INTERNET LEGAL
RESEARCH WEEKLY
September 4, 2005
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #204 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....
Troubleshooting your PC
Computer troubles got you down? Maybe the steps listed in Ready to Drop Kick Your PC? will help cure those techno-problems.Yahoo! Audio Search Revisited
For those of you who haven't checked out Yahoo! Audio Search, Gary Price over at Search Engine Watch provides us with a closer look.Share your search with Jeteye
There's a new search tool in town -- Jeteye. As search engines go, it's doesn't appear to be all that special. But you can package your search results and share them with others. Once you register, just run a search, and check off the results you like. That will create a "Jetpak" that you can then e-mail to others. Even better, these Jetpaks are themselves searchable.Blawgs of the Week
Here are the latest in law-related weblogs: first, Alex Scoble is the brother of uber-blogger Robert Scoble (the Scobleizer), and it turns out he's working in the legal field. He's blogging about his experiences as an IT manager for a law firm over at Alex Scoble's IT Notes -- A Law Firm IT Manager Blog. The Alaskablawg is the product of a criminal defense lawyer in Alaska, and he's discussing law and life in the Last Frontier. Beth Grimm is a Pleasant Hill, California attorney whose California Condo Law page includes a great blog on California Condo and HOA Law. Infamy or Praise is the product of California lawyer Colin Samuels. He’s discussing law, news, politics, and lots of other stuff there. The Japan Group Blog is the product of the lawyers at Davis & Company, a Canadian law firm that serves clients in places like, well, Japan. Wayne Scheiss is the director of the legal writing program at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, and he's publishing Legalwriting.net in part because he's "a bit too serious about legal writing." Finally, Have Opinion, Will Travel is authored by someone who claims to be an appellate judge in the southeastern United States. In describing his profession, he says "Appellate judges sit above the fray as the battle unfolds beneath. When the smoke clears and the dust settles, they descend from their lofty perches and shoot the wounded."
Caught in the 'Net
Hurricane Katrina Relief, for Lawyers and Others
The legal community is doing its part to provide assistance to those caught in the horrible path of Katrina. The American Bar Association has posted a Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief page, with links for those who need help and those who want to help. There's a lot of great information and resources here. The ABA Legal Technology Center also has a page of Technology-Related Resources for Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief with lots of useful links.
The legal technology folks are also banding together to help; you can read more about the efforts of this group at Between Lawyers. If you know of a lawyer/law firm needing technological or disaster recovery assistance, drop me a line and I'll make sure they get connected with the right people.
Another Word tip for you this week (I know, I know, too many Word tips -- it's just that I have so many of them, I need to get rid of them somehow).
Sometimes you create a table in Word, and you need to add more rows, a specific number. Here's how to do it:
1. Click your mouse outside the table, but just below.
2. From the Table menu, choose Insert, then Rows Above.
3. In the Insert Rows dialog box, type the number of rows you want to add.
4. Click OK.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
PubMed
I'm sure I've mentioned PubMed at some point in the past five years, but the information found here is so great, it's worth mentioning again. PubMed is a service of the National Library of Medicine, and it contains over 15 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals back to the 1950s. You can literally set up an automated update in less than five minutes. Just register (for free), type in your search terms, save your search, and updates are e-mailed to you whenever new citations are available. Of course, you can spend more time there if you want -- you can search the journals database, see what's New/Noteworthy, take a tutorial on how to use the site, or make use of the interesting E-Utilities.Estate Planning Links
In another life, uber-technolawyer Dennis Kennedy dabbled in estate and tax planning law. His first web site was Estate Planning Links, which was ultimately taken over by another Dennis, this one named Toman. The page is pretty simple, but has some great links; Estate Planning Resources, Advanced Estate Planning, Calculations, Forms, Elder Law, IRA/Employee Benefits, Valuation, Life Insurance, and much more. Each link is a gateway to a ton of useful links on those individual subjects. A site worth saving!Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
The Clearinghouse is a nonprofit consumer organization that wants to raise consumer awareness of how technology affects personal privacy, among other things. The topics in the left menu are substantial; they include Identity Theft, Background Checks & Workplace, Financial Privacy, Internet Privacy, Medical Records, Telecommunications & Telephone, Public & Government Records, Direct Marketing, and lots more. The What's New area features a listing of data theft incidents that is current as of last Wednesday.Indiana Department of Education RSS Feed
Not much to this page, but the benefits you will reap are tremendous -- if you're looking for regularly updated information on Indiana education, that is. This is just the page for the RSS feed for the Department of Education -- assuming you have been reading my newsletter and know about RSS feeds, adding this to your newsreader should be a snap. If you'd like to know more about RSS, just drop me a line.International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
This site monitors the genocide trials in Rwanda, which have been going on for some time now. You can read documents from the trials, basic legal texts, the latest news and updates on the trials, and much more.
Finally, some fun and useful sites to peruse during your holiday:
Ready to get serious about your computer hardware? Check out Tom's Hardware Guide, which has articles and tips on all that stuff.
Here's a new service that's definitely not law or research related, but it's fun. The Music Genome Project started a while back with the idea of creating a database of music by linking its characteristics and attributes -- literally, its "genes." That project has culminated in the debut of Pandora -- just plug in the name of an artist or song you like, and Pandora will find songs that are similar and combine them into a "station." You can create as many stations as you want. The service is free for the first 10 hours of listening, then you'll have to pony up $36/year. Seriously cool.
Well, that’s it for Issue #204 – 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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