Taking the plaintiff firm's spokesperson at their word (I'm assuming the leak wasn't intentional), it sounds like it was a mistake made from ignorance. The article reports that they were working to correct the problem by making emergency, corrected filings with the federal court clerks. At that point, it's probably best thing they could do to prevent further inadvertent disclosures. But how do you unring the bell?

Rather than restate the article (which I recommend reading as a cautionary tale), I'll add that law firms and corporate law departments still need to be vigilant in the proper way to redact electronic documents. Historically, Adobe Acrobat did not provide appropriate redacting tools (a point I've suggested to them over the years and to which they listened by adding redaction in Acrobat 8 Professional -- but take note, it's not in the Standard version). So firms running on older versions of Acrobat or other PDF tools without built-in or third-party redaction tools (such as Redax from Appligent), remain at risk. By the way, Acrobat 9 was just announced and will likely ship in the next month or so. The same caveat re: Standard-sans-redaction applies per Acrobat's Feature Comparison Table.

If you haven't already invested in these tools, your process may be similar to this:

- Justifying the need for the proper tools (um, just read the article above)
- Communication to the legal staff as to why they are required, using real world examples to demonstrate the impact and that it's not just a hypothetical
- Investment in the appropriate software tools
- Training and practice for the legal staff actually performing the redaction, and it's not a bad idea for supervising attorneys to at least understand the underlying principles (as the plaintiff's lead counsel said, "I didn't know that.")

If your organization is already using appropriate redaction tools (you are, right?), it's probably a good idea to have redaction "tune-ups" with your staff. Meaning, reviewing and/or creating documentation for the standardized and firm-approved process of redacting documents, holding periodic refresher and new user training (consider "on-demand" video training snippets for training or follow-up support so busy professionals can fit it into their schedule), and consider making it part of the organization's overall risk management initiatives so it's at least on the radar. While you're at it, you might want to take a look at how many people actually know how to properly secure or lock a PDF, particularly those posted to external sources such as web sites.

For other helpful resources, the NSA (yes, that NSA) published a guide several years ago describing how to redact documents after the federal government suffered several information breaches and embarrassments from improper redaction efforts. There are also several very informative blogs dedicated to using PDFs in the legal market, such as Acrobat for Legal Professionals and PDF for Lawyers, both of which have definitely addressed redaction issues.

While these tools have significant price tags, as the saying goes, "an ounce of prevention..." Taken into perspective, an organization is likely going to incurs costs far greater than software and training when dealing with just one of these mis-redaction incidents. Sounds like a pretty good ROI to me.

Beth Kellermann, Litigation E-discovery Manager for Apple, Inc., was recognized in the corporate legal department category. Florinda Baldridge, Director of Practice Support for Fulbright & Jaworski LLP, was recognized in the private law firm category. Also, Carl Kikuchi, Branch Chief for the Office of Litigation Support, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division was recognized in the government category. Congratulations to all.

But it was especially warming to see long-time friend and colleague Tom O'Connor receive top honors industry-wide for his selfless work in New Orleans, helping lawyers after the spotlight on Katrina had faded. Many may not know this, but Tom relocated to New Orleans and organized free CLE for attorneys by getting speakers and vendors alike to respond, and brought other resources and ideas.

During his speech he asked, "Who helps lawyers?" The answer is, of course, other lawyers. In his unassuming and down-to-earth manner, Tom told me afterward how even a relatively simple thing as providing free copies of software to struggling attorneys brought on tears of thanks. That's how much this assistance was needed. As Tom shared, while the the larger firms generally had more resources to rebuild, what were solos who practiced out of their home offices to do when they didn't even have a roof over their head? Some had to move away, but those who stayed needed all the help they could get to continue on. The public usually thinks of the negative aspects of the profession, and sometimes with good reason, but it's people like Tom who make me proud to be a member. Congratulations Tom, it was well deserved.

I think they were going for "defragments", but yet another reason to have a second, perhaps more technically inclined person double-check your sales content.

