May 15, 2005 Issue

Welcome to Issue #190 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!

Good 'Net Resources Reviewed
Mary Ellen Bates has a nice article up over at The Virtual Chase. Finding Authoritative Sources reviews two of my favorite sites, Wikipedia and Answers.com.

Estate Planning on the Web
I wrote a quick article on estate planning links for the May issue of the Texas Bar Journal. You can access the article here -- it's a PDF file.

New Perks at Yahoo! Search
It's the little things that count, right? Well, Yahoo! has been adding little things to its Yahoo! Search page, and they make it a more useful place to be. You can now access your Yahoo! mail from there, read a few news headlines, or find pages you have saved using the new My Web feature.

When clustering and job search collide
Here's what happens when a job search engine (Indeed.com) and a clustering meta-search tool (Clusty) collaborate: Jobs.Clusty.com. On the main page you can see the job listings per state (well over a million listings), or you can enter your own keywords with the applicable city, state or zip.

An all-in-one page for Google
Tired of going to different Google pages to conduct your searches. Xtra Google can help with that. Just enter your search terms, and click on the button of the service you want to search. Nifty page!

A Hidden but Valuable Tool at MSN Search
Most of the major search engines offer an "Advanced Search" option, but you usually have to click a link and access a separate page to take advantage of its features. MSN Search makes its advanced search tools available on its home page. Just click the "Search Builder" link, and you'll get a set of option that enable you to focus your search. One of the options is "Results Ranking," which allows you to alter the ranking of the search results based on your preferences. Here's a post from the MSN Search blog that illustrates how it works.

Brush Up Your PC Skills
Believe it or not, there are only 30 steps to transform yourself from a novice to an experienced computer user. Just check out the tips and skills at 30 Must-Have PC Skills, Part 1 and Part 2 -- master these skills, and you'll be a much more efficient computer user.

Blawgs of the Week(s)
We have double the blogs this issue, because I was off last week. Here goes: First, Barry Bayer has been discussing new technology with attorneys since 1997, and now he's blogging about it at Law Tech Review. Joel Seachrist is the Small Town Lawyer, providing notes of interest to town officials in New York State. He's a partner in Beckman and Seachrist, a firm that represents several towns in Chautauqua County, New York. The Wisconsin Student Bar Association is blogging about activities at the University of Wisconsin Law School -- great idea! Dan Hunter and Greg Lastowka are professors (at the Wharton School and Rutgers Law, respectively), and they have started blogging at Open Access Law "to share information, resource, ideas, and commentary about open access to law review articles." Francis Pileggi is a Delaware lawyer, and he's blogging about it at the Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog. What's this? Another Inter Alia? It's true -- this one is published by the anonymous J.D., "concerned citizen," an "about-to-be-graduated 3L's take on law and politics." Here's a niche blawg: Hawaii Condo Law is about Hawaii Condominiums, planned communities, co-ops and the laws that govern them, from Honolulu lawyer Richard Ekimoto. He's also blogging at the related Fair Housing Law.

The InsideJustice.com blog features postings on both U.S. as well as international law, brought to you by Renee Dopplick, a first-year lawyer. The folks at the University of Washington Law School are blogging about trial advocacy at Trial Ad Notes. The Shigley Law Firm of Atlanta, Georgia has a brand new lexBlog blog, and they are writing about personal injury matters at the Atlanta Injury Law Blog. Ross Kunkel is writing his second blog (in addition to his Employment Law Blog) -- the Arbitration Blog covers employment and labor law arbitration. The Temporary Lawyer is an anonymous blog chronicling the life of a temporary lawyer, "a life sentence to confinement in a 10 by 10 cube." The New England School of Law OUTLaws features "news and information of interest for the New England School of Law OUTLaws, and other members and supporters of the GLBT law school community at large." Last but not least, Kevin Heller has a blog on the side from TechLawAdvisor -- it's the Legal Jobs Blog, featuring "job ads, related articles and links concerning the legal job market."

Caught in the 'Net

Search Faster With Google -- Lose Your Privacy?

Last week Google unveiled a new product -- the Google Web Accelerator. It's designed to speed up the surfing experience of the broadband Internet user. The product works by "prefetching" material, as well as temporarily caching of web pages on its own servers.

Since it was released, several privacy issues have been raised, including the concern that it can allow users access to the password-protected content of others. Google is working on a fix for that right now, but in the meantime, it has suspended downloads of the new tool, stating "We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support."

A New Way To Remember Passwords

Here's a nifty way to generate tough-to-break passwords without remembering them: use this Password Generator. All you have to do is remember one password. Here's how it works: whenever you visit a site that requires a password, just head to the password generator, type in your master password and the URL of the site you're trying to access. It generates a strong password designed specifically for that site. The next time you visit the site, you only have to go back to the password generator, type in the name of the site, and your password automatically appears. If you need a more visual description of how this works, check out this screencast.

Help Desk

Time for Week #3 of "10 Things To Do Before You Call For Help." This one is easy:

#3: Reboot. Restarting your computer gives it a chance to clear out its memory, and get things straight. The same thing applies for your DSL or cable modem -- if you are having trouble connecting, just turn if off for 10 seconds and see if that helps.

Next week: Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'.....

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!