May 13, 2007

Welcome to Issue #267 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!

End Your PowerPoint Right
I hate it when I get to the end of my PowerPoint presentation, go one slide too far, and have that dreaded black screen that says "End of Presentation." I prefer that my final slide remain as the last thing my audience sees; little did I know that I have the power to make that a reality, and get away from the black screen of death. Fortunately, it's an easy fix. In PowerPoint 2002/2003, just choose Tools/Options, then click the View tab, and uncheck the box next to "End with black slide." If you're a new user of PowerPoint 2007, chose the PowerPoint options button at the bottom of the window, choose Advanced from the left side of the next panel, and on the right side look for the Slide Show section. Then you can uncheck the "End with black slide" option.

Keeping Up with the Federal Regulations
Here's a site I have been meaning to mention for awhile: it's Justia's Regulation Tracker. It allows you to search the Federal Register, and track the results you find. You can search by specific agency or across all of them, and receive PDF versions of the regulations you want to keep. You can also subscribe to an RSS feed for any search you create, so you can keep track of new rules, regulations or orders that are issued on your subject of interest. Justia always puts out such great products, and the Regulation Tracker is no exception.

Talking about Wikis for Lawyers
I had a great time yesterday on Lawyer 2 Lawyer, the Legal Talk Network show with Bob Ambrogi and J. Craig Williams. The topic was Legal Wikis, and I was pleased to join Martin Farley of the IP Daily Update wiki, and Dan Lewis of Wikia for a discussion about wikis and how they can be used in the legal profession. Wikis will play a big part in the upcoming book Dennis Kennedy and I are writing on collaboration technologies to lawyers, because we believe wikis have the potential to play a big part in how lawyers communicate with each other. As we discussed in the podcast, lawyers can use wikis in either public or private ways with very different, but nonetheless beneficial, results. Check it out.

Blawgs of the Week(s)
I was gone last week, so the list of great law-related blogs is a bit longer this issue:

We're still making our way through a series of tips on troubleshooting your computer when it starts runnnnnninnnnggggg sloooooooowwwwllly. For today: get your Windows Services in order.

When your computer starts, Windows begins a series of processes or "services," which are designed to perform specific tasks. Some of these services aren't necessary, and can be a factor in slowing down your computer's performance. Fortunately, there's an easy way to disable certain Windows services.

Which services can be disabled without problems? To learn more about this, check out these sites:

-- Controlling Windows Services and Service Accounts
-- Optimizing Windows XP Services
-- Turn Off Unnecessary Windows XP Services

Before you do this, a WARNING: there are certain Windows Services you SHOULD NOT DISABLE. DISABLING CERTAIN PROCESSES MAY PREVENT YOUR COMPUTER FROM OPERATING PROPERLY. Make sure you read the articles above to know which services can be safely disabled.

To get to Windows Services, go to My Computer, right click on the icon, and select Manage. In the left menu click the plus sign next to Services and Applications, and choose Services. In the Services window you have information on the name, status, and startup type of the service. To learn more about the service, just double click on it. To stop the service, just right click on it and choose Stop.

Next week: runaway processes!

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!

PubMed Central
This is another great page from the National Institutes of Health. PubMed Central is a free archive of hundreds of biomedical and life sciences journals. You can search the archives all at once, or browse the list of journals and search them individually. To keep up with new journals or major updates to the site, you can sign up for the mailing list, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Texas State Board of Pharmacy
For my Texas readers, here's a nice resource on pharmacists and pharmacy information. The Consumer area provides facts about prescription medicines, pharmacists and pharmacies -- all of this contains useful information. But for researchers, the sections for pharmacists and interns may have the best stuff; you can learn about licensure, rules and laws applying to pharmacists, and articles about specific pharmaceutical issues. There's even a place to file a complaint about a pharmacist, if you are so inclined.

Divorce Support Page
This is a site for consumers to find family lawyers and other family law resources. Included in the site are support forums to talk to others, a divorce blog, a listing of state divorce laws and others state resources, articles and research on divorce, and directories of divorce professionals nationwide. If you want to narrow the search to your home state, just click on it, and you can get to forums and directories tailored for your state.

Mortgage Professor's Website
This isn't the most professionally-designed page, but it's definitely regularly maintained, which is a big requirement for a useful research site. Jack Guttentag is a Professor of Finance Emeritus at the Wharton School of Business, as well as the founder of a mortgage technology company. He's providing you with articles and tutorials on various mortgage issues, including how to select a mortgage, responding to a solicitation, shopping for a mortgage online, public policy issues, mortgage calculators, and much more.

Western Criminology Review
The WCR is a forum for publication and discussion of theory, research, policy and practice in criminology and criminal justice. It's edited by two people from the University of Alaska-Anchorage, but the Western Society of Criminology comes out of Portland State University in Oregon. The site only provides links to its most recent issue, but the good news is that the articles are free. There are what look like some great current articles up there, none of which I could begin to understand.

Going on a trip and don't know what to pack? Head over to the Universal Packing List, tell it what kind of trip you're taking, and get a customized list of things to take with you.

For the game this week, I give you not one, but a whole bunch of games. Flash Games made by TonyPA features a whole bunch of fun games to play.

Well, that’s it for Issue #267 – 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.

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