Just for fun, here's the definition for "derange" from Dictionary.com, which pretty much sums it up, especially #3 if you need to go through outsourced tech support these days:

In today's complex litigation where ESI is now the norm, numerous organizations and teams all need to work effectively with each other, have clean lines of communication and expectations, and yet it's not always clear who's doing the driving. Please join me for an interactive and informative session sharing the challenges, best practices and take-aways for litigation professionals, corporate teams, and more.

The conference is organized by the great people at Litigation Support Today Magazine. They've assembled an impressive list of presenters that reads like a "Who's Who" in litigation support and eDiscovery professionals, and I'm looking forward to many interesting discussions.

On a personal note, I'm pleased to join a company who has been a trendsetter in directing eDiscovery technologies and methodologies for over 20 years, a rarity in this often volatile market. Great company, with fantastic people who really know their stuff. I'm particularly excited as my new responsibilities will draw on my deep experience with corporate legal departments, law firms, and enterprise business units and systems. In other words, I understand their specific challenges as I've been there too, as a practicing attorney, corporate legal IT manager, and large law firm and legal technology consultant. As a law firm executive director recently shared with me, "finding someone who can think like a lawyer and understand 'tech speak' is a rare animal."

I'm also a Six Sigma Green Belt with extensive experience with systems and processes that include e-mail and document retention, electronic invoicing, matter and document management, and enterprise content management. Thus I understand the challenges corporate teams face in managing their data, as well as in designing and implementing effective processes to improve defensibility and compliance. In addition, a number of companies are looking ahead to their "next steps" to proactively address these issues, which include evaluating whether and how to bring more preservation and collection efforts in-house, retooling or refining their data retention policies and practices, and further automating and systemizing their litigation hold processes.

I'll repeat the disclaimer that the posts and opinions expressed on this blog are solely my personal opinions and viewpoints. They do not represent or reflect (nor are they intended to represent or reflect) the positions, opinions, viewpoints, policies and/or statements of my employer or any other entity or person.

As always, if you'd like to discuss anything or just want to bounce ideas around, please feel free to contact me via the e-mail link at the top of my blog.

It's a public service announcement to watch out for cyclists. But its main message is equally applicable to managing and finding your own data. As the announcer says at the end, "It's easy to miss something you're not looking for." (And, sometimes, for things you are.)

It often takes a fresh and expert eye to spot what others have missed. Don't be afraid to seek them out, as it's often more cost-effective than missing what's in plain view.

Please keep in mind some of these items are based on information found online including unofficial sources, so it's best taken as my personal interpretation of that information (meaning that if I've unintentionally stated something incorrectly, don't hold it against me, and I would appreciate constructive feedback):

• Numerous postings online have stated that by default, all versions of Vista automatically create shadow copies of your documents and other user data files and folders as part of the "System Restore" feature.



• You can turn off "System Restore" to disable shadow copies, but it's a bit of throwing the baby out with the bath water. You see, "System Restore" allows you to roll back the clock on your system to an earlier (and hopefully more stable) state. This is incredibly useful whenever your Vista system experiences problems (such as after installing a problematic program, driver, or update, adverse registry changes, etc.). FYI, newer Apple operating systems offer a somewhat similar feature called "Time Machine".



• By default, Vista allocates 15% of the drive's size or 30% of available free space, whichever is smaller, for storing this data. In Vista, Microsoft removed the nice slider control available in Windows XP, so changing its space allocation requires some arcane text commands with administrator privileges. Thus most users will just leave it as-is. On larger hard drives, this creates a fairly large backup cache. For instance, on a new 200GB hard drive, up to 30GB would be dedicated to storing these hidden backups. When the allocated space fills up, Vista deletes the oldest backups as needed to make room for the new ones.



• However, only the Ultimate, Business, and Enterprise editions of Vista actually allow users to access and retrieve the hidden shadow copies via the "Previous Versions" feature in Windows Explorer.



• This means the Vista Home Basic and Premium versions create these hidden shadow copies but do not provide any way for their users to access or retrieve them. This results in potentially large amounts of wasted disk space and additional data retention concerns. Perhaps Microsoft intended this as a teaser to entice Home users to upgrade to Vista Ultimate, but they really should have disabled shadow copies on those editions or alternately provided the "Previous Versions" feature to access and restore them as needed.



