An IP blawg I should not have overlooked

Earlier this week, I mentioned that I had posted my article, IP Blogs: Pocket Parts for a Digital Age. Of course, there is nothing like writing about a topic to make you realize what you left out. One such IP blog worth mentioning is Law Under the Microscope, written by Cecelia A. Gassner and devoted to legal and regulatory developments related to the life sciences bioagriculture and nanotechnology. Like two other great IP blogs -- The Invent Blog and Patent Pending (which I wrote about in October) -- Law Under the Microscope originates from the beautiful city of Boise, Idaho.

A tool to quickly search IP case filings

Want to know whether a company has been sued for patent, trademark or copyright infringement? Want to track new IP case filings in a particular jurisdiction? Who's Suing Whom is a simple interface for searching information about IP cases filed in U.S. district courts for at least the last five years. A free basic search reveals the name, case number, court and filing date of matching cases. For $25, you can purchase the full docket report for the case. I have not tested this other than to run a few free searches, but it could prove to be handy for quick reference. The site is sponsored by InterLingua, a translation service provider specializing in IP cases.

New Web site targets online child abuse

A Web site launched yesterday as part of a collaborative effort by law enforcement agencies on three continents is intended to serve as a global resource for helping to prevent child abuse online. Virtual Global Taskforce, created through a partnership between law enforcement agencies and industry in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and Interpol, aims to become a “one-stop shop” for information about child protection online. It will provide pointers to information on how children can use the Internet safely and to support agencies that can advise and support victims of abuse.

A blog about New Jersey divorce law

Charles C. Abut, a New Jersey divorce lawyer and mediator, recently launched a blog, appropriately titled New Jersey Divorce Mediation, Litigation & Arbitration. Charlie focuses on summarizing recent family law cases from New Jersey and recent developments from other states of interest to family lawyers generally.

Blawgers' lunch at LegalTech

With a bevy of blawgers threatening to descend upon LegalTech New York Monday, Monica Bay of The Common Scold has taken the lead in organizing a blawyers' dutch treat lunch Tuesday, Feb. 1, at noon. If you are interested in joining us, please get in touch with Monica or me.

Contracts research site readies search upgrade

One of the most valuable but little-known legal resources on the Internet is the CORI K-Base, an archive of more than 25,000 contracts, 22,000 of them searchable, maintained by the Contracting and Organizations Research Initiative of the University of Missouri. Today, CORI announced that the K-Base will soon be even better. On Feb. 16, CORI will unveil a new interface and search engine that will offer full-text searches by key word as well as contract type, company name, filing date and industry code. In fact, anyone who wants to attend the unveiling and see it demonstrated is welcome, the announcement said. It will be held at 4:30 p.m. at the Adam's Mark Hotel in St. Louis, Mo.

For anyone unfamiliar with CORI, here is what I wrote about it in the latest edition of my book, The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web:

"Operating on the premise that research on contracting is stymied by a lack of available contracts, the CORI project at the University of Missouri, Columbia, is working to create a digital collection of contracts and make them available over the Internet. The collection so far contains more than 10,000 contracts, drawn primarily from filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR database, where company filings frequently include contracts of interest to investors. CORI downloads, extracts and categorizes these contracts and makes them available via a full text search and retrieval system. Users can search the library by full text or according to contract type. Contracts available so far encompass mergers and acquisitions, employment, finance, joint ventures, leases, licenses, purchases, joint ventures, agriculture and underwriting. In addition to the digital contracts, CORI has a collection of hard copy contracts, including HMO-physician agreements, sports stadium leases, container shipping contracts, and more. These contracts are described at the site and can be ordered by e-mail."

Everything you ever wanted to know about your PC

Think you know everything about your computer? Find out with the free Belarc Advisor. This neat little utility builds a detailed profile of all installed hardware and software on your computer and displays it in your Web browser. It provides details down to the serial number of your main circuit board and the secondary cache of your processor. Best of all, it identifies every piece of software installed on your computer and shows you the directory where it is located. Try it and find out what you don't know about your PC.

Making IP funny, one post at a time

In writing my post Monday about wacky patents, I came across a blog I had not seen before but wish I had: IP Funny. Devoted to "intellectual property humor," it features items such as the breast pump attachment for a household vacuum cleaner and a method for automatically detecting pornographic images. The source of this IP tomfoolery chooses to remain anonymous -- for obvious reasons, perhaps -- but rumor has it the writers are "serious" blawgers who post items here they don't dare post on their other blogs.

