Internet Legal Research Weekly -- August 3, 2008

Welcome to Issue #307 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 attending the ABA Annual Meeting in New York City. See you in two weeks!

A New Wiki for Lawyers
Oklahoma attorney Brad Smith has created a new wiki for lawyers to use, and it looks promising. LegalWikiPro is, like Wikipedia, a free collaborative encyclopedia that anyone can edit -- but this one is for lawyers. Brad wants to provide real content for real lawyers, but to that he needs your help -- after all, a wiki depends on the collective knowledge of the community to be successful. The wiki is divided into three main areas -- Federal, State and General. To see how powerful a wiki of this type can be, check out the Oklahoma pages -- there's a lot of great, free information for lawyers there. The rest of the wiki is just waiting for you to get started -- so go on, start editing!

Free Chapter from Our Collaboration Book
I've been remiss in mentioning this, but the great folks at TechnoLawyer posted an excerpt from the book Dennis Kennedy and I wrote, The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together. The excerpt they chose to reproduce is from Chapter 17, simply titled SharePoint. It gives what we think is a good basic overview of the collaboration tool, for lawyers who might not know a lot about SharePoint. While you're at the TechnoLawyer blog, make sure you sign up for their free newsletter. They consistently deliver fantastic legal technology news all week long -- not just from experts, but also reviews from lawyers who are using these tools in their practice. It's a don't-miss subscription.

Blawg of the Week
Just one law-related blog to mention this week -- and it's a great niche blog, this time from Washington attorney John Waldo. His blog, Hearing Loss Law & Wash-CAP, is "answering the special legal needs of the hard of hearing and deaf." Wash-CAP, in case you didn't know (I didn't), is the Washington State Communication Access Project. Waldo is talking about such issues as the ADA and insurance coverage for hearing loss.

I'm on a Firefox kick the next few weeks, providing you with handy tips on using the great Firefox browser. This week, short cuts:

-- To begin typing into the address bar, don't use your mouse, just type CTRL+L or ALT+D.

-- You also don't need to type .com, .net or .org when entering the URL. After you type the domain (for example, nytimes), just hit CTRL+Enter for .com, CTRL+Shift+Enter for .org, and Shift+Enter for .net.

-- If you use the Search Bar in Firefox, just type CTRL+K to start typing in that box. The search bar allows you to query multiple search engines -- to cycle through them, just press CTRL+Up or Down Arrow to move between the different search engines.

-- To find words on a web page, press CTRL+F, or just the / sign to activate the QuickFind tool.

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

American Academy of Otolaryngology -- Head and Neck Surgery
As with most of the association sites I mention here, the AAO reserves most of its good content for the roughly 12,000 otolaryngologists it serves. But have no fear -- still lots of good stuff for the lay researcher. In the Community section you can search for an ENT across the country, and there are some good resources under the Practice & Advocacy and Health Information sections.

Alberta Courts
If you ever have the need to access information on the courts of Alberta, this is the place to go. There are separate areas devoted to the Court of Appeal, Court of Queen's Bench, Provincial Court, and Court Services. Each area provides access to Announcements, Articling, E-Filing, Judgments, and Publications and Forms, Subscription Services, and more. There's even an RSS feeds so you can receive regular announcements from the courts.

Fuel Cell Patents/Applications
This page, which is provided by the firm Thompson Hine, serves a very specific group of people: those interested in fuel cells. It's an archived database of United States patents and published patent applications regarding fuel cells. The index is organized by patent owner -- just click on one, and you'll get a listing of patents that particular entity owns. The patent links just take you to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Pretty basic, but the value here is that you don't have to search through the USPTO site for these patents -- they're right there waiting for you.

Iowa State Patrol Crash Reports
Here's an interesting way to display crash reports -- just keep them on your website for 15 days. That's what Iowa is doing -- just select an Iowa county, and you'll get a listing of all vehicular accidents within the past 15 days -- and full reports on them, too. If you want to research earlier accident reports, you'll have to contact the Iowa State Patrol yourself.

KnowX
The smart Internet searcher has a subscription to at least one public records site. KnowX is a site I used frequently when it first came out, and it's still a good choice. You can purchase a single day pass, or get an annual subscription for around $500. You'll get access to a large number of public records -- property ownership (homes, aircraft, boats, cars), marriage/divorce/death records, business and corporate records, people searching, licensing information, liens/judgments/lawsuits, and I'm just getting started. KnowX is a pretty good service at a reasonable price.

Cuil (pronounced "cool") is a new search engine that debuted this week, and it has been amazingly over-publicized. It aims to be a Google-killer, because of the huge number of pages it indexes -- it also claims to search by relevance, not popularity (like Google). The engine opened to mixed reviews -- try it for yourself.

Music Catch is fascinating -- use your mouse to "catch" the shapes generated by the music, and get points in the process.

Well, that’s it for Issue #307 – 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

Now available: The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell

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