Here are the highlights from my Twitter posts for the last week (Sept 24–28), with some additional commentary.

• New Orleans attorneys who wish they could manage their email better (using automation and tools that increase efficiency and lower stress) should attend this CLE program on October 19th.
• If, like me, you’re not getting an iPhone 5 but want something that will dramatically improve your old iPhone’s performance how about a Mophie Juice Pack Air case? It doubles your battery life and wraps your iPhone in protective case. Yes it makes it slightly larger and heavier, but extra battery life doesn’t grow on trees you know.
• If you did get a new iPhone, or upgraded (like me) to iOS 6 then stop worrying about Apple’s new maps. There is a much better free GPS navigation application called Waze, which has been growing steadily. I have been using it for almost a year, but I notice that many of my tech-savvy friends are discovering it too. It’s probably the best GPS app for the iPhone and it’s free. That’s a powerful combination.
• If you have a Mac and want to run Windows you can, but you need the right software. What’s the right software? Almost certainly it’s Parallels. The Wall St. Journal’s tech columnist Walt Mossberg reviewed Parallels and favored it over VMware. I’ve switched to Parallels and so far I’m impressed.
• I’ve been trying out the new Dragon Dictate 3 for Mac and I’m not ready to pronounce this program a game-changer, but it’s much better than the prior version. If you struggle with typing, or if you just want to turbo-charge your text input, then you should investigate Dragon Dictate. Windows users should definitely get the PC version, which has been more fully developed and is feature-rich and quite reliable.

To get these news tidbits as they come out follow me on Twitter. For tweets about technology follow me at the PaperlessChase Twitter page, and if you’re a Louisiana lawyer interested in technology come to one of our live CLE programs.

Here are the highlights from my Twitter posts for the last week, with some additional commentary.

• Interesting profile by Michael Lewis off President Obama in Vanity Fair. Lewis got major backstage access, and crafted a well-written piece.
• Incisive short video by Ken Burns on story telling where he says “1 + 1 = 3, those are the really interesting stories.” If anyone knows what makes stories interesting it’s Ken Burns.
• Who is Sam Bacile? He’s supposedly the mystery man behind the anti-muslim film blamed for foreign diplomatic attacks and no doubt we’ll hear a lot more about him in the days and weeks to come.
• Foursquare is not a social media tool you’d expect politicians to use much. And it seems that Congresswoman Michelle Bachman apparently regretted unlocking the Adventurer Badge on Foursquare We know this because the sites Politwoops keeps track of deleted tweets from politicians.
• Nice article by NY Times columnist David Brooks, on what politicians could learn from Bruce Springsteen. I called Brooks a conservative in the original tweet and a friend tweeted me to say Brooks is NOT conservative, pointing me to Charles Krauthammer’s July 2011 interview, in which he clarifies why Brooks is not a conservative: “He’s open to all views.” Okay, gotcha. And he’s really open to Bruce Springsteen.

To get these news tidbits as they come out follow me on Twitter. Remember you don’t need to post on Twitter to use it; you can just follow people. Or you can just visit my Twitter page, but that seems like a lot of work for just my posts.

Here are the highlights from my Twitter posts this week:

• Tired of copying/pasting into your address book? Here’s a better way. Simple, automatic, reliable, & really useful!
• All Florida lawyers must now serve by email in state court: link
• Ross Gubmerman grades the readability of the Apple v. Samsung legal briefs: link
• A New York court considers whether lap dancing is art and thus tax exempt: link
• An Amicus brief filed in SDNY federal court, but in comic book form: link
• New Orleans lawyers with iPads should sign up for my CLE seminar this Friday, Sept 14th. It’s three hours of CLE credit, including an hour of Ethics.

To get these kinds of updates as they come out subscribe to my Twitter feed (you have to join Twitter to do so, but it’s free).