Law professor blogs adds another two

I wrote in October about the launch of Law Professor Blogs, a network of blogs written by law professors, and I noted more recently the network's launch of Law Librarian Blog.

Now there are another two: Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog, edited by Gerry W. Beyer, professor at St. Mary's University School of Law, and Media Law Prof Blog, edited by Christine A. Corcos, associate professor of law at Louisiana State University.

They join the other law professor blogs:

• AntitrustProf Blog
• ContractsProf Blog
• CrimProf Blog
• Health Law Prof Blog
• LaborProf Blog
• Sentencing Law & Policy Blog
• TaxProf Blog
• White Collar Crime Prof Blog

And at Yahoo, video search

As Google released its TV search, Yahoo released a video search of its own. It does not search TV programs, but it does search for video on the Web. It searches for files in the standard video formats -- AVI, MPEG, Quicktime, Windows Media and Real. Results display as a still image. Click the image to launch the video.

It struck me that this could be useful for finding video to use as demonstrative evidence. I tried searching "heart valve," and found a number of videos illustrating various functions of the heart. Next I tried "accident reconstruction," and again found a number of results. Of course, you can also use it to search for movie trailers or even some of the Web's more unseemly offerings.

Google makes TV searchable

Google today released Google Video, a service that enables you to search the content of television programs from PBS, the NBA, Fox News and C-SPAN, among others. "What Google did for the web, Google Video aims to do for television," Google co-founder Larry Page said in a press release.

Still in development, this beta release of Google Video searches the closed captioning content of a number of TV programs that Google began indexing in December 2004. Entering a query such as "sutherland" will return a list of relevant television programs with still images and text excerpts from the exact point in the program where the search phrase was spoken. So far, there is no video playback, but Page said that the company is working with content owners to add enhancements such as playback.

For each TV program containing text that matches your search, Google Video provides:

• Preview page. Displays up to five still video captures and five short text segments from the program.
• Upcoming episodes. Shows when the program will be aired next.
• Search within the show. Enables searching for specific words within a given program.
• Program details. Offers program and episode information including channel, date and time.
• Change location. Set your zip code in the preferences box, and it finds the next time and channel where the program will air in your locale.

As this searchable archive of TV programming grows, it could become an invaluable tool for lawyers. Use it, for example, to search for references to a particular company or product, or to pinpoint historical information about news events or weather conditions for a particular date.

Wacky patents, or the search for a better shovel

It must have been waking to this view of my driveway that led me in search of a better snow shovel.

With that my goal, I managed to end up at Delphion's Gallery of Obscure Patents, where I found the potentially useful method and apparatus for directing a stream of pressurized fluid at a location forward of a wheel to improve the traction of the same and the absolutely irrelevant sun shield for automobiles, but no shovel.

Not to be defeated, I began looking for other sites with obscure patents. I found myself at the IPWatchdog Museum of Obscure Patents. As a parent, I was happy to find here the protective mouth shield. But nothing here would simplify my shoveling.

Next came Patently Silly, where I came upon this handy system for sensing whether an object struck in a collision is a pedestrian. But not even the archives had a shovel.

I tried Wacky Patent of the Month, but all it had was an absolutely useless life raft.

My last hope was Weird and Wonderful Patents, where I fleetingly wondered whether there might be some use to this combined plow and gun.

Are there other repositories of obscure or wacky patents where I should look? Please let me know, before I have to shovel.

IP Blogs: Pocket parts for a digital age

I have posted the full text of my recent column, IP Blogs: Pocket Parts for a Digital Age. Here is a sample:

For lawyers in many fields, blogs are becoming the new pocket part. With their immediacy and focus, they provide up-to-the-minute news and analysis of judicial, legislative and regulatory developments.

More than in any other area of law, this is the case for intellectual property. Dozens of blogs now track developments in patent, trademark and copyright law. Written by practicing lawyers, full-time academics and even non-lawyers, they discuss events virtually as they happen, often adding their unique perspective and analysis.

Herewith is a survey of selected IP blogs. The listing is alphabetical, not by ranking. (For the sake of space, omitted are those that focus on domain name rights and governance.)

Read more.

Wi-Fi users: Beware the evil twin

Researchers at Cranfield University are warning that "evil twin" hot spots, networks set up by hackers to resemble legitimate Wi-Fi hot spots, present the latest security threat to Web users.

