Welcome to Issue #290 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!
Pardon the self-promotion in this week's issue -- I've been involved in a lot of things this past week! But each thing can benefit you, too -- hope you can take part in one or more of them!
News Update -- from the Inter Alia Weblog
The Fruits of Our Labors
I'm pleased that the book Dennis Kennedy and I wrote, The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, is now online! The book itself won't be available for a few more weeks, but you can pre-order now for a 15% discount. If you're going to ABA TECHSHOW, it should be available there -- they are planning on giving away several free copies of the book in some of the sessions as well.
Dennis and I are really pleased about how the book turned out -- we hope you like it, too.
The Digital Edge on ABA TECHSHOW
If you're not already listening to The Digital Edge podcast, you should be. Each month Jim Calloway and Sharon Nelson bring you a fresh batch of great legal technology information -- it's informative and always entertaining. Last month, Sharon and Jim had me on the show to talk about ABA TECHSHOW -- it was great fun, and the podcast ABA TECHSHOW 2008 -- Preview Edition is up for you to download or listen to online. And don't just listen to this episode -- subscribe to the podcast for future episodes.Pumping Up Your Practice with a Blog
I'm very pleased to be presenting Pumping Up Your Online Presence with a Blog in a teleconference for the ABA's GP|Solo Division -- it scheduled for next Thursday, March 6, beginning at 1:00 p.m. EST. I'll be presenting with my good friend Jim Calloway, with whom I have spoken about blogs at several seminars. We'll be talking about why blogs are important to a law practice, the best ways to get started with your own blog, and we'll even toss in some discussion about using RSS as a research tool. Hope to see you next Thursday!Blawgs of the Week -- Oh, Canada!
This week, two Canadian blogs for your consideration:
- Our next stop in our periodic tour of Canadian law blogs is Law of the Land -- Canadian Commercial Real Estate Law Blog. It's brought to you by the Real Estate Industry practice group at Lang Michener, and they're talking about such topics as condominiums, financing, leasing, title insurance, environmental issues, and more.
- This site isn't technically a "blawg," although it's certainly a law-related blog. Work it Out is "a solution-focused approach to goal attainment," and it's published by Allan Revich of Toronto, Canada. He's active in the Toronto ADR community, and he's discussing conflict management and negotiation on his blog, with an emphasis on workplace issues.
Caught in the 'Net
Anybody using Google Docs out there? If you're not, you're really missing out on a great way to easily collaborate with others on documents over the Internet. For those of you using Google Docs, here are a few nifty tips and downloads that I mentioned this past week on Inter Alia:
-- For you Power Google Docs users out there, here's a nifty tool: the Documents List Uploader is a utility that lets you upload multiple documents from your computer up to Google Docs. If you want to go straight to the download, click here. Once you've installed it, all you have to do is drag and drop Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents to the Uploader, and they'll automatically be added to your Google Docs account.
-- The best part about using Google Docs is the ability to share documents with others, so you can all work on the same document at the same time. But in earlier versions of Google Docs, to share a document you'd have to do it with each separate document, which can be a pain. Now Google has made it easier to share multiple documents with others, with just a few mouse clicks. On the main Google Docs page, just select all the documents you want to share, then click the Share button. An Invitation window will pop up, and multiple invitations will go out to your collaborators. Easy!
The gDocs Bar is a Firefox extension that adds an easy-to-use sidebar displaying all of your Google Docs. Once it's installed, you can view your documents in several different ways -- by document type, according to which folder they are in, or you can search for a document using keywords. If you spend a lot of time using Google Docs, this can be a really useful tool.
Help Desk
Here's a tip for the Excel users out there. If you do a lot of data entry in spreadsheets, you'll notice that when you press ENTER, your cursor moves down to the next row. If you work more in a left-to-right environment, and want the cursor to move to the right instead of down, it's easy to change that. Here's how:
In Excel 2003: Click Tools, and then Options. Click the Edit tab, and underneath Move Selection after Enter, click on the pull-down menu next to Direction and select Right. Click OK.
In Excel 2007: Click the Office button in the upper left corner, and select the Excel Options at the bottom right of the window that appears. In the next window, select Advanced from the left menu. The first option is After Pressing Enter, move selection -- click on the pull down menu and select Right. Click OK.
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
Lupus Foundation of America
Lupus is a chronic inflammatory disease that can affect various parts of the body, especially the skin, joints, blood, and kidneys. The Lupus Foundation site provides information for anyone interested in the disease -- patients, family members, researchers, physicians, and others. Some of the best stuff is found under the Resources tab (publications, patient and family resources, helpful links, etc.) and the Newsroom (including reporter's resources, legislative updates). There's also a "Lupus Community" with message boards, web chat, an Ask the Experts feature, and more.Omgili
I've mentioned this sites in speeches before, and I really love it. Omgili is a search engine for discussion forums -- it crawls over 100,000 boards, forums, and other discussion-based forums to see what people are talking about. I have used this site to search for dirt on expert witnesses -- just plug in their name to see if they are talking about something online. But you can also use it to tap into people's personal experiences, get solutions to problems (including your tech support issues!), and hear other ideas and opinions on just about any topic.Australian Constitution
This page is just something those of you who conduct Australian legal research should bookmark for regular reference. It's simply a basic page of links to the various Chapters and parts of the Australian Constitution, maintained on the Parliament of Australia's website. That's it -- that's all there is to it.Pension Protection Act of 2006
Here's another page dedicated to a specific law, but this site is much more detailed than the Constitution above. Here you'll find all you need on the Pension Protection Act -- the law itself, links to related regulations, IRS regulations, PBGC regulations, the background of the law, information on speeches and testimony, news releases, and other guidance. This is great comprehensive coverage of a single set of laws.Same-Sex Marriage: A Selective Bibliography of the Legal Literature
Another very simple site, this one from the Rutgers Law School Library. But it's a great bibliography of information on the subject of same-sex marriage. Some of the resources have links, some of them don't. But you'll find titles or links on ALR annotations, Web-based resources, books, articles both opposing and supporting same-sex marriage, articles and resources from selected U.S. and foreign jurisdictions, as well as international aspects of the issue.
Finally, some fun and useful sites to play around with this week:
With PortableApps you can carry your favorite computer programs along with your bookmarks, settings, email, and more. All you need is this program and a USB drive.
Valo is an odd but addicting game -- use your mouse to eliminate the blue boxes, but stay away from the red ones!
Well, that’s it for Issue #290 – 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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