"Oh, no."

Those were the words I uttered when I happened to glance at my PC yesterday evening. Apparently, while I was at work yesterday, my computer decided to change its status from "Beautiful, Brand New PC" to "Expensive Square." I suspect this is the result of a very bad virus.

I have no idea how long it will be before things return to normal, but I think it's safe to say, it will be quite a while. So, hang in there. I will eventually return.

Search the 2006 Official Law School Guide

The Law School Admission Council (LSAC) has a searchable database of ABA-approved US law schools. You can choose criteria such as graduate employment rates, bar passage rates, tuition costs, etc.

The results provide photos, complete descriptions and admission profiles (in PDF format) of the law schools that meet your criteria. Here is the link to search the 2006 Official Guide.

You can browse the Official Guide to Canadian (LSAC-member) Law Schools here.

Feed Link of the Day - SimplyHired

‘Looking for a new job in the United States? You can create customizable feeds to find jobs that interest you.

Just fill in the keyword box with a word that describes the job for which you are looking. Add a city, state or zip code in the location box and then click the button to search their (over 4 million jobs as of the time of this post) database. Look for the orange XML button in the top right corner of your search results for your feed. For an even more flexible search, be sure to try the advanced search option.

In testing it out, I found that it works very well. The only problem I had with SimplyHired is that it has pulled both open and closed job listings, so you have to be careful to check the dates of the listing. I did contact them about this over the weekend and they were very quick to respond. They wanted more information so they could look into the problem. How often do you find good customer service from a free site?!

Here’s the site where you can create your customized feeds: http://www.simplyhired.com/

Text of the Draft Iraqi Constitution

The complete text of the draft Iraqi constitution, translated into English by the Associated Press, is available in HTML and PDF (25 pages) versions at Jurist here.

WatchThatPage Problems & Solutions

WatchThatPage, which has long been a great, free resource for monitoring Web page changes, has been having a few problems lately. They published the following on their Web site:

“WatchThatPage has been unreachable for some time due to a problem with the Internet line to our ISP. The line had been disconnected by mistake by the ISP, but is now fixed. The updates will start to run again very soon. The good news is that we have new servers to speed up our service!”

I received an e-mail from them today, showing changes on the pages I monitor, so it seems it may already be back to normal.

Feed Link of the Day - National Geographic News

You can access National Geographic News headlines and article summaries through RSS. You can click on the headline to read the full-text of the articles for free. National Geographic has some fascinating stories such as this one: "Earth's Core Spins Faster Than Surface, Study Confirms."

Here's the site: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/

Here's the feed: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/index.rss

Washington, DC Mayor's Blog

Washington, DC Mayor Anthony Williams began an official blog this month. It has been the subject of a lot of criticism. The Washington Post published an article yesterday criticizing the fact that the mayor has only posted twice since August 15th. You can read the article here.

An interesting quote in that article follows:

"Web logs, or blogs, are made up largely of amateur punditry, pedestrian musings and partisan hackery, not usually the opinions of the elected leader of a major city."

I think that is an interesting quote for two reasons:

1) I read over 300 feeds. Not one of them could be described as "amateur punditry," "pedestrian musings" or "partisan hackery."

2) Many elected leaders (at the local, state and federal level) have blogs including another mayor; Oakland Mayor (former California Governor and no stranger to criticism himself), Jerry Brown (who, I might add, has only been posting once a month lately). There may be other "major city" mayors blogging, but I'll let someone else compile that list.

As long as I'm writing about blogs by elected officials, I should point out this list of "Links to (US) State Legislators' Blogs and Legislatures with RSS Feeds" on the National Conference of State Legislatures Web site.

The only criticism I have of Mayor Williams' blog is that it has no feed.

Feed Link of the Day - FAIR

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) is a US media watch group. They offer two kinds of feed. You can subscribe to Recent (Web site) Additions and Media Views. Here’s the site: http://www.fair.org

Here’s where to get the feeds:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=144

Post-Free

I'm going to take a little vacation from blogging. I expect to return to posting in about a week. 'See you then!

LawKT.com

LawKT.com is the legal section of the Surfwax News Accumulator. You can search and browse over 60,000 law firm publications (as well as recent, related news articles) here.

You can sort by date by putting the “date after” date in brackets after your search term. For example, if you want to search for class action publications from this year, you would search “class action” [12/31/2004].