DOJ's hidden library of legal research

The U.S. Department of Justice has developed an extensive and extremely useful library of Internet legal research materials, including a research blog, according to Michael Ravnitzky, a lawyer and former colleague of mine at American Lawyer Media. But while DOJ created the library at taxpayer expense, it keeps it closed to public view.

Ravnitzky, who was director of database and computer-assisted reporting at ALM and earlier was senior FOIA analyst at APBnews.com, has obtained print-outs from the library and compiled a list of many of its topical guides. He writes:

"The Department of Justice Library Staff have in recent years created a number of extremely useful guides for the use of DOJ attorneys. These guides are posted on an internal DOJ employees only web site called The Virtual Library. The guides would be quite useful to other attorneys and researchers. Unfortunately, the guides, which were prepared at taxpayer expense, have until now not been available to the public who paid for them."

He suggests that anyone who wants copies of any of the guides should request them in writing, mentioning the Freedom of Information Act, to Patricia D. Harris, FOIA/PA Mail Referral Unit, Department of Justice, Room 1070, National Place Building, Washington, DC 20530-0001. "In the letter, you should agree to pay fees if necessary," he advises. "You can ask them to let you know if fees will exceed some particular amount, such as $30."

Here are some of the guides Ravnitzky found:

• Guide to DOJ Briefs on WestLaw
• DOJ Brief Bank on WestLaw
• Apprendi Issues Guide
• Civil Monographs
• Environmental, Energy and Natural Resources Law on the Web
• Federal Income Taxation Research
• Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations Research Guide
• Finding Expert Witnesses
• Finding Company Information
• Guide to Corporation Records by State
• Guide to Court Resources (Federal, State, Local, International)
• Guide to State Legal Ethics Resources
• International and Foreign Legal Research Center
• Law of War Pathfinder
• Legal Research on the Web
• Legislative History Research: Focus on Environmental Statutes and Collections
• Legislative Research Center
• Medical and Professional Licensure Information by State
• Presidential Resources
• Public Records Resources Online
• Researching Expert Witnesses Online
• Resources for Finding, Investigating and Using Expert Witnesses
• State Legal Resource Center
• Terrorism Websites and Research Sources
• Treaties Research
  

In addition to these guides, Ravnitzky says, the Virtual Library includes a research Weblog written by Justice Libraries staff. You can get a printout of the last year's worth of blog entries -- about 16 pages -- by making a request.

You can get more information from Ravnitzky by e-mailing him at mikerav-at-mindspring.com.

NSF funds study of ODR in labor relations

Online dispute resolution has proved successful in e-commerce and IP disputes, but can it be adapted to help resolve labor-management disputes? Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are about to delve into that question.

Under a three-year, $700,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, faculty from two UMass research centers, the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution and the Electronic Enterprise Institute, will work with the National Mediaton Board, an independent federal agency that works to help resolve labor relations disputes in the railroad and airline industries, to investigate the use of technology and ODR to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the process.

“We're testing the theory of technology as a fourth party,” says EEI co-director Norman K. Sondheimer, who is collaborating on the project with Leon Osterweil, a computer scientist and EEI co-director, and Ethan Katsh, professor of legal studies and CITDR director. “If we can really make it work and verify that such systems work for the people in government who will have to use them, then it opens the door for other federal agencies to adopt online dispute resolution.”

Searchable version of Sarbanes-Oxley

I wrote recently about the free, searchable versions of the Intelligence Reform Act, The Patriot Act and other government documents offered for download by askSam. This week, they added the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in a version that alows you to search or browse the act's text.

An argument for more creative copyright protection

It is a question much debated: How do copyright law and digital media square up? In Send 'free' to work: Creative Commons brings copyrights into the digital age, Rocky Mountain News columnist Linda Seebach surveys Creative Commons and other alternatives to statutory copyright and challenges intellectual property owners "to make 'free' work for them."

Tune in today to Harvard conference on blogging and ethics

Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society is host today and tomorrow to Blogging, Journalism & Credibility, an invitation-only conference of bloggers, reporters and academics focusing on ethics and credibility in blogging. The program is being webcast, supposedly, although it is not working for me just now. Alternatively, you can follow a transcription via IRC. Here are the schedule and a list of participants. And here is what the Wall Street Journal has to say about the conference.

News flash: Lawyers take work home

Did we need a survey to tell us this?

