INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
May 26, 2002
Tom Mighell

Welcome to Issue #71 of the Internet Legal Research Weekly, a newsletter that delivers relevant and timely legal research information, and other fun stuff, to your inbox every Sunday. If you like what you read, please forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage him or her to do the same! To subscribe, all you have to do is send an e-mail to ilrw-subscribe@topica.com. It’s free!

And away we go…..

News Update

A Tornado of Google Activity
This week Google debuted several new features, including:

How Users Get Well on the Internet
The Pew Internet and American Life site has a new study called “Vital Decisions: How Internet Users Decide What Information to Trust When They or Their Loved Ones are Sick.”

We Like It Better This Time
A survey shows that first time visitors to the redesigned FirstGov site are more likely to return than were new visitors to the original website.

Help Desk

If you’re interested in downloading software from the Internet, you should probably know about the different types available to you. This week we’ll talk about shareware, which may be better known as “try before you buy.” You can download the software at no cost, and try it out for a limited period of time (usually 30 days). If you like the software and want to continue using it, you’ll have to register the program and pay a fee. If you don’t do this, at the end of the evaluation period the software will not function properly, or at all.

Do you have a question about searching the Internet or your computer in general? Drop me a line at tmighell@swbell.net– I’ll post your question (don’t worry, I won’t use your real name) and try to get an answer for you!


Legally Relevant – Sites on the Internet

Search Online

If you’re in the market for a new meta-search tool, give Search Online a try. To get the full experience, you should probably register – it’s free, and gives you access to some pretty interesting tools. Search Online queries AltaVista, AllTheWeb, MSN, Teoma, Lycos, Yahoo, WISENut, and Google. You can customize how your search results appear on a page, and you can set up a news search to e-mail you every day with updated news headlines. When you want to search, just type your search terms in and choose from some pull-down menus to narrow your search further. Your search results will show you the search engines that list each site, as well, as a handy preview pane to see the website without leaving the results page. When you find something you like, you can save it to your own online favorites folder – in fact, you can save a whole bunch of sites at once just by checking off the sites you want to save, the selecting SAVE. Pretty cool if you want to save a number of sites for a particular search. The only problem I saw with this site is that when I tried a search for Barcelona, I got different results each time I tried it. Don’t know why that is….but still worth a try.

Merck Manual of Geriatrics

This is another fantastic offering from the folks at Merck. It looks like most of the Manual of Geriatrics is placed online, and you can search it by Table of Contents or Index. There are 16 sections covering every condition, disease or ailment suffered by the elderly, with a nice summary, symptoms, and treatment page for each. There’s also a link to buy the publication, if you are so inclined.

Private International Law Database

A service of the U.S. Department of State, this site is a permanent archive of private international law information released prior to January 20, 2001. What is private international law, you ask? Basically, it’s law between countries that deals with individuals – in this database, you’ll find treaties relating to family law, wills,
trusts and estates, transactions law, and judicial assistance. This database will contain all of the treaties and international agreements in effect prior to the time President Bush took office.

CPAhoo!

Goodness, how I hate the name of this site. You think the designers could have come up with something more original. Despite the corny title, this site does have hundreds of links to accounting, tax, and management sites. CPAhoo! is designed just like Yahoo! in that you can enter search terms, or just browse the directory from such categories as Accounting, Business and Finance, Careers, Consulting, Firms, Education, Personal Financial Planning, Taxes, and more. If you subscribe to the newsletter, you’ll get a listing of new sites added each week.

Business 2.0 Webguide

The editors of Business 2.0 Magazine have put together this guide to the “Best Business Links” on the Internet. The FAQs state that “expert researchers have done step one of your research for you by anticipating
your research questions and sifting through search results at many different sites.” So you’re supposed to be getting only the best, most informative, and authoritative business sites on the Internet. The guide is divided into categories such as Business, Management, Careers, Marketing, Company Information, Mobile and Wireless, E-Business, Networks, E-Commerce, Finance, Industries, Small Business, and many more. To check out information on a specific company, click the “Companies A-Z” link.

Now for some fun and useful sites this week:

For those of you who want to remember those who have fought for us over the years, computer expert Kim Komando has put together a nice page of links of Memorial Day websites

In the last issue I discussed the subject of virus hoaxes – if you’re interested in learning more about other Internet hoaxes and urban legends, head over to the Purportal. There are places to search other urban legend sites, and handy links to keep you informed about what’s real and what’s not on the Internet.

And in what is surely a first, the Onion reports that a factual error was found on an Internet website.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day!

Well, that’s it for Issue #71– I hope you liked it! If you did, pass this along to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage him or her to subscribe. Also, feel free to drop me an e-mail any time if you have questions, or if you have websites or other topics you want included in a future issue.

Tom Mighell

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Questions? New websites? Just want to talk? Send me an e-mail at tmighell@swbell.net.