Internet Legal Research Weekly -- June 1, 2008

Welcome to Issue #302 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 rehearsals for our annual Bar None show. This year our show is titled "Sleazy Todd: The Demon Partner of Main Street," and we have some really funny songs and skits. If you're in the Dallas area (or plan to be), why don't you come and see us? It's a lot of fun, and you'll be supporting a great cause -- diversity scholarships at SMU's Dedman School of Law. To buy tickets ($25), just visit www.barnoneshow.com and click on the Tickets link.

Pre-Fabricated Pipes
If you use RSS to keep up with the latest in news, technology, and other issues, you might agree with me that the ultimate use of RSS is the ability to create your own, dedicated RSS feeds -- otherwise, you're stuck receiving the news headlines that others think are important. There are a few tools out there that allow you to create your own RSS feed, including the early Kebberfegg, where all you have to do is plug in a few search terms and RSS feeds are generated for you instantly. But then Yahoo! Pipes came along, which totally blew me away. Pipes is an awesome RSS-creation tool; you can mash together multiple feeds, filter those feeds so that only news items with certain words are delivered, filter out duplicate feeds, and oh, so much more. The problem with Pipes is that it's too good -- there are just so many options for creating an RSS feed, the casual or less advanced RSS user is sure to get confused. I sure do. That's why it's a great feature of Pipes that you can use a Pipe that anyone has created -- in fact, there's a way to Browse the Pipes, to find one that suits your interest. But Read/Write Web has made it even easier for us; they have put together The Ultimate Yahoo! Pipes Creation List, with some great mashup feeds that you can use in your own newsreader.

Blawgs of the Week
Here are a few of the great law-related weblogs featured this past week on Inter Alia:

We still have a few weeks left of our series on computer security. This week, let's take a different tack and discuss how you can protect your kids on the Internet. Actually, these suggestions are less about security, and more about good common sense:

-- Use a common area -- always place the computer in an area where you can monitor their use. Or at least where they *think* you are watching them.

-- Enforce time limits -- it's not a good idea for the kids to stay on the computer at all hours. Set a time limit, and enforce it. If you have Vista on your computer, you can use the User Accounts to set a timer, and many parental control software products include timers.

-- Limit game time as well -- most of the game systems also have timers built in -- PS3 and XBox now include family timers or restriction levels.

-- Be aware of new software -- even if you're using parental control software, kids can still figure out what you're using and download other browsers or software to get around the controls. Buy controls that work system-wide -- an even better idea is to consistently monitor the software that's installed on your computer. Just go to Control Panel, then Add/Remove programs, and you'll see a listing of the programs that are currently installed.

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!

South African Journal on Human Rights
This journal has been publishing for 24 years, and it claims to be the leading South African public law journal. The site offers full-text copies of most of the articles in each issue, dating back to 1995. The site isn't pretty, but it provides the information you need.

Washington State Digital Archives
I mentioned the Texas Archives last week, now we're moving on to Washington. The State Archive site here is pretty simple -- a good listing of the various collections offered in the Archives, including Birth, Census, Marriage and Death Records, information on Frontier Justice, Institutions, Land and Property, as well as records on Naturalization, Oaths of Office, Photographs, UCC, Power of Attorney, and much more.

National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys
NACBA was formed in 1992 to ensure that consumer debtors and their attorneys are heard in the halls of Congress, and to help consumer bankruptcy attorneys represent their clients more effectively. As with most association sites, most of the resources here are members-only. But there are a couple of great things here for the rest of us, including Amicus Briefs filed in selected appellate courts, a Bankruptcy Attorney Finder, Consumer Tips, and a page of Legislative and Bankruptcy News.

National Council of State Boards of Nursing
The artwork for the home page on this site takes FOREVER to show up -- kind of annoying. But the content is undeniably useful -- this organization aims to connect the various state boards of nursing on matters of common interest and concern affecting public health and welfare. There's a handy Resources section that offers publications, brochures, papers, newsletters and presentations, information on the Nurse Licensure Contract, and information on the various programs and services offered by NCSBN. Again, most of the good stuff is restricted to members, but there are still some good things for the average researcher.

ABA Juvenile Justice Committee
This ABA committee develops CLE programming for juvenile justice practitioners and develops policies to further juvenile justice reform, among other things. Check out the resources area, with links to publications and other sites that deal with juvenile justice issues. Not much to this site, but it points out to a lot of useful information.

Here's a fund site that is of marginal usefulness -- just plug in a weight into SensibleUnits.com, and they'll tell you its equivalent in real objects. For example, my dog's weight (25 pounds) equals 1.6 men's shotputs, 19 basketballs, or 6.9 average physics textbooks.

Gemmers is a fun game that's a little bit like Bejeweled, but you're competing against other people -- you try to eliminate the gems faster than the other users.

Well, that’s it for Issue #302 – 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.

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