

As it turned out I needn't have worried about either of these. All four of the sessions were busy and each one was really different with loads of input from the groups.

I'm not going to try and recap everything which was covered, but I thought it was worth highlighting a few of the main themes which emerged. This is on a "no names, no packdrill" basis as I didn't ask the participants if they would agree to me attributing their comments.

It's also worth bearing in mind that this was a self-selecting group to some extent as presumably those with no interest in social media didn't bother attending!

• The overwhelming sentiment was that social media was "useful" and that law firms should be involved
• Conversely, nobody would own up to obtaining material amounts of work via social media
• Measurement of return on investment is still very basic (or non-existent)
• Where ROI is measured it tends to be in terms of non-financial metrics (Followers, Likes etc.) and not bottom line impact
• Restrictions on social media use vary from a complete block to a "free for all"
• Policies also vary wildly from non-existent to extremely detailed
• Firms are starting to consider how post-termination restrictions apply to social media
• One firm stated that they obliged fee earners to hand over passwords for all social media accounts with any reference or link to the firm!
• Tweeting in Convoy seems to be the most popular strategy. It was strange having the term quoted back to me by people who didn't realise where it came from!
• Niche sectors or practices seem to be the most fruitful area for social media (e.g. claims against the police and PI claims for cyclists)
• Broadcasting of news and legal updates was seen as a necessary, but not sufficient part of a social media strategy. Almost everyone thought that personal engagement was necessary to use social media effectively

The final theme which emerged was an extrapolation of this "brand vs individual" concept. Some of the attendees who represented ABSs and corporates were much more comfortable with the idea of a corporate social media presence, whilst the "traditional" law firms leant towards building relationships with individual partners and fee earners.

I suspect this will be one of the areas where we see the marketing for these two types of entities start to diverge as ABSs start to gear up.

All in all it was a fascinating afternoon and a good chance to catch up with a few people. I only wish I had been staying for the free bar in the evening!

Alternative Legal IT?

I am hosting one of the round table session tomorrow at the Lexis Nexis Alternative Legal IT Conference on social media in law firms.

I don't know if any of my readers are going along, but if so I look forward to seeing you there.

It will be interesting to see whether attitudes have changed since I first started writing about this kind of thing. Assuming it goes well I will report back here.

The Rosetta Tablet

It's hardly news these days to point out that sitting down all day is bad for you (in fact I wrote about standing desks back in 2011).

The latest scary article to hit my reading list is the recent Wall Street Journal article on the subject. It turns out now that sitting for more than three hours a day

"can shave a person's life expectancy by two years..."

Most lawyers (and other desk bound professions) probably fall squarely within this danger zone.

Discounting standing desks as impracticable for most lawyers, the advice is to stand as much as possible (on phone calls or when dictating) as well as speaking to people rather than emailing them... which is probably a good idea for lots of reasons.

There is another thing I would add to the list though:- use a tablet.

When consuming content on a tablet (otherwise known as reading your emails and stuff) it is just as easy to stand up, walk around or lean against the filing cabinet in the corner of the office as it is to sit in a desk chair.

Microsoft recognised this in their post on the new Office touch interface I linked in my last post.

If you can use your iPad or your Surface (or whatever) to pick up your email whilst striding around the office then presumably you boost your chances of sitting for less than the magic three hours a day?

So is this the latest negotiating tool to persuade the partners that you need the latest tablet...

"It's a health and safety issue!"

I'm surprised none of the tablet manfacturers have picked up on this yet, but I guess even Apple's marketing team might baulk at claiming that the iPad helps you to live longer.

Office gets touchy

There is an interesting (and very long) piece on the Microsoft Office development blog about the new touch interface in Office 2013.

There is certainly a lot of excitement involved:-

"We are excited about the opportunity to enable a whole new set of usage postures for Office, from the bus to the plane to the couch to the hallway."

Hands up anyone who hasn't secretly fantasised about reformatting spreadsheets in their hallway?

It will be interesting to see how this performs on the Microsoft Surface when it eventually surfaces (sorry), but looking at the screenshots of some of the UI elements my impression it that it looks fiddly.

As I have written before though, if Microsoft can deliver a really good Office experience on a tablet then it will be a big plus for enterprise users. Can anyone really see an iOS version of Office 2013 given the upcoming Surface launch?

Squarespace 6

Regular readers (hello both of you!) will have seen me post before about Squarespace, which is the platform this blog has been hosted on for the last couple of years.

With the launch of the rather awesome new Squarespace 6 I have made the leap over to the new version.

Hopefully the site design looks nicer and the back end structure and editing is great. I am particular in love with the new Markdown interface which is available in addition to the normal WYSIWYG and HTML editors.

If you are looking to make the leap from hosted Wordpress.com or similar I would really recommend checking out the free trial.

Tribunal backlog backlash

Following the recent Daily Telegraph report on record employment tribunal backlogs I was pointed to an interesting post by Anya Palmer of Old Square Chambers.

"In any case, to suggest that if some multiple cases take years to resolve, there must be something wrong, is to completely misunderstand the way our legal system works."

