INTERNET LEGAL
RESEARCH WEEKLY
August 3, 2003
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #120 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 visit Inter Alia and fill out the subscription form -- it's free!
A busy weekend for me...so enjoy this lite version of the ILRW!
And away we go…..
Give your searches a slug
Want to add a little fun to your searches? Check out BananaSlug, a site that uses Google APIs to add random words to your search query. Just enter your search terms, and then pick a category to "seed" your query with a random word -- the categories include world cities, tarot cards, Shakespearean themes, a full dictionary, proper names, and jargon. I tried "congressional redistricting," and BananaSlug added the word "nonforfeitable." Alas, only 2 results with that combination.New Names, Same Search over at HotBot
SearchDay reports that HotBot has renamed the engines it searches, apparently because of name recognition problems. It turns out users did not recognize the search engines Teoma, Inktomi, and FAST Search, but they do know about HotBot (powered by Inktomi), Lycos (powered by FAST), and AskJeeves (powered by Teoma). It's all in the labeling.A Better Challenge-Response
Mailblocks, an anti-spam program that uses the "challenge-response" method of reducing unwanted e-mail, unveiled an improved product this week. The new version supposedly reduces the number of challenges sent out to the same e-mail sender.Another news service worth using
With all this fuss over Google News, we forget that there are other worthy sources to get your news fix. Yahoo News is one of those sites, and SearchDay takes a closer look at some of its features.Helpful links, in a nutshell
Gee, I haven't thought about the Law in a Nutshell series since law school. Apparently, they're still going strong, and there's even a version called Legal Research in a Nutshell. The University of Virginia School of Law has put up a page of all the research links contained in the print publication -- if you can put up with the annoying frames, it's a pretty useful list.Pardon me, but can I install spyware on your computer?
A new piece of legislation, the Safeguard Against Privacy Invasions Act, would require companies using spyware to get permission from computer users before installing the software on their machines. Yeah, right.Find more Office files, FAST
AllTheWeb now features the ability to search for Excel and PowerPoint files. To limit your search to these file types, use the syntax filetype:excel or filetype:powerpoint.July search engine update -- that was the month that was
Don't miss SearchDay's wrap-up of search engine milestones for July.Blawgs of the Week
Just when I think I can take a break from reporting on new law-related weblogs, Denise over at Bag and Baggage comes along and throws another basketful up into the air. Among the notables: Abstract Appeal features the thoughts of Matt Conigliaro, an appellate lawyer in St. Petersburg, FL. He blogs about the Eleventh Circuit. An attorney/writer/wonk/critic publishes Frolic and Detour, which appears to have all of the happiness, bitterness, and eye-rolling it advertises. Illinois lawyer Charles Petit pens Scrivener's Error, featuring "law and reality in publishing (seldom the same thing!) from the author's side of the slush pile." Incorporation Blog is brought to you by Mark Smith, a CPA and attorney in Lincoln, Nebraska. George Wallace, an attorney practicing in Pasadena, California, writes on all topics at A Fool in a Forest. A corporate tax attorney at KPMG in California writes TWise.com. A government lawyer, pop culture addict, political junkie, comic book enthusiast, and former Apollo Astronaut (all the same person, apparently) is really a Bureaucrat by Day. The Blawg Review's mission is "reviewing the law reviews," with lots of links to law review articles around the country. This is a terrific idea for a weblog. A "50-something mother, wife, grandmother, law student, certified webmaster, decorative artist, who is beginning a whole new life" has made a good start with Le-Gal. Groklaw is written by a paralegal who sounds like a real techie. Joseph Gusmano, an intellectual property lawyer at Weinstock, Friedman and Friedman has not one but two blogs -- the Patent Project and the Trademark Project. Finally, Federal and State docket portal Legal Dockets Online now has its own weblog.Sometimes you need to search for something on your computer -- all versions of Windows come with a search function, and XP even gives you a "search companion" to help you with the search. XP also adds an annoying step in the search process, asking you what you want to search for before you can enter search terms. You can remove either or both of these annoyances.
Choose Start, then Search to open an Explorer window with the Search Companion bar. To get rid of the search companion, choose Change Preferences in the options at the left side of the window, and choose Without an Animated Screen Character. To get rid of the extra search step, choose Change Preferences, then Change files and Folders Search Behavior, then select the Advanced option. You're done!
Do you have a question about searching the Internet or your computer in general? Drop me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)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
Council of State Governments
The CSG encourages states to share resources, strategies, and ideas by taking advantage of leadership training, research and information products, and regional problem-solving activities. The site is designed primarily for state officials and employees, but there is a plethora of useful information for the ordinary legal researcher, too. StatesNews (accessible apparently only from the home page) provides news stories from the states in a variety of categories. The policy area is where you'll find the most substantive information, with resources on everything from agricultural and rural policy to public safety and justice.
Supreme Court MP3 Files
Back in June, the Oyez Supreme Court Multimedia Project released the first of several sets of Supreme Court arguments in MP3 format. Available on this page are MP3 files from oral arguments during the 1950s and 1960s -- you can download a copy of any file and share it with others.UCLA Center for Health Policy Research
The CHPR claims to be "one of the nation's leading health policy research centers and the premier source of health policy information for California." Its mission is to understand and advance public health policies that can improve access to health care as well as promote good health among diverse populations in California and the nation. From the home page you'll find links to the Center's major programs, including the California Health Interview Survey, American Indian/Alaska Native Care, and more. There are also several publications available for review, with topics such as Access to Health Care, Health Care Economics, Health Care Delivery System, Health Insurance Coverage and Programs, among others. You can subscribe to any of eight available newsletters on current health topics, so you don't have to visit the site regularly to find new information.WiseEye
WiseEye is an independent online news scanning service that wants to become the most popular news service in Europe. It currently only features news from 370 news providers, and it's apparently only updated several times a day, so it's not as robust as Google News or NewsNow. You can use the search engine to look for news items of interest -- I tried "texas redistricting" and found a large number of stories, most of them from ABC news. An up-and-coming service, hopefully.AgeSource Worldwide
Provided by AARP, this page features information resources about aging from around the world. And you can search in Spanish or French, too. You can browse by topic, or just enter a query in the search box. Categories include Computers and Technology, Health and Wellness, Learning, Legislation and Elections, Life Answers, Money and Work, Policy and Research, and more.
Finally, some fun and useful stuff this week:
Has the movie Gigli gotten more press than any movie in recent memory, or what? That's why I was amused to see the lead story in the Onion this week: Gigli Focus Groups Demand New Ending In Which Both Affleck and Lopez Die.
Traffic reporter-pilot Commander Chuck Street has his own page featuring photos of some of the accidents he has seen from the air. Hmmm...
If you're looking for writing, translation, and terminology tools, check out Word Wizards, where they offer a compendium of these tools, Canada-style (caution, many pages in french here).
Well, that’s it for Issue #120 – 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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