INTERNET LEGAL
RESEARCH WEEKLY
October 2, 2005
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #208 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....
Nationwide Amber Alerts via RSS
Many states offer their own online Amber Alert services, including an RSS feed to keep track of the latest developments. Now, Project Safekids offers a page with RSS feeds for both Amber Alerts and Sex Offender Information.Take a Meme-o
How often do you visit Memeorandum for the latest take on the news? Well, that's not often enough. This site is one of my favorite visits during the day; it takes important news articles throughout the day, and links directly to bloggers who are discussing them. All in one place, you get the story and the commentary, from all points of view. And here's a feature you may not have noticed. Click on the Preferences link and select Show Link Search. Now, you'll be able to check Google Blog Search, Bloglines, Technorati, and IceRocket for even more sites that link to the particular article. Unfortunately, this feature's only available if you visit the site, so if you subscribe to the RSS feed, you're out of luck.Snipping Your Web Research
I have long used NetSnippets as a way to capture information from the Web for research or other reasons. Now the company has come up with a similar, but simpler program for saving and sharing research. eSnips allows you to snip all or part of a Web page and save it to an online repository -- you get 1GB of storage space for free. You download the eSnips toolbar, which allows you to easily clip the Web page. You can keep your research private, or share it with friends, clients, or whoever. I have only used it a bit, but it looks like a pretty cool way to save research. My only gripe is that eSnips only comes with a toolbar for Internet Explorer, not Firefox -- hopefully they'll catch up soon. For a more complete review, check out Mary Ellen Bates' A New Approach to Sharing Web Research.Get the most out of Gmail
Have you finally taken advantage of the open signup for Gmail? Well, what are you waiting for? And while you're doing that, check out GmailTips.com, which shows you how to supercharge your Gmail experience. It's currently up to 46 tips, and I'm sure more are on the way.Blawgs of the Week
It wouldn't be a normal week without a new crop of law-related weblogs for you to peruse. First up, Freedom Now is the blog of Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University. He reports "from the legal side of the free software movement." Jacqueline Dowd is a poverty lawyer (and law professor) in Orlando, Florida, and she's commenting on "social justice issues, news and court decisions...with a few other random thoughts thrown in here and there" at The 13th Juror. The Law Professor Blog Network blogs just keep on a-comin' -- this time it's the Corporate Compliance Law Prof Blog, which is published by Paul E. McGreal, the Director of the Corporate Compliance Center and Harry and Helen Hutchens Research Professor at South Texas College of Law. Here's another of the great Sheppard Mullin blogs: the Corporate and Securities Law Blog, talking about....well, corporate and securities law. Here's a blog with a limited shelf-life: Grotian Moment: The Saddam Hussein Trial Blog is being hosted by Case School of Law, and "features key documents related to the Iraqi Special Tribunal, answers to frequently asked questions, and expert debate and public commentary on the major issues and developments related to the trials of Saddam Hussein and other former Iraqi leaders." Marc Mayerson is an insurance coverage attorney with Spriggs and Hollingsworth in D.C., and he's writing about the law of insurance, the insurance of business, and the business of insurance at Insurance Scrawl. Finally, a few months ago I mentioned the WorkersCompensation.com web site in the newsletter; what I didn't mention was that the site has its own CompBlog, featuring news and information on workers compensation law around the country.Last week I started a series on "degunking" your computer -- five tips to clean up a lot of the junk that accumulates on your computer. This week's tip:
Consolidate your media files -- now that we have multi-gigabyte-sized hard drives, it's easy to let music files, pictures, and video sit around just taking up space. Here are a few ways to slim things down:
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
U.S Department of Justice Antitrust Division
It's always good to come back to sites we've visited before, to see if anything new has appeared. The Antitrust home page is full of news headlines, so you'll have to use the menu on the left to get to the good stuff. The Overview provides a nice basic description of the workings of the division, but it's the Public Documents and Antitrust Case Filings that will likely prove most useful. The Public Documents provide appellate briefs, policy documents and guidelines, speeches, and more; the case filings feature selected case files from 1994 to the present.United Nations Research Guide
Some of the best Internet research guides have been compiled by university libraries; this site from Mississippi State is an example. The library is a UN depository library, and this guide is designed to assist researchers in gaining access to UN materials within the library. The links are divided into sections: UN System of Organizations, Background Information and History, Current Awareness, Indexes and Databases, Directories, Statistical Information, and Research Guides.Medscape
Okay, maybe I have reviewed this site before. But it's just so darned useful, how could I not review it again? The home page is very busy, but pretty well organized -- at the top are links to Specialty Home Pages, in areas from Allergy and Clinical Immunology to Women's Health. Each page contains links to news, journals, continuing education, and more. At the bottom of the page is another huge list of links to the Medscape Resource Centers, with collections of key medical content. This is a must-have medical information site.WHO Mortality Database
Released in January 2005, this database provides mortality data officially reported by World Health Organization member states. You can download the complete data files if you're that anal retentive, or you can just browse the tables. You'll find the number of registered deaths, information on infant deaths, and more. The tables are chock full of information, and date back to around 1979. The data only dates forward to around 2001, depending on the country.ABA Center for Continuing Legal Education
Here's another place to find great CLE programs, presented by the American Bar Association. You can browse the calendar of ABA-sponsored conferences, which are provided in person, or as tele- or video-conferences. But that's not all -- you'll also find resources here on individual state MCLE requirements, e-mail updates, and much more.
Finally, some fun and useful sites to start of your week:
Want to play the toughest word game on the Web? Then check out Etymologic.
If you were wondering when Liberation Day in Eritrea falls (it's May 24), take a look at the U.S. Department of State Local Holidays directory.
Well, that’s it for Issue #208 – 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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