Much of the energy that I used to put into blogging has been shifted to Twitter. I’ve set up a system to capture my tweets and, once a week, I plan to comb through them and highlight some of the more interesting ones. This week I was stuck in Hurricane so the tweets are all about that, and will only be of interest to those who live in New Orleans. Next week, you’ll see tweets with a broader focus.

• How to prepare for a Hurricane with your iOS devices
• Seven years ago I wrote these posts right before Katrina hit
• RT @VargVargas: Al Roker said “fair amount” of buildings on Canal will have “significant structural damage.” Uh, OK.
• RT @brianstelter: Happening SE of NOLA: RT @Laura_Buchtel: Hearing that people used Facebook to coordinate rescues… How different from 2005.
• RT @AvenuePubNOLA: Question of the day: have you got any hurricane specials? Yeah, we ’re open. That’s pretty special.
• RT @kbeninato: My new article for The New Republic: Morning After #isaac in New Orleans
• Overheard on Scott’s porch uptown, after discussing the value of Twitter. Scott: “I’m huge on MySpace,”
• My blog post: Sudden catastrophes, and why hyperlocal news coverage beats traditional reporting
• RT @TheNolaChick: 9 stages of a hurricane. I’m at stage 7. Hoping to be 9 by tomorrow.

For a complete list of the tweets (and retweets) I sent out during the week of Hurricane Isaac, click and download this PDF file. It’s only my perspective, and so it’s guaranteed NOT to be a collectors item. But it’s interesting to see how residents in one area of the city felt during a time of intense worry.

Put a stake in the ground: we now live in an era where aspects of the "journalistic balance of power" have shifted.

I was in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and blogged about it. My blog posts were of limited value to most people, but for those who knew I lived in New Orleans and had a blog they were apparently very helpful. But back then things were very different than they are just seven years later.

Back in 2005 there was no iPhone, and the "smartphones" that existed didn't have useful cameras if they had them at all. Twitter didn't exist in 2005 and Facebook was just getting off the ground. Use of mobile internet was also not available.

Today we live in a world where iPhones (and similar high-caliber smartphones) are everywhere. Those mobile devices are connected to high-speed wireless networks that reach everywhere, and the people who own those devices know how to do a lot of things with them: text message, tweet, post to Facebook, upload pictures or video, and gather useful information from other similarly armed citizens.

The excellent website, Uptown Messenger, run by Robert Morris has done a fantastic job of keeping tabs on events affecting the Uptown area of New Orleans. During Hurricane Isaac his coverage has been peerless. The Times Picayune has to cover a much larger swath of the city, and the same is true for the TV stations. Their coverage is useful for getting a general sense of events affecting the metro area, but not as useful for getting detail about Uptown New Orleans.

Robert Morris has a background in journalism, so he brings that experience to the job. But he also knows how to gather information from other citizens who have smartphones and familiarity with Twitter. This morning a popular local bar called Fat Harry's had a fire. Robert's twitter post (with picture) was uploaded at 8:32 am. The Times Picayune website has a short story posted 30 minutes later, with a similar picture. The local CBS TV affiliate noted the story about Fat Harrys in a Twitter post, citing @UptownMessenger as the source.

When a local state congressman named Neil Abramson decided to drive around and post useful updates using Twitter, Robert Morris began retweeting his posts. Robert Morris has (at this writing) 3,188 followers on Twitter and Neil Abramson has 1,125.

But it's not about how many followers you have. Just as it's not about how many reporters you have on staff or how many watts your TV or radio transmitter has. The question is: who can quickly provide useful information in a time of crisis? If you live in Uptown New Orleans during and after Hurricane Isaac the answer is: Robert Morris. Look at his map of power outages in Uptown New Orleans, which is created using actual users tweeting about which locations have power and which don't.

Entergy's power outage map, on the other hand, has been criticized for inaccuracy (see sample tweets below).

Uptown Messenger's outage map has been much more accurate than Entergy's map, even though the power company should have better information about where power is available. Is this because Entergy can't provide better information on a timely basis, or that it isn't