Testing out this service, I found that the search engine can be a bit flawed and some items don’t have dates. Browsing seems to be a better bet.

It also appears that many topics aren’t being updated as frequently as they once were. The "News Articles" links at the top left of the individual topic pages usually link to current articles. However, I did find some broken links. Nonetheless, LawKT appears to have a lot of good sources that might otherwise be more difficult to find.

You can also link to LawKT Premium from this site. LawKT Premium is another name for Nextaris. You can read more about the free Nextaris service at SearchEngineWatch here.

Leaving a Law Firm: List of Links

Carolyn Elefant at My Shingle has a post today with a "quick list" of several links to articles and ethics opinions dealing with attorneys leaving a law firm "and soliciting or taking clients." You can read the post here.

Feed Link of the Day - Da Vinci’s Notebooks

Matt Webb wanted to read The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, so he took the Project Gutenberg text version and turned it into feed. 1,565 pages worth of feed.

Matt offers two kinds of feed on his site. You can choose the feed that allows you to start with page 1, and provides you with a page a day (for 1,565 days) or you can choose the feed that that allows you to read along with Matt (he's on page 445 as of the time of this post). Matt started reading on May 30th, 2004.

I am on page 6. I liked page 3, which said nothing more than, “Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work.” It’s a good thing I’m not a man.

Here’s the site: http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/

Here’s the feed to read along with Matt:
http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/2004-05-30.rss

Here’s the feed to start with page 1 (You’ll have to change the date on the end of the feed URL to reflect the date you decide to grab the feed...or just get it from Matt's site.): http://interconnected.org/home/more/davinci/2005-08-17.rss

"Law Libraries" Button for Your Site

Today, Bonnie Shucha at WisBlawg has a post about a new "Law Libraries" button for use on blogs/Web sites. The button, which is to be used as a link to Bonnie's list of law library/law librarian blogs, was created by Jim Milles of Out of the Jungle.

Click here to grab the HTML for adding the button to your site. At the same link, you can link to the cool tool Jim used.

It's nice to have this kind of cohesion in the law librarian community. Thanks Bonnie and Jim!

I added my button!

Talk Digger Adds Custom Feeds

The Blog Herald mentioned yesterday that Talk Digger (earlier post) now offers customizable feeds for URL link statistics.

Simply click here, check the boxes for what you want in your feed, add your URL to the search box and click on the “Generate RSS feed” button. After you click the button, make sure you scroll down to the bottom of the page for your customized feed.

Feed Link of the Day - C-SPAN Podcasts

C-SPAN sent out a Special Alert! e-mail message today announcing that three of their programs are now available as podcasts. You can subscribe to feed for Q&A, American Perspectives and Book TV’s After Words.

Here’s the site: http://www.c-span.org/

Here’s where you can get all three feeds:
http://www.c-span.org/podcast/

LexisNexis® ECLIPSE™ Changes Name & Dedupes

LexisNexis® ECLIPSE™ will now be called LexisNexis® Alert. It will have also have additional enhancements. Lexis says the Alert feature will allow you to “save an Alert search when your initial search retrieves no items; receive a 'no new results' notification any time your Alert search finds no new documents; and eliminate duplicate documents from your Alert search results.” Did you get that? They said “eliminate duplicate documents from your Alert search results.” That’s great news. You can read the announcement here.

Nervous About Your First Deposition?

If you or someone you know is nervous about a first deposition, Evan Schaeffer of Illinois Trial Practice Weblog says there is no need. He has written a very brief, but reassuring, post on how to start a deposition. He also links to his earlier, very humorous, post at Legal Underground, “The Horror of One Lawyer’s First Deposition.” You can read them here.

Feed Link of the Day - Leiter's Law School Reports

Earlier this month, Daniel Solove at PrawfsBlawg mentioned that Brian Leiter of Leiter Reports has started a new blawg. The new blawg will feature the law school updates that were previously mentioned on Leiter Reports.

Here’s the site: http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/

Here’s the feed: http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/atom.xml

Directory of State Securities Laws & Regulations

You can access a linking list of US state and Canadian province/territory securities laws and regulations at the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) Web site here.

