Martindale-Hubbell Developer Blogs

Are Free Alternatives to Microsoft Project Worthwhile?

2013-03-29T05:00:00Z

It's almost impossible to manage a modern workforce without management software, and the default choice is still MS Project for most companies. But a growing number of businesses are starting realize that MS Project is bloated, expensive, and doesn't necessarily do much to streamline management. Free alternatives are available, but are they worth using?

The most championed free alternative is OpenProj, an open source piece of software designed to emulate Microsoft Project. If you're a fan of MS Project, there's not much to contest here. It does a decent job of imitating Microsoft's layout and interface, and it even opens MPP and MPT files. Unfortunately, it can't save them back to the same format, instead saving them as XML files. So there may be some compatibility issues if you need to work with people who have MS Project.

The only real problem with OpenProj is that it does exactly what it's built to do, emulate MS Project. So while it is free, it doesn't really bring any value to the table that MS Project doesn't already deliver on. And that's a problem if you're looking for a genuine alternative, because OpenProj copies MS Project in every way, warts and all.

The bloated features are still there. The lack of online collaboration is still there. The design intended only for project managers is still there.

OpenProj isn't necessarily a good choice because the only people who will be able to use it effectively will be project managers who can already use MS Project effectively, and those people would rather be working with MS Project.

Most of the other free alternatives face similar problems, although we did discover a few that are worth looking into.

TeamLab is one of the more interesting options available. We like it because it's built for collaborative use on an intranet or on the cloud. It's intuitive and designed to be used by anybody, not just project managers, so it is a legitimate alternative to MS Project that adds value to the table. It's got a variety of easily understood features that allow for document sharing and editing, CRM, digital discussions, email notifications, and of course, project management.

There are a few important pieces missing, however. TeamLab doesn't do task-dependency. This can make project management a real chore. Any time the schedule is changed, you have to update any subsequent tasks as well. A task-dependency feature would make scheduling much more adaptive so that it would take up less time.

TeamLab is also missing personalized to-do lists, which takes a lot of the wind out of it's project management sails. This forces employees to weed through the project schedules in order to find out what they need to be working on, and they end up doing a lot more “managing” than they should be. Worse still, TeamLab doesn't offer Gantt charts for project managers to work with.

Additionally, TeamLab isn't exactly free. It is open source, so you can download the source code for free, but there are some pretty dramatic IT costs involved if you want to set it up on your own internal servers. TeamLab does offer a cloud-based version of its product, but it is not free.

All in all, TeamLab is certainly worth looking into, but it won't be enough to handle all of your project management needs, and that means it's simplicity can actually be a source of complication for project managers.

Small businesses can do a lot for themselves by turning to cost effective options instead of free ones. Workzone is a good example of a low cost alternative to MS Project: one that still offers task dependencies, Gantt charts, and personalized to-do lists, as well as some of the online collaborative features mentioned above. Remember, you get what you pay for. Spending more doesn't always guarantee high quality, but opting for “free” is rarely your best bet.

Show relevant Martindale-Hubbell® Lawyer listings on your own website

2012-02-15T18:42:00Z

LexisNexis® Martindale-Hubbell® has a comprehensive listing of lawyers and law firms - over a million! These listing are all searchable by area of law or by location. With the release of Lawyers -near-you widget, you can now show the matching lawyers or law firms right on your own website in context of either Lawyers.com or martindale.com. How cool is that? You can leverage our extensive database of lawyers right on your website for free. All this with just few lines of code. Here is how you can go about getting this widget:

Step 1: Include the following 2 lines of script code somewhere in your HTML code within <head> element -

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.2/jquery.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://svcs.martindale.com/searchresults/searchresultswidget.js"></script>

Step 2: Now depending on which lawyers you want to show, the following code can be easily altered. For example, if you have a website that provides latest legal news on Bankruptcy in Los Angeles, California, you can alter the code as follows to display relevant lawyers on your site:

<div class="results_widget" aop="Bankruptcy" city="Los Angeles" state="California"> <div class="results_content"><a href="http://www.lawyers.com/find-a-lawyer.html">Find a Lawyer</a> | <a href="http://www.lawyers.com">Lawyers.com</a></div> </div>

Once you are done with Step 2, you custom code is complete! Here is how the widget will look like for the above query:

For those who want to further customize the widget, details can be found in our Documentation section.Here are 4 sample websites that are optimized for PC, iPads and iPhone and use Lawyers-near-you widget:

http://www.losangelesdebtresource.com
http://www.philadelphiadebtresource.com
http://www.philadelphiaimmigrationhelp.com
http://www.immigrationhelp-losangeles.com

As always, we are always eager to hear from you. Happy integrating!

