May 27, 2007

Welcome to Issue #269 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!

It's that time of year again -- Bar None! Here in Dallas, the Dallas Bar Association puts on a show for charity -- we have lawyers, judges, and others in the legal community singing, dancing, and generally making fools of ourselves, all for a good cause. The proceeds of our show benefit a diversity scholarship at SMU's Dedman School of Law, and over the past 21 years we have raised more than 1.1 million dollars! This year, our show is titled Plaintiffs of the Caribbean: At Writs' End, and it promises to be terrific. The show will run June 13-16 at the Greer Garson Theatre on the SMU campus. Tickets and sponsorship information is available at www.barnoneshow.com.

I'll be out of action the next two weeks -- in Indiana next week speaking at their great Solo and Small Firm Conference, and the week after that in Bar None rehearsals. See you on June 16!

Upcoming Legal Research Seminars
I'm pleased to be a featured presenter for the National Business Institute's conference "Find it Free and Fast on the Net: Strategies for Legal Research on the Web." It will be presented twice -- on Tuesday, June 19 in Dallas, and Wednesday, June 20 in Fort Worth. I'll be speaking on such topics as How to Search Like a Pro, Finding Practice Tools, and Locating Persons and Finding Background Information. To learn more about the seminar and register, download the Conference Brochure (PDF File).

Collaborating with PowerPoint
Now that we have tools like Google Docs and Spreadsheets and Zoho to work on and collaborate on documents and spreadsheets over the Internet, we've got two-thirds of the Office suite covered. What can we do about PowerPoint? SlideAware wants to help with that. With SlideAware you can do a number of things with your PowerPoint files. You can upload a file for the review and comment of others. If you want to give an online seminar or presentation, you can invite viewers to SlideAware, where they can all view the presentation within their browsers, without the need to download new software. Finally, you can store PowerPoint files on the SlideAware site, or embed presentations on your website, blog or wiki. The free account allows you to do some of these things; for $12/month you have access to all of these great features.

Digital Dictation for the Web 2.0 Set
Have you Jotted yet? I'm way behind on mentioning this great site, but it's worth a look if you ever find yourself away from your computer, e-mail, or other note-taking device. Jott allows you to send text or email messages to yourself, all by dialing a phone number and leaving a voice message. Want to send a message to a group of people? No sweat -- with Jott you can leave a message for all of them at the same time -- and you can specify whether they receive your message by text, email, or voice mail. Interesting concept -- and did I mention it's free?

Blawgs of the Week
Here are just a few of the law-related weblogs I featured on Inter Alia this past week:

We are nearing the end of a series of tips on troubleshooting a slow computer. This week we'll talk about something mentioned here before: disk fragmentation. As computer files and programs are added, deleted, and changed on your hard drive, the contents of those files can become spread across different sectors in disparate areas of the disk. When files get fragmented, your computer can slow down, because it's working harder to put the pieces of the files together. Fortunately, a fragmented disk is easy to remedy.

Windows has its own defrag utility. To access it, just click Start, then All Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and select Disk Defragmenter. Then click either Analyze, or Defragment to get things started.

If you'd like something a bit more powerful, try a third-party defragmentation tool. I use PerfectDisk by Raxco -- it does a great job of defragmenting, and I can even set it to defrag on a schedule, to keep my system in tip-top running order.

Next week, our last slow-down tip: the dreaded background applications!

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!

FedWorld.gov
This is an odd little site, provided by the National Technical Information Service, a program of the U.S. Department of Commerce. It serves as a gateway to government information -- but there's really only 3 things you can search here. You can look for government jobs, or search the NTIS database for scientific, technical, and engineering information. You can also search for Supreme Court decisions, but only those from 1937-1975 -- what? Finally, there's a link here to the place you really should be going -- USASearch.gov, the better search tool for government information.

Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences
The ACJS is an international association established to foster professional and scholarly activities in the field of criminal justice. Like most of these association sites, the information here is mostly for members, but the non-member can still find a few gems by digging around a little. You can read issues of ACJS Today a quarterly newsletter of the Academy. There's also a listing of criminal justice education jobs available, and links to other criminal justice education sites.

American College of Surgeons
All right, it's a little unfair that I mention two professional associations in one issue -- sorry! But the ACS site also provides a page with loads of public information, including news from the College, a publications and services catalog, a search function for members of the College, information on how to find a qualified surgeon, patient choice, and more. You'll also find links to surgical specialty sites and other surgical sites of interest.

Fresh Logic Atlas
This atlas is powered by Microsoft Virtual Earth, and it's a lot like Google Earth. You can find addresses or places of interest around the world, and get directions to those places -- then you can email the link to those directions to yourself or others. It also allows you to find events, gas prices, movies, people, traffic, and wifi hotspots, among other things. A nifty little atlas.

BitLaw
Provided by the Minneapolis law firm of Beck and Tysver. BitLaw is a great resource, with over 1,800 pages on patent, copyright, trademark, and Internet legal issues. You can search the whole resource, of browse by topic area. There are also resources for primary sources, software patents, and forms and contracts.

Interested in seeing how Windows icons have changed over time? Do you care? If you do, check out the Windows Icon Design Knowledge base, to see how far we've come.

Connect the dots and try to make more boxes than the computer in the game Dots.

Well, that’s it for Issue #269 – 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.

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