Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Why the Future Is Not Paper - First in a Series

This is the first in a series of notes on how the future court document and file environment is not going to look like the current paper-based systems.  I wrote a paper many years ago that used the analogy of automobiles.  The first autos looked like horse carriages.  Does your car look like a carriage now?

One very interesting approach was recently posted by Microsoft Research.  The system is called Pivot and it uses the DeepZoom and Silverlight technology that has been shown in recent years.  It is difficult to explain.  For several video presentations on the new technology go to:  http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/pivotviewer/

Pivot uses JPEG images and so after seeing the demonstrations please note that there are several software applications that can convert PDF pages to images.  One that I tested successfully is Office Converter: http://www.officeconvert.com/

Iowa EDMS Makes Progress

Thanks to our colleague, Larry Murphy, we learned of a Des Moines Register newspaper article pubished on June 7, 2010 titled: More online court filings seen for Iowa.  The article notes that the EDMS became operational in Plymouth County, Iowa in January and they hope to pilot the system in Story County, Iowa in September.  The article further stated:
"The Plymouth County test took longer than the 90-day pilot period so staff members could fix glitches before expanding the system to other counties, Bosier said.  'We're trying to go about this very carefully and do it properly,' he said. "I'd rather it be a little slower getting there, instead of rushing through and getting it wrong."