Groklaw's Latest News Picks

Groklaw's Latest News Picks - New Feature

by Pamela Jones
Groklaw

February 24 2005

We are starting a new feature today on Groklaw, Groklaw's Latest News Picks. It will be news stories that relate to our areas of interest on Groklaw, both legal and technical, but with the emphasis on news that relates to law. It will be on the right hand side of the homepage, at the top, so the calendar and Groklaw headlines boxes will be below it.

Groklaw's dburns, who gained fame by obtaining the USL-UCal settlement agreement [ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041126130302760 ] for Groklaw, will be the editor of this news feature, with ChocoNutDancer as his right hand man.

We've been trying it out internally since Tuesday morning, and it didn't bring the whole house down, so we think we're ready to roll it out. We also wanted to get input from members first, so we could tweak our vision to suit the needs and desires of our readers and volunteers.

One of Groklaw's volunteer coders, stevem, who is MathFox's chief assistant, volunteered to code it, and MathFox tweaked it to make sure we didn't break anything, and then designer Ted Thompson graciously offered to do a graphic for us, and here we are, lots of discussions, work and headaches later, ready to roll. I really hope you like it. The code is being released under the GPL to Geeklog, so everyone can benefit from this new feature.

There is an submission link for you to contact dburns with any stories you think we should add. You will find it below the news stories. If you have links that are interesting -- and especially if they are a bit off the beaten path -- please do share. Some of you work in areas that we might not be as aware of as you are, and you know about news stories or white papers that others here would like to read. Do feel free to keep emailing me with things that you think I need to know about too. Stories in other languages besides English are welcome. If you have time to briefly describe what the story is about, please do, but we have a translation team now assembled, and they can help out as needed. As new stories are added, the older ones will go here [ http://www.groklaw.net/newsitems.php ], and they will be searchable with our search engine.

People can get the major tech headlines already on Google and Slashdot. We are looking more for stories with a legal slant, about patents, or copyright, or tech stuff that relates to our areas of interest. Remember, it's Groklaw. But don't hold back. If something interests *you*, there is a good chance it will interest others here too. Nothing is too deep or too complex. Then it's up to dburns what he wants to use or has time to put up, so don't get mad if your submission doesn't show up. If he doesn't use it, I might. It's an editorial call, and we're all volunteers here, so time is the most precious resource and the most limited, and you are free to leave links to news stories as comments too, if you like to do that.

My purpose is this: we are all in this together, and both dburns and ChocoNut Dancer have been emailing me links to news stories for over a year, every single day, with a brief summary of what the stories were about. I've found it extremely helpful, even though I couldn't possibly write about all of the stories. I found that the accumulated information they provided me helped me to get the big picture, though, and one day it dawned on me that if it helped me, it would help you too. Our most valuable weapon in the FOSS community, in my view, is brain power, so I asked the guys to help me to find a way to share all the information I was getting with you, so we can all think together. Groklaw's Latest News Picks is the result, and I truly hope you find it as useful as I have.

05:30 PM EST