Internet Legal Research Weekly -- March 9, 2008

Welcome to Issue #291 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!

No issue next week -- I'll be in Chicago for ABA TECHSHOW 2008! If you haven't registered yet and you're still interested in attending, what are you waiting for? In addition to full registration, we also have single-day passes where you can get a good taste of what the conference is all about. See you on March 23!

An easy way to get the text out of PDF documents
Cutting and pasting out of PDF documents can be a royal pain. If you're got a copy of Adobe Acrobat, you can export a PDF file to a Word document or even a plain text file, to make extraction of text less of a hassle. But if you don't have Acrobat, check out PDFTextOnline. This site will nearly instantly convert your PDF to plain text, which you can then copy and paste into other applications. A nifty, free way to work with the text in your PDF files.

Blawgs of the Week
Here are some of the great law-related blogs I featured on Inter Alia this past week:

Caught in the 'Net

Two New Features for Your Google Spreadsheets

I'm Back on a Google Docs kick this week, with two new features you might not know about. Well, not exactly new; they've been around for about a month. But new to me, anyway.

The first is the ability to create forms in Google Spreadsheets. Instead of creating a spreadsheet that other users must register with Google Docs to see and edit, you can invite people to fill out your form -- these forms can be used for sign-up sheets, surveys, or anything else you can think up. When you create a spreadsheet, instead of inviting people to a document as collaborators or viewers, simply invite them "to fill out a form." That's all there is to it.

The second feature is less revolutionary, but perhaps more helpful to those of you who use Google Spreadsheets a lot. You now have the ability to freeze up to 5 rows, or 5 columns of data -- this can make it a lot easier to navigate through a big spreadsheet and still see certain data. The Freeze Rows/Columns feature can be found under the Sort tab.

A tip for Outlook users this week. If you're using Outlook 2003, you may be sick and tired of the pale yellow background that shows on your calendar (In Outlook 2007 it's a blue color). Did you know it's easy to change this?

In either Outlook 2003 or 2007, just click Tools and select Options. On the Preferences tab, click the button Calendar Options. There in the dialog box that appears, there will be a pull-down menu next to Background Color (2003) or Default Color (2007). Choose from a good number of colors there, and check Use selected background color on all calendars, if you like. 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!

Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island
Here's a page to stick in your bookmarks, whenever you need to do some Prince Edward Island research. From this site you can view the court's schedule, meet the the justices and other members of the staff, and look at various reference materials, including rules, forms, practice notes, statutes and regulations, and other links. You can also search decisions from the PEI Supreme Court since 1997.

Ready.gov
The tagline for this site is "Prepare. Plan. Stay Informed." The goal of Ready.gov is to get you ready for a disaster or emergency, whether you're a business, family, or just a kid. You can order a disaster preparedness kit, make your plan, or learn more about what you can do to prepare for emergency events in your area. Not really a research site, but still a good set of resources to know about.

Software Patent Institute
SPI is a non-profit corporation formed to provide prior art related to software technology with the intention of improving the patent process. The database consists of descriptions of software technologies provided by IP.com, and you can search this prior art database by keyword, date, specific collection, country of origin, or other categories.

State Net ($$)
State Net delivers "vital data, legislative intelligence and in-depth reporting for people who care about the actions of government." For researchers, this site is a goldmine of information, but a lot of it will cost you. They provide legislative and regulatory reporting services, tracking bills, statutes, and regulations in all 50 states. There are also some good documents available under the Resources tab -- some for free, some not. For any of the services, you can request a free trial, to check it out before you buy.

Texas Law Help
This site is provided as a one-stop online resource for free and low-cost civil legal assistance in Texas. Directed primarily at those who are seeking legal services, the links provided take readers to links and information on a large number of legal topics, from civil rights to wills and estates. Most of the links reside on other sites, but resources combined here is impressive. For those looking for legal assistance, there's also a way to find a lawyer in a particular geographical area.

Even if you can't make it to ABA TECHSHOW 2008, you can still follow what's going on there, at the ABA TECHSHOW Buzz. This page will feature blog posts about the conference, pictures taken by our attendees, Twitter messages about the goings-on at TECHSHOW, and a list of links to sites talked about by our ABA TECHSHOW Speakers. The site won't be live until Monday or Tuesday, so I can't mention it until then -- check on Inter Alia (www.inter-alia.net) on Monday or Tuesday for the link.

Here's a game that takes a bit of thinking: in Water Supply, you have to build a water pipeline for the city, and stay within budget at the same time.

Well, that’s it for Issue #291 – 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.