• To help address these issues, Shadow Explorer is a free basic utility program (not affiliated with Microsoft) which allows these users of other Vista versions to access and restore these prior shadow copy backups. However, unlike "Previous Versions", it requires administrator privileges to run. (But see my caveat at the end of this post since it's a 0.1 release.)



• Even Vista Ultimate, Business, and Enterprise users and IT departments may find Shadow Explorer of use. I've discovered firsthand that Vista's "Previous Versions" feature is dependent on a number of system and service prerequisites, and the lack of any one of them will disable the ability to access and restore these Previous Versions. For instance, disabling a drive's administrative share, certain Windows services, or networking settings can all disable the "Previous Versions" listing in Vista Ultimate even though the backups are still present on the drive.



• Tip: If you have Norton Internet Security installed and have run its "Security Inspector", it may have reported and disabled several hidden administrative drive shares (such as C$) as security risks (which they are indeed). However, as mentioned above, these administrative shares are necessary for "Previous Versions" to function in Vista. So if you want to leave these shares disabled for better security, the Shadow Explorer utility program allows you to access and restore shadow backups even though Vista's own "Previous Versions" feature is disabled.

Organizations interested in migrating to Vista will need to explore these issues in more detail before crafting their security and group policies. I expect some will elect to disable System Restore altogether and rely upon other system restoration methods to address user support issues as they arise. Others may move user folders onto a separate disk partition or drive and simply turn off "System Protection" for that location. Such options may improve Vista's performance if it's not churning away saving hidden backup copies, and it's usually a good idea to separate documents from program files for a number of valid reasons.

So it's all the more puzzling to try to understand why Microsoft chose to disable access for Vista home users, as they are the ones most likely wanting to use and restore Shadow Copies. I seriously doubt informed businesses would want multiple hidden document versions floating around on their corporate laptops and desktops, particularly in light of numerous regulatory and litigation concerns.

Shadow Explorer Tutorials can be found at:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/recover-files-with-shadow-copies-on-any-version-of-windows-vista/
http://www.shadowexplorer.com/documentation/manual.html

Please keep in mind that Shadow Explorer is a very basic version 0.1 release. While it worked fine for me during my brief testing, it may contain bugs and other issues consistent with a new release. With that said, it provides an easy way to access, view, and restore the various shadow copies in Windows Vista. I applaud the author for providing such a useful tool, and for considering these additional planned features as it's developed further.

Corporate counsel struggling with records retention should be among the first to read this, as their regular business information can be used against them in unforeseen ways. Indeed, my alternate title for this practical guide is "Call the Help Desk, Your Accessibility is Showing". From discussions with various corporate and outside counsel, a common misconception under the new rules is that backup tapes are an inaccessible “safe harbor” media as long as one asserts they are only used for disaster recovery. Depending on the specific facts, this could prove to be a costly assumption as newer decisions consider the totality of the burden and cost under Rule 26(b).

As a result, I suggest a novel but very practical approach to challenge or confirm an opposing party's assertions using business intelligence methods and their own data. In accessibility matters, courts are increasingly demanding objective data on which to base their discovery rulings rather than relying upon subjective arguments and affidavits claiming excessive time and expense are required. It’s also contemplated in the Committee Notes regarding sampling and other techniques.

As an example, corporate help desk logs can be used to quantify the frequency and purposes for which backup media are being accessed. However, other seemingly mundane systems and data may be useful and relevant. This further illustrates why companies continue to need savvy e-discovery professionals to bridge the legal/IT gap and identify opportunities and weaknesses others have missed. I also provided an update on how the backup technology landscape is changing and what you should know about it when dealing with ESI accessibility issues.

Among other hot topics, LegalTech was brimming with discussion on the Qualcomm fallout, records retention, proactive approaches, and automated review. In addition, I covered key issues such as cost reduction, the effects of globalization, data privacy, and outsourcing/insourcing. With recessionary concerns on the rise, corporate law departments are being asked to do more with less, and these issues will continue to compound through 2008 and into 2009.