"Despite long hours at the office, many attorneys continue to burn the midnight oil once they leave, according to a new survey. Attorneys polled said they give themselves homework assignments an average of nine days per month, or more than twice a week."

An 'amazing' legislative tracking service

beSpacific calls it "an amazing legislative tracking service," and for good reason. Developed by Joshua Tauberer, a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, GovTrack recently won the grand prize in the Technorati Developer's Contest for developing a way to show what bloggers are saying about bills as they work their way through Congress.

But GovTrack monitors much more than bloggers. It tracks the status of federal legislation, the speeches of representatives on the House and Senate floors, voting records, campaign contribution summaries and more. Even better, you can define the issues you want to follow and then receive updates by e-mail or RSS feed. GovTrack gets its information from THOMAS and the U.S. Senate and U.S. House Web sites.

Service searches Web for copyrighted images

Copyright lawyers who represent photographers and image suppliers may soon have a new tool for enforcing their clients' rights. An Israeli company that specializes in advanced image recognition software is making it easier to police infringements of copyrighted photographs on the Internet, according to the blog The Stock Photo Industry. The company, PicScout, which already counts a number of top stock distributors as customers, is working with StockArtistsAlliance, a stock photographers' organization, and plans to roll out an affordable service for individual photographers early this year. Currently, PicScout is scouring the Internet for some 1.5 million images, according to a company spokesperson quoted in the report.

The report, originally published in Stock Asylum, says that PicScout uses technology developed for the Israeli military to compare images from distributors' archives with images found on the Internet. "The sophisticated computer algorithms often find matches even when images have been cropped, colorized or otherwise altered," the report quotes the spokesperson as saying.

Web site matches workers with unclaimed pensions

Is it possible a client of yours is entitled to a pension that remains unclaimed? The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is looking for some 15,000 people who are owed pensions after their companies went out of business or closed their pension plans. To help locate them, it provides PBGC Pension Search, a tool to search for missing people who are owed pensions both from fully funded plans that have ended and from underfunded plans taken over by PBGC. It lists names and last-known addresses, companies where missing people earned their pensions, and the dates their pension plans ended. Search it by employee name, company name or state in which the company had its headquarters.

Another blog for inhouse lawyers

My posting last week about InhouseBlog elicited news of another blog aimed at inhouse counsel, The Wired GC. written anonymously by "John," a general counsel in the Midwestern United States. (The domain is registered in Michigan.)

Free Westlaw searching?

Blogger and Louisiana lawyer A.J. Levy explains.

Feds plan enhancements to Regulations.gov

Sabrina has the scoop: The federal government is readying enhancements to Regulations.gov. According to GovExec.com, the Office of Management and Budget is working with an interagency project office to launch the new and improved site. "For the first time," the report says, "citizens will be able not only to comment on proposed regulations using the Internet - as they do now on the site - but also will have access to supporting agency documents, every public comment and rules that are already in place." The revamped site is slated to be online this summer.

Indiana's most wanted defense firm

Indiana's Most Wanted, a Web site that seeks to assist law enforcement by displaying photographs and descriptions of suspects wanted for arrest, is sponsored by the Fort Wayne criminal defense firm Miller & Arnold Law Offices. Guess that makes it Indiana's most wanted criminal defense firm.

CrossingtheBar takes down its shingle

CrossingtheBar.Com, a Web site devoted to providing information and commentary on the multijurisdictional practice of law, has ceased to operate. On the site's homepage, George Riemer, president of Ethics Northwest Inc., posts the following message:

"Having put in over five years of effort into providing information and commentary on the multijurisdictional practice of law, I have come to the conclusion that people are not willing to support an independent web-based source of such information. I am not able to continue to contribute the time and money needed to maintain and improve CrossingtheBar.Com as that independent voice on the topic of the multijurisdictional practice of law. I hope lawyers and others interested in this topic can find the information they need through other channels.

"Thanks to those of you who have given me (both positive and negative) feedback and encouragement regarding CrossingtheBar.Com over the course of time. I am sorry I can't continue, but reality has finally penetrated my idealism. People expect a web-based Encyclopedia Britannia (sic) of MJP for free. I have come to realize I just can't provide it."