Feed Link of the Day - Burning Ears

Paula Seeger, who usually blogs at the Dane Co Legal Resource Center Blawg, has just started a new blog. The new one is called Burning Ears Blawg and will feature local news items about law libraries and law librarians across the US. It sounds like a great concept! If you have a local news story you would like to share with Burning Ears, Seeger suggests you e-mail her.

Here is the site: http://burningears.blogspot.com/

Here is the feed: http://burningears.blogspot.com/atom.xml

US President Bush is...Podcasting

Yes, it's true. You can now get President Bush's weekly radio address via a podcast. Here's the feed: http://www.whitehouse.gov/rss/radioaddress.xml

New 527 IRS Filing Information Released

The Center for Responsive Politics has posted the latest 527 organization filing information for the top 50 federally focused organizations here.

Blogger & Bloglines Trying to Improve

Blogger announced that it would like people who use the service to take a survey (to "help us help you") when they log in to post. They are offering $500 gift cards to “three lucky respondents.” You can read more about it here.

Bloglines announced that they have “simply outgrown our current facility.” That should come as no surprise to anyone who uses Bloglines. The good news is that they are moving their computer operations to a larger location. You can read more about it here.

Feed Link of the Day - Cambridge Journals

Last week, Teri Vogel at SD Librarian pointed out that Cambridge Journals Online would be providing feeds this week. Teri followed up with a link to those feeds on Monday. Here’s where you will find the Cambridge Journals Online site: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/home

Here’s where you can access the long list of feeds: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/byFeeds

Thanks Teri!

How to Read a Judicial Opinion

George Washington University Law School Professor Orrin Kerr has written “How to Read a Judicial Opinion: A Guide for New Law Students.” You can read the PDF version here. You can read Professor Kerr’s post regarding the document and his desire to create a free online guide for new law students at The Volokh Conspiracy here.

More Dublin Blogs

I just returned from my annual journey to Dublin, Ohio. I was parking my car to go to the Dublin Irish Festival when I noticed “OCL” through the trees.

After wandering around Dublin once a year for the past six years, I finally saw a bit (3/4) of OCLC. Every time I visit, I casually wonder where it is. It turns out I’ve driven by the campus about a 100 times without knowing it.

So, with Dublin (and OCLC) on my mind, I thought I’d point you to this post by Alane (at It’s All Good) which links to three more OCLC bloggers.

Feed Link of the Day - Google News

Yes, Google News finally joins MSN News and Yahoo! News by adding customizable feeds. Now you can run a search here, click on "RSS" or "Atom" on the left side of your results and automatically generate a feed for your news search. You can also grab some pre-defined feeds here.

Hopefully, Google will soon add customizable RSS feeds for their Web search too. For now, Tim Yang mentions that you can use GooRSS for that.

SearchEngineWatch - Sold

Read more about the sale of SearchEngineWatch (an AbsTracked favorite) to Incisive Media at Inside Google.

Feed Links of the Day - A Smorgasbord

I am going to make today’s FLOTD a multi-FLTOD. There are just so many new (and new to me) feeds out there that I don’t want to hold off. Too much good stuff is cropping up each day. Also, I won’t be able to post tomorrow or Monday. Here’s today’s list of feeds:

Out of the Jungle – Through one of those ego feeds I mentioned earlier this week, I came across this new blog. It looks really good. There are 4 contributors listed, but so far, the posts have all been by law librarian, Jim Milles. Out of the Jungle is described as, "Thoughts on the present and future of legal information, legal research, and legal education." I just subscribed!

Here’s the site: http://outofthejungle.blogspot.com/
Here’s the feed: http://outofthejungle.blogspot.com/atom.xml

LexisNexis Press Releases – Thanks to TVC Alert for mentioning this earlier in the week. You can subscribe to legal, business, risk management and general LexisNexis press feeds. You can also subscribe to all four with one feed.
Here’s where to find them: http://www.lexisnexis.com/presscenter/rss/

HangingTogether – George at It’s All Good points out that the Research Library Group (RLG) has started the HangingTogether blog. I like their Ben Franklin quote at the top, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Here’s the site: http://hangingtogether.org/
Here’s the feed: http://hangingtogether.org/?feed=rss2

MAKE: Blog – This blog is for the uber-techy. I'm not, but I still like checking out what kinds of things they are creating over there. It is truly amazing. For example, check out yesterday’s posts on “HOW TO make DRM-free ebooks for the Sony Librie e-ink ebook reader” here.