My personal opinion is that Office 2007 is the clear winner from Microsoft this past year (definitively overshadowing Vista), and the massive improvements are well worth the office suite upgrade and third-party integration efforts. Sherry insightfully observed that with Word 2007's linked styles right out of the box, firms are likely going to need to pay even more attention, not less, on training and reinforcing solid style usage with their user base. As Sherry mentioned in a recent ILTA publication, if you're not automating your document practice, then how are you going to maintain your margins when your corporate clients demand a substantial rate cut? Also, she noted that the new XML format, while adding some needed document file stability, also adds a bit more complexity due to the XML intricacies.

Donna Payne and I had some techno.fun comparing and contrasting Word's built-in Document Inspector capabilities to a dedicated metadata scrubber such as Payne's Metadata Assistant. On one hand, it would seem that Word's built-in Document Inspector gets the job done. Both Donna and I have used it and found it to be effective, especially in a pinch where you're working on a simple document and just need a quick scrub before sending it off to someone. When you want to remove just about everything, it pretty much does the trick. But in comparing notes, we quickly agreed it has several fundamental weaknesses:

1) No Workflow: In other words, when using Word's Document Inspector, you have to remember to manually scrub and save the Word document before you start the e-mail process. Third-party scrubbers add the necessary workflow which allows you to scrub the file as part of the e-mail attachment process.

2) No Selective Scrubbing Within Each Category: For each of Word 2007's five scrubbing categories, it only offers you an "all or nothing" approach for the items in that particular category. There is no middle ground. So if you want to scrub only some of the document property fields, but keep a few like "Author" and "Title", you'll need to first remove all of that category's metadata, and then manually retype in the few you want to retain. And that's a bad thing, because you can lose useful or necessary metadata in the process if you're not careful.

So while we've seen very substantial improvements in Word 2007, firms and companies will still need to assess their overall practice workflow and specific scrubbing needs, and it will likely take third-party add-ins to more fully address them.

Many of you know FeedDemon has been my preferred RSS reader since I started using it at least 4-5 years ago. I've also played around with other readers, both PC client and web-based, but kept going back to FeedDemon. I also chose FeedDemon as the best RSS reader or news aggregator for a prior Law Office Computing Shootout feature article. It packs a ton of useful features into a very intuitive, fast, and polished package. But rather than extoll upon its many great features and advantages, MediaBlab has already done a fine job of that.

Lest ye think NewsGator is abandoning their client-based software programs, it's just the opposite according to Nick Bradbury, the programming genius behind FeedDemon. In a nutshell, they're making it free to expand their client software users. Why? Because we humble human beings seem to make an effective relevance engine. You see, when using one of these now-free NewsGator programs, it sends back information when one flags an article, saves a clipping, or e-mails it to a friend. By these simple actions, we're signifying that particular item was important or relevant. I'm quite reminded of how Google was founded upon ranking relevance via tracking a site's inbound links. Nick gets it.

All this aggregated information helps NewsGator determine which RSS feeds and articles are more relevant than others, and helps them "bubble it up" to the surface for their enterprise customers. That's where NewsGator is refocusing their efforts and attention. So in exchange for getting the software free, users help them by doing nothing more than they are already -- reading, flagging, searching, etc. As Nick says, "Your attention is valuable." Sounds very Web 2.0 to me.

To their credit, both Nick and NewsGator recognized that we're just a little concerned about our privacy. Nick covers that in his post, and points us to NewsGator's FAQ so we can decide for ourselves. Apparently, we can choose to disable the data collection and reporting mechanisms, albeit at the loss of features like data synchronization.

Also, since many of their enterprise customers use these very same programs, Newsgator appears to have a vested interest in keeping them updated rather than abandoning them.

I give them credit. In a very innovative way, they're providing value in offering a first-rate RSS reader for free and enabling us to see what news is popular with others. NewsGator is gaining value in return while being fairly transparent about it. Of course, the new free FeedDemon 2.6 specifically contains more "phone home" mechanisms for "attention reporting". While I would normally suggest staying with an earlier version for privacy reasons, if their FAQ is accurate and we can indeed disable those tracking and communication methods, then there's probably little harm. Besides, even if they could still track my RSS reading habits, there's nothing there that would make me miss any sleep. But I'd still hold them accountable so that all users have a clean choice.

