10 Great Things About Albany

People supposedly like top 10 lists, so here goes, in no particular order ...10. Albany is a fairly short drive to several cool places. New York City is a bit more than 2 hours. Boston is 3 hours. Four hours to Montreal, and a bit more than that to Niagara Falls. These days you can skip right by Buffalo. Closer to home, we have the Adirondacks, the Catskills, the Berkshires, and the Green

Insanity in the Computer Age

There's a semi-famous quote about the definition of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." It's most often attributed to Albert Einstein, but I haven't found a reliable source for that. I've certainly heard the quote before.Recent events in our office prompted me to ponder this quote. Within the same day two people working for me had problems that

Online Piracy and Payment Providers

In our recent client projects and in discussions on LinkedIn, we have examined the comparative strengths and weaknesses of online payment providers. Our particular emphasis has been on the detection and prevention of software piracy and fraud.


PayPal, Google Checkout, and Authorize.net are three commonly used online payment processing systems.


Fraudulent transactions are often a problem with online sale and distribution of software and online content. For example, the fraudulent operators may phish PayPal accounts, placed orders using those phished accounts, obtained license keys to the software, and downloaded the software, likely for illegal resale. In some instances, the purchases were geotracked to eastern Europe, in others to various locations here in the United States.


There are a number of technological and legal approaches to dealing with online piracy, including cross-border piracy. There are services that help detect and combat fraud and phishing, such as those offered by Kount and MarkMonitor.

For more information, please contact us at info@technologylawgroup.com or 208.939.4472.

Albany Lawn Care and Snow Plowing

My buddy Mark Malone started up a business, Malone and Sons, doing lawn care and snow plowing. They've been mowing our lawn in Guilderland and do a consistently solid job. It's been a tough year with all the rain, but they find a way.We normally don't need plowing, as we have a snow blower. But we were away for a week and there were two storms. Mark plowed for us and that was a big help when we

Website Economics

The web has certainly changed my world. Our websites, including our law firm site and our traffic court site, are the main drivers for our business.There are a bunch of websites out there that seem more successful, yet apparently struggle. I just got an e-mail from one where I'm a "member." The site gets over a million page views a month, and is in the ballpark of 500K unique visitors a month.

Frustrated Lawyers

I've been a little grumpy lately. Usually I'm happy, dopey, and a bit sneezy. Never bashful. But lately, grumpy. I think I'm frustrated with being a lawyer and with running an office.I shouldn't feel that way. Life is good and so is business. Things are a lot tougher for a lot of other lawyers, and for a lot of other people. We're doing quite well. I had part of this conversation with a cop in a

El Dorado Superior Court

As our traffic court website continues to grow, we're nearly done with California. We just finished adding El Dorado Superior Court. The county includes a few courts, including South Lake Tahoe Superior Court. I've been to South Lake Tahoe. There's some gambling resorts on the Nevada side of the border, but the thing I remember most is the Heavenly Valley ski resort. Huge, straddling the state

Albany Websites

As someone who is seen by Albany media as a prospective advertiser, I sometimes get interesting information.Back in May I attended an event in Colonie where one local media outlet (you can guess who) was bragging about its website. The sheet they handed out on this provided some numbers for April traffic; I'm adding current Alexa rank:Media Company  Unique Visitors  Alexa RankTimes

Women & Entrepreneurship: Have We Unlocked the Secret to Success?

I am an accidental entrepreneur. That happy accident came in the form of contract work as intellectual property attorney for a global technology company. I was well-prepared in education and experience and downright lucky to be at the right place at the right time in front of the right people.


I started Technology Law Group in a spare bedroom with that single, excellent opportunity. Now in our sixth year, I reflect upon what a rewarding, challenging, and inspiring journey entrepreneurship is.

Entrepreneurship in the legal profession is unusual. The profession has time-honored ways of doing things. Over centuries, men have created these ways of approaching client projects and organizing and running law firms. Men similarly predominate in science, in technology, in banking. The list goes on.


Women are recent entrants into the external workforce. America’s need for productive capacity during World War II brought women out of the home and reshaped them and their self-perceptions as economically and otherwise powerful. Who can forget Rosy the Riveter, that symbol of vibrant, feminine strength?

Women entrepreneurs are an even more recent phenomenon, and I often reflect on what it means to effectively lead and compete as a woman in two male-predominant professions, technology and the law.


