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Welcome to Issue #150 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 while we're at it, welcome to the sesquicentennial issue of the newsletter! Thanks to all of you for your readership and your support over the past 150 issues. Guess I gotta get started on the next 150!

The sound of Opera
It's a little bit ironic that the first Web browser that takes voice commands from its users would be called Opera. Still in the developmental stage, the new browser will have the ability to ask what the user wants and listen to the request.

Hear that jingle-jingle?
Yep, the Tax Man's comin' to town again. As usual, the Librarian's Index to the Internet covers all the bases with its Tax Time 2004. Plus, Yahoo's Tech Tuesday devotes this week's issue to Tax Time.

Unflattering info about you on the Web? Sue 'em!
I love the headline: Man 'Googles' Himself, Sues for Libel. Apparently, he didn't like his search results, and now he's suing Google, AOL Time Warner, and Yahoo for libel. When you enter his name (with quotes, the correct way), the first result you get is a page from the California Board of Accountancy regarding a recent disciplinary action. Although the article's not clear, he is apparently suing because the "summary" shown in the Google results provided unflattering and apparently untrue information that did not apply to him. I will agree that the summaries provided in Google search results can mislead you about the context of the actual information on the page. Here's my question: he's just now getting around to Googling himself??

But have you met the guy who just Googled himself?
In The Perils of Googling, the author demonstrates how fiendishly easy it is to find sensitive information on the Internet using our favorite search engine.

Speaking of perils....
If you haven't learned about the dangers of falling prey to a phishing scam, read this. The latest Phishing Attack Trends Report (PDF File) shows that 282 attacks were reported in February, with the financial services industry continuing to be the most heavily targeted.

An old Beagle learns new tricks
The Beagle virus I have mentioned here several times in the past few months is constantly mutating. Now it's using new tactics to trick computer users into becoming infected. Don't be fooled; regularly update your antivirus definitions.

Just like Hearst v. Pulitzer....
Yahoo! News has upgraded its search engine, now allowing you to search over 7,000 news sources in 35 languages. That certainly beats Google News' paltry 4,500 sources. SearchDay has the scoop.

Client development by e-mail
I spoke at ABA TECHSHOW on "Legal Research That Comes To You," but I didn't include this research tool. Techdirt reports that lawyers are able to learn about prospective criminal defense clients because the sheriff e-mails them the names of everyone who got arrested the previous day. The lawyers then contact the defendants, offering their legal assistance. I don't know about other states, but here in Texas they call that solicitation...

And over at the Yahoo Search Sportsdesk....
Want to check out the latest scores for your favorite pro sports team? Just head over to Yahoo!, type in teamname scores (for example, dallas mavericks scores), and your first results will be the scores to recent games. Cool.

Fail to plan, plan to be liable
Companies that don't make sufficient efforts to secure their networks from outside attack are facing increasing risk of penalties, both criminal and civil. Both HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley deserve some of the credit for this new trend.

ClusterMed out of beta
Vivisimo's clustering tool for PubMed, ClusterMed, is out of beta and open for business. The service allows you to search PubMed using Vivisimo's great clustering technology.

Blawgs of the Week
Michael Girards is a lawyer in Toronto, and he's publishing e-Lawg, a Canadian perspective on the intersections of law and technology. The Workers Comp Insider offers information about "workers' compensation, risk management, business insurance, workplace health & safety, occupational medicine, injured workers, insurance web tools & technology, and related topics." It's maintained by Lynch Ryan, a workers' compensation consulting firm. Our last selection is not technically a blawg, but its layout reminds me of one -- a blawg with lots of other cool resources. It's Discovery Resources, yet another terrific source of information from Dennis Kennedy and George Socha. The site aims to provide up-to-date information, resources and news available about electronic discovery.

Google Keeps Rolling Along

How long will Google and Yahoo continue this game of one-upsmanship? I don't care, as long as we keep getting new search tools. First is the new layout. Google ditched the tabs view, added a link to its Froogle shopping search engine, plus a More...link. Pretty basic stuff, but the new layout is getting a lot of buzz.

