April 1, 2007

Welcome to Issue #263 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!

Whew! ABA TECHSHOW was GREAT last week! To those of you who were there, THANK YOU for helping to make TECHSHOW 2007 one of the best on record. And if you're kicking yourself for not making it this year, save the date for next year -- ABA TECHSHOW 2008 takes place March 13-15, 2008, at the Chicago Hilton. In the meantime, keep up at the TECHSHOW Blog, available at www.techshow.com.

All A-Twitter
I really, really want to like Twitter -- and I don't know why. It's a site that allows you to instantly update anyone on what you happen to be doing, right now. I'm sure that no one is really interested in knowing when I'm watching a basketball game or reading a book, but there sure are a lot of people using this tool, including John Edwards. Then I saw this article on Eight Ways Twitter is Used Professionally, and I sat up a bit straighter and took notice. Maybe Twitter is good for using at technology conferences, as a good way to keep up with my friends at the conference.

Blawgs of the Week
Here are a few of the great law-related weblogs I covered on Inter Alia the past two weeks:

A new way of looking at backup

In the past I have talked about services like Mozy and Carbonite for backing up your personal information. I use Mozy, and I really love it. But what if you don't want to trust your (or someone else's) personal data to an online service? There are certainly legitimate concerns over what would happen if one of these companies either suffered a security breach or went out of business altogether.

That's where CrashPlan hopes to excel. CrashPlan allows you to back up your personal data to any computer -- another computer you own, another employee's laptop, your mom's computer -- any computer. The service is actually just software, so you don't have to pay a monthly fee -- just $20 (or $60 for the pro version). Non-legal example: what if you wanted to share your family photos with your parents, but knew they wouldn't take advantage of sites like Flickr -- set up CrashPlan to backup your photos, and Mom and Dad will regularly get new photos delivered directly to their hard drive. Give it a look.

Is your PC running slow? Not sure what's causing it to drag down? It could be one of any number of things, and sometimes you have to try several fixes before you identify the cause. For the next 8-10 issues, I'd like to discuss those things that could be slowing down your PC, and how to deal with them.

First up is the one you all know about -- spyware and viruses. In addition to causing security problems for your computer, they can also significantly slow down your computer. It's relatively easy to keep viruses and spyware off your PC, but you've got to be vigilant. It's not just enough to have anti-virus and anti-spyware software installed; you have to regularly update the definitions of each program, to make sure you're protected against the latest threats.

I'm currently using ZoneAlarm's antivirus program, which is provided as part of the ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite -- it works great, and automatically updates itself once a week. If you're looking for something in the price range of *free*, AVG is one of the better free antivirus tools available.

With antispyware apps, you also have a choice between free and paid versions. SpyBot and Ad-Aware are two of the best-known free products, and Windows Defender is a free Microsoft product that actually works well. My favorite antispyware product, however, will set you back $30 -- it's Spy Sweeper, and it's a fantastic program.

Once you scan your program for spyware or viruses, you may find something that your program cannot fix. The major antivirus/spyware companies may have special fixes for your problem at their sites -- or just go to your favorite search engine, enter the name of the spyware/virus that's affecting you along with "removal," and you're likely to get several results with instructions on how to safely remove the bad item.

Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses
AWHONN is the leading professional association for nurses who specialize in the care of women and newborns. Like most association sites, the resources here are intended primarily for members. However, there are a number of education and practice resources available, with information on fetal heart monitoring, cardiovascular health, prematurity, care of women over 65, and more. There are also a number of publications on similar topics, and a terrific page with state and federal legislation news on issues affecting health care for women and newborns.

ABA Commission on Domestic Violence
You don't have to be a member of the ABA to take advantage of the great information on domestic violence available here. The site provides statistics, safety tips, CLE programming, and tips and strategies for handling domestic violence cases. Attorneys can subscribe to the CDVLAW listserv to discuss issues that arise in this type of law. You'll also find resources categorized by practice area, as well as information for law school students and faculty.

Free Trade Area of the Americas
The FTAA is the site that documents the efforts of the Americas to create a single free trade area. As such, you'll find a good deal of trade information here as it deals with this part of the world. Press Communiques, Ministerial Declarations, Negotiating Groups, and a Trade and Tariff Database -- it's all here.

BrainMaps
What a cool site. BrainMaps is a high-resolution digital brain atlas that's based on over 15 million megapixels of scanned images. There are brain maps for primates (including homo sapiens), rodents, carnivores, and birds, with over 50 TERABYTES of brain image data accessible online. There are also downloadable desktop applications so you can view and analyze images offline. And for your RSS users out there, a feed is available to update you on new additions to the site.

United Nations Research Guide
I *love* the Globalex research guides, and this one is no exception. This is actually an updated version, to help you find the United Nation's internal resource trails. It's authored by Linda Tashbook, a law librarian at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. It provides great ways to find someone working in the UN, investigate an issue the UN is working on, research United Nations treaties, get trained on searching UN databases, and much more. As usual, Globalex provides a great reference for doing research on the Internet.

In Red, you try to fend of the meteors that are attacking you - how long can you survive?

And Jeu Chiant is all in french, but you don't really need to know french to play it. You try to balance one ball on a beam, while hitting another ball up in the air. A little like chewing gum and rubbing your tummy at the same time, only much harder.

Well, that’s it for Issue #263 – 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.

Subscription Information: If you want to keep on receiving issues of the Internet Legal Research Weekly, send me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net, or visit Inter Alia and sign up there! If you no longer want to receive the newsletter, just click on the link at the bottom of this newsletter.

Archives: Miss an issue? You can read previous issues of the Internet Legal Research Weekly in the Archives.

Questions? New websites? Just want to talk? Send me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net.