October 23, 2005

Welcome to Issue #211 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!

Another Week, another Google Product
Have I mentioned the new Google Reader? That's probably because I'm mostly underwhelmed by it. It came out two weeks ago to not much fanfare. That's because it's a pretty simple product. It's got some slick features, but on the whole, pretty basic. If you are just getting into reading blogs and RSS feeds, this might be a good tool to start with. But it certainly doesn't have the features that FeedDemon or Bloglines boast.

You gada.be looking at this
Chris Pirillo has come up with a terrific little search tool called gada.be. It's a meta-search tool that collects results from 140 sources, and it's a snap to use. In fact, you don't even have to go to the site to start using it. Just take your query (say, Harriet Miers), and make it the URL: http://harriet.miers.gada.be. You'll instantly be taken to your results page. This tool will be especially useful for those who use mobile search; it's clean, graphics-free, and easy to use.

Gotta-Have Bookmarklets
A bookmarklet is a small application that can be stored as a bookmark in your browser, and perform additional useful functions. Check out this list of Top 10 Must-Have Bookmarklets -- even if you just use one or two of these you'll be glad you did.

A New Look for Exalead
Exalead, the French search engine, has undergone a facelift. The home page is now clean and easy to navigate. Exalead's also pushing its new one:desktop desktop search product.

Becoming an Informed.com-ed News Researcher
There's a brand (and I mean brand) new site for doing news research, and it's called Inform.com. It wants to be a one-stop news research site -- you can save your searches, create customized "Discovery Paths" for just about any topic imaginable, create your own customized news channels, and more. Two things that I'm not so sure about: 1) you can't create RSS feeds from your searches, and 2) I can't tell what news sources the site is drawing from. No matter; it's still in beta so there's plenty of time to work on these things.

Supercharge your Bloglines experience
I still think Bloglines is the best, free online aggregator on the Internet today. It's an even better aggregator when you are using these 5 Power Tips for Bloglines Users -- these are must-have tips if you're a Bloglines user.

Blawgs of the Week
As usual, here's the weekly crop of law-related weblogs for your perusal. First up: the law practice management blogs out there are among some of the most useful and interesting legal blogs out there, in my opinion. Here's one from Pat Yevics, the Law Office Management Director of the Maryland State Bar Association -- it's called Law Office Management Assistance from MSBA. Give it a look. Bloggo D'Amato is the relatively new blog of Anthony D'Amato, a professor at Northwestern Law School. Juridiconline.com is the Blawg.org of France -- it's a directory of French law-related blogs. Concurring Opinions is a group blog started by Professor Daniel Solove and joined by Kaimipono Wenger and Nathan Oman. They're focusing on technology, privacy, intellectual property, contract, property, torts, constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, literature and humanities, legal theory, sociology, and more. Patent Pod is a blog that features audio recordings of recent patent law decisions, available for download to your computer or iPod. Neat idea -- my only disappointment is that the decisions are read by a computer, and not a real human being. Christopher Goeken's Queer Law Watch is busy tracking and sharing recent cases of importance to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community. Silvia Coulter is a law firm consultant, marketing strategist, and sales expert, and she's putting her know-how out there for you at The Legal Compass.

We're finally to the end of our 5-part series on "degunking your PC." This is a favorite tip of mine -- it can really speed up your computer.

Tip #5: Clean Your Registry. Abandoned, incorrect, and corrupted entries in your Windows registry can really gum up the works. But many of you are no doubt wary of tinkering with the registry, and you would be correct in that instinct; if entries in your Registry are improperly removed, it can really mess with your system.

That's why the safest way to deal with the gunk in your Registry is by using a registry cleaner. I use two products, and both are pretty good. The first and best is jv16 PowerTools, which runs $29.95. The other product I use is Registry Mechanic, also $29.95. jv16 PowerTools is great at identifying invalid registry entries, but you still need to look at the entries to make sure that they can be safely removed; the program will give you its best guess, but if it's for a program you're still using, you may want to err on the side of caution and keep it in. On the other hand, you can create a backup of your registry first, which will allow you to go back to your original settings if you remove something by accident.

I had a bunch of questions from readers this week, but only have time to answer one: Jack wants a recommendation for a free spam filter. That's a really good question: I'm not aware of a good spam filter that's free. The programs I'm familiar with will all set you back -- not much, but still not free. So here's my recommendation: get a GMail account. The spam filter is pretty darned good, and you can forward all of your GMail to your regular e-mail account.

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!