More important are two new projects being conducted in Google's research lab. Google Personalized, allows you to create "personalized searches" after you have created a profile based upon your interests. I tried it out, and for now I'm underwhelmed. The technology certainly shows promise, but how do I know that the results are truly personalized? I'll keep fiddling with it.

Google Web Alerts show much more promise. The interface is identical to Google News Alerts, and the idea is the same. Just enter your search terms, and Google will send you an e-mail every time it indexes a page containing those terms. Google is just now catching up with Google Alerts on this, but it's good that it finally did.

Also a welcome addition to the home page is the What's New link, where you can see all the new stuff on one page. Nice to see Google finally putting this information in the same place. Here's a review from Danny Sullivan on the new features.

Later in the week, Google announced the launching of GMail, the search engine's venture into the world of Web e-mail. With a gigabyte of online storage, GMail is designed so that you never have to delete another e-mail, and you'll be able to easily search them. Check out Danny Sullivan's review of the new service. The article Free E-Mail with a Steep Price? makes a few interesting points about GMail. It seems that Google is going to scan all your incoming mail for keywords, and place related ads in the e-mail for you to read (the price of 1 gigabyte of free e-mail, I suppose). Can anyone say privacy issues?

Let's talk this week about keeping your computer free from clutter. I have come across several users lately who do not keep their computers clean, and are completely befuddled as to why their systems are so slow and clunky. Here's why: a system clogged with unnecessary files runs more slowly, and the mess makes important things harder to find. Here's one way to clean out the junk.

If your computer came with a disk-cleaning software product, use it regularly -- I use mine once a month. If you don't have such a program, click the Start Menu and select Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and then Disk Cleanup. The program will calculate the amount of disk space you can save by emptying the Recycle Bin, cleaning our your Temporary Internet Files (a HUGE space hog), and even by compressing old files. Check off the options that make sense and then click OK to regain that hard drive space.

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!

Resources for Economists on the Internet
Bill Goffe, from the Department of Economics at SUNY Oswego, presents this simple page of economics sites. Here you'll find links to 1,391 resources in 97 sections and sub-sections available on the Internet of interest to academic and practicing economists, and those interested in economics. The categories include Data, Dictionaries, Glossaries, and Encyclopedias, Forecasting and Consulting, Meetings and Conferences, Scholarly Communications, Teaching Resources, and more. Very simple layout, but valuable resources nonetheless.

The Federal Web Locator
The Center for Information Law and Policy is behind this page, which aims to be the one-stop shopping point for federal government information on the Web. There are no doubt a wide variety of links here, displayed on a long page. After covering the branches of government, the FWL lists federal independent establishments and corporations, quasi-official agencies, boards, commissions, and committees, non-governmental federally-related sites, and search services. The copyright date is 2003, so this site may not have been updated recently.

Topix
I have mentioned this news aggregation site recently on Inter Alia, but I thought it deserved a second look. Topix constantly scours the Internet for news articles, and displays them according to topic. The front page lists the most recent story in each category. If you want to drill down further, select the tabs across the top for Local, Business, US/World, Health, SciTech, Life, Entertainment, Sports, and Offbeat news. You'll find a news page for hundreds of U.S. cities, with stories collected from several local newspapers; the Dallas news had stories from seven or eight sources. If you like to read your news in a newsreader, each page has its own RSS feed to which you can subscribe. Topix is a terrific news site.

Trademark Trial and Appeal Board Inquiry System
Want to check on the status of a matter before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board? This page makes it easy. Just enter the name of the party, trademark, or other identifying information, and you'll get a docket sheet of the action, as well as links to pleadings filed in the matter. The parties and attorneys are all hyperlinked, so you can see at a glance the other matters in which they are involved.

World Press Review Online
The mission of the World Press Review is to give readers a first-hand look at the issues and debates that occupy the world’s newspapers and magazines, providing them with a succinct view of the political and economic climate outside of the U.S., as well as how the rest of the world perceives the role the U.S. plays in the global community. The site is divided into regions of the world, with somewhat recent articles from each area.

Do you ever pull up your computer's Task Manager and wonder what all those programs are? Check out Answers that Work -- click on Task List and then navigate over to the name of the mysterious program. Answers that Work will tell you what the program does, and whether you can safely remove it. There's other great stuff on this site, too.

Well, that’s it for Issue #150 – 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.