INTERNET LEGAL
RESEARCH WEEKLY
February 1, 2004
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #143 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!
And away we go…..
Goin' Anti-Phishin'
Every now and then I mention a new "phishing" scam, where individuals receive spoofed e-mails purporting to be from legitimate websites. Now you can keep up-to-date on the latest in phishing over at Anti-Phishing.org, which features daily headlines on new scams. Speaking of phishing, the latest scam features a letter purporting to be from the FDIC (it's not), warning that if users don't provide their bank account information online they will lose their insurance protection, citing the Patriot Act as a threat. Again, this is a scam -- spread the word.RSS Feeds of the Week
Last week I wrote a mini-article on RSS, a technology bound for big things this year. Here are a few RSS feeds you might want to check out (remember, if you want to learn more about RSS, drop me a line and I'll fill you in!): I have used My Yahoo! as my portal for some time now. I think Yahoo's product is far and away the best of the entry portals -- it features a large number of different resources, which you can customize in any number of ways. Now comes word that Yahoo! is introducing RSS headlines for users of My Yahoo! It doesn't provide headlines for its own features; you can add the RSS feeds you want to view (up to 25). My Yahoo! then acts as a news aggregator every time you visit.Yet another great use of RSS is PubSub. It monitors over 100,000 weblogs and generates RSS feeds based on your search preferences. Once you subscribe, just enter a search string, and PubSub will send you an e-mail whenever those terms appear somewhere on a weblog. If you're more ambitious, you can receive the results in your news aggregator. Very cool utility -- as John Battelle says, it's "Google News Alerts for the RSS-osphere."
AI Roboform in the NYT
This is hardly news, but the New York Times has an article on AI Roboform, certainly the best free password manager available, and probably the best period. If remembering the ever-increasing number of passwords is getting to be difficult, AI Roboform can make your life much easier.Better late than never
Microsoft has finally issued a beta version of its search toolbar. It has all the features you have seen in other toolbars -- a highlighter, quick links to other sites, a popup blocker, and more.Beware MyDoom
If you haven't read or heard of the MyDoom virus which began to circulate the Internet this week, then obviously you have been vacationing on a desert island or otherwise hibernating. CNet has a nice page with all you need to know about the virus, including how to protect yourself against infection. Also visit the U.S. Computer Emergency Team to sign up for e-mail warnings of future attacks, plus helpful hints on keeping your computer safe.Search by social networking
A phenomenon sweeping the Internet is social networking -- sites like Friendster, LinkedIn, Ryze, and Tribe.net are allowing individuals to set up networks on the Internet, facilitating friendships, romance, business relationships, and more. Now social networking comes to search engines, with the launch of Eurekster last week. Danny Sullivan reviewed the new search engine, which remembers the sites that you find valuable. When you conduct a search on the site and stick on one of the results for longer than a minute, Eurekster remembers the site for you, and places that site at the top the next time you run that search. Even better, once you send the names of your friends to Eurekster, when those friends use the search engine, they'll be able to see the sites that are important to you. This is truly the next stage of search engine personalization.Power searching for the news
A few years ago RocketInfo used to be one of the only news search tools in town, until the company decided to concentrate on pursuing the corporate news search market. Since last year, RocketInfo has been back, offering products on a number of platforms. One tool that I have not tried is the RocketInfo Desktop, a software program that searches over 10,000 new sources. Chris Sherman gives the utility a spin in SearchDay.Highbeam sheds light on Internet research
Internet research site Highbeam launched this week, providing customizable access to Internet resources, both free and subscription online services. The old reference services eLibrary and Researchville are incorporated into the new Highbeam site, with more than 28 million articles from 2,600 sources. You can use the basic service for free, and the subscription service will cost you $99.95/year or $19.95/month. There are some interesting features of this service, including Research Groups, which are groups of Internet resources that can be searched at the same time. You can create your own Research Groups, to only search those resources important to your research.Blogs of the Week
Here are the law (and not-so-law)-related weblogs I found this week: Keep up with the primaries and other presidential campaign news at the Campaign Desk, from the Columbia Journalism Review. And Disablawg is a disability law resource owned and operated by the Web community deafGA.org.Sometimes you need to know how many words your document contains. Both Microsoft Word and WordPerfect want to help you count words. In either case, make sure you're in the document you want counted. In WordPerfect, select File, then Properties. Click on the Information tab, and you'll find the word count there. Microsoft Word brings word count to your desktop -- just click View, then Toolbars, and select Word Count. You'll get a floating toolbar that you can add on to one of your existing toolbars.
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
ISI Highly Cited Researchers
Calling itself "an expert gateway to the most highly influential scientists and scholars worldwide, ISI aims to boast the top 250 preeminent individual researchers in 21 subject categories, from agricultural sciences to space sciences. You can search by researcher, or browse by category, the name of the researcher, by institution, or by country. The bio on the researchers can be quite extensive, along with a list of publications -- some of them are available online, but only at institutions that subscribe to ISI.Legal Ethics Opinion Summaries
This page is maintained as a service of the firm McGuire Woods, and it contains summaries of ethics opinions from Virginia and the American Bar Association, apparently only back to 1999. You can browse by topic, restrict your search to a specific date, or use specific search terms. Useful if all you want is summaries -- what would be truly useful is if the summaries contained links to the full opinions.The Doe Report ($$)
The leading seller of stock medical demonstrative evidence, there is truly a wealth of medical information here. You can browse Medical Reference, the Legal Library, the Medical Topic List, or Anatomical Models, or you can view charts and diagrams by medical specialty or body region. If you want to order a print, it ain't cheap; a small format PDF costs $99 (as is), with 30 x 40 prints running almost $400. The content is terrific however -- give it a look.National Pesticide Information Center
If you want to know more about that pesticide your neighbor just sprayed on his crabgrass, visit the NPIC website. Here you'll find general information about pesticides, to help you evaluate the risk to you, your pets and food. For the more technical-minded there is an area with environmental and chemical databases and statistics. In the Regulatory area you'll find links to state and federal agencies that regulate pesticides, and you can also browse a lengthy contact list of manufacturers. Finally, there's some pest control advice if you just want to figure out how to get rid of those carpenter ants.Obitpage.com
Did you know there's an International Association of Obituarists? Well, there is, and fellow Bar None alumnae Carolyn Gilbert is its founder. She and others have been studying obituaries for a long time, both as history and as literary art form. Here you'll find an archive of "great obits," as well as links to obituary pages from major newspapers around the country. Not a legal research site per se, but I know of at least one occasion when I have used the obituaries to confirm the death of a party to a lawsuit.
Finally, some fun and useful sites for you this week:
Have you ever had to reinstall Windows? Not fun. Even worse, what happens if you can't find the Product Key Number? You definitely need it to reinstall Windows. Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder to the rescue. This nifty program will dig your Product Key Number out of your computer's registry, so you don't have to call Microsoft whining for help.
Satisfy your urge to shoot down helicopters (if you had the urge to begin with) with heliATTACK 2.
Well, that’s it for Issue #143 – 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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