Internet Legal Research Weekly -- February 24, 2008

Welcome to Issue #289 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!

Only 2 weeks left until ABA TECHSHOW! If you haven't registered yet, what are you waiting for? For legal professionals interested in learning how to better use technology in their work, ABA TECHSHOW can't be beat. If you're a law student (or you know law students who are interested), you can attend ALL of ABA TECHSHOW for free! Details at www.techshow.com.

Creating chat rooms on the fly
As readers of this newsletter may know, Dennis Kennedy and I have written a book on collaboration technologies for lawyers -- The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together will discuss not only collaboration strategies but also the tools that will help you work with others. We'll also be creating an online companion for our book, with a constantly-updated directory of the collaboration technologies we find. This week I'll mention one of those sites.

ChatMaker makes it dead simple to hold a chat with anyone, instantly. Just create a name for the chat room, then send the URL for that room to your participants, and voila! You're chatting with others. A great, free way to instantly communicate with others, without everyone having to download an instant messaging software program.

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

Another tip for Word users this week. Let's say in your document you have a small paragraph that gets split between two pages -- it just doesn't look right, 2-3 lines on one page, 2-3 lines on the other page. Here's an easy way to make sure you keep those paragraphs from breaking between pages.

-- Either right click in the paragraph, or select a group of paragraphs and then right-click your mouse.

-- Choose Paragraph from the pop-up menu.

-- In the dialog box, select Line and Page Breaks.

-- Check the box next to Keep Lines Together.

-- Click OK, and you're done.

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!

FDA Heart Health Online
Here's a great site from the Food & Drug Administration, dedicated to providing information about the products used to prevent, diagnose, and treat cardiovascular disease. In addition to recently updated Heart Health News, you'll find links to such topics as The Healthy Heart, Conditions & Diseases, Risk Factors, Diagnosis, Treatments, Healthy Lifestyles, as well as links to other helpful sites on heart health.

LibrarySpot
The Spot Network sites were really popular a number of years back, and they haven't gone away. LibrarySpot continues to provide access to useful library sites and resources on the Internet. You'll find pages with links to different types of libraries -- academic, film, government, K-12, law, medical, state and public, and even presidential libraries. There's a Reading Room with links to book, newspaper and magazine sites, and a Reference Desk providing access to hundreds of useful sites -- almanacs, calculators, calendars, encyclopedias, music, public records, quotations, and more.

Animal Legal & Historical Web Center
Michigan State University College of Law maintains this site, with over 800 full text cases and over 1,000 U.S. statutes on animal law. You can browse these cases and laws by state, topic, species, or country. There's also a podcast, as well as a list of frequently asked questions on dog issues. I really like this site -- it's a comprehensive, regularly-updated resource on a niche but important subject.

National Crime Prevention Council
The NCPC is the home to McGruff, the Crime Dog. He and the rest of the NCPC are devoted to becoming the nation's leader in helping people keep themselves, their families, and their communities safe from crime. There's a wealth of crime prevention information available here -- publications, programs, and training are available to visitors. The site also provides resources by age group, so there's something for kids, teens, parents, seniors, and law enforcement.

North Dakota State Court Records
Occasionally I'll mention very basic pages from various state courts, that still provide good information. Here's one that will be useful if you ever need to do research on a North Dakota state court case. The site provides case information for criminal, traffic, and civil cases, and in some areas municipal court case data is available. Just plug in as much information as you have, and you'll get a simple page of the parties involved, their attorneys, and a listing of events and case documents. Unfortunately, documents are not available online.

Have I mentioned Blockles before? If I have, sorry -- but it's a fun game! Sure, it's just Tetris -- but it's Speed Tetris against other people. I stink at this game.

Well, that’s it for Issue #289 – 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.