INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
November 28, 2004
Tom Mighell

Welcome to Issue #172 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…..

News Update

Over 8 Billion Served
It's always a game of one-upsmanship in the search engine world. The same day the new MSN Search debuts featuring 5 billion pages (see below), Google announces that its index now contains a whopping eight billion pages.

Test your Phishing IQ
Think you know how to spot a scam e-mail when it arrives in your inbox? Try the MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test II -- you may be surprised at the results.

Become a URL expert
Sometimes an important part of getting to the right source on the Internet is knowing the exact URL. Once you understand how URLs work, you can often find information that did not appear to be immediately available. The folks at Eipert Information Services have a two-part series on URLs that you should definitely check out Deconstructing Web Addresses and Use your knowledge of URLs to find information.

A new-found Firefox treasure
If you're using the Firefox browser, you may have already used its Find tool. Although the concept itself isn't different from the Find feature in Internet Explorer or other programs, the way it's implemented is. Gary Price has more on Find as You Type.

Another reason to try the Yahoo! Toolbar
If you want to add an extra dimension to your search experience, download and try the Yahoo! Toolbar, which now offers access to the two million library records of WorldCat, a central catalog of library holdings.

A word about PubSub
I have mentioned PubSub several times over the past year -- it is a terrific way to keep up with information on the Internet, without having to constantly check resources day after day. Once you set PubSub to monitor your keyword searches for you, all you have to do is wait for the results to roll in. Last week Chris Sherman wrote on PubSub in Managing the Firehose of Real-Time Information. PubSub monitors nearly 6.5 million Internet resources -- how can you afford not to be using it?

Scholarly research on Google
Google's latest offering is sure to be of interest to those in the academic community, but legal researchers can use it, too. With Google Scholar you can search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Read these reviews from Resource Shelf and Search Engine Watch.

Wayback to court
I frequently mention in seminars that the Internet Archive, otherwise known as the Wayback Machine, could be useful in litigation for pointing out web pages as they existed in the past. And an Illinois magistrate judge agrees. The Judge held that archived copies of websites are not hearsay, in a trademark case. One interesting item from the story; the party offering the pages from the Archive also included an affidavit from an Internet Archive employee, to authenticate the documents. If you're going to use pages from the IA, make sure they can be properly authenticated.

Blawgs of the Week
Well, past two weeks, actually -- here are the latest law-related weblogs to cross my radar screen: the mind behind Legal Pings recently began writing Cyber Crime Law, a blog discussing the issues of detecting, preventing, and dealing with cyber crime. John Welch is a lawyer with Foley Hoag in Boston, and he is making occasional observations regarding the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board at the TTABlog.

MSN Search: Better Late than Never?

After what seems like years of tweaking and refining, Microsoft finally released a beta version of its search tool, which now relies on its own Web crawlers to provide the over 5 billion pages it indexes. The interface is much cleaner (a la Google), and there are some interesting new features:

  • Try the Search Builder function -- it's a drop down menu that makes it very easy to customize your search, by adding additional words, limiting results to certain sites, countries, or languages, and letting you view sites by how they are ranked.
  • Results are now cached, just like Google. Many of the results even show the date that the site was last crawled.
  • Next to the Search button is the Near Me button, which is MSN's version of local search. You don't even have to tell MSN where you're located -- the search engine guesses based on your IP address.
  • Like Google, MSN Search can act as a calculator, a unit converter, and a dictionary. Unlike Google, MSN Search relies upon its Encarta enclyopedia to return answers to specific questions.

It looks like the general consensus is that while it's no Google-killer, it's definitely a worthwhile alternative. For more, check out PC Magazine's Review or Microsoft Unveils Its New Search Engine -- At Last.

Help Desk

To finish out the year, Help Desk will offer tips on PC Maintenance, with actions you should regularly perform to keep your computer in tip-top condition. This week, let's talk about what you should do every day:

  • Update your virus definitions -- new viruses appear daily, and the anti-virus companies are pretty good about releasing new definitions to fight the bad guys. Make sure you keep up.
  • Backup -- make a backup of any files that have changed since your last full backup.
  • Reboot when programs crash -- programs that hang can cause other programs to mess up, too. Restarting your computer clears all the junk out of your computer's memory.

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

Medline Interactive Health Tutorials
Medline is such a great resource. And these interactive tutorials make it easy to get quick information about various medical conditions and issues. You must have the Macromedia Flash plug-in to run the tutorials -- if you don't have it, you'll be prompted to download a free copy before you start. Once you're ready, review tutorials on diseases and conditions from Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms to Warts, Test & Diagnostic Procedures, Surgery and Treatment Procedures, and Prevention and Wellness. You can also print out the tutorials for later reference.

National Criminal Justice Reference Service
NCJRS is a "federally funded resource offering justice and substance abuse information to support research, policy, and program development worldwide." The reference topics you'll find here include Corrections, Courts, International, Juvenile Justice, Law Enforcement, Victims of Crime, Statistics, and more. By registering (for free), you can also receive regular e-mail updates of new content as well as access to other agency information.

National Aviation Safety Data Analysis Center
I know, we're heavy on the federal government web sites this week -- get over it. This site is part of the FAA, and provides access to aviation safety data and information sources used by the government. From here you can visit the Office of System Safety, nine aviation-related databases, review information on various subjects of aviation interest, as well as studies conducted by NASDAC. A ton of information at this site.

Permanent Court of Arbitration
I couldn't figure out why this was called the "Permanent" court, or whether there are temporary courts of arbitration around anywhere. At any rate, the PCA "administers arbitration, conciliation and fact finding in disputes involving various combinations of states, private parties and intergovernmental organizations." Here you'll find basic documents, information on recent and pending cases, research and publications, procedural rules, and other resources. There's also a nifty page of arbitration links, if you don't find what you want here.

LexisNexis Directory of Law Reviews
An interesting page from Lexis -- it's simply a set of links to PDF files with an up-to-date listing of every law review in the U.S. The files are divided into sections: 1) General Student-Edited Law Reviews; 2) Special Focus Student-Edited Law Reviews; 3) Non-Student Edited Peer Review and Trade Journals, and 4) University Presses. I'm not sure why this resource exists solely in PDF format; it would be far more useful in as an interactive HTML resource. Oh well -- it's a good resource, nonetheless.

Finally, some fun and useful stuff to start out your week:

Getting a new PDA for the holidays? Check out PDA Support, with links to help you find the best sources of support for your new handheld.

They say a person who can catch a fly with a pair of chopsticks can accomplish anything. Well, after trying Flysui for a few minutes, I believe it -- it's hard!

Well, that’s it for Issue #172 – 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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