The full (guest) post on Darren Newman's A Range of Reasonable Responses blog looks in detail at the statistics on which the report is based and makes interesting reading.

Are the "official figures" quite what they seem?

Automating Cloud Contacts

I have used Cloud Contacts to scan my business cards for several years now.

It is a fantastic service, but as I have started to use it a lot more recently I decided to review the steps it takes to get the information from a physical card into Highrise (which is what I actually use to track and manage contacts).

The process used to look like this:

1. Receive business card
2. Take a photo of card using iPhone camera
3. Email photo as attachment to Cloud Contacts
4. Delete photo from iPhone
5. "Card Scanned" email arrives from Cloud Contacts
6. Add action to OmniFocus to add contacts to Highrise

The OmniFocus action prompts me to import the contact into Highrise and follow up with an email or a LinkedIn request.

In the spirit of Chart Porn's take on repetitive tasks I decided to take the geeky approach and try automating this.

The new workflow now looks like this:-

1. Someone hands me a card
2. Take photo of card on iPhone
3. Follow up action appears in OmniFocus once the card is on Cloud Contacts

It wasn't that difficult to set up, but it does require cobbling together a few different apps and services. In case anyone feels the need to do anything similar I have set out the basics below.

Quickshot

QuickShot is a replacement for the iPhone camera app, which I picked up from a post by Shawn Blanc (in fact this whole automation idea was triggered by that post).

I haven't really explored its functionality to the full, but for my purposes the important feature is that it lets you automatically upload any photo you take with your iPhone to a specified Dropbox folder.

By that way, if you don't have Dropbox then you can sign up using the preceding link and I get bonus storage added to my account.

I have set up a DropBox folder for CloudContacts and each card I photograph with QuickShot gets automatically uploaded to this folder.

Wappwolf

The second step involves a web-based service called Wappwolf, which bills itself as a Dropbox automator.

Again, Wappwolf is really powerful and I have only scratched the surface of what it can do, but the key is that it allows you to add automatic actions to your DropBox folder (or individual folders).

These include emailing any file which is uploaded to the folder.

I set up an action for my Cloud Contacts DropBox folder which automatically emails any new file to my Cloud Contacts account... and then deletes the scanned card from DropBox.

You could do this using folder actions on the Mac (like in Shawn's post), but the advantage of Wappwolf is that runs in the cloud and is always on. This means the rules operate whether or not your Mac is running.

OmniFocus and Mail

The next step happens in the background as Cloud Contacts processes the scanned card and adds the information from it to my account.

Once this is done I receive an email from them confirming there is a new card in my account.

The final step in my workflow uses OmniFocus and Mail on my Mac to turn this into an OmniFocus action to follow up the contact.

There are various ways to do this, but the easiest way seems to be to use the "clipping" preferences in OmniFocus to create a new Mail rule.

This rule shows up in Mail like any other, but it will be triggered by emails with "-OmniFocus" in the subject (or whatever other trigger you chose in OmniFocus preferences). When such an email arrives the rules creates a new action in OmniFocus based on it.

I just altered this triiger so the rule was triggered by emails from Cloud Contacts instead. When these arrive they are automatically converted to actions in OmniFocus.

It would be nice to be able to do this server-side with the iCloud mail server so that it worked whether or not my Mac was awake (like with the Wappwolf actions), but this seems to work well enough provided the Mac isn't switched off for extended periods.

You can create email rules using iCloud.com which run at the server end, but only for basic tasks like "move to folder" or forwarding the email (this is actually quite a nice feature if you use iCloud email - I have moved all my basic mail rules onto iCloud so they run all the time even if my Mac is off).

At the moment, OmniFocus doesn't support creating actions by email, which is a shame as otherwise the iCloud mail rules could work for this.

How does it work?

The automation works really nicely and has made using Cloud Contacts even easier than it was already. It fits in well with all the cards I am scanning at the moment having started a new job!

This is all a bit steampunk and I'm sure it could be tidied up, but it may throw up some ideas if you are wondering about ways to streamline your workflow with Cloud Contacts (or anything else which requires photo uploading).

I haven't gone for a full on how-to guide with screenshots and step-by-step instructions, but if anyone would like this then give me a shout and I will see what I can do.

Paperless (or less paper)

David Sparks' MacSparky blog is one of my favourite tech blogs (and also interests me because the author happens to be a practising lawyer).

I have no idea how he finds the time, but he has just released Paperless which is the first in a series of MacSparky FieldNotes guides.

The book is available as an iBook Store download and deals with setting up and implementing a paperless workflow. It covers everything from scanning your documents to naming and filing through to backup and various power-user Mac tips.

In reality this is a showcase for what can be done with iBooks Author as much as it is a book as it includes video, screencasts and other rich media.

As the name suggests it is focussed on Mac users, but is also covers iOS devices in detail. A lot of the more general advice would also work just as well in a PC environment (although obviously you need an iOS device to get the book!).

If you have been thinking about going paperless then this is a great starting point... available for £2.99 on the iBook Store.

Coffee week

This week seems to have been mainly about coffee: writing about it; thinking about it; sometimes even drinking the stuff.

