Recently in Websites worth your time Category

This post was written anonymously: "The U.S. federal courts system has launched a brand new website called CourtWEB that provides free access to district court opinions from judges who elect to participate and make their decisions available. According to a press release from the N.D. Ohio, all opinions written by N.D. Ohio judges since January 2006 are now freely avaialable on the web site. PACER is still available for other filings in cases, as well as full dockets and documents in older matters.

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Source: Cleveland Law Library Weblog, 26 February 2010. Reproduced with permission by Kathleen Sasala.

This post was written by Tom Mighell: "I'm a bit behind in covering this site, but it's such a great idea I wanted to mention it. PDFmyURL allows you to almost instantly create a PDF from any page on the Internet. Just type in the URL of any web page, click the button, and wham! Instant PDF of that page. There are also some advanced options that allow you to format the style of the PDF - landscape orientation, header/footer, table of contents, margins, page size, and more.

One thing I really like about this tool, and one thing I'm not wild about:..."

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Source: Inter Alia, 1 February 2010, reproduced with permission of the author.

From the e-newsletter: "Are you representing a company that wants to implement a social media policy?   Attorney Doug Cornelius has been compiling social media policies from companies across the company and making them available on his site.  So far he's got 144 policies, from companies like the American Red Cross, Fairfax County, Virginia, the Smithsonian Institution, and the U.S. Navy. Great resource."

Follow this link to the site.

Source: Mighell, Tom. Internet Legal Research Weekly. Volume 11, Issue 4. 31 January 2010. Subscribe <http://lists.inter-alia.net/mailman/listinfo/inter-alia>.

This post was written by Tara Calisham: "...Check out Calendar Labs at http://www.calendarlabs.com/ .

This site contains a wide variety of free, useful calendars in several formats. You can custom make your own calendar with an online generator. There are several paper templates for calendars in weekly, monthly, and yearly formats. There are lists of holidays for several different countries and calendars for different religious holidays.

If you're looking for really different content, check out the calendar for movie releases (only updated to January at this writing, alas) or the calendar that gives general horoscope information (lucky day? Money day? Health risk?)..."

The full text and active link are available by clicking on the author's name.

Source: ResearchBuzz, 27 January 2010

© 2006-2010 ResearchBuzz, reproduced with permission of the author.

This post was written by Ernie Svenson: "Keeping up with the increasing fountain of information is a challenge for anyone.  It's especially challenging for me because I'm always adding new sources to my existing flow.  If it weren't for Google Reader (a web-based RSS reader) and NetNewsWire (its companion program that syncs to Google Reader), I'd be lost.  But the truth is, I really gravitate towards a few basic sources.  And so, as my New Years resolution to share more information, I thought I'd pass along my really key sources. 

First, let me say that RSS is an amazing technology and I wish more people would make use of it.  In fact, if you want to use an RSS reader and simply want to subscribe to everything I read (you can delete what you don't want) then download this OPML file and import it into your RSS reader.

Everyone laments the downfall (or, at least, serious downgrade) of newspapers.  I don't waste time lamenting things that are inevitable.  Newspapers (or any daily paper-based publication) face the harsh reality that printing every day, coupled with every day physical delivery, is a frighteningly expensive way to deliver information. And, if the reason you're printing every day is to cover 'breaking news,' then you're basically trying to defy gravity. Twitter is fast, free and scaling virally.  So good luck to the newspapers.  I predict that in ten years there will only be 5 national papers, and a smattering of local ones.

What will we do then?  Sad as it may seem to you, you'll be on our own.  You'll have to sift through the mass of information and latch on to the good stuff.  Wouldn't it be cool if you could subscribe to the best online feed for each topic that you were interested in?  You can.  Right now.  The future, my friends, "is here but just not evenly distributed." So, tap into the future now, and let the newspapers arrange their funerals on their own.

So, if I were building my own personal newspaper from online sources here are the feeds I'd subscribe to..."

Find out his picks and get the active links at:

Source: Ernie the Attorney, 1 January 2010

This post was written by Tara Calisham: "Don't know what to do with your free time? There's a search engine for that. Goby, available at http://www.goby.com/, aims to link you with leisure activities. It's in beta, and if its logo and home page background are any indication, it's also underwater...

Instead of a single query box, you have to tell Goby at least two of three things: what you want to do, where you want to do it, and when you want to do it....

The results show the name of the place, an image, and where the listing came from (in this case backpacker.com.) There are also additional buttons to show more info, get photos, or search for what's nearby...

Goby is a good idea, though you might have to tweak your searches a little to get what you want. I see a lot of possibilities as more APIs offer geolocation tools and services. Pictures of the First Landing State Park are great, but how about tweets from folks who have been recently or who are nearby?"

Full text and active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: ResearchBuzz, 5 January 2010

Copyright © 2006-2010 ResearchBuzz

Posted by Gary Price, Founder and Senior Editor: "One of the most impressive "freebies" on the Internet comes from ebrary. We've mentioned it before. It's officially called ebrary Discover.

Users (you don't need to have a subscription) can search and read more than 20,000 full text books online (recent titles) in a wide array of disciplines from a variety of publishers. The financial aspect only comes in to play if you want to print or save a page.

When you register for the service (it takes only a few seconds and, again, it's free), you have to place a minimum of $5 on a credit card. The money is ONLY used if you decide to print or copy a page. Each page costs a quarter to print or save. A unique payment plan for sure.

We see all of this as a win-win.

Users gain access to over 20K titles and the chance to sample some ebrary technology. ebrary gets users to learn about the company and try its technology in a practical and useful manner. It would be great if all demos could be like this..."

Full text and the active link are available at the source site listed below.

Source: ResourceShelf, 14 December 2009

From the e-newsletter: "I came across Accident Sketch http://draw.accidentsketch.com/ a few weeks ago, and it's a great potential tool for lawyers and other legal professionals. The site allows you to create a professional-looking depiction of an auto accident site, or really any other sketch you would need to make that would involve an aerial view of cars on roads, highways, and parking lots. It's got some good customization, and when you're done you can print out a copy of the sketch, from two different views. If I had one quibble with the site, I'd want the ability to save the sketch to an image file, so it could be used later during a trial presentation - unfortunately, the "Print Depiction" option will only give you a PDF document, with a Notes area to write down your version of the "incident."  An interesting tool, and did I mention it was free?

Source: Internet Legal Research Weekly by Tom Mighell. Volume 10, Issue 26. 29 November 2009. Subscribe <http://lists.inter-alia.net/mailman/listinfo/inter-alia>.

Posted by Connie Crosby: "Still doubtful about video as a marketing vehicle? A few recent milestones from YouTube, the leading site for video distribution, be it entertainment-related or professional:

• as of October, YouTube is now up to over a billion views each day
• as of May, at least 20 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute
• Increased high definition (HD) resolution is coming to YouTube starting this week.  1080p HD will be the new maximum resolution, up from the previous 720p HD. This is in response to the increasing resolution of consumer cameras.  See the blog post for comparative examples.  

For more discussion about law firm marketing and YouTube, check out this March 2009 blog post by Larry Bodine."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Slaw.ca, 16 November 2009

Posted by Joe Hodnicki: "The Department of Justice has redesigned it's website, Justice.gov, "in an effort to increase openness and transparency in government. Utilizing a variety of online tools, we will be able to share news and information, not just on our own web site, but through popular social networks Twitter, YouTube and MySpace and Facebook." The to-date infrequently posted-to Justice Blog will be "a hub of information for the Department."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Law Librarian Blog, 5 October 2009