For those unfamiliar with CrossingtheBar.com, here is what I wrote about it in my book:

"Thinking about moving to warmer climes? Ahh, but there's that nasty issue of bar admission. Here is help: a Web site that provides a state-by-state guide to reciprocity rules. Beyond reciprocity, it also includes rules for admission pro hac vice, rules regarding the unauthorized practice of law, special licensing procedures for corporate counsel, and information on how other professions deal with multi-state practice. The site covers all U.S. states, territories and possessions. The site hosts a discussion forum for lawyers interested in multi-state practice issues, although it shows little activity."

Two noteworthy items from Texas

Of interest to lawyers in Texas, the Brownsville Herald reports that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality now publishes public and legal notices directly on its Web site, where they are also fully searchable.

The Herald also reports on what it says is the first Texas lawmaker to have a blog. State Rep. Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, started a blog Jan. 1 as a means of keeping his constituents updated on his actions and thoughts while working at the state Capitol.

A ready-made list of law journal RSS feeds

Here is an easy way to keep current with the most recent articles published in law journals. John Doyle, librarian at Washington and Lee School of Law, has compiled a list of RSS feeds for the tables of contents of 132 law journals and loaded them into an OPML file. Import this file into your RSS reader, and not only will you have a current list of law journal contents, but also you will received notification as soon as new articles publish. Doyle has also assembled a Web page that describes the law journal feeds and explains how to load them into a newsreader.

Reporting on the reporters who covered civil rights

For any legal professional who wants to keep current with new developments on the Web, Cornell Law Library's electronic newsletter InSITE is a must-have (and free) subscription. On this Martin Luther King day, the current issue offers a pointer to Reporting Civil Rights, online companion to the Library of America's two-volume anthology covering the events that led to the end of segregation by law in the United States. It does this through the words of 151 reporters and journalists who covered the civil rights movement, including James Baldwin, Robert Pen Warren, David Halberstam, Lissiam Smith, Gordon Parks, Murray Kempton, Ted Poston, Claude Sitton and Anne Moody. The site features a desegregation timeline, biographies and bibliographies of the reporters and writers, perspectives on reporting offered by journalists who covered the civil rights movement, and a collection of related resources on the Web.

New blog aims to inform inhouse counsel

Geoffrey G. Gussis, an associate with Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland & Perretti, Morristown, N.J., has launched InhouseBlog, a blog targeted at inhouse lawyers. He knows of what he blogs -- he is former general counsel to a dot-com marketing and advertising services firm.

The Thomas Jefferson Papers

He was admitted to the bar in 1765 and went on to shape a nation's laws as no other lawyer before him or since. Thomas Jefferson the statesman is well known, but Jefferson the lawyer is abundantly evident in The Thomas Jefferson Papers, a collection of some 27,000 original Jefferson documents published online through the American Memory project of the Library of Congress.

From the collection's introduction:

"The collection is organized into ten series or groupings, ranging in date from 1606 to 1827. Correspondence, memoranda, notes, and drafts of documents make up two-thirds of the Papers and document Jefferson's activities as a delegate to the second Continental Congress; his drafting of the Declaration of Independence, June-July 1776; his position as governor of Virginia, 1779-81; his return to Congress as a representative, 1783-84; and his appointment as minister plenipotentiary in Europe and then minister to the Court of Louis XVI, succeeding Benjamin Franklin, 1784-89. Well documented are his two administrations as president from 1801 through 1809, when he engineered the purchase of the Louisiana territory and maintained American neutrality in the conflict between France and Great Britain that led to the War of 1812."

Here, for example, is his rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, bearing his words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

Most of this online collection consists of digitally scanned images of microfilmed copies of handwritten documents. Legibility varies, but some of the documents include searchable text transcriptions.

ABA TechShow launches a blog

If you are thinking of attending ABA TechShow March 31 to April 2, you can keep up with conference announcements and planning via the newly launched ABA TechShow.blog. ABA TECHSHOW.blog. Better yet, it has an RSS feed.

Along with Jim Calloway and Jeff Flax, I'll be putting on the 60 Sites in 60 Minutes program at TechShow. The TechShow folks just posted the complete list of sites we presented last year. If that isn't enough, there is always the 60 Sites Hall of Fame.

An RSS feed for Supreme Court opinions

Yesterday's decision in United States v. Booker is a dramatic reminder to lawyers of the importance of staying current with the Supreme Court. Since 1993, one of the best ways to keep on top of the court's opinions has been the liibulletin, a Legal Information Institute e-mail service distributing syllabi of Supreme Court decisions within hours of their release. But less well known are the LII's RSS feeds for the court's decisions. It has two: one for Supreme Court decisions issued today and another, longer listing of the court's recent decisions.

