Author: Rick Klau

Cryptographic Abundance ::: Anybody remember Pretty Good Privacy back in ’94 and ’95? I was a volunteer law clerk for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (aka EFF) at the time, working on the Bernstein case. I was amazed that (a) crypto was available for free that was allegedly “crack-proof”, and (b) more people weren’t using it.…

mLife ::: What is mLife? Anybody else seen these ads? I was in DC Monday and Tuesday of this week, and they were literally glued to every street corner. Airport kiosks, TV ads, full page spreads in USA Today and other newspapers.What is it? According to the web site, we’ll find out February 3. Personally,…

Rest in Peace, MDP ::: An article by New York State Bar Association president (and Proskauer Rose partner) Steven Krane explores the lessons that the legal profession can learn from the Enron debacle.Krane’s logic goes this way: Enron had Andersen as an auditor, and Enron had Andersen as a consultant. Andersen’s consulting business necessarily influenced…

Web services end users in short supply ::: Here I am at this conference, sitting at a computer with a direct Internet connection. In the past ten minutes, I’ve checked e-mail (home e-mail through Hotmail, work e-mail through Outlook Web Access), read the news, I’m posting an update to my web site (through blogger.com), and…

Checking in from the Marketing Partner Forum ::: I’m in Naples again (one of life’s cruel ironies – it’s at the same not-ready-for-prime -time Ritz Carlton Golf Resort I was at two weeks ago), this time for the Marketing Partner Forum. Keynote speaker is David Maister – who was hawking his new book (First Among…

AOL in Negotiations to Acquire Red Hat ( washingtonpost.com) ::: This story ran over the weekend, and I’m still not sure I have figured out what the advantage is to AOL (or Red Hat, for that matter). AOL is primarily a consumer company, with more than 30 million subscribers. Red Hat is a distributor of…

A few law firms on the verge of global domination ::: In this month’s American Lawyer, Peter Zeughauser writes about what it’ll take for a handful of firms to emerge from the pack and be true global powerhouses. Zeughauser (who is the founder and prinicipal at The Zeughauser Group) predicts that to be truly global,…

Gates memo: “We can and must do better” ::: The first major strategy shift for Microsoft since Gates’ .Net letter from two years ago. Many Microsoft execs are doing their version of a mea culpa – for example, Microsoft’s Group V.P. for Operating Systems Jim Allchin was quoted as saying “enough is enough” in today’s…

CPA Firms Adopting the Corporate Approach ::: At the recent Winning is Everything conference, I picked up a copy of Practical Accountant magazine. The cover story is about “Going Corporate” – a trend among growing accounting firms. What accounting firms are realizing, according to those interviewed, is that traditional services-based businesses often have thinner profit…

Handspring warns of Treo holdup – Tech News – CNET.com ::: Turns out that the Treo won’t show up on the web until next month and on retail shelves until March. But give credit to Dubinsky and crowd for making a “bet the company” wager on the Treo… they indicated in yesterday afternoon’s conference call…