INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
January 3, 2010
Tom Mighell

Welcome to Issue #353 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!

Happy New Year! Big things coming for Inter Alia in 2010 - stay tuned!

And away we go.....

News Update -- from the Inter Alia Weblog

Create Your Own Podcast Feeds
While listening to this week's episode of my favorite podcast, This Week in Google, I learned about a cool new tool called Huffduffer. This nifty tool addresses a need I have had for some time: the ability to create your own podcast feed out of any audio file you find on the Internet. I subscribe to a lot of different podcasts, and I love that new podcasts are automatically downloaded to my computer as they are available. However, occasionally I'll find an audio interview or random podcast that doesn't have an RSS feed, so I can't program it to download to my PC. Huffduffer was designed for those random files. After you register, you'll get a bookmarklet for your browser - when you see an audio file you'd like to keep, just "Huffduff it," and the file will get added to a special RSS feed. Then all you need to do is subscribe to that feed in iTunes or whatever music player you use, and the files will automatically download to your computer. Here's another way to use it - create a Huffduff feed of audio files you want others to hear. Just fill your feed with audio for others, and post the link to the RSS feed on your website. A really intriguing tool - check it out.

2009: A Look Back
'Tis the season - for every blog and podcast to feature a "2009 in Review" or "A Look ahead at 2010" entry or episode. So who are we at The Kennedy-Mighell Report to miss out on the fun? In our most recent podcast, Looking Back: Legal Technology in 2009, Dennis Kennedy and I talk about some of the biggest legal technology topics of the year. Although the economy undoubtedly had an effect on law firm technology in 2009, there were plenty of other tech developments that were not affected by the economic crisis. We had a great time recording this podcast, so give it a listen. Next week, we'll continue the trend of predictability and take a look at what's ahead in 2010.

Blawgs of the Week
Here are a few of the great law-related blogs I featured on Inter Alia over the past few weeks:

Here's a beautiful-looking blog, from Canada. The Litigator Live features "Excellence in Commercial Litigation and Competition Law." Just as the blog says, you'll find posts on different aspects of commercial litigation in Canada. It's published by Michael Osborne, Kenneth Dekker, and Meredith Hayward of the Toronto firm of Affleck Greene McMurtry.

I always love talking about electronic discovery blogs here, and I get to do that this week. The Rule 26 Blog is brought to you by BlankL+T, a law firm that also employs engineers and technicians to provide legal, technical, forensic, and logistical resources to their clients. They're covering a wide range of e-discovery topics on their blog.

The Legal Beat is Lawline's companion blog. They've assembled news articles, updates, and posts on topics such as attorney malpractice, business development skills, entrepreneurship, technology, and more.

Big firm Fox Rothschild is sure comfortable with blogs - they debut a couple of new blogs each year. It's a shame that not all of them live for very long. Their latest is Privacy Compliance and Data Security, which features information on data breach prevention and the appropriate response. It's published by Mark McCreary, Amy Purcell, and Scott Vernick, all of the firm's Philadelphia office.

Help Desk

Word 2003 provides helpful information in the Status Bar about where your cursor happens to be in a particular document - the Column number, line number, and even how far (in inches) you are from the margin. In Word 2007, however, this feature is not turned on by default. But it's still available, if you know how to get to it.

Fortunately, getting to it is dead simple. Just right-click on the Status Bar, and you'll get a full list of available items. Click the items you want to enable - Vertical page position gives you the [At: 2"] number, and you can also check Line number and Column.

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!


Updates from Twitter

Here are the articles and resources I found interesting on Twitter this week:

Legally Relevant – Sites on the Internet

Deep Web Research 2010
Marcus Zillman is an expert on Internet research, and he's published this article on searching the Deep Web over at LLRX, one of my favorite research sites. This guide is designed to give you a better understanding of the Deep Web, as well as dozens of links to Deep Web search tools. There are some great search engines, databases, and search services available in this article/list.

Indiana Courts
I love it when state web sites try to bring their services into the 21st Century, and the Indiana Courts are making a go of it. You can access case records by County, as well as view webcasts of appeals before the Indiana Court of Appeals and Supreme Court. You'll also find a number of other online services, including attorney registration, child support calculator, clerk's online appellate docket, tax court opinions, and more.

American Nephrology Nurses Association
The mission of ANNA is to advance nephrology nursing practice and positively influence outcomes for individuals with kidney disease through advocacy, scholarship, and excellence. This is a BUSY site, with tons of resources, although most are for Association members. But researchers have a lot to explore here, too. Take a look at the Health Policy section, which features position statements on various issues, and the Resources page, which offers publications, fact sheets, historical documents, and access to the Nephrology Nursing Journal.

Weekly Epidemiological Record
This site is maintained by the World Health Organization, and provides "a rapid and accurate dissemination of epidemiological information on cases and outbreaks of diseases under the International Health Regulations and on other communicable diseases of public health importance, including emerging or re-emerging infections." The reports are in PDF format, and it's interesting that you can't subscribe to automatically receive these reports. You can subscribe to a listserv that providers the WER's table of contents, as well as other short epidemiological bulletins.

Lawday
Lawday calls itself "North America's best resource for leading lawyers, arbitrators, and legal experts." It's a newsletter that's distributed every weekday morning to over 25,000 lawyers across North America. The articles are available for free online, but sadly, there's no RSS feed to which users can subscribe. You can receive the newsletter by email, though, through a free subscription. You can also search for leading lawyers, firms, arbitrators and experts through an easy-to-use form. Most of what you'll find, though, is in Canada.

Finally, some fun and useful sites to help start off your week:

Start off the new year with some new tech tools, by reading Mike Arrington's fifth annual List of the Tech Products I Love and Use Every Day.

Use Boxmen is an oddly-named game, and it's not easy - you navigate your boxman across a screen, with the help of other, disposable boxmen. If you're stumped, there's a video to help.

Well, that’s it for Issue #353 – 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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For the latest legal technology, e-Discovery and other great links, visit the Tom Mighell Linkstream.

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Questions? New websites? Just want to talk? Send me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net.