LawSites joins the Law.com blog network

I am proud to announce that I have joined the Law.com Blog Network. I look forward to participating in what is certain to become a vital component of Law.com.

Bringing order to Web searching

Information is good. More information is better. But when it comes to searching for information on the Internet, the outcome is often too much of a good thing. Search Google for "employment discrimination," for example, and it returns 8.25 million results.

I have written before about Vivisimo, a search company that takes its name from the Spanish word for "clever." It markets what it calls "clustering" software to businesses and organizations and for several years offered a free demo version on its Web site. The demo grew so popular that Vivisimo has now spun off a full-featured site dedicated to applying its clustering engine to Web searches, called Clusty.

Clusty is not a search engine, in that that it does not crawl or index the Web the way Google does. Rather, it is a software program that calls on other search engines, extracts the relevant information, and then organizes the results into a hierarchical folder structure, much like the folders in a Windows directory.

Perform the same "employment discrimination" search in Clusty, and you notice something different. While the results appear in the center of your screen much like they do in Google, to the left of the screen is a list of expandable folders with titles such as Age Discrimination, Civil Rights, Sexual Harassment, Gay Rights and Employment Discrimination Lawyer. Clusty has grouped the search results into topical folders, giving you a quick overview of the main themes and allowing you to zero in on relevant results more quickly.

There's more that makes Clusty unique. Next to each search result are three icons that give you options for how to view the Web page. Click one, and it opens the page in a new window. Click another and it opens a preview of the page directly under the search result. Click the third and it shows you which of the topical folders contains that site.

Like Google, Clusty has tabs for searching news, images and shopping sites. Unlike other search sites, it lets you customize the tabs. Add tabs for searching blogs, Wikipedia or Slashdot.

For lawyers, Clusty's ability to help hone in on relevant results makes it a useful tool for legal and factual research.

For another recent review of Clusty, see Building a Smarter Search Engine.

Judge posts courtroom videos on the Web

In my Media Law blog, I often write about public officials' attempts to block public access to information. In Ohio, Medina County Common Pleas Judge James L. Kimbler is doing just the opposite. He is using the Internet to enhance public access to his courtroom.

Several months ago, Kimbler began videotaping the sentencing proceedings he presides over and posting them to his court's Web site. (Follow the link to Inside the Court: Online Edition.) He uses his own camcorder and keeps himself out of the picture, focusing on the prosecutor, defense lawyer and defendant.

For Kimbler, this is one more step in a continuing effort to make his courtroom more accessible, he told the Associated Press. The judge already uses the Internet to conduct online pretrial conferences with lawyers, and the court's home page invites visitors to sign up to receive Kimbler's weekly e-mail updates. The site includes a variety of court documents and docket information, verdict summaries and the daily calendar.

If the videos prove popular, Kimbler told AP, he would like to add webcasts of other court proceedings, including jury selection, change-of-plea hearings and perhaps even entire trials.

Electronic communications compliance group offers free policy template

A new Web site and a roundtable today in New York marked the launch of The Electronic Communications Compliance Council, an industry group that describes itself as dedicated to providing best practices and resources to companies grappling with e-mail and instant messaging policies and compliance. To mark its launch, TE3C, as the group calls itself, is offering those who register free access to Policy Builder by Fortiva, an online tool for businesses to create customized e-mail policies.

And another lawyer with a podcast -- sorta

Thanks to Kevin J. Heller for his comment noting Evan Schaeffer's MP3 ... umm, broadcast? (Without the RSS feed, it doesn't really qualify as a podcast, does it?) Evan reads from Blacks Law Dictionary, to drums and guitar. Next week: Gregory Corso read to bongos.

West CEO Wilens to head new Thomson legal division

The Thomson Corporation today named Mike Wilens, president and CEO of Thomson West, to be president and CEO of its newly created Thomson Legal & Regulatory North American Legal organization, PR Newswire reports. He will oversee Thomson West, Thomson Elite and Thomson FindLaw.

FreeEDGAR is free no more

I notice that EDGAR Online has discontinued its more feature-modest cousin, FreeEDGAR. Here is what a notice on the FreeEDGAR site says:

Since 1995, FreeEDGAR has provided millions of SEC filings to individual investors, professionals, students and journalists. As a service of EDGAR Online, Inc., FreeEDGAR's basic functionality allowed our visitors to experience the power of our premium services including EDGAR Online Pro.