Without question, some men are extraordinarily supportive of my endeavors as a woman entrepreneur. Likewise, I deeply value my mentors who are women. Still, entrepreneurship is a tough business.

When I received an invitation to write an article for the University of Pepperdine Law School’s Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship, and the Law, I jumped at the chance.


It is an opportunity to critically examine how women entrepreneurs operate, what special challenges we face, and how we effectively compete. Would the answers be different than for men? Do women run businesses differently than men? Do women have unique strengths that enable them to succeed when men would not to the same degree? And, why are there so few women like me out there, leading businesses, convincing political leaders and funding sources to support the innovation community, competing and winning?

To answer these questions, I harnessed the power of online social networking and posted them on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, a social networking site used by more than 24 million professionals worldwide, is a powerful business tool.

Answers to my LinkedIn questions came from across the United States, from India, South Africa, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Denmark. Commentators include single entrepreneurial moms like me, professors, investors, media professionals, change management experts, and others.

Most say that women entrepreneurs operate at a disadvantage as compared to men. They say women have to work harder, smarter, and more creatively to succeed.


The principle reason, they say, is because women’s entrepreneurial success is directly tied to power, a woman’s willingness to embrace and leverage her power as a business innovator. Women are more than willing to take the calculated risks that all entrepreneurs take. They make the tough and necessary choices to integrate the hard work of entrepreneurship with the hard work of parenting and running a household. Women have the smarts, guts, and ambition to succeed as entrepreneurs.

Yet, women are a small minority of entrepreneurs. Why?


Some say that our social history with its rigidly-defined gender roles and lack of acceptance of women in the work force is the reason. They say investors, prospective customers, and other people critical to business success hold tightly to these historical perspectives without ever considering the resulting biases in their decisions to do (or not to do) business with women entrepreneurs.

Women flexing their power as business leaders are often viewed disparagingly, as masculine, and therefore unacceptable as women. Men using power are viewed as . . . well . . . powerful, and we respect and admire them for it. When will we likewise respect and admire powerful entrepreneurial women?


Some say that women themselves harbor a flawed notion that it is somehow wrong to have and exercise power, that women haven’t given themselves permission to be powerful. Because women are often ambivalent about their power, they are ineffective at using it. The failure to use power fully and effectively means the failure to achieve entrepreneurial success. This is true for all entrepreneurs and particularly for women.

As I continue work on the Pepperdine article, I gain insight into how I and other entrepreneurs work, how we leverage our power to introduce an innovative pricing model or otherwise add value to our services, how we best help our clients achieve their goals. It is a personal and community inquiry of critical importance to all entrepreneurs, to all who serve and do business with them, and to all who aspire to become them.

I am completing the article now. If you would like to receive a copy of the final piece, please drop me a note at eloza@technologylawgroup.com.

2008 Honda Accord

I've been shopping cars for a while now, and finally made a decision. I've been looking at $50K cars like the Audi A6 and the Infiniti M35x. And I've been all over the map, thinking about an Acura MDX and even the upcoming 2009 Porsche 911 Carrera 4. At $80K, the Porsche was getting a little silly. But I've wanted one since I was about 14 years old. Maybe the next car.Well, I went and drove the

Local and Unique

There's something unique in the works at SpinJ Corporation. We're working on a new website. It's top secret. So secret that if I told you what it was, I'd have to ... well ... not kill you ... maybe tickle you until you promise not to say anything. That's all I can really do.Okay, I'll drop a small hint. The site's name means something. It stands for Local and Unique.Coming soon ...A New Spin

Milestones on the web

Our websites hit some new milestones. First, The Redlich Law Firm site had over 10,000 visits in July. We came close to that in both January and March, but this is the first time we went over. It wasn't that long ago we had only 6000 visits a month, so this is good for business.Next, our Traffic Court site has a few highlights. We had over 80,000 visits in July, with over 70,000 unique users. And

Tax Benefits of Leasing a Car - IRS Depreciation Limits

I've been thinking about leasing a car (see my previous post about leasing certified pre-owned cars). My accountant told me to lease. But I like buying. I know there's a tax benefit to leasing, but I don't really understand it.If I was smart I would have asked my accountant to explain it to me. But I figured it should be simple to find out why by looking on the internet. It was more of a struggle