September 12, 2004

Welcome to Issue #164 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!

Sorry for the lack of a newsletter last week -- my ISP went down on me, and was out until Tuesday. So here's an expanded edition, featuring stuff from the past two weeks.

A Google Enhancer
Chris Sherman reviews the new MoreGoogle, a downloadable program that provides additional information about your Google search results. The main feature of the site is that shows thumbnail images of the sites returned by your query. But MoreGoogle has...well, more. You can also find related sites, Amazon product information (if it's relevant), and site access statistics, among other things.

Shields Up
Last week the folks over at Yahoo! Tech Tuesday talked about spam -- this week they are talking firewalls, and why they're important to any Internet-connected computer. As always, if you catch this story late, you can find the articles in the Tech Tuesday archives.

Copernic: Looking Within
Copernic, which has previously been known for its meta-search tool and meta toolbar, is turning inward with its Copernic Desktop Search, a product that will index and search your computer for files. Best of all, it's free! Gary Price has a review at SearchDay.

The (last) month in search engines
Chris Sherman's Search Engine Milestones for August 2004 is already up, for those of you who missed the major search engine news last month.

Make FireFox more IE-ish
Many of you have switched over to FireFox because of the numerous bugs and problems surrounding Internet Explorer. I have had my share of problems with FireFox, but in general I'm happy with it. The one thing I wish I could do is to outfit it to do many of the same things IE did for me. Now, thanks to FireFoxIE, you can do that. Just follow the 15 steps to achieve that IE feel.

Another reason to protect against spyware
You hear me rant ad nauseum about the need to regularly scan your computer for the existence of spyware. Now Microsoft is advising the same thing. Turns out that some spyware could cause computers to freeze up when the new Windows XP Service Pack 2 is installed. If you are contemplating installing the XP update anytime soon, make sure you run SpyBot or Ad-Aware first.

Search Time-Savers
Tara Calishain has been posting some great search tips in PDF format lately. Her latest, Seven Ways to Save Time Searching, is no exception.

Blawgs of the Week(s)
Here are some of the latest law-related weblogs I have come across: The Florida Law Weblog is up and running, penned by Christopher Chopin, a lawyer in West Palm Beach. Russ Krajec is a registered patent agent and soon-to-be lawyer, and he's writing about patents and business strategies at Everything Under the Sun Made by Man. The INDUCE Act was introduced in Congress this summer, and it's causing a lot of commotion in copyright circles. Kevin at TechLawAdvisor created the INDUCE Act Blog to discuss the issue, with contributions from Andrew Raff and Chris Rush Cohen. The Xerdict Group is a company that sells, among other things, collaboration software to the legal community. Part of their marketing efforts include the Legal Extranet Blog, with information about legal extranets and litigation support. And The Law & Entrepreneurship Blog is published by a group of students at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and features recent developments in -- you guessed it -- law and entrepreneurship.

This past week, I found: The firm of Davis, Wright and Tremaine has started up the Communications Law Blog, with the assistance of the folks at lexBlog. Michael Cohen is up and running over at his Complementary & Alternative Medicine Law Blog, another blog created by lexBlog. A group of female law professors has started the BizFems Speak! blawg, to discuss corporate law and the role of the corporation in society. Michael Madison, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, is blogging on law, society, and technology over at Madisonian Theory.

Help Desk

For those of you using Outlook, a tip: do you want to find out if the people who send you e-mail request "read" receipts? Here's how in Outlook 2000 and 2002 (2003 in parentheses)-- from your Outlook Inbox, select View, then Current View, then Customize Current View (In 2003, Select View, then Arrange By, then Custom). Click the Fields button, then click the drop-down arrow next to "Select Available Fields From," and select "All Mail Fields." Select "Receipt Requested" and click the "Add" button. Then Click OK twice.

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!

EH.net
EH.net began life back in 1994 as the Econhist internet discussion list. It now provides internet-based services to economic historians, economists, social scientists, and the public. You can browse the abstracts published by EH.net, look up related terms in the Encyclopedia, subscribe to one of several mailing lists, or even ask a question of the Professor on duty.

