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Welcome to Issue #125 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!

Back in the saddle after vacation and some technical difficulties...sorry for the delays!!

Taking search to the next level?
Meet Nutch, a new "open-source" search engine that is expected to "push search to places that are not immediately obvious." It's not live yet, but Searchday has the lowdown.

File swapper? Think before you swear
Last week the RIAA offered a "Clean Slate Program," promising amnesty to those music-sharers who sign an affidavit promising to clean up their act. But a complaint filed in California claims that the program will not shield file-swappers from liability.

Time to update Windows again
Another week, another Microsoft warning. This time there are three vulnerabilities that could allow worms and other malicious nasties to take control of your computer. Moreover, experts predict the next Blaster-like worm will emerge in the next few days. If you're not already configured to receive automatic Critical Updates, make sure you run Windows Update regularly.

Living with popups
A federal judge in Virginia has given hope to pop-up companies like Gator, ruling that such programs do not violate copyright or trademark law. The judge stated, "Alas, we computer users must endure pop-up advertising along with her ugly brother 'spam' as a burden of using the Internet." Fortunately we have terrific pop-up blockers like that found on the Google Toolbar to help us in the battle.

What happened to search engines in August?
You can find out from Chris Sherman, who published the Search Engine Milestones for August 2003 a few weeks ago.

Another ally in the war against spam
Spamotomy is presented by independent publisher Aai Sites, and aims to help you "find the tools and information you need to eliminate this annoyance from your life for once and for all." The home page is set up like a weblog, with daily posts on spam and other junk mail news, and there's a Tools page with reviews and descriptions of just about every spam solution in existence. I haven't had time to dive into this site, but it certainly is promising.

A facelift for InfoSpace
Long-time web directory InfoSpace got more than a facelift, actually -- the site is completely different. Genie Tyburski discusses the changes over at SearchDay. (By the way, Genie's right -- $39.95 is a bit steep for a public records report. Accurint provides great results for under ten dollars).

Blawgs of the Week
And you thought a week would go by without a mention of new law-related weblogs? Ha! Here goes: the Business Law Weblog is brought to you by an M&A and corporate finance lawyer considering the law, his practice, and other things. An Australian lawyer last seen in Melbourne and now heading for Cambridge presents Courting Disaster. Braced for Impact is "hurtling white-knuckled into the future." Aren't we all... IP Law and Practice features the musings of Axel H. Horns, a European Patent and Trademark Attorney. Lots of great information. A third-year law student from Boston College publishes a blog with possibly the longest Latin term yet: ignorantia legis neminem excusat (ignorance of the law excuses no one). A techie-turned-law-school-student writes Dylan Goes to Law School. A whole flock of law students at Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis contribute to Sapere Aude. Divorce Blog comes from North Carolina divorce lawyer Lee Rosen, and is "a source of news and information about divorce with a specific emphasis on North Carolina divorce." A weblog I have been looking forward to for a while is LawTechGuru, from lawyer-turned-tech-consultant Jeffrey Beard. Keep an eye on this one for the latest legal technology buzz. Stephen Bainbridge, professor at UCLA School of Law, presents Corporation Law and Economics, "a corporate governance and law blog, with notes on politics and wine." Serious Law Student is beginning the chronicle of her years at Columbia Law School. Raymond Chandler posts his experiences in law school, life, politics, Missouri politics, and anything else he feels like writing about at Attempted Survival. Sherry Fowler (a/k/a Scheherazade) publishes Civil Procedure.

Body Parts on the Internet

Legal professionals frequently have to deal with issues of the human body, in personal injury or medical malpractice cases. Unfortunately, few of us are also trained in the medical field, so grasping issues in this area of science is sometimes easier said than done. If you want to get a good start on learning about medicine and how the human body works, the place to start may well be anatomy. This week, we'll take a look at some of the sites that can help you learn more about that plaintiff's body parts.

Let's start with the traditional -- Gray's Anatomy, originally published in 1918, and containing over 1,200 engravings. All 12 chapters and 1,247 illustrations are available for your review. A bit primitive, but certainly the publication that set the standard.

As you might imagine, colleges and universities are some of the best places to find information about anatomy. Most institutes of higher learning and medical schools have websites touting or providing information on their anatomy programs. Here are a few worth visiting: first up is LUMEN from Loyola University Medical Center. Lumen offers the Dissector, which provides some great resources on the various areas of the human body. There's a dissection lab guide with real pictures of body parts, but if that's too much you can learn from the other training materials here, including a tutorial, a listing of
muscles, tests, and cross-sections for you to review. Make sure you check out "Lumen Learn 'Em, the Master Muscle List, and the practice exams. This site contains a ton of information, including a list of other educational institutions with anatomy resources.

