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Welcome to Issue #142 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!

Whew! It has been a busy couple of weekends. I am still busy, but enough time to send you an abbreviated version of the newsletter, that's heavy on the news. Thanks for your patience!

20 More Questions
I'm way behind in reporting this, but with Howard Bashman's Twenty Questions feature, it's always better late than never. This time he interviews Chief Judge Deanell Reece Tacha of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

ID Theft -- it doesn't stop when you die
Not even death can save you from ID theft -- authorities recently arrested a man who obtained credit information and Social Security numbers just by reading obituaries and then conducting Internet searches on the deceased. This is a good reason why it's so important to take steps to protect your identity while you're still alive.

An online file cabinet
Having trouble keeping track of your web research? Are articles moving into archives or disappearing entirely when you try to locate them again? Furl to the rescue. Furl is an online filing cabinet for all of those web pages you want to save -- just add a link to your toolbar, and click it when you want to save a page to Furl. You can browse or search your archived directory of articles any time you want.

Google Results that come to you
GoogleAlert has been around for awhile, but it's still a tool worth mentioning, and Chris Sherman does so in SearchDay. Just enter your search query, and GoogleAlert will e-mail you when web pages with those terms are added to Google's database. It's like a newsclipping service for web pages. If you want a real newsclipping service, try Google News Alerts, which searches over 4,500 news sources for your search terms.

A cleaner keyboard
Remember the January 4 issue of the newsletter where I discussed how to clean your keyboard? It turns out a keyboard and mouse can harbor more bacteria than a toilet seat. That's why Fellowes has introduced an anti-bacterial keyboard -- a substance injected into the plastic that forms the keyboard creates an environment where bacteria cannot survive and grow.

Just wind him up...
Whenever Dennis Kennedy gets interested in something, we all benefit. This time the subject is Tablet PCs -- during a recent search for information on the hot new tech tool, Dennis decided to share his links with the rest of us on his Tablet PC for Lawyers page.

Blawgs of the Week
Another week, another crop of law-related weblogs. We have some good ones this week. Evan Schaeffer, an Illinois lawyer, is now writing Notes from the (Legal) Underground, billed as "A blawg that asks the question -- can lawyers be entertaining?" Distorted Veracity is the blog of Cantey & Hanger attorney Ryan. Nice to see a fellow Texan blawger! Stephan Ott is blogging on deep linking over at Links and Law. yclipse features notes and comments on legal technology issues from Michigan lawyer Sean Fosmire, whose company publishes Courts.net. A federal appellate clerk in the South, known only as Publius, brings us Legal Fiction, described as an "unconventional look at law, politics, and culture from a southern, non-Federalist Society law clerk." The RAWBLOG is published by Peter Friedman of Case Law School.

RSS -- IT'S ALL OVER THE PLACE!

Longtime readers of this newsletter know that I have a big interest in RSS as a research tool -- that's one of the reasons why I like weblogs so much. In fact, it's a main part of my upcoming seminar on "Making Research Come To You" (contact me if you're interested in having me present it to your group!). This week there were a number of neat new RSS resources that were made available, so I thought I would take a moment and talk about them.

I got really excited when I heard that Senator Joe Biden was offering an RSS feed or press releases issued by his office. I have been following the RSS feed of Texas Governor Rick Perry for some time -- it's a good way to easily keep up with state news. Other senators are supposed to follow suit -- let's hope it's soon. The only problem -- where the heck is the link to the RSS feed? I found a link at Ray Matthews' RSS in Government page, but neither Biden's Press page nor his Press Release page show a link to an RSS feed. It's not very helpful if it's not accessible.

Okay -- this next one isn't related to legal research -- but it's still pretty cool. Since I got my iPod last November, I have been a regular visitor to the iTunes Music Store -- every Tuesday is "New Music Tuesday," and dozens (and sometimes hundreds) of new albums and songs are made available for download, for just 99 cents a song. If it's a pain to remember to visit iTunes every week, and if you have a newsreader or feed aggregator, make iTunes come to you. Use the iTunes Music Store RSS Feed Generator -- you can select the types of music you want to see, and it will generate an RSS feed that you can add to your newsreader. Very cool.

Back to the law. If you spend a lot of time poring over SEC filings, EdgarIndex is a new service you might want to check out. It features customizable RSS-based alerts of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. The subscription-based service costs $4.95/month for unlimited custom feeds. Even with the small fee, this is a nifty service.

Help Desk

Time for a History lesson -- how to clean out your browser's history, that is. When you type in a URL, you'll notice that Internet Explorer (or Netscape, or Mozilla) saves the sites you've visited in the past. Sometimes, that can be embarrassing; more often, it's just annoying to have a glut of URLs in your browser. Here are a number of ways to make sure your history stays that way -- history.

If you just want to delete a single page from History, start typing it into your address bar. If a list appears, scroll down that list until you find the entry you want to delete; highlight it, press delete, and it's gone. You can also press CTRL-H in any program, and the History pane will appear on the left. You can delete a single address, all the pages from a single domain, or an entire day or week's worth of history.

To erase your entire history, in Internet Explorer, click Tools, Internet Options, and click the Clear History button. In Netscape and Mozilla, click Edit, then Preferences. Select History under the Navigator category, and click the Clear History button.

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!

Coalition for the International Criminal Court
This group consists of a network of over 2,000 non-governmental organizations advocating for a fair, effective and independent International Criminal Court. You'll find a list of the countries that have currently ratified the agreement creating the court, and efforts in those countries that have not yet approved it. Also found here are media statements, various documents, and resources and tools used by advocates for the international court.

Intellectual Property on the Internet
Part of the World Intellectual Property Organization site, this is a survey of issues involved in the subject of intellectual property law on the Internet, as it applies to the digital economy. That's it. It's just a set of links to other pages in the outline of issues. Oh, you can download the report in word or PDF, or even view it in russian, but that's it.

Foodstat.com ($$)
This site is powered by RTS-resource, a company that provides analysis and business development for the international food and drink industry. The stats are limited to the countries in the European Union countries. Just select a country, choose the foods you want to study, and finish with the years to be included. The statistics you receive will allow you to assess European food markets, make a presentation, or forecast market trends.

Guide to Internet Resources for Cancer
Although this guide is maintained by a non-medical person, the resources he has compiled here on cancer are considerable. There are currently 4,313 links to cancer-related websites, in categories such as Treatment, Oncology Journals, Cancer Organizations, Childhood Cancer, Patient's Guides, E-Mail discussion lists, and much more. I was impressed that the individual who compiled this site has a page warning its readers to be aware of information quality issues with regard to medical websites. This site hasn't been updated since July of 2003, but that shouldn't stop you from browsing here for a cancer resource you didn't know about.

IncSpot ($$)
A service of the Corporation Service Company, IncSpot is in the business of "making business itself possible." There are a number of products offered by this company, mostly related to the formation and maintenance of corporations; it offers representation and registered agent services, as well as solutions to allow companies to manage its compliance requirements, intellectual property issues, and litigation. You can also search for liens and other UCC documents from the CSC website. There are many more opportunities for businesses here -- take a look.

I like to think the Help Desk feature of this newsletter provides you with useful information to maintain your PC. If you need more, but don't want to pay a lot for it, give AnswersThatWork a try. For $35/year, you can have your own personal Tech Support person:

Want a strategy game that's a little -- well, a lot -- gory? Try the Faerie Wars Cobblestone Minefield. WARNING -- it's pretty darned gory:

Well, that’s it for Issue #142 – 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.