About Elections & Voting
The Federal Election Commission is offering this page About Elections and Voting, just in time for the presidential campaign's home stretch. You'll find links to primary elections and caucuses, recent election results, voter registration and turnout statistics sites, electoral college information, and the administrative structure of U.S. elections. A pretty basic page, but with links to all kinds of good stuff.

Fletcher-Ginn Multilaterals Library
The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University makes available this collection of international multilateral conventions and other instruments. You will find treaties in the fields of human rights, commerce and trade, laws of war and arms control, and other areas. The documents are listed by category, chronologically, or you can search for items by keyword. There are also a few resources on how to conduct research for treaties and other agreements.

Enforcement and Compliance History Online
The EPA features its Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO), which will help you determine whether the EPA or other government agencies have conducted compliance inspections, and the violations and enforcement actions that came about as a result. You can view the data broken down by air, water, or hazardous waste, or just enter a zip code to see all inspections for that area. An e-mail update is also available for those who want to stay informed of significant changes to the site.

Government Resources on the Web
Have I mentioned this site before? I know I have mentioned pages from the University of Michigan Documents Center in the past, so if this is a repeat I apologize. But the resources offered here are so great it bears mentioned again. Here you'll find links to government pages all over the world, in categories including Federal, foreign, international, state, local, and Michigan state and local. There's also access to citation guides, congressional research, documents in the news, guides to government documents, high school debate topics, and much more.

NetNewsTracker
I've visited this site before, but it's worth mentioning again, because it's a great example of how you can use the Internet to make "research come to you." NetNewsTracker searches Usenet newsgroups for anything you want -- just sign up, enter your search terms, and whenever those terms appear in a Usenet post, you'll receive an e-mail with a link to your keywords. You can run 3 searches at any one time and receive your e-mails in HTML or text. Best of all, it's free! This is a great "set it and forget it" way to conduct research on the Internet.

Fed 101
Fed 101 is provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and it's a nifty introduction to the inner workings of the Federal Reserve Bank system. You can read about the history, structure, monetary policy, banking supervision, and financial services of the FRB, figure out where your checks go when they are cashed, and even find out what it's like to be a bank examiner for a day.

National Agriculture Safety Database

The National Agriculture Safety Database is a national central repository of agricultural health, safety, and injury prevention materials for the agricultural community and agricultural safety professionals, but the legal research can probably find something of value here too. Search by keyword, or browse information by topic or by state. Topics range from animals to supervising for safety, and each topic contains a number of links to safety-related articles. There are also a number of videos for viewing. You'll also find a ton of great links on the "Miscellaneous" page, with information on conference proceedings, federal and national materials, journals, news releases, and more.

Household Products Database
It's under your kitchen sink, but you've never been quite sure what it does, or whether it can harm you. That's where this site comes in, helping you to learn the ingredients contained in household products, their health effects, and how to handle them safely. You can search by product or ingredient, or by the Material Safety Data Sheets.

International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes
The ICSID is an offshoot of the World Bank which is occasionally called on to assist in mediation of investment disputes between governments and private foreign investors. As with any mediator's site, you'll find lists of policies and procedures, as well as fee schedules. But you can also review pending and resolved cases, listings of bilateral investment treaties, a number of documents and publications, as well as the latest news (Winter 2003, unfortunately) from ICSID.

Want to really attract attention the next time you go out (as well as see what people all over the world are searching for)? Wear a search engine belt buckle.

Check out Toogle, which takes your Google Images query and turns it into ASCII art. Just enter the name of a person or thing, and watch art created before your eyes. Fun stuff.

Yahoo is stepping into the waters of online travel with its new FareChase site. It has a clean interface, but what's really nifty about this site is where the search results take you. If the fare is available at Orbitz, you'll be taken to Orbitz. If the fare is at another airline website, you'll be taken there. I priced a hotel and was taken to Hotels.com to make the reservation. The only negative I found so far is that FareChase doesn't work with FireFox, only Internet Explorer.

Well, that’s it for Issue #164 – 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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