Monday's infographic post was followed by the arrival of my newest coffee acquisition. The Synergy 2 Cup Brew Station is a beautiful combination of oak and copper piping, which now has pride of place on my worktop.

The Hario drippers can just be placed straight on top of a cup, but the brew station means you can actually see how much coffee is in the cup as you brew it. Plus it looks good!

Finally, my Facebook feed this morning featured a discussion about whether cafetieres are a decent way to make coffee, which I couldn't avoid getting involved with. I have actually written about this before, but in my view they result in nasty coffee, plus they are actually not very good for your health.

Much better to go and invest in some Harios!

Hopefully back in decaffeinated mode next week.

Why coffee makes the (legal) world go round

One for all the caffeine deprived lawyers out there on a Monday morning!

Created by: OnlineMBAPrograms.org

California Dreaming: privacy and mobile apps

This is the latest in my (not-at-all) regular series of posts about mobile application development and the law.

The latest developments are markedly California-centric. As you will see though, this doesn't mean it is safe for UK developers to ignore them.

The first piece in the puzzle is the FTC's complaint against Broken Thumbs apps, which was recently settled in California.

Broken Thumbs settled the claim (with no admission of liability) on the basis of a $50,000 fine and other undertakings, having been accused by the FTC of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act in the USA by failing to obtain verifiable parental consent to the collection and use of personal information from children under 13 who used their mobile apps.

This settlement is the first specific confirmation that COPPA applies to mobile apps as well as websites.

This is something which UK app developers need to be aware of because COPPA isn't limited to US companies.

It applies to any business which operates a website or online service (which now expressly includes a mobile app) if it is directed to children and offers products or services for sale:

"involving commerce [between the USA and] one or more foreign nations..."

There is no requirement that the operator (or app developer) is based in the USA so this could apply to a UK developer whose app is available in US app stores.

This is a topical area for the FTC, which also released a report in February this year accusing developers of mobile apps directed at children of failing to provide proper disclosure of their collection and use of data on app store pages.

To an extent, this is being addressed by the major app platforms. The "big six" mobile app platforms (including Apple and Google) signed up to an agreement with the California Attorney General at the end of February aimed at increasing transparency about privacy issues.

One of the requirements of this is for the app store approval process to include:

"an optional data field for a hyperlink to the app's privacy policy or a statement describing the app's privacy practices or (b) an optional data field for the text of the app's privacy policy..." [emphasis added]

The full agreement can be found in PDF format here, but I would expect to see these additional fields cropping up in UK app store submission processes.

This raises the question of what (if anything) you need to put into this field when submitting your app.

For UK developers this is fairly straightforward. If you are processing personal data then the Data Protection Act will apply. The best starting point is the comprehensive guidance issued by the Information Commissioner's Office about privacy notices.

One of the reasons why Data Protection has become a live issue for app developers was the revelation that Path and other apps were uploading the contents of address books from the device on which they were installed without obtaining specific consent from the user.

This brings me to the final Californian item. A class action has already been filed against Path and a large number of other social media and mobile companies in Texas, but as of March 26th, a class action has been launched against Path in California.

The claim is filed on behalf of all US mobile device users who downloaded the Path app prior to the date on which the company removed the address book uploading function.

I have no idea what the likely prospect of this (or any of the other) claims is, but the message is clear. Privacy is becoming a big money issue for app developers, regulators and litigators and it pays to be aware of the issues.

Finally, what of the future?

The US dimension is likely to change in the light of the new "Bill of Rights for online consumers" being promoted by the Obama administration in the form of the Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World white paper.

UK developers who are already used to the relatively high European level of data protection regulation may not think they have much to worry about; however, the EU data protection regime is also likely to change significantly over the next couple of years.

The European Commission has recently proposed a review of data protection rules to bolster privacy rights, increase users' control over their data and introduce a single set of rules on data protection.

This is likely to cover issues such as an obligation to notify data breaches and the "right to be forgotten", both of which will be relevant to anyone developing apps which process personal data.

The new law will be in the form of a regulation which is directly enforceable across the EU without the need for individual national legislation. It also carries the threat of fines of up to 2% of global turnover for non-compliance.

With privacy and data protection edging up the global agenda, this is a subject which will become increasingly important for app developers over the next few years.

A working knowledge of UK data protection rules and a weather eye on upcoming developments is the basic starting point.

However, it is becoming increasingly important to be aware of legislation like COPPA where US and other rules could catch you out.

Contract drafting Twitter-style

Last year, one of my non-lawyer Twitter connections posed the following question:-

So who's building github for contracts? Current common system of emailing Word documents doesn't have a good UX!— Francis Irving (@frabcus) December 21, 2011

It turns out that the GitHub for contracts is... GitHub.

Twitter have released to the world a form of Innovator's Patent Agreement, which is a form of patent assignment which promises the inventor that their patents will only be used for "defensive" purposes and not for patent trolling.

From a purely geeky point of view though, the really interesting thing is that the contract is:

1. Written in Markdown

2. Hosted on GitHub with a request for any improvements to be submitted via a pull request

So, is this going to be the future of contract drafting?