Reid My Blog!

Google Ads Gone Wild

Ok, I almost never look at the sponsored ads and links that appear on each page of my Gmail account, but a set of odd links caught my eye today. I was reading an auto-generated e-mail notifying me that a friend  was now following me on Twitter. The Sponsored Links included an ad for "Effective Hematoma Repair" for dogs--promising "Proffessional (sic) results in minutes", an ad for "Hernia Mesh Products" for humans, and one for an "Hysterectomy Recovery Step-by-Step Guide." Is there something about the word "Twitter" that triggered this avalanche of wasted advertising?

Oh, thank heaven, these advertisers are getting good value for their advertising dollars! (Yes, I did click through to trigger payment to Google!)  I wasn't going to give them extra value by posting the links here, but the one for hematoma repair for dogs is just too weird not to share!

Congressional Research at Your Fingertips

The new OpenCRS website is a new must-bookmark site for lawyers in all types of practice.  The site provides high-quality informational briefs on a wide range of topics--from immigration to Internet privacy to medical malpractice reform with a state-by-state survey of caps on punitive damages--prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

The CRS is the non-partisan think tank funded by Congress to provide members of Congress with objective information on any topic requested.  The CRS serves only Congress.  The briefs are not available to the Executive Branch or the public.  As a former Congressional staffer, I can attest to the high-quality of these well-written briefs.

Now OpenCRS in conjunction with several public entities, including the University of Maryland Law School and the Franklin Pierce Law Center are providing these reports to lawyers and the general public.

Lawyers will find many of the reports useful for factual research and baseline legal research.

Simple But Effective Marketing

Locating the service agent for a foreign corporation can be a common task for lawyers and their paralegals, but it is a thankless one. The Internet made it easier, but it took Maryland attorney and entreprenuer, Terry Berger, to make it painless.  Terry hosts Resident Agent Info, a web site that makes it a snap to find the resident agent for corporations in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.  The info is free from all but three states, as Terry makes clear. It's a web site that every lawyer should bookmark.

I also applaud Terry for his shrewd marketing.  His site provides the information as a public service, promotes his law practice and he collects a bit of ad revenue at the same time. I'll bet the site gets 100 times more the views than one that would just promote his law practice. A good lesson for us all.