eDiscovery Daily Blog

• May 1, 2014

Several people have asked me where I get ideas for topics to create a daily blog post on eDiscovery Daily.  There are several great resources out there – including law technology sites, compilation sites and other blogs – and I’ve mentioned many of them over the years and referenced their articles and posts in this blog.  But, there is another source – from a huge, well known company – that I scan daily to keep abreast of developments in the industry (and for good blog topic ideas).

Google has a very useful feature, called “Alerts”, which are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on a query (or queries) that you provide.  It’s great for monitoring a developing news story or keeping current on a competitor or your industry (as well as tracking news about your favorite celebrities or sports teams).  Here’s how it works:

1. Go to the Alerts page on the Google site (here’s the link).  If you have a Gmail account and haven’t already logged into it, you’ll want to do so – it works best with Gmail, but doesn’t have to be tied to a Gmail account.
2. Type the term or terms for which you want results into the Search query box.  You will then see a preview of the type of results you’ll receive to the right to see what you can expect to get in your alert.
3. Select a Result type that you want to pull – valid choices are Everything, News, Blogs, Video, Discussions and Books.
4. Select a Language to pull (default is English, but there are over 40 languages to choose from!).
5. Select a Region to pull, which is essentially the same as country (default is Any Region, which will pull regardless of where the source is located).
6. Determine How Often you want updates (default is Once a day, but you can receive emails with items “As-it-happens” – talk about “digital debris”! – or Once a week).
7. Determine How Many, which is either Only the best results (default) or All results.
8. Specify where to Deliver to – if you’re logged in to your Gmail account, that will be the default, but you can also specify some other feed.
9. Click the button to CREATE ALERT.  The alert will then be created and be sent to your desired email address or feed, based on the parameters specified above.

You can also manage your alerts from this page and make adjustments to them or remove them outright if you don’t want to receive them anymore.

I have daily alerts set up for “eDiscovery” and “e-Discovery” (the results are sometimes different) as well as “saas” and “information governance”.  I receive the emails at the same time each day and usually go through them to see if there’s any notable news or articles worth reviewing.  Alerts typically include press releases, product announcements, articles and blog posts (including, of course, the daily post from eDiscovery Daily!).  Wouldn’t want to be left out.

Not every item is exactly on point.  For example, in today’s alert, there was a real estate listing for a house in “2445 E Discovery Place” in Langley, WA.  But, then again, you sometimes get amusing articles such as “10 Ways to tell a lawyer knows nothing about eDiscovery” from Searcy Law.com.  Every now and then, you need a good laugh.

So, what do you think? How do you keep up to date on your industry?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.