I don’t know about you, but I find I am using the internet all the time. I am constantly looking things up, checking facts and the law before I write something, or seeing what new blog posts have been written by others. And I want to get there quickly with no tedious looking up.
So I was delighted to find out about the Conduit free tool bar service.
My first thought was, as always ;), for my Landlord Law members. Some of them have complained that the navigation on the Landlord Law site is a bit opaque (others have complimented me on its simplicity so you can’t please them all). “Here” I thought “is a way to give them an alternative method of finding things “. So I constructed a nice toolbar with links to all the main Landlord Law pages. You can read about it here.
Naturally I downloaded and used the Landlord Law toolbar myself, and very useful if was too. But I began to get frustrated by it. Because I had designed it for landlords, whereas I am a solicitor. I wanted access to sites I use professionally such as the UK Statute Law Database and the CPR. I wanted a link to The Times law page and the housing section of the Communities and Local Government web-site. I wanted the Nearly Legal Blog and BAILLI. And after a while I decided that I was jolly well going to have them.
A quick email to the nice Conduit people reassured me that I could have more than one toolbar. So I did the Housing Lawyers toolbar. You can read about it here.
It is *really* useful. I work on two computers (the office PC and the Macbook) and use two different internet browsers on each. The toolbar means that my links are in the same place on all of them, which makes life a lot easier. Plus, if I find a new site I want, I add it to the toolbar and, bingo! It is on all my web-browsers without me having to do anything.
If you are a housing lawyer you are welcome to use it too. You can download the toolbar from here. My Conduit stats say that there are six active users, so presumably someone other than me is using it – I hope they are finding it useful.
But if you are not a housing lawyer (and lets face it, not many people are) – why not get your own? The Conduit people promote it as a way of getting money, as you can earn if lots of people use your toolbar, but frankly all I am interested in is having an easy life. Anyone can sign up and get a nice toolbar for all their regular web sites. You can fit an awful lot on it, as you can do drop down lists, which means that different types of site can be grouped together. I have a drop down list, for example, for all the housing blogs I follow, and another for all the sites where I can read case law.
Why not give it a go? Let me know how you get on!
