INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
January 4, 2009
Tom Mighell

Welcome to Issue #324 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!

Wow -- it's 2009 already! I hope all of you had a relaxing and joyous holiday. Now let's started with the 10th volume of this newsletter....

And away we go.....

News Update -- from the Inter Alia Weblog

Blawgs of the Week
Here's a selection of some of the great law-related blogs featured at Inter Alia over the past 2 weeks:

  • Here's an interesting niche blog from the Brooks Pierce firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Newsroom Law Blog is a group effort, examining legal issues facing broadcast and print newsrooms.
  • There have been a real burst of "green law" blogs coming out lately, and Green Energy and Development Law is one of the latest. It's published by Brad Mondschein of the Hartford office of Pullman and Comley. He's discussing topics like sustainable development, green building requirements, energy conservation, and alternative energy.
  • One of my good legal technology buddies, Tom O'Connor, has been blogging along for awhile at the docNative Paradigm Blog. Tom's an e-Discovery and computerized litigation support system whiz, and I'm so glad he's finally taking his expertise to the blogosphere. Check out his posts on electronically stored information, predictions for 2009, and reports from e-Discovery conferences.
  • The PatentFools are Gene Quinn and John White, patent attorneys and educators who believe themselves to be the funniest patent attorneys alive. (I am in no position to disagree on this.) The point of the blog is "to try and identify wrongs, articulate positions, influence decision-makers and have some fun saving the world for generations to come." Sounds like fun!
  • For The Defense is the blog of the Defense Research Institute. There are a good number of authors on this blog -- at least 14 -- and they're discussing a wide range of legal as well as political issues, including climate change, commercial litigation, employment law, intellectual property, professional liability, and more. One great feature of this blog is that each author has his or her own dedicated RSS feed, so you can narrow your reading if you prefer a particular author's voice.

Help Desk

I've got tons -- TONS! -- of tips on using Office 2007. So for the next couple of weeks I'll be providing tips on Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. But even if you don't use Office 2007, don't worry -- most of these tips can also be used in Office 2003 programs, as well. For the next few weeks, we'll cover some basic Outlook tips:

-- You probably already know how to create mailing or distribution lists in Outlook, but if you don't, it's really simple. Just go to File, then New, then Distribution List. Give a name to your list, then press Select Members (or Add New, for external email addresses). Choose the people you want on your distribution list, and click OK to finalize your list. Now, when you want to send an email to that set of people, just type in the name of the group. Note: Outlook usually won't keep your group's name in the To: line -- instead, it will substitute that name with the addresses of everyone on the list. If you have a big list, consider adding your group name to the BCC line -- then those email addresses will not appear on the email that goes out.

-- With the new year, it's a great idea to start out with a slimmed-down inbox. You can do that easily by cleaning out those emails with really large attachments. Just go to Tools, then Advanced Find, and then More Choices. In the Size (Kilobytes) drop-down menu, select greater than, then enter a value -- let's try 1,000 (for 1MB). Then click Find Now. You'll get a listing of those messages with attachments over 1MB in size. You can then delete those messages, or save the files to folders where they won't slow your email down so much.

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!

This Week at Fios

The Fios webcasts will start up again at the end of January. I'll keep you posted!

Legally Relevant – Sites on the Internet

NIH Radio
The National Institutes of Health provide regular "audio reports" on the latest medical news. These reports are quite short -- only about 2-3 minutes each -- and cover topics like teen marijuana use, alternative medicine, sickle cell disease, ADHD, lung cancer, and more. Users of RSS can subscribe to the recordings, to receive regular notice of new recordings.

ServiceMembers.gov
This government page is designed for the members of our armed forces, to let them know about specific laws that protect their civil rights. It describes the particular laws (USERRA, SCRA, UOCAVA) and provides instructions on filing a claim. There's also a listing of cases filed with complaints, decrees, and settlement agreements. You can also review transcripts of speeches, testimony and other statements made on this topic.

ScienceBlogs
With all the great blogs out there, it's sometimes hard to find the ones that provide the best information. That's why I like ScienceBlogs -- it attempts to highlight the best science-related bloggers and continue their respective discussions on this site. They've chosen 75 bloggers based upon their originality, insight, talent and dedication, and made them available in one place for you. You can browse the site for the latest science information, or you can subscribe to an RSS feed -- they have a separate feed for each individual blogger, or you can subscribe to a particular "channel" -- they include Life Science, Physical Science, Environment, Humanities and Social Science, Education and Careers, Politics, Medicine & Health, Brain & Behavior, and Technology. This is a great site!

OAS Intellectual Property Rights Resources
This page from the Organization of American States puts the Intellectual Property laws from 34 countries at your fingertips. Just click on one of the country flags, and you'll get a list of resources for IP laws from that country. Some have links to other sites, but some just have references for the text version. A good bookmarkable site for IP statutory law.

Living with Diabetes
This site is maintained by David Mendosa, a freelance medical writer and consultant specializing in Diabetes. He's been collecting resources on diabetes for over 13 years, and organizing them here for anyone to access. He doesn't provide medical advice, but he does have some good tips for anyone dealing with diabetes. His Diabetes Directory has over 800 substantive resources about diabetes, and every week he writes two new articles on the latest developments. The site is pretty basic in terms of design, but the content is powerful.

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

Have an mp3 that's just too quiet? If you don't have the audio software to adjust the levels yourself, check out vloud. Upload an mp3 to this free audio tool and it will adjust the sound for you.

Zilch is a dice game that wasn't very nice to me the first time I played it -- it's an addictive scoring game if you keep up with it.

Well, that’s it for Issue #324 – 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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Questions? New websites? Just want to talk? Send me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net.