Showcase your well-earned Martindale-Hubbell® Client and Peer Review Ratings on your website

2012-01-12T01:26:00Z

Are you a lawyer who was recently Martindale-Hubbell® Client or Peer Review rated? Are you excited about it? If you are one of our 100,000+ lawyers who have well established ratings, odds are you are pretty excited. These ratings currently reside on your profile on Lawyers.com and martindale.com® websites. The only other place where you can display your ratings is on your LinkedIn profile via Martindale-Hubbell® Lawyer Ratings application. So what can you do if you have a website and you want to display those stellar ratings on your website for free? Unfortunately, not much. I am excited to say that this is no longer the case! With the release of Martindale-Hubbell® Peer and Client Review Ratings widget, you can now display your ratings anywhere with just a few lines of code. Here is how you do it -

Step 1 - Include the following 2 lines of script code somewhere in your HTML code within <head> element -

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.2/jquery.min.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://svcs.martindale.com/Ratings/Ratings.js"></script>

Step 2 - Locate your unique International Standard Lawyer Number (ISLN). Each lawyer is identified by a single ISLN, the industry standard for tracking individual lawyers throughout their careers. If you don't know what your ISLN is, fear not! We have built an ID Look up tool for that purpose. Follow the easy steps mentioned in the tool to get your ISLN.

Step 3 - Now that you have your ISLN number, you are pretty much set. Simply copy and paste the following lines into your HTML code. Make sure you replace the ID parameter (highlighted in yellow) with the ISLN number you got from Step 2 above

<div class="ratings_widget" id="1275001" profile="attorney"> <div class="ratings_header"></div> <div class="ratings_content"><a href="http://www.lawyers.com">Lawyers</a></div></div>

Once you do all this, here is how the Ratings widget will be displayed on your website -

You can control a few aspects of this widget. Complete documentation is posted on the LexisNexis Developer Center site. For instance, say you are only Peer Rated and you'd like to display only Peer Ratings on this widget. We have provided you with an optional parameter named 'rating' which you can pass as shown below -

<div class="ratings_widget" id="1275001" profile="attorney" rating="prr"> <div class="ratings_header"></div> <div class="ratings_content"><a href="http://www.lawyers.com">Lawyers</a></div></div>

If you follow the above code, the ratings widget will look something like this -

If you are part of a larger firm with quite a few lawyers, you can showcase ratings of each lawyer within their biography page. In fact, if your firm has Martindale-Hubbell® ratings, you could display that on your homepage.The only difference here is that you will pass an ORG_ID instead of ISLN. You can locate the ORG_ID using the same ID Look up tool. Here is an example of a law firm website - Ansbacher & Associates, P.A. who is leveraging Martindale-Hubbell® Peer and Client Review Ratings widget on their lawyer's professional profile page.

Although personal recommendation is the most prevalent reason for someone to select a lawyer, lawyer ratings are a consumer favorite as well. It brings credibility to you as a legal professional and confidence to consumers seeking legal assistance. After all they are shopping for the best lawyer to represent them in their legal matter. What better way to tip them in your favor than display Martindale-Hubbell® Ratings.

As always, we are eager to hear from you. Happy integrating!

Display Martindale-Hubbell® Lawyer and Law firm mini-profile widgets on your websites

2011-11-30T04:50:00Z

LexisNexis® Martindale-Hubbell® has been the world's leading source of information for the legal profession for more than 140 years. Its flagship products, Lawyers.com and martindale.com®, are the most complete sources of information on lawyers available anywhere. Have you ever thought of displaying this information about legal professionals and law firms on your own blog or web site? Well, now you can! We recently released easy to integrate profile widgets that allows you to easily display information about a lawyer or law firm from within the confines of your blog or website.

