INTERNET LEGAL
RESEARCH WEEKLY
July 5, 2008
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #303 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!
I'm back! I decided to take a few weeks off -- two of them for vacation -- but now that it's July it's time to get back to work. Enjoy!
News Update -- from the Inter Alia Weblog
The only news I have to offer is the best of the....
Blawgs of the Month
Here are a few of the great law-related weblogs I featured on Inter Alia during the month of June:
- Here's an interesting niche blog -- the Climate Law Update is "your source for the most up-to-date news relating to climate change and renewable energy." It's published by the worldwide firm Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner.
- Virtually Blind discusses virtual law and legal issues that impact virtual worlds. It's brought to you by Benjamin Duranske, a lawyer whose last physical world law job was in San Francisco. He founded the Second Life Bar Association, and works with several groups who are trying to establish independent judicial systems.
- Uber-firm K&L Gates has another blog -- this one is the Construction Law Blog, featuring a discussion on legal issues, news and regulations relating to the construction industry. They're mostly providing summaries of construction law cases from a number of states.
- John Phillips has practiced labor and employment law for over 33 years with the Atlanta/Chattanooga/Nashville firm of Miller & Martin. His blog, The Word on Employment Law, discusses legal issues affecting the workplace, with a little bit on politics and HR thrown in.
- Emma Wood is a law library technician in Vancouver -- she does research, provides current awareness services, and builds databases to help her firm better manage its knowledge. She's also the author of Ballad in Plain E, where she writes about some of the great information she finds.
- The Green Patent Blog occupies a nifty niche -- it covers intellectual property issues in clean technology. Your blogger-in-residence is Eric Lane, a patent attorney at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego. He's discussing patent issues as they might apply to biofuels, energy storage, hybrid vehicles, solar power, and other clean technology issues.
- Erik Mazzone is the Director of the Center for Practice Management at the North Carolina Bar Association. At his blog, Law Practice Matters, he's talking about the business side of running a law practice: marketing, management, technology and finance.
Caught in the 'Net
Acrobat Takes One Giant Step for Collaboration
Wow -- Adobe has slowly but surely been making advances in adapting its tools for collaboration purposes, but in June they took one giant leap into the collaboration space. With the debut of the new Acrobat.com, Adobe is putting all of its collaboration tools in one convenient, very pretty place. All of these services were previously available -- just not all on one page. Here's what you get:
The only complaint I have about the layout of these various services is that none of them have a navigation menu that allows me to travel to any of the other services without going back to the home page. Hopefully Adobe will solve that in future revisions of the product. I also expect Adobe to roll out some type of subscription pricing for higher levels of service in the future -- more storage space, more documents, for a couple of bucks a month.
All in all, this is a great development, and I look forward to seeing where Adobe goes from here.
Help Desk
We are *still* working our way through a multi-part series on computer security, and this week we're talking about your home (or perhaps small office) network. Many of you are probably using wireless routers at home or in your office -- but how many of you can say that no one can break into or use your wireless connection? Here are a few basic tips to keep unwanted users off your network.
-- Change the default -- nearly all routers come pre-configured with Admin as the username, and either no password, or just "password" as the password. All hackers know this. Change these defaults, so people on the network can't take over as the Admin.
-- Stop broadcasting -- your router broadcasts your SSID (the "service set identifier, if you're interested), or network name, to make it easier for people to find. If you turn off the broadcast (through the admin control panel), people won't be able to see the network. It won't keep out the pros, but it should stop your freeloading neighbors from poaching the wireless connection.
-- Use a MAC -- not the ones from Apple, or even Burger King. Every router has a MAC (media access control) address. You can configure this control to allow access only to those devices you specify. Again, this won't stop a seasoned hacker, but every little bit helps.
-- Encrypt your connection -- your router will either support WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) or WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup), which encrypts your wireless connection, so that only users with the key can access your network.
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
Her Majesty's Court Service
Her Majesty's Court Service provides administration and support for most of the courts in the United Kingdom. This site provides a lot of court information, including dockets for court hearings, a court finder with details on the location and hours of each court, access to helpful forms and leaflets, a nice set of news links, and more.UNdata
The United Nations goes Web 2.0 with this site, which provides access to UN databases, searching over 55 million records. When you search the database, you get several options -- you can preview the information, download the data in XML or spreadsheet format, or explore the dataset further. The search tool also allows you to filter the results by category. You'll also find a glossary of terms, a wiki, and profiles for the countries of the world.American Academy of Oral Medicine
The AAOM's goal is to foster excellence in education, research, and patient care in the field of oral medicine. As with most member association sites, a lot of information is members-only. But the home page alone has links to some great patient information, with PDF files on such topics as dry mouth, tooth grinding, and a whole bunch of other conditions too delicate (or too gross) to mention in this newsletter. Check out the link to the American Board of Oral Medicine, which contains accreditation standards and other information on board-certified oral medicine practitioners.American FactFinder
Another factfinding site this week, but this one is limited to the U.S. Provided by the Census Bureau, the American FactFinder is called "Your source for population, housing, economic, and geographic data." And boy, does this site deliver on that promise. There's a population finder, fact sheets on numerous topics, and statistics on people, housing, and business and government. You can also download the data for use on your own computer.South Carolina Archives & History
http://www.archive-it.org/collections/858 (A-L)
http://www.archive-it.org/collections/857 (M-Z)
http://www.archive-it.org/collections/296 (Miscellaneous Sites)A few years ago, the Internet Archive introduced Archive-It, a service which allows institutions to build and preserve collections of digital content, without the need for technical expertise or hosting facilities. South Carolina has taken advantage of this service, and has set up its Archives and History online through the 3 links above. Each collection searches a separate set of archived websites from South Carolina -- just enter your search terms, and your results will show you pages which have been permanently archived. This means the content may no longer be current -- but it's a fantastic way of getting to historic information that may no longer be available or regularly maintained online.
Finally, a few fun sites to start off your week:
Having trouble making a difficult decision? Go to Ind.ecisions and roll the dice. Choose from 2, 3, or 6 options, and the dice will make your decision for you. No reason here, just complete randomness.
In Knuckleheads, you move through the game by swinging one head over the other, while hitting (and avoiding) stuff.
Well, that’s it for Issue #303 – 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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