INTERNET LEGAL
RESEARCH WEEKLY
July 8, 2007
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #273 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!
News Update -- from the Inter Alia Weblog
Making your email address less friendly to spammers
Here's an interesting way to avoid putting your email address out there on the Internet: with Contactify you actually create a URL that you give to other people. When they go to that web page, they can enter your email address and their message to you, then enter the security code to ensure they aren't a spammer. It seems like an awful lot of trouble to get a message to somebody, and I'll be surprised if people actually use it. But it seems like a good way to reduce spam.Blawgs of the Week
Here's a selection of some of the best law-related blogs I covered this past week on Inter Alia:
- The Drug and Device Law Blog is published by lawyers from two different firms: James Beck is with Dechert in Philadelphia, and Mark Hermann is with Jones Day in Cleveland. Together they are providing their "personal views of various topics that arise in the defense of pharmaceutical and medical device product liability litigation."
- It's arguable that Professor Stephen Bainbridge is one of the hardest-working legal bloggers; for some time he maintained a number of weblogs on various topics. Now the UCLA law professor has combined them all into one site at ProfessorBainbridge.com -- there he's writing about law, business and economics, politics, religion, culture, food and wine, and photography.
- Brian Cuban and Angel Reyes are attorneys in my own backyard of Dallas. Their self-titled Brian Cuban & Angel Reyes Blog feature posts not just on trial law but also on a number of topics: business and money, immigration and citizenship, Dallas news, real estate and investments, politics, and more.
- Here's a nifty international law blog: French-Law.net presents, as you might expect, French law -- but in English. It's edited by Nicolas Jondet, a lawyer and Ph.D. candidate in copyright law at the Edinburgh School of Law. The blog "provides news updates in English on recent developments in French Law, focusing on Intellectual Property, Technology and Medical Law." Great resource.
Help Desk
Last week we assigned a keyboard shortcut to the enormously helpful Paste Special function in Word. This week, I want to introduce a bunch more keyboard shortcuts that you should know:
F2 = Rename the selected file (in Windows) or edit the selected cell (in Excel)
F5 = Refresh your Web browser window
CTRL+ESC = Open the Start Menu
CTRL+Mouse Wheel = zooms in and out or enlarges/reduces text size
Windows+L = Password lock your computer
Windows+R = Open the Run dialog box
Windows+M or Windows+D = Minimizes all open windows
Windows+E = Launches Windows Explorer
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
Glaucoma Research Foundation
As you might expect, the GRF funds innovative research to find a cure for glaucoma, a disease can cause blindness by damaging the optic nerve. For researchers, there are four main areas you want to visit: About Glaucoma, Living with Glaucoma, Treatment, and Research. There are also free publications available, as well as Gleams, a free email newsletter. One of the best things about this site is that you can alter the font size of the page as well as the contrast, to more easily view the site -- just what I would expect from a site dedicated to helping those with eye disease.American Legal Ethics Library
I know I have mentioned this site once or twice before in the newsletter or elsewhere online, but Cornell's ethics site continues to be one of the best resources for ethics information on the Internet. The layout and content provided is pretty basic: you get access to ethics codes and rules nationwide, as well as commentary on the laws governing lawyers, on a state-by-state basis.Minnesota Maps Online
All right, this site may be of interest only to my Minnesota readers (do I have any Minnesota readers?), but I generally find map sites very cool, and this one is no exception. You'll find original land survey maps, plat books and atlases, for counties and cities throughout the state. Images of the maps are available, and you can zoom in on them to see more detail. You can also keep a collection of your favorite maps, for future reference.NewspaperArchive ($$)
One thing I hate about searching for news is that when that news gets too old, news sites often place them into archives -- to get them, you'll have to register at each news site. NewspaperArchive is the largest historical newspaper database online, containing more than 66 million newspaper pages from 1759 to the present. To get access to these pages, however, you'll have to be a subscriber -- an annual membership is only $8.25/month, and it's more for shorter subscription periods. If you're doing a lot of historical news search, this might be a good site to join.Registry of U.S. Government Publication Digitization Projects
Slowly but surely, the U.S. government is digitizing most of its publications. This is the place to search or browse for them. You can search by Project Title, Institution Name, or General Subject Area -- these areas include Arts & Humanities, Business & Economy, Legal & Regulatory, and Technology & Applied Sciences, among others. Each page will give you a lot of information on the digitization project, but more importantly a link to the documents themselves.
Finally, some fun and useful sites to start out your week:
Here's a fascinating 90-second map animation depicting who has ruled in the Middle East for the past 5,000 years, provided by MapsOfWar
For wasting time for hours and hours, there's nothing like tossing cards into a hat. Now you can do it virtually, with Card Toss.
Well, that’s it for Issue #273 – 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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