August 19, 2007

Welcome to Issue #276 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!

Clean Up Your Firefox Menus
One of the best things about the Firefox browser is its ability to have "Add-Ons" that greatly enhance the functionality of the product. One of the *worst* things about Firefox is that these add-ons often deposit items on menus, whether the main menus or the one that comes up when you right-click your mouse -- sometimes your right-click menu can get pretty long and unwieldy. Sometimes when you uninstall the add-on it removes the menu entry, but sometimes it doesn't. That's where another add-on, the Menu Editor, comes in. Once you have installed the Menu Editor, just go back to Tools, then Add-Ons, then select Menu Editor from the list and click Options. There you'll see all of the items that appear on every menu that shows up in Firefox. Just click the ones you want to delete, and they're history.

Liven up your Google Calendar with Other People's Schedules
I don't really use online calendars -- I have a great calendar setup at work, and it's accessible to me wherever I go. I just don't need an online equivalent. But many of you are using online calendars, and Google Calendar is very popular. One of the best features of the Google Calendar is the ability to include other calendars within your own. To add calendars of people you know, just click the Add button in the My Calendars box on the left, and select "Add a Friend's Calendar." You'll then have to ask that person to Share their calendar with you. If you don't have any friends to share calendars, Google will still help you out. Just click Settings, then the Calendars link, and then Add Calendar. Google has created a number of different calendars that will import directly into yours -- tv schedules, holidays, Orbitz travel deals, and even the campaign events of four of the presidential candidates. Just click Add to Calendar, and your own calendar is suddenly a lot more populated.

Tsk, tsk....another redaction tragedy
It's been awhile since a government agency improperly redacted a confidential document, allowing the press and other readers to easily see "behind" the redaction to the text below. Maybe they've learned their lesson, we thought -- maybe everyone in the government got the memo that just placing a black box on top of text doesn't really redact the information below it. Well, we were wrong. The Federal Trade Commission inadvertently released dozens of Whole Foods Market's trade secrets in public court documents, as part of their opposition to the grocer's proposed purchase of a competitor. In the original version of the documents, the redacted text was really just "electronically shaded black," making it very simple to search, copy and paste the text underneath. Maybe the FTC hasn't read the memo yet...

Blawgs of the Week
Here are a few of the great law-related blogs I featured on Inter Alia this past week.

Do you often find yourself repeatedly inserting the same large blocks of text into your documents? Why not set up a system so you don't have to retype all that information every time? There are a number of ways to do this -- use a document assembly program, create a macro, develop a template, etc. Today we'll talk about creating AutoText entries.

In Word 2003, type the text that you want Word to "memorize," and then select it. Choose Insert, then AutoText, then New, and then type in a name for your entry into the dialog box. It should be at least four characters long. Click OK. Now, when you're in a document and you want to insert that block of AutoText, just start typing the name of the entry you just created, when the ScreenTip shows up, click Enter, and voila! Auto text.

Word 2007 handles it a bit differently. Create your text, highlight it, and then click on the Insert ribbon. Click Quick Parts, then Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery. A larger dialog box will appear -- fill it out with at least the name of your entry. From there, it works the same as Word 2003. You can also add the AutoText icon to your quick launch toolbar in Word 2007, to make it much easier to create AutoText entries -- if you're interested in learning how to do that, drop me a line.

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!

American Nursing Association
NursingWorld is a big site, designed primarily for nurses and those in the nursing profession. The legal research can find a lot of useful information here, however -- there are resources on credentialing of nurses, patient safety, ethics, documentation, health care policy, and government affairs, among other things. Visitors can also see past issues of the Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, but current issues are available only to members. There's also a great selection of nursing links, with hundreds of other sites on nursing issues.

Trademark Trial and Appeal Board Inquiry System
Part of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Website, this is the place to view the proceeding files of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. You can search by the proceeding/application number, or by other words that might appear in the record -- mark, party, correspondent, etc. When you get to your search results, you can get contact information on the parties involved, as well as PDF copies of all the documents currently on file in the case. The names of the parties to the trademark disputes are also hyperlinked, so you can easily get a listing of other trademark cases in which the party is involved.

AccessPlus ($$)
If you're in Illinois or need information from that area, then AccessPlus may be a resource you can use. A subscription to the service gives you access to court dockets, lawsuits, judgments, liens, post-judgment actions, bankruptcies, and court hearing information. The database also offers Illinois and Wisconsin jury verdicts, Cook County UCCs, and biographies of Illinois judges. To subscribe, you'll have to contact LawBulletin -- prices aren't available on the website.

Airsafe.com
To look at this site, you'd think it was a little fishy -- it's not well-designed, and it has a lot of ads and links to non-aviation related sites. But just click on some of the links, and you'll find relatively up-to-date information on airline safety, aviation accidents, airport security, and more. There are also tips on Fear of Flying, Personal Safety, Airline Safety Tips, Fatal Airline Events, and other issues.

ASIL Electronic Resource Guide
ASIL Stands for the American Society of International Law, and its ERG has been published online since 1997. The guide is divided up into various international law chapters, including Human Rights, Commercial Arbitration, Criminal Law, Economic Law, Environmental Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Treaties. These chapters provide access to tons of links on these issues, as well as information describing each of the sites.

Check out your reflexes and reaction time by shooting tranquilizer darts to stop darting sheep at this BBC Science & Nature site.

Fly Swatter is HARD. Try to swat the flies as fast and as accurately as you can.

Well, that’s it for Issue #276 – 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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