The WebAnatomy Home Page from the University of Minnesota allows you to test your knowledge of anatomy; just select a system, and you'll get a diagram from which you are supposed to identify the particular elements. Another interesting, if simple, university site is Anatomy Tables, presented by the University of Arkansas Medical Center. No diagrams here -- just select a system or region of the body, and you'll get a listing of the location and description of various parts of that system.

The U.S. government also wants to teach anatomy to you, through the Visible Human Project, a creation of complete, anatomically detailed, three-dimensional representations of the normal male and female human bodies. Here you can download transverse CT, MRI, and cryoscan images from male and female cadavers, taken at one millimeter intervals. Most of the information is available for download only, but there are some other resources, such as AnatLine and AnatQuest -- give them both a look.

There are also a number of independent sites on anatomy worth mentioning. Human Anatomy Online is a rather simple site allowing you to click on body parts to learn more about them. Three Dimension Medical Reconstruction is a collection of movie clips showing various...medical reconstructions. Martindale's Anatomy and Histology Center has a nice set of links to other anatomy sites, and LifeART will sell you medical clip art to use in presentations or at trial.

Finally, let's head back to the academic world, to see what anatomy journals are available online. The title Wiley's Anatomy Web Site promises us a lot, but it's mostly to promote the company's anatomy journals and publications for sale. You'll find free copies of sample articles, links to related journals, and a nifty page of Internet anatomy resources. Some of the sites mentioned there include NetAnatomy, DissectionRoom.com, and GetBodySmart. MedBioWorld provides a lengthy list of anatomy and physiology journals on the Internet, most of which require a subscription; a free anatomy journal is found at Jasi.net, the Journal of the Anatomical Society of India.

Know of an anatomy site not mentioned here? Drop me a line and I'll mention it in an upcoming issue.

Help Desk

If you use Internet Explorer 6, you may have noticed that it automatically resizes large images to fit in your browser window. Sometimes you want to see the full-sized image, however; here's how to get it back. Hover your mouse pointer over the lower right-hand corner of the image, and click on the image that appears. If you want to get rid of the shrinking images permanently, select Tools, and click on the Advanced tab. Scroll down to Multimedia Options, and uncheck the box next to Enable Automatic Image Resizing.

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!

TrackEngine
Sometimes we don't have time to visit all the websites we need to keep updated on our research. That's where TrackEngine comes in. Once you complete the free registration, you can drag the Track Me link to your browser toolbar. Whenever you see a website you want to monitor, just click Track Me, and fill in the blanks with information requested in the form that pops up. Whenever that site is updated, you'll receive an e-mail notifying you of the change. You can monitor 5 bookmarks for free; after that it's $19.95/year for 10 bookmarks, and about $60/year for 50 bookmarks.

LeapLaw ($$)
LeapLaw is described as a "One Stop Legal Resource," providing "intellectual capital, model legal forms, best practice tips and "how-to" instructions for common legal procedures sought by legal professionals practicing business law working in solo practice, law firms and in-house legal departments." For $150/month ($400/quarter, or $1,500/year), you can take advantage of LeapLaw's model legal forms and resolutions, best practice summaries, charts and checklists, and LeapLaw's Internet resources. I did not have time to check out LeapLaw's services, but there's a free two-week trial if you're interested.

@ Edgar ($$)
I don't usually mention EDGAR sites that charge a fee, but what the heck. @Edgar provides real-time, unlimited access to EDGAR and other financial research data, for $24.95/month ($59.95/quarter, $199.95/year). You can receive e-mail alerts on recent filings, and download documents in Word or Excel.

Cancer.gov
The federal government scores again with this terrific site offering information on cancer. From the home page you can browse such resources as Research Programs, Research Funding, Types of Cancer, Clinical Trials, and Statistics. As you drill down to the sub-categories, the materials found here are tremendous. A must-have for the cancer researcher.

Collaborative Live Reference Services
It's 3:00 in the morning and you have a research question -- who you gonna call? This simply-designed page provides links to libraries around the world offering free, live online reference services. Okay, so maybe you won't find a U.S. library open at 3 a.m. -- but it's not 3 a.m. everywhere....

Well, that’s it for Issue #125 – 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.

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Questions? New websites? Just want to talk? Send me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net.