I also really like Nick's attitude and customer focus in his other blog post:

"Sure, I enjoy making money as much as the next guy or gal, but I'm really doing this because it's fun. I like writing software, and I'm going to keep writing it until my fingers break off.

There's no point in creating software in a vacuum - you've got to make it useful, make it scratch an itch, for it to be truly rewarding. And to do that, you've got to listen. You've got to pay attention to what people are asking for and what they're complaining about.

So, regardless of whether you've paid for FeedDemon in the past or you're a new user now that it's free, I'm not going to stop listening. It wouldn't be fun otherwise."

Most of all, I'm looking forward to catching up with many of my friends and colleagues, making new contacts, and taking in the new developments, product launchings, and various briefings. As expected, the show is heavily dominated by EDD players, and shows like LegalTech are a great way to stay abreast of the various methodologies and solutions offered in this busy, busy market space. It seems like just about every day I'm hearing of a new product, service, or partnership, so I'm looking forward to getting an espresso-like jolt at the show. If you're there, look me up.

Will Vista end up similar to how the market received Windows ME? The comparisons would seem apt so far. With each platform generation of Windows, Microsoft has typically taken three times to get it right, and the fourth to bloat it up beyond repair. The last time around, it was Win95, Win98, Win98 SE (widely acknowledged as the best and most stable of the Win9x series), and of course the "Millennium Edition" which was so bloated and troubled that it mainly only saw installations in the consumer PC market -- and many of those were sold as pre-installations on new PCs. This time around, we started out with the clunky Windows NT, saw substantial improvements in both Windows 2000 and XP, and are still wondering how Vista will play out.

The big success story for Microsoft is that their new Office 2007 line rocks compared to their previous efforts. I've been using the Office 2007 Professional suite since June and am hooked. Better and easier comparison tools built into Word (finally!!!!), built-in metadata removal, etc. The ribbon bar simply rocks. Outlook 2007 is a joy to use and its built-in search is blazingly FAST! I added OneNote 2007 recently and it's really been improved -- lots of new features and integration with the other Office 2007 apps and IE to easily move information over to OneNote. OneNote's new indexing and search within images is utterly fantastic. Microsoft actually listened to their customers in developing Office 2007, and it shows. While organizations will need to plan their migrations and third-party integrations with the Office 2007 suite carefully, I think many will like the numerous improvements once they give it a chance.

Despite the press-mongering, from direct experience I also don't have much in the way of negative feelings for Vista so far. Is it bloated? Absolutely. Does it consume disk space faster than an interstellar black hole? You bet. Does it seem designed by a committee with no unifying theme other than the "Aero" look and feel? Affirmative. But is it unstable? Not in my experience so far, although I'll reserve judgment until after I've installed all the forthcoming SP1-related patches. I've been running Vista Ultimate (32-bit) on a new Toshiba mid-range laptop since June with a TON of new and legacy apps, and overall it's been a pretty good experience. In other words, it hasn't stopped me from getting things done. No system crashes, no "stop" errors, mostly just some apps stopping and restarting.

With the above criticisms said, Vista is not without its charms. There are a number of things I really like about Vista:

