To me it’s a bit like a supercharged Doodle, which I’ve been using for awhile to help schedule meetings. The added advantage with Tungle is that if your schedule changes so too does your availability for meetings you’re trying to book, which is super handy when trying to book something with those late-to-reply people who end up having you hold multiple slots open for a meeting or make you rebook because you’ve already scheduled something else. Plus Tungle looks better.

The connector program for the Mac is in beta, and has stuck on me a few times but more or less runs smoothly. Currently it refers you to the Tungle website when scheduling, I’d like to see a way to schedule meetings directly on my machine. Syncing works pretty well with iCal back and forth.

Right now, there doesn’t appear to be a pricing model attached, so not sure what direction it will head, but this is a great idea, and well implemented.

You can find me at: http://tungle.me/jordanhatcher

LPM blogs

Build a Solo practice. Susan Cartier Liebel’s blog and one of the first I started following when I developed my consultancy.

There are quite a few others that I dip in on regularly, such as Chuck Newton and Home Office Warrior. These days I mostly just see what is out there via the twitter people I follow, though I very sorely tempted to join Solo Practice University to give it a go.

Tech for the solo/small firm

Keep up to date with Future Lawyer and for the Mac users, subscribe to MILO and read iPhone JD if you have an iPhone.

SEO

SEO Moz comes in very handy and has lots of tools to help with SEO. My Pro subscription has been useful, but there are plenty of things to get you started for free.

SEO Book. I bought and read Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and it’s been a great help to understand the issues and where to improve (even if I don’t get to do all of what he and SEO Moz recommend).

UK

In the UK we have the SOLO IP group, which I’d hoped would offer more practice management tips and tricks, and still has the potential to be a really useful resource specifically for IP practitioners.

The answer: to help build your business!

You have a business. If you’re reading this blog, you’re likely a solo or small firm lawyer. But this applies whether you are a lawyer in Chicago, a consultant in London, or a widget manufacturer in Kazakhstan. You have a business, and it is not selling advertising on your web content.

Lawyers sell their services, not ads.

Blogging help you sell your services in many ways. Through it, you can increase your SEO, making it easier for potential clients to find you, and build out your networks and reputational capital to build referral business and boost your standing as an expert (and so charge higher rates).

Putting ads on your site sends the wrong message in this environment. It says you aren’t serious about blogging as part of your practice and it’s a distraction to the people you want to stay focussed on your site and your content (and not clicking through to other sites to buy things).

Besides that, those ads aren’t likely to be very successful. That one beer a month that you can buy with the GoogleAds on your blog will be useful to console you when you think about how the blog isn’t helping your business.

This was admittedly a bit of a last minute idea for me, but realised that it worked pretty well. For next time, I think I’d:

• develop and deliver some exclusive Twitter content given during the event
• and do a bit of promotion around the Twitter feed.

You can follow me on Twitter here.

I very much recommend upgrading if you haven’t already, especially as it looks like it has several SEO features already built in. It also might be a good time to try a new theme that takes advantage of some of the changes in WordPress.

Avenue A Razorfish 2008 Digital Outlook Report: ”

Only a few years ago, a Web site’s home page was the most prime piece of digital real estate a publisher could offer. Not so much today, however. The relevance of the home page as a media buy is on the wane. Search, social networks, blogs, and RSS (among a host of other online sources) are driving more and more users deep into today’s Web properties. Now, the majority of consumers bypass a site’s home page completely.

Every page is now a home page, each of which will have a wider reach, a lasting shelf life, and the ability to attract a new audience like never before. To capitalize on this, ensure that every page has a strong, clear global navigation scheme and related content that is visibly promoted. And don’t forget to make sure that display advertising gets prominent, above-the-fold, home-page-like treatment (300×250 rectangles and 728×90 leaderboards). Remember, every page can be accessed in any conceivable manner and in any conceivable order—you can’t design properties to control user flow anymore.

So the lesson is, make sure all your pages have good navigation as potential clients are likely to jump right into your firm’s site content, and get out there on social networks and RSS so that they come to your site in the first place.