As we have expanded the functionality in our EDGAR Online Pro product significantly over the last year we are no longer continuing to support the FreeEDGAR website.

I wrote about these sites in the second edition of my book, The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web, awarding them my highest rating of five stars. Here is what I said in my book:

Another top-notch destination for EDGAR research is EDGAR Online, although it suffers from a confusing case of multiple personality disorder. Several years ago, EDGAR Online, a subscription-based service, purchased Free Edgar, a free service, and then added IPO Express, a related but still different service. If you go to EDGAR Online, you find no mention of Free Edgar, but go to Free Edgar and you find yourself frequently directed back into EDGAR Online. A visitor can become exhausted trying to sort through the differences between the sites, because nowhere on either site are the differences clearly explained.

As one might expect, the differences are in price and features. EDGAR Online requires a subscription, currently priced at $44.85 a quarter, while Free Edgar is, as the name suggests, free. Free EDGAR allows searches by company name and ticker symbol and shows the current day's filings. EDGAR Online allows more sophisticated full-text concept and keyword searching of the EDGAR database. Both services formerly offered a personalized, e-mail alert called Watchlist, but now that is available only through the paid service. In addition, EDGAR Online's "My EDGAR Online" feature allows you to create a portfolio of up to 25 companies, tickers, industries, regions and types of SEC data to track, with real-time e-mail notification of new filings matching your criteria.

EDGAR Online differs from its free cousin in these other extras:

• Word processing and spreadsheet capabilities that allow you to take data from any SEC document and import it into a Word, WordPerfect or Excel document.
• A hard copy option, providing printed, bound copies of any EDGAR filing, delivered to your office overnight.
• IPO Express, delivering e-mail notification of new public offerings.
• EDGAR Online People, for researching corporate directors and executives. Type in a name and obtain the person's salary, stock options, history of insider trading, and other information.

[Offbeat] Two guys who commute

Speaking of podcasts, the two guys at TheCommute.org drive to and from work together. They record their conversations each way, and then podcast them. They call themselves Voice one and Voice two. Voice one explains the concept:

Most days I get a lift to work with Voice two. We talk in a way that two people in a car would talk. We constantly refer to things that you will not know about or understand. We also talk about things we read in the news, saw on the web, heard on the radio. It really is as exciting as it sounds.

Newport Beach home to half the nation's 'plawdcasters'

Of course, half of four is only two. But yesterday, Denise Howell, the Newport Beach, Calif., lawyer who blogs at the site Bag and Baggage, debuted her first podcast. By my count, that brings the number of lawyers who podcast to four -- two of them from Newport Beach. The other three: J. Craig Williams (also from Newport Beach), Ernest Miller and Bret A. Fausett, a technology lawyer who podcasts programs of his favorite music through the site Internet Pro Radio.

Denise is credited with having coined the term "blawgosphere" for the community of legal bloggers. More recently, she (and her husband) came up with "plawdosphere" for the community of legal professionals with podcasts. In her debut podcast, she talked about finding the perfect cell phone and using it to record a podcast. She also reviewed the week's highlights from other blogs and worked in a reference to Thomas the Tank Engine.

Sideblogs and The Common Scold

Over at The Common Scold, Monica Bay has added a nifty little sidebar, called Blog Bytes. (And yes, that deranged-looking guy is me.) She also sent along some references to setting up a sideblog in TypePad or using the service Sideblog. For someone who just started blogging in November, Monica has hit the ground running. Notably, she has created a blog page that relies not just on the main entries, but uses the left and right sidebars to provide a diverse and always interesting array of content, tracking everything from tech gadgets to the New York Yankees.

Lawsuit abuse group targets wacky warning labels

A flushable toilet brush that warns users, “Do not use for personal hygiene,” is the nation’s wackiest warning label, according to the annual Wacky Warning Labels contest conducted by Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch. M-LAW created the contest eight years ago to show how concern about lawsuits has created a need for common sense warnings on products.

Other winners:

• A children's scooter that warns: “This product moves when used.”
• A digital thermometer that cautions: “Once used rectally, the thermometer should not be used orally.”
• An electric blender that advises: “Never remove food or other items from the blades while the product is operating.”
• A 9"x3" bag of air used as packing material that warns: “Do not use this product as a toy, pillow, or flotation device.”

