INTERNET LEGAL
RESEARCH WEEKLY
May 16, 2004
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #154 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…..
Shortcut to better research
Using shortcuts at the various search engines is a terrific way to get your research done quickly and efficiently. Finding out about these shortcuts is the hard part. Greg Notess points you to shortcuts of some of the major search engines in Search Engine Prefixes and Shortcuts. And if you're not satisfied with those shortcuts, head over to SearchDay, where Gary Price offers More Yahoo Search Shortcuts.The search war is afoot
Danny Sullivan has a nice article on Search Wars: Battle of the Search Superpowers, which discusses the history of competition between the various search engines, and where the battles will lead us, with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft leading the way.Help for phishing victims
I like to believe that most readers of this newsletter know better than to give out their personal financial information in response to e-mails purportedly coming from a financial institution, eBay, or the like. However, these "phishing" scams wouldn't still be occurring unless people were being taken in by the authentic-looking e-mails. For those people, the Anti-Phishing Working Project has a terrific page on What To Do If You've Given Out Your Personal Financial Information. It's a great checklist of things to do if you're a victim.CAN-SPAM Library Now Open
Doug Isenberg over at Gigalaw has created the CAN-SPAM Library, with links to the law, executive and legislative histories, litigation, FTC action, studies, articles, and much more on the anti-spam measure.At last, a blog from Google
After months and months of anticipation, the folks over at Google have launched a Google Blog, which will hopefully feature new and interesting information about the search engine.Better password-keeping practices
How do other computer users protect their passwords? Some share their methods in How To Safely Store and Manage Passwords.Handy Search Bookmarklets
Greg Notess offers some nifty bookmarklets that can help you quickly switch to other search engines, select text to send to a search engine, or otherwise expedite the search process.Get your numbering right
Are you ever as frustrated with MS Word's page numbering as I am? Well, even if I am the only one (although I doubt I am), this page on the ins and outs of page numbering in Word will be a valuable resource for me.Nothing but the truth, in Results 1-10 of 2,10,310
CNet reports on the growing reliance of judges on search engines for judicial research. I'm glad to see that judges are using the Internet to assist in their decision-making, but I agree with comments in the article that judges should not rely solely on the results of a Google search, without at least taking the trouble to determine the quality of the information found there.Google Groups, the 2nd Generation
Google is adding another new feature, debuting the beta of Google Groups 2. The new version will allow users to create their own mailing lists or groups, either public or private. SearchDay has more. Plus, the new Google Groups are offering Atom Feeds for each group, so you can have new posts downloaded directly into your newsreader! You have to dig a bit to find them -- just click on the More button for a particular group, and scroll to the bottom of the next page.Redaction a useless exercise?
Researchers in Europe have developed a technology that allows a person to identify redacted words and phrases in confidential documents. Gee, in the hands of an unscrupulous lawyer, this tool could have serious implications for attorney-client privilege.Blawgs of the Week
A new crop of interesting law-related weblogs for you this week. Geof's Waste of Bandwidth Blog features the continuing journey of a patent attorney named, as you might expect, Geof. For those of you who are interested in the intersection of technology and the law, IT Manager.net promises to make the practice of law just a little bit geekier. The Uncivil Litigator is maintaining a running journal of his professional life, for his own enjoyment. All the better if you find something you like there..... And Mauled Again is the blog-creation of Professor James Edward Maule, in which he discusses tax law, legal education, the First Amendment, and a bunch of other stuff, including chocolate chip cookies.Here's a tip on how to configure Microsoft Word to automatically launch with the most recently edited document. To start, you need to create a shortcut on your desktop or Start Menu. Find the Winword.exe file by selecting Start, then Search (or Find), and searching for the file. Right-drag that file to your desktop and select Create Shortcut Here from the pop-up menu that appears. Select the shortcut's title, press F2, and rename it Word's Most Recent File, or whatever you want. Right click on the shortcut, select Properties, and go to the Shortcut tab. In the Target field, insert a space after Winword.exe and add the string /mFile1. If you want to be able to use a hotkey to launch Word this way, type the key (for example, Ctrl-Shift-Alt-W) in the Shortcut key field. Click OK, and 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
The Scannery
The Scannery is a specialized search engine that covers the websites of more than 20,000 public companies in over 65 countries. Search is a four-step process; enter your search terms, then select the countries/indices you want to search, then the desired industry, and then customize your search. A search for "dialysis" in the healthcare industry found over 425 documents on the subject from 32 companies. New to The Scannery is MyScannery, which allows you to save search queries, and have The Scannery run them for you automatically.Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy Database
For those of you with an interest in Internet domain name disputes, this should provide you with a lot of content. In fact, all 6,957 current decisions resolved under the ICANN UDRP are listed here, and are available for review. Unfortunately, there's no way to browse the decisions; you'll have to use either the Simple or Advanced Search pages. Just enter a domain name and you'll find a decision related to it. The advanced search page is especially helpful to those with similar cases, because it allows you to select facts similar to your own, in order to locate analogous decisions. This is a terrific resource.State Environmental Resource Center
The State Environmental Resource Center (SERC) researches state environmental policies and assembles information and tools to help legislators make important decisions on key environmental issues. The information is not just available to legislators, however; anyone can take advantage of this site. You can browse by policy issue, including clean energy, safe air and water, children's health, land and water use, environmental citizenship, and more. Each issue contains "issues packages" on various topics. You can also subscribe to Wildlines, SERC's free newsletter.WhoIs Finder
This is a clean, simple way to find out the owner of a particular domain name. Just enter the domain you want to search (for example, inter-alia.net), and you'll find registration information for that site. In many cases, you'll also find identification information for the individual(s) running the website. A fast and easy way to find out who's behind that website.International Documents
Presented by Northwestern University, this page from the university libraryis just a long page with links to government websites from all over the world. That's it. That's all you'll find here. But it's still a worthwhile site to bookmark.
Finally, some fun and useful stuff:
If you find yourself in need of a logo, you can create your own logo at the Logo Generator.
See how many firecrackers you can light before time runs out, with Rocket Mania!
Well, that’s it for Issue #154 – 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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