Mini-Profile widget, as we call it, allows you to display a Martindale-Hubbell® profile for any lawyer or law firm as a pop up on hover or click. The Profile widget displays only a subset of our data. To get more details, your users can always click through to see the full Martindale-Hubbell® profile page of the lawyer or law firm. An example of this can be seen on the Counsel to Counsel forum press at http://forum-press.martindale.com/ as shown below -

Benefits to you

Opportunity to augment your website with Martindale-Hubbell® profile data including Martindale-Hubbell® Peer and Client Review Ratings
Ability to offer more services to your end user and differentiate from competition
Easy to integrate - all you need is one line of code
Keep your users longer on your web properties
Minimal developer experience needed

Details on how to get and integrate this profile widget on your website can be found in our Documention section. In coming months, we will be reaching out to our partners to integrate this widget withing their online properties. So look out for more examples at our Gallery.

As always we are always eager to hear from you. Do let us know about your integration with Martindale-Hubbell®!

Site using Microsoft Azure DataMarket offerings

2011-09-07T15:20:00Z

We now have two reference websites to illustrate possible uses of our data in the Windows Azure Marketplace. There are two web applications; one for our Community blogposts and podcasts and a second for the Lawyers.com Consumer Articles. Both of these sites use the Datamarket ODATA API to pull data from the Azure SQL Server db's that host our content. The sites allow for the download of the code used to create the sites (with examples for accessing the data) as well as pointers to our documentation and subscriptions in the marketplace.

There is a landing page to introduce the concept at

http://www.lexisnexisstore.com/datamarket

There are links on this page to the reference sites which may also be accessed directly as follows

http://www.lexisnexisstore.com/datamarket/community

http://www.lexisnexisstore.com/datamarket/lawyers

LexisNexis partnering with Microsoft to bring Lawyers.com Legal Articles to Developers Community

2011-08-09T14:50:00Z

Microsoft on Oct 28th 2010 announced, during their Professional Developers Conference 2010, the commercial availability of DataMarket aka Microsoft Codename “Dallas” which is part of Windows Azure Marketplace. This DataMarket includes data, imagery, and real-time web services from leading commercial data providers and authoritative public data sources. In short, its the one stop show for Data or iTunes for Data. And rightfully so. There are over 120 content providers to date with content ranging from Demographic, geospatial, financial, retail, sports, weather, environmental and health care. Some are for free and some are premium based. Just to name few providers - Weather central, Zillow.com, Navteq, Data.gov, The Word Bank and now LexisNexis.

We are very excited to announce the partnership between Lawyers.com and Microsoft to bring forth legal consumer articles to 3rd party Developers. As a developer, you can now get specific area of law articles and put it into their websites, stand alone applications or mobile apps. These articles are typically written by Lawyers themselves and are categorized under various areas of law. So if you have a website that is focused on Bankruptcy alone, you can pull only those consumer articles that are related to bankruptcy.

This LexisNexis offering is free of charge. All we ask you in return is to link the article title back to its full content on Lawyers.com and give us proper attribution from your application. To get more details, follow LexisNexis branding guidelines.

Keep an eye out on the DataMarket's catalog to see more datasets from LexisNexis. Let us know what you think and what other data would you like to see?

Welcome to the LexisNexis Developer Center

2010-12-01T05:13:00Z

I am very excited to announce the limited release of LexisNexis Developer Center. You now can get access to Martindale-Hubbell administered Profile data of lawyers and Law firms using our RESTful APIs. All you need to do is to send us an email @ mhdevelopers@lexisnexis.com with few details mentioned in our How to get started page and we will send you an API Key. Pass this API Key every time you make a call to our API. That’s it!

I would also like to take this opportunity to introduce our Community Managers – Manish Bhargava and Eric Lee. They will be actively involved in blogging, responding to your questions/suggestions via forums and in general anything that you are blocked by.

In coming months we will release some Profile Widgets, Search API and more. So keep a look out on the site or follow us on twitter @MHAPIs.

I welcome you all to experience the LexisNexis Developer Platform. Happy building cool applications!