Lawyers choose their favorites for '60 Sites in 60 Minutes'
One of the most popular ABA Techshow sessions is the traditional conference closer: “60 Sites in 60 Minutes.”
And as a near-capacity crowd inside the Continental Ballroom at the Chicago Hilton marked the end of Techshow on Saturday, in rapid succession, a four-person panel consisting of outgoing Techshow chairwoman Natalie Kelly, who serves as director of the State Bar of Georgia’s law practice management program, Randall Juip of Foley, Baron, Metzger & Juip, Lincoln Mead, the IT Director of the Utah State Bar and Sharon Nelson, president of Sensei Enterprises, Inc. gave out a list of 60 useful, informative, and in some cases funny websites to use at home, in the office, or on the go.
For the first time, the 60 Sites session was crowdsourced. Several conference-goers submitted sites for consideration, suggesting websites that dealt with some of the hottest topics at Techshow.
Cybersecurity was on a lot of people’s minds at Techshow, and some of the recommended links dealt with password strength, hacking and encryption. Mead’s first site was MyKolab.com, which offers secure email accounts that purport to be NSA-proof. “The information is stored in Switzerland, which has some of the most rigid privacy laws in the world,” said Mead. Several sites evaluate the strength of passwords, including one of Nelson’s choices, Telepath Words, as well as HowSecureIsMyPassword.Net, which was submitted by Baton Rouge attorney Craig Bayer. Meanwhile, Catherine Reach, director of law practice management & technology at the Chicago Bar Association, offered two websites people can use to see if their email addresses have been hacked: HaveIBeenPwned.com and ShouldIChangeMyPassword.com.
Following Friday’s keynote address from Google Ventures partner Rick Klau, the panel spoke of several websites that can be used to conduct data analytics. Juip recommended Hashtracking, an analytic tool that tracks hashtags on Twitter. Larry Port, CEO of Rocket Matter submitted three sites: CallRail, which provides metrics for phone calls, and Marketing Grader and Optimizely, which measure how effective websites are. Klau had originally mentioned Optimizely during his keynote when recounting how the 2008 Obama campaign had used data analytics to figure out donation patterns from website visitors.
For shoppers, the panel had several websites for users to keep track of good deals. Kelly suggested Airfare Watchdog and Tingo.com—the latter even gives you money back if you paid for a plane ticket and the price subsequently went down. Juip chose Wanna Spend, which allows users to put down how much they want to spend and gives suggestions for gifts based on that budget. And for Apple lovers, Grand Rapids, Mich., lawyer David Ledbetter recommended dealmac, which lets users compare prices for Apple products at various online sites.
The panel wasn’t without a sense of humor, and several links had more entertainment than professional value. Among the choices were PeopleOfWalmart.com, You Had One Job, and MakeBeliefsComix.com. Looks like Techshow attendees traveling home will have no shortage of websites to browse as they head to the airports or train stations.
For the full list of all 60 links, click here.
