Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘feeds’

Microblog 2008-10-20

  • Parents press states for autism insurance laws [AP] #
  • Steve Chapman on right and wrong ways to legalize gay marriage [Reason] #
  • Unsolicited “StoneZone” mailings say they’re from veteran GOP operative Roger Stone — and when you try to unsubscribe? [Greenfield] #
  • “Lawyer Called ‘Poster Boy for Capital Litigation Abuse’ Appointed to New Case” [ABA Journal] #
  • Before fingering credit default swaps (CDSs) as culprit in the crisis, better read this [Salmon; more, John Carney] #
  • Twitter cookbook all recipes 140 chars. or less h/t VBalasubramani #
  • Reminder: you can follow Twitter feeds of both Overlawyered and Point of Law #

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Microblog 2008-10-01

  • Tyler Cowen’s views on the credit crisis [Marginal Revolution] #
  • Lehman’s role in clearing London trades meant its collapse maimed many customers [NYT DealBook] #
  • “Laying on of hands”: Man who used church as front for brothel fights order barring him from massage business [Balko, Hit and Run] #
  • “Orphan copyright” proposal dies for this term in Congress [Krafets, Wired “Threat Level”; earlier] #
  • Inland Empire woe: spray-painting lawns green to simulate happier times in Calif’s “Foreclosure Alley” [Calculated Risk] #
  • Just a reminder: both my blogs now have their own Twitter feeds at @overlawyered and @pointoflaw. #
  • “Milk powder” “Falun Gong” “earthquake” — just seeing if that elaborate Chinese web-bug system catches me [NYTimes] #

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Twitter integration

As alert readers may have noticed, I began using Twitter recently (@walterolson) and have been experimenting over the past week with what it can do. I’ve now added Alex King’s Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress, which makes it possible to integrate blog functions with those of Twitter. I’m giving a tryout to two new functions:

* Now featured atop the rightmost column of this site is a list of my five most recent Twitter posts. Some are ultra-brief summaries of Overlawyered or Point of Law posts, while others point to law-related articles or news stories in lieu of writing them up at full post length, and yet others contain non-law-related or even personal content. If you want to keep abreast with these in something close to real time without coming back to visit the site itself, “follow” @walterolson (on your Twitter account) or use the @walterolson RSS feed (distinct from the regular Overlawyered posts and comments feeds).

* Once a day Twitter Tools will generate an Overlawyered post like this one summing up the last day’s Twitter mini-posts (“tweets”). In their native form, these roundups have a rather raw look, replete with artificially truncated URLs (of the tinyurl and is.gd variety), often not identifying the article source, etc. If time and inclination permits, I’ll try to clean these up and make them more Overlawyered-relevant by reinserting “real” URLs, via links, earlier/further reading, etc., maybe cutting pure personal stuff, etc.

* Here’s a list of lawyers and law types on Twitter. I’m listed at #230.

* This is all, obviously, experimental, and aimed at seeing whether the new formats appeal to existing readers and reach new ones. If it does work well, I might take further steps, such as systematically broadcasting Overlawyered content on Twitter (a reader volunteer might come in really useful on that). One step at a time, though.

* More: If you’re a reader whose Twitter posts might furnish good story tip material for this site, and I realize that, there’s a good chance I’ll try following you; I’ve already done three posts using material I found in Twitter streams. (This is by contrast with Facebook, where I follow a more conservative policy, and mostly accept as friends only those I “really” know or at least have emailed with a fair bit).

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