• Fast built-in search, at least for the indexed file types. You can also customize the indexing settings.
• Vista Sidebar Gadgets - Great for monitoring just about everything, including system performance, weather alerts, To-Do's, and even receiving Office 2007 tips and tricks from MS, and a lot more. (Yes, Apple, Google, and Yahoo have their widgets and whatnots too.)
• Simplification of user accounts into "Standard User" and "Administrator", and the ability for standard users to temporarily elevate their rights to an administrator without logging out and back in again.
• Handles media file types in Explorer better than XP, especially when tagging files.
• Vista's Mobility Center is great for pulling various system settings together into a single control panel -- perfect when setting up for a presentation in a hurry.
• Live pop-up previews of open programs in the task bar -- this really helps when you have many open windows and need to find the right one quickly. (Vista's new 3D Desktop Flip is a nice addition too, but after seeing Ubuntu 7.10's desktop flip, I like it better than Vista's as it uses a better visual metaphor.)
• Dialogs, Help, Windows Explorer, etc., all improved in usability, navigation, and explaining things to users in plainer language.
• Built-in basic CD/DVD burning. Now even unsophisticated users can burn discs without having to learn a new program. Easy wizard-based steps and it works.
• Windows Complete PC Backup (full drive imaging backup) really works, but it's not available in any of the Home versions. Ironically, home users need it the most as businesses typically already employ more advanced drive imaging tools for deployments.
• Vista can resize hard drive partitions on the fly without reformatting or losing data, rather like a built-in basic version of PartitionMagic. (Perfect if you want to make room to dual-boot to a second OS, such as WinXP or Ubuntu Linux.)
• An improved Disk Cleanup utility that walks you through a nice wizard and shows you how much space you're likely to reclaim before you commit.
• New Control Panel applet for easily setting file associations with your installed programs. (Perfect for when another program has grabbed a file association away from your preferred program.)
• New Aero interface is very Apple-ish (that can't be a bad thing as long as your hardware supports it). Yes, it's mainly eye candy and sucks resources on slower systems, but I like it. It's handy at times to see what's sitting underneath the current window via its transparency. Aero runs fine on my mid-range laptop, and gives Windows that new car smell. (Windows DreamScene is in the same category -- think full-motion desktop backgrounds -- but I like it too.)

• UAC (User Account Control) -- Too many redundant prompts, which interrupt my workflow. I absolutely LOVED the Apple commercial dissing it with the Secret Service guy. Priceless. (It's on YouTube.)
• File shadow copying service works and is accessible in Vista Ultimate, BUT: The home versions stupidly keep making shadow copies of your files but don't let you access them, so it's a waste of valuable drive space AND it presents an e-discovery treasure trove (Duh!). You can either turn off your System Restore protection to disable shadow copies (not a good idea as it's saved my bacon several times), or reduce the amount of drive space allocated for restore points, which limits your recovery options. Microsoft absolutely needs to provide a way to turn off file shadow copies while preserving System Restore's core functionality of backing up and restoring just your system files and registry settings.
• While greatly simplified, Vista's built-in Disk Defragmenter has been lobotomized from the power user's perspective: There's no graphic status, not even a simple progress bar. Vista only presents a single button to click. After that, it lacks any indication of its progress or how long it will take -- could be minutes, could be hours. Place your bets, round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows! (Not even Microsoft.) On the bright side, Vista automatically defrags your disk in the background at reduced throttle, which is good for many users who just don't defrag otherwise.

Overall, and with the exception of hard-core gamers needing XP's faster performance, I see Vista as a nice OS for home users buying new PCs -- though it's somewhat crippled without Ultimate's enhanced features. Other than the new drive encryption and other security enhancements, it's definitely a tougher sell for businesses. There's just not that much noticeable improvement or enough compelling new features to justify moving from XP yet, especially when you consider the substantial cost and effort involved in testing/migrating hundreds of legacy programs to ensure their compatibility. Not to mention Vista has significantly higher hardware requirements if you want good performance for your users.

Thus Vista's OS licensing is only the tip of the total cost iceberg. IT executives are likely considering skipping Vista altogether and deploying the next OS, "Windows 7", when it ships (right now it's slated for 2010, but we all know Microsoft usually pushes back its ship dates along the way). The trick is to manage the time gap if Microsoft doesn't change their plans for phasing out XP. Currently, mainstream support for Windows XP SP2 will end on April 14, 2009, after which it switches to "Extended Support" that will last for 5 years until April 8, 2014.

As long as businesses are able to purchase new XP Pro licenses during this gap as needed, it will seriously undercut the need to upgrade to Vista. Many industry analysts are predicting Microsoft will extend XP's mainstream support given the considerable outcry from home and business users alike. However, MS usually waits to just before the support cutoff deadline before announcing any extensions, as earlier announcements would only serve to provide more reasons to stay with XP instead of upgrading.