Cincinnati law librarian launches blog

The Law Professor Blogs network continues to grow with the addition of Joseph A. Hodnicki's Law Librarian Blog. Joe is Web services coordinator for the University of Cincinnati Law Library and editor of the Securities Lawyer's Deskbook. Joe also serves as Web producer for Law Professor Blogs.

A great link today on Joe's blog: the 2005 Okie Librarian Calendar.

E-Discovery blog to feature caselaw database

Preston Gates & Ellis is putting the finishing touches on its new Electronic Discovery Law blog, which will report on legal issues, news and best practices relating to the discovery of electronically stored information. The blog is live, but still being readied for its formal launch Monday, when it will include a searchable case database on electronic discovery issues.

Add-in removes hidden data from Office documents

Hidden metadata in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files can be bad news for a lawyer. This add-in from Microsoft lets you permanently remove hidden data as well as collaboration data, such as change tracking and comments.

Searchable version of Intelligence Reform Act

The folks who developed askSam, a free-form database tool, have imported the complete legislative text of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act into a searchable askSam database file and made it available as a free download on their Web site. To use it, you will also need the free askSam viewer. These database versions of popular documents are becoming a regular feature of the company's Web site. Among the other documents askSam offers in free, searchable database versions are The Patriot Act, the 9-11 Commission report, transcripts from the 2004 presidential debates and speeches from the 2004 political conventions.

Tweak speeds up Firefox downloads

Thanks to Rick Klau for his pointer to this tweak for speeding up the Firefox browser.

UK search engine steers clear of the colonies

Seekport is a new Internet search engine optimized for users in the United Kingdom. Through customized ranking algorithms and a British indexing team, it aims to provide high-quality searching with much less spam and far fewer hits from the United States. The company also provides country-specific search indexing for France and Germany, and plans to launch indexes in 2005 for Italy, Spain, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.

Reference answers -- now for free

GuruNet Corporation today announced that it will no longer charge subscription fees for its Web site-and-software combination reference service, Answers.com. GuruNet will sell ad placements and sponsored links alongside topic entries rather than charge subscription fees. Answers.com claims to include information on more than a million topics, drawn from a database of more than 100 reference sources.

Bringing the stratosphere to the blogosphere

From MARS in my last post, I jump to space law. Thanks to Tom Mighell's Inter Alia, I learned about the blast-off of New York lawyer and journalist Jesse Londin's new blog, Space Law Probe, companion to her space law portal, Spacelawstation.com. I have been a fan of Jesse's writing since her days as a senior law editor with American Lawyer's pioneering online service, Counsel Connect, where she was, among other things, moderator of the Internet Talk forum and editor of CC's newsletter, The Squib. Guess this explains where she gets her nickname, Buzz.

The year's best free reference sites

By way of beSpacific comes a pointer to a listing of the best free reference Web sites of 2004, compiled by MARS -- the American Library Association's Machine-Assisted Reference Section.

Strange goings-on at Microsoft settlement site

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that California consumers racing to make the deadline for claiming benefits from a $1.1 billion Microsoft court settlement are hitting a virtual wall -- the Web site containing the claim form they need gives them gobbledygook or aborts their request. Curious, I gave it a try. I had no problem generating the form. But something strange of a different sort happened to me. I visited the site using the Firefox browser, but when I clicked the "Create Printable Claim Form" button, the document-creation process forced my computer to open Internet Explorer and display the resulting PDF document there. The site is not run by Microsoft, but by a court-appointed, independent claims administration company.

Mass. Web site promotes 'safe haven' law

BabySafeHaven is a Web site launched today by Massachusetts officials as part of a campaign to make the public aware of a new state law that allows a parent anonymously to leave a newborn who is less than a week old at a hospital, police station or manned fire station without legal consequences. The awareness campaign also includes posters on public transit, two billboards and a statewide safe haven hotline, 1-866-814-SAFE. The law took effect Oct. 29, 2004.

Law practice management -- the Callo-way

I have a mental shortlist of people who should be blogging but who are not. That list just got one name shorter with today's launch of Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog. Jim is director of the Oklahoma Bar Association's Management Assistance Program and chair of the American Bar Association's TechShow 2005. I had the honor and pleasure of serving with Jim and Jeff Flax on the 60 Sites in 60 Minutes panel at last year's TechShow and will be doing the same this year. Jim is a nationally known speaker and writer on legal technology, Internet research, law office management and organization and legal ethics, so I have no doubt his blog will prove to be of value.