Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
Reed Technology's Web Preserver: My New Favorite Research Tool
January 30, 2012
Some time back, John and I took a test drive of Reed Technology's then unweildy-sounding software for archiving social media and Internet pages, guided by Rod Wittenberg and Matt Byrd. Then came the holidays and the press of work and I never really had the chance to play with the tool, which now has a very nice – and memorable name – Web Preserver.
At $35 a month per user for 10GB of storage (hey guys, that's a great price – put it on the website!), this is quite a deal whether your interest is archiving social media pages, archiving your website, gathering evidence for a case or research. As I spend a lot of time on research for presentations and writing books/articles, I love being able to create folders for every new topic that comes up and storing my research electronically.
Confession: I've been spoiled by years of paralegals doing research and printing everything out. Not green, but it did allow me to read (not on computer screens, which i see too many of) but on paper while traveling or at home in my family room. However, searching paper is highly problematic and I've been determined to go green and become more efficient for some time.
I love that I can have scads of folders on whatever topics may come up – going paperless, apps for Androids, data breaches, machine-assisted review, etc. I can search my folders easily and refine the date range to zero in on something I know I've harvested in the last week.
So thank you Rod and Matt – great product – and if you are at LegalTech or ABATECHSHOW, you can stop by Reed Technology's booth and check this Web Preserver out. Or, of course, you can contact them via the website.
In our animated conversation as Rod and Matt kindly visited Sensei and we walked through the software, I offered many suggestions, most of them minor, to improve the user's experience and was pleased that they were quick to take notes and to say they would incorporate those suggestions.
I had only one serious concern, which may not significantly impact lawyers (or anyone else) who wants to archive or research. But if you really are collecting information for a case, lawyers are going to want encryption in transit and in storage and to create and hold the decryptiion key. Currrently, that it is not possible, but they are working on it. But other than that, I'm a big fan!
Listen to the Podcast
