Florida Bar's Advertising Rules Are Found Unconstitutional by Federal Judge

Details are given in an article in today's Wall Street Journal entitled, "Florida Court Strikes Down Limits on Lawyer Advertising," concerning the opinion released last Friday by the Honorable Marcia Morales Howard of United States District Court for the Division of Jacksonville.

The federal judge has held that the Florida Bar violated the First Amendment rights of Florida attorney William Harrell Jr. when it deemed Mr. Harrell's advertising message of "don't get less than you deserve," as "manipulative" and therefore in violation of state solicitation rules. 

How much will this decision impact Florida attorneys?  Maybe not so much:  right now, amendments to the Florida Disciplinary Rules await approval by the Supreme Court of Florida. 

To review the rules in place for Florida attorney advertising, go here.
To review the rules that were proposed this summer for Florida Supreme Court approval, go here. 

Tags for Your Blog Post or Tweet - Finding Popular Tags to Boost the Chances People Will Find and Read What You Wrote

Once you have written your post or tweet, you might want to consider indexing what you've written so others can find it.  On Technorati, for example, the most popular tags can be found, listed alphabetically, at Technorati's Tag Index. 

What is Technorati?  It's a site that collects information placed in blogs and then creates indices of the information as well as rankings for the blogs within its system (which total in the millions).  If your blog is not listed at Technorati, then you need to get cracking and get your blog in Technorati's sights.  It's a big deal. 

For Twitter, tags go by the name "hashtags" and you can find a listing of popular hashtags at Hashtags.org - but this site is different than Technorati's Tag Index.  Here, you enter a hashtag, and the site returns with information on how popular it is ("trending").  Look at the percentages on the left: if they're low or nonexistent, then choose a different word for your hashtag.  (For more on how Hashtags.org works and why it's a big deal, read the informative article provided by TwitterTipsCentral, "Where To Find A List Of Twitter Hashtags ".)

Tip: Create Your Own Index of Tags

And, remember that tag.  No need to reinvent the wheel.  If you regularly publish items dealing with dogs, or beer, or recipes, or speaking Klingon -- whatever your focus -- collect the most popular tags for that topic and save them.  Make your own list of tags for your use, as a ready reference.

Why should you care about tagging?  Read my earlier post, "Twitter Tip: What is a Hashtag?" for details on why tags are a good thing. 

hashtags, twitter, tags, technorati, tagging, tips, blogs

Blogger Sues Blogger for Copyright Infringement: Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood vs The Hollywood Reporter

Nikki Finke reports on the comings and goings of the Hollywood biz at her blog, Deadline Hollywood, and I've read her for years -- she has been instrumental in making blogs more respectable as a legitimate news source.  Nikki Finke's background as a journalist - working at Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Observer, in addition to having her writing appear in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post means that she had top of the line journalistic credentials when she jumped over into the blogging arena. 

Nikki Finke's decision to become a blogger is important to all bloggers, and in doing so, she undoubtedly felt a lot of backlash from the traditional journalists who do not consider blogging to be respectable as a news source.  That's a rabbit trail topic - something to discuss in more depth on another day.

Point here is, I'm not the only one who admires her work, apparently.

Over the past few weeks (or maybe months), Finke has been posting about her battles with The Hollywood Reporter and her claims that her stuff has been popping up without authorization over at THR, which is another blog.  Today, I read on Reuters that Finke's filed suit:  "Deadline blogger sues The Hollywood Reporter." 

Among her claims (and by "her" I mean Finke as well as her parent company, both plaintiffs in the litigation), an allegation that source code was swiped from Deadline Hollywood.  That's plagarism, 21st Century style. 

Finke goes on: she's also alleging that there has been theft of "intellectual decisions" in what she follows in her blog posts.  As bloggers understand all too well, posts go up minute by minute (almost as fast as tweets) when there is a big story -- and deciding what to post and when is a big thing when you're publishing a blog.  Blogging will get more consideration and exposure as a venue for words, and news, and opinion, because of this lawsuit - if for no other reason than everyone's got to catch up with what exactly Nikki Finke is alleging is the harm that has been done and how it happened. 

Once again, Nikki Finke may be helping bloggers everywhere gain more respect for the medium - this time, not on the screen, but in the courtroom. 

blogs, copyright, nikki finke, deadline hollywood, blogging, journalism