April 10, 2005

Welcome to Issue #186 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!

Are you tired of receiving this newsletter in your Inbox? If you're using a newsreader to read RSS feeds, you can now receive each issue of the ILRW via RSS! Just subscribe to the following feed:

http://www.newslettersbyrss.com/feed/642.xml

If you do decide to switch to the newsletter via RSS, let me know, and I'll unsubscribe you from the list.

Your Career, Summarized
ZoomInfo is a nifty new people finder. Just plug in the name of any person, and you'll get a summary of information about that person collected from around the Web. It's interesting to see how it gathers information from discrete sites and combines them in an intelligent way, even though it still has some flaws. ZoomInfo is using its technology to help companies recruit new employees, and it's easy to see how this could be a useful employment tool.

Any questions?
Answer search engine Brainboost does a better job of answering questions than Ask Jeeves, in my opinion. Just ask it a question, and you'll get a much more thoughtful answer than most search engines provide. Give it a whirl.

Good Primer on Phishing
Jeff Beard points us to a nice article from Microsoft on Identifying Fraudulent E-Mail and Phishing Schemes. It's an easy-to-understand guide to identifying and protecting yourself against these scam e-mails.

Find shareable content on the web
The Creative Commons license was developed a few years ago to denote material posted on the internet that could be republished, shared, or reused under certain conditions, unlike traditionally copyrighted works. The folks at Yahoo! had the terrific idea to create a search engine that would search for this type of content, so they did -- at the Yahoo! Creative Commons Search.

The Coolest Thing You'll See All Week
Remember when Google acquired digital mapping company Keyhole last October? Here's why: it has added satellite images to its Google Maps service. Once you find your address on the map, just click the Satellite link in the upper-right corner. You can move the satellite maps around just like the graphic images -- it will even show you a satellite map of your route when you ask for directions. Way, way cool!

Better Internet Sleuthing
Need to keep track of the latest developments in the search engine industry, as well as new search tools and services? Check out the Pandia Search Engine Detective, a gateway to everything search engine.

New People/Job Search Tools
Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal has reviewed two new search tools in Two New Vertical Sites Tailor Web Searches, But Still Have Kinks. The first is Ziggs, a professional profile search engine -- it claims to have an index of over 2.3 million professionals, with bios/profiles taken from that
individual's company web site. The other tool is Indeed, a job search engine that claims to add 100,000 new job listings per day. As Walt indicates, these sites are not perfect, but they are interesting additions to the search world.

Searching for transportation
Now here's an unusual new search engine feature from Google -- the Google Ride Finder, which will show you the actual positions of cabs, shuttles or limousines in a particular town, in case you need a ride to the airport or someplace else. Currently eleven cities are included in the search results.

Search Engine Cheat Sheet
You know what you're searching for -- you just aren't sure the right tool to use (if you're a smart searcher, you aren't just thinking Yahoo! or Google). How to decide? Try Phil Bradley's Finding Information: Search Engines, a simple but terrific page offering suggested search sites based upon the information you need to find.

Blawgs of the Week(s)
We have twice the law-related weblogs this week: first, Eric Goldman, former GC of Epinions and now teaching at Marquette University Law School, is blogging at not one but two locations: the Technology and Marketing Law Blog and Goldman's Observations. The Vermont law firm Shems Dunkiel Kassel & Saunders has created the Renewable Energy Law Blog in order to discuss and share "news and commentary on the evolving law, science, and policy of renewable energy development." Sander Gelsing is a patent and trademark lawyer, as well as a registered Canadian Trademark Agent, and he's posting his intellectual property thoughts at Now, Why Didn't I Think of That? Rick Duncan is a constitutional law and religion and the law professor at the University of Nebraska School of Law, and he is co-blogging at the Red State Lawblog. The LSSO Blog is the blog-child of the Legal Sales and Services Organization, which provides educational conferences and workshops to further develop the skills of legal sales and service professionals. Shane Jimison is a solo lawyer in Richmond, and he's writing the Virginia Law Blog. Don't Know it from Adam is a blog on "life as a Michigan Law Student," from the aforementioned Michigan Law Student, Adam Wolfson.

The blawgosphere is jumping on the Podcasting bandwagon, and BlawgCast.com intends to monitor it all. Here you'll find links to law-related podcasts from around the internet, in addition to interested stories on the new phenomenon. Randy Riddle, who once served as Chief Counsel to the California Secretary of State, is now practicing election and government law in the private sector -- he's also writing about it at California Election Law. Blawg Review is "a collaborative project of a group of law bloggers who are committed to making the best of the blawgosphere more easily accessible and enjoyable to read." Outside the Whale is a group weblog written by Jon (a lawyer), JK (a [non-law] graduate student), and Rob (working towards a masters of law).

I'm pleased to announce the debut of a brand-new blog from three of my newest friends -- Matt Buchanan, Steve Nipper, and Doug Sorocco are pooling their considerable IP talents and writing about it at rethink(ip). They'll be discussing ways to "fix" what's wrong with intellectual property law. Ross Kunkel is the publisher of LawMemo.com, a site on employment law. He has also started blogging at the LawMemo Employment Law Blog -- check it out. Finally, I'm not very good at Portuguese, but by my rough translation De lege agraria nova is a Brazilian blawg on agrarian law.

Caught in the 'Net

Schwing! A New Blawg
It is with great pleasure that I announce the debut of Between Lawyers, a Corante-based blog featuring Denise Howell, Dennis Kennedy, Martin Schwimmer, Ernie Svenson and me. Although our postings over at the Blawg Channel have lost their steam, our private conversations about the law and technology continued to develop -- so we decided to take them public. As for the title -- although we do intend the conversation to be "between lawyers," the inspiration is actually a lot funnier. Party (and blog) on!

Wireless in Court
There were a number of stories last week on the use of wireless technology in court. First came news of a New York opinion regarding the New York Workers' Compensation Board -- the Board allowed the State Insurance Fund to install a wireless network in one of its offices, but not other attorneys appearing before the Board. Not surprisingly, the appellate court found that treatment to be arbitrary and capricious. Also last week, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts published its Considerations in Establishing a Court Policy Regarding the Use of Wireless Communication Devices, which sets forth a good description of the status quo, as well as things to keep in mind when utilizing wireless devices in court.

The Best in Searching
The 5th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards were announced last week, and there are some interesting search tools named. For the first time, Yahoo! Search was named best search tool over Google, which I think is the right call -- I have been using Yahoo! a lot more lately, and really like the breadth of its features. Jux2 was named Best Meta Search Tool. Check out the rest of the winners -- you might find a new search tool to try.

While we're on the subject of Yahoo! vs. Google, there have been a number of articles lately on whether Google has "jumped the shark," and that Yahoo! is now tops in search. Read Second Sight, How Yahoo Got Its Mojo Back, and On Yahoo's Mojo and the Tiresome Need for Perspective, and draw your own conclusions.

Help Desk

If you're like me, you probably have a whole bunch of stuff that starts up with your computer, most of which cannot decipher. In fact, Windows and other programs start up a lot of processes that you most likely do not need, and which only serve to take up valuable memory.

But how to figure out what's what, and which processes are safe to disable? Check out ProcessLibrary, which offers a great directory of just about every program that might load when your computer starts up. Learn more at Searching for Windows Processes.

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!