Office 2007, on the other hand, is a noticeably superior improvement, and the clear winner from Microsoft this past year. Since switching, I never want to go back to an earlier version. The many new features and enhancements actually work well. Microsoft's apps division finally gets it.

Bottom line, if I were a CIO looking at Microsoft upgrades, I'd invest in Office 2007 and offset it by staying put with WinXP for a bit longer, especially as SP3 is coming and should extend its life. Don't get me wrong, I actually like Vista and have had a good experience with it so far. But when it comes to quantifying it, Vista is a much tougher sell for businesses than consumers.

6. IZArc

While Windows XP and Vista can view and open .ZIP files natively, that's about it. I've used WinZip for years. While it's a great program with a nice user interface, it's not free, and it can't open a number of archive formats. The same goes for WinRAR, which prompted me to look at a number of free Zip-compatible archiving programs. I've concluded that IZArc is the closest thing to WinZip and it supports a staggering range of archive file formats. Per its web site:

"IZArc is the ultimate freeware archive utility supporting many archive formats like: 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, ZOO. With a modern easy-to-use interface, IZArc provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to many powerful features and tools. It allows you to drag and drop files from and to Windows Explorer, create and extract archives directly in Windows Explorer, create multiple archives spanning disks, creating self-extracting archives, repair damaged zip archives, converting from one archive type to another, view and write comments and many more. IZArc has also build-in multilanguage support.

With IZArc you can open CD image files like ISO, BIN, CDI and NRG. It is also possible to convert such files from one type to another (BIN to ISO, NRG to ISO).

If you need to send large files to your colleagues, friends or customers who may not have archiving tool you can easily create self-extracting archive that can be extracted by simple double click." It can also encrypt files with AES for more secure transmission.

Web Site: http://www.izarc.org
Systems Supported: Windows 95, 98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista.

[I also considered 7-Zip, which boasts the best compression with its proprietary .7z file format. However, 7-Zip doesn't handle nearly as many archive file formats as IZArc above. When sending compressed files to others, keep in mind they likely won't have 7-Zip installed, and using the self-extractor feature will result in an .EXE file that could be blocked by the recipient's e-mail or antivirus system. Regardless of which archiving program used, I recommend choosing the more common .ZIP format when sharing file archives with others, especially since Windows XP and Vista can open them natively.]

7. Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders Backup Tool

Even with Outlook 2007's expanded feature list, it still can't back up your personal folders or settings. Personal Folders Backup is Microsoft's free add-on for Outlook that will automatically copy your .PST file to another location. You choose the preset number of days for the backup interval. Your .PST file is the one that contains all of your e-mail messages, attachments, folders, contacts, tasks, and notes. So if your .PST file gets corrupted, deleted, or whatever, you can simply copy it over from your last backup.

The downside is that Personal Folders Backup does NOT back up your Outlook account settings, signatures, stationery, etc. -- it only backs up the .PST file. So if you need more robust backup solutions, take a look at Slipstick's list of Outlook backup and recovery tools. Most are not free, but they perform a more complete backup than Microsoft's free program. Keep in mind that most organizations have their own Outlook/Exchange backup solutions and data policies, so this type of solution may be more applicable for personal and SOHO uses. It's definitely better than not having any Outlook backup solution, especially if you use Outlook on a PC without an Exchange server.

Web Sites:
     Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8B081F3A-B7D0-4B16-B8AF-5A6322F4FD01&displaylang=en
     Instructions: http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/preview.aspx?AssetID=HA010875321033
Systems Supported: Outlook 2002 and later, and the operating systems that support each respective Outlook version.

8. Vista Shortcut Manager

Remember how Microsoft's free TweakUI would let you remove the shortcut arrow overlay from your desktop icons? However, since Microsoft has not updated TweakUI for Vista, Frameworkx has released their Vista Shortcut Manager. This one-trick pony allows you to remove or customize the shortcut overlay icon for Vista. Here's a "before and after" sample:

Before:After: It's purely cosmetic, but it gives your desktop icons a cleaner, more refined appearance.

Web Site: http://www.frameworkx.com/Frameworkx/solution.aspx?id=632
Systems Supported: Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit versions

[In Part 1 of this list, I mentioned the powerful TweakVI utility. It can also remove the arrow from Vista's shortcuts. As I mentioned earlier, TweakVI is on my "To Try" list, but I need to emphasize that since TweakVI modifies so many of Windows' critical system settings, you better know what you're doing if you decide to play with it. In contrast, the Vista Shortcut Manager is much safer to try for this particular purpose.]

9. AusLogic Disk Defragmenter

While greatly simplified, Vista's built-in Disk Defragmenter has been lobotomized from the power user's perspective: There's no graphic status, not even a simple progress bar. Vista only presents a single button to click. After that, it lacks any indication of its progress or how long it will take -- could be minutes, could be hours. Place your bets, round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows! (Not even Microsoft.) Thus the folks down under at AusLogics have released a free defrag tool that works in Vista, and you can actually see what it's doing. This is also helpful when you need to know where the unmovable files are, or when you're preparing to shrink and repartition your Vista drive.

However, there's a trade-off for that visual feedback: The AusLogic defragger doesn't give you any options for the defrag method or nor does it offer boot-time defragmentation. It also doesn't defrag Vista's Master File Table (MFT) yet -- that's slated for a later version. The Master File Table keeps track of all the file locations on your drive, like a table of contents. In comparison, Vista's built-in defragger also defrags the MFT, so it's a good idea to run it every so often to keep the MFT optimized. In this Knowledge Base article, Microsoft explains that Vista's Disk Defragmenter has a number of operational improvements, so you can decide for yourself how you best want to keep your drive defragmented.

Web Site: http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/index.php
Systems Supported: Vista/XP/2000/2003, 32-bit and 64-bit and dual-core CPU supported.

10. Microsoft Office Tips & Tricks Sidebar Gadget

So you've got the new Office 2007 suite installed, and are still learning its various features and nuances. To help you along, Microsoft has a free Vista sidebar gadget that delivers a new tip each day. One day it may have a Word 2007 tip, and the next a new one for Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, OneNote, or other Office 2007 apps. The gadget is relatively small, but clicking on it expands its size to display the tip's content:
---> Click on the tip's title to display the help within:

Web Site: http://www.microsoft.com/office/greattips/default.mspx
Supported Systems: Windows Vista

Gartner included 29 e-discovery vendors in its analysis. Its weighted evaluation criteria was based on each vendor's Market Understanding, Innovation, Market Responsiveness and Track Record, Offering (Product) Strategy, Business Model, Customer Experience, and Marketing Strategy. Gartner then rated each vendor on a 5-scale range between "Strong Negative" and "Strong Positive".

Keep in mind that analysts' projections and predictions should be taken as just that — sometimes they're right on and sometimes they miss the mark. With that said, this makes for an interesting current summary of the vendors' relative strengths and weaknesses, as well as providing further insight into the ever-changing e-discovery market.

Perhaps the most telling predictions are found in the executive summary:

"STRATEGIC PLANNING ASSUMPTION(S)
By the end of 2008, there will be four viable categories of vendors in the e-discovery market: platform players, review and analysis platforms, collection, preservation and processing and full service outsourcers. By the end of 2008, there will be 25% fewer vendors claiming to have e-discovery functionality." (emphasis added) Time will tell whether this will be from continued market consolidation and shakeout, and/or from other factors.

The research helps confirm that enterprise transformations will not happen overnight: "Through at least YEO8, enterprises should acquire tools in this market tactically. Achieving full proactive control over unstructured data — which is the ultimate answer to e-discovery challenges — will take between five and 10 years for most enterprises." "Few software vendors offer credibly complete solutions for e-discovery. Enterprises can, however, select products tactically to begin their long-term e-discovery strategy."

I agree it will take years, and may not even occur completely for some. When you consider large global Fortune 500 companies having numerous different systems deployed throughout different geographical and functional groups, there is no immediate silver bullet. It will take time for companies to define and analyze their needs, gaps, and problem areas, and then select and implement these solutions, not to mention effectuating the necessary change management throughout their organizations.

Congratulations to Guidance Software, and I'm sure many will appreciate having access to this market research.