Here's the site: http://www.makezine.com/blog/
Here’s the feed: http://www.makezine.com/blog/atom.xml

Medcyclopaedia™

Medcyclopaedia™ is a free Web source where you can search or browse 18,000 medical topics and 10,000 images. Here's more detail from the Web site:

"The Standard Edition of Medcyclopaedia™ includes all text and images from The Encyclopaedia of Medical Imaging's eight book volumes: Physics, Techniques and Procedures, Normal Anatomy, Musculoskeletal and Soft Tissue Imaging, Gastrointestinal and Urogenital Imaging, Chest and Cardiovascular Imaging, Neuroradiology and Head and Neck Imaging, and Paediatric Imaging."

The site also says that text and images can be copied "for non-commercial use in lectures, articles, etc. provided that you refer to the source (http://www.medcyclopaedia.com, GE Healthcare)."

Top Five & Ten

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion is asking people to post their top ten favorite blogs at Technorati here and their top five favorite podcasts at Technorati here. Check them out. You might find something new!

Feed Link of the Day - DLC Vision Outline Blog

The Depository Library Council has launched a new blog. It is called DLC Vision Outline. Today's post "invites the library community and general public to post their comments on, 'Toward a Vision of the Government Information Environment of the 21st Century: A Draft Outline,' on the DLC Vision Outline Blog at http://dlcvisionoutline.blogspot.com...."

Here's the feed: http://dlcvisionoutline.blogspot.com/atom.xml

US Executive Orders Disposition Tables

The US National Archives has a section on its Web site that is devoted to listing the status of Executive Orders. It begins with E.O. 7532 signed January 8, 1937 through E.O. 13380 signed June 17, 2005 (as of the time of this post). You will find the Executive Order numbers, titles, dates they were signed by the Presidents, Federal Register cites, any amendments and the current status (revoked, superseded, in force, etc.). You will also find statistics regarding the number of Executive Orders signed during each year. PDF texts of the Executive Orders from the William J. Clinton and George W. Bush Presidencies are also available.

Here is the link to the disposition tables.

You can search the disposition tables here.

Lastly, you can search or browse the out-of-print, Codification of Presidential Proclamations and Executive Orders, spanning April 13, 1945 - January 20, 1989 here.

Blogging 101 for CPAs

Evan M. Lang (author of Best Websites for Financial Professionals, Wiley & Sons, 2003) wrote an article for newbies to the blogosphere in the June, 2005 issue of the Journal of Accountancy. It begins by explaining what a blog is and includes useful links for additional information and various blogging tools. It also includes links to tax, accounting and legal blogs.
Click here to read "Would You, Could You, Should You Blog?"

Feed Link of the Day - IT Conversations

IT Conversations has a multitude of text and podcasting feeds for their tech-related conferences and interviews. You can read more about them in BusinessWeek's July 27, 2005 article, "Geekdom's New Clearinghouse."

Here is where you can access ITC's feeds: http://www.itconversations.com/rss.html

US Federal Rulemaking Process

On GSA's RegInfo.gov site, they provide a chart that outlines the general requirements involved in the "informal rulemaking" process.

You can access the step-by-step Web version of the chart here.

You can access the chart in PDF format here.

Talk Digger - Spam Might be Linking to You

A lot of people have been writing about Talk Digger. You can read about it from its creator, Fred, at Fred On Something. Basically, by entering any URL, you can see who is linking to it.

I have to confess that I, like most bloggers, have some ego feeds set up, so I wasn't surprised by most of what it found. However, there was one that completely shocked me.

It appears that a spam blog has taken one of my posts (this one) and has posted it (as though it were its own) on the spam blog. They simply gave it a different title (a completely nonsensical one).

Spam blogs appear to be growing in numbers. You can read about spam blogs at The Republic of Geektronica.

Update: Tim Yang mentions uptimebot. Like Talk Digger, it tracks links. It has a nice legend, however it only tracks search engines, while Talk Digger also tracks services like Technorati, Icerocket, PubSub, Feedster, etc.

Feed Link of the Day - Apple

Last week I had a Microsoft feed for a FLOTD, so I thought today, I would have a link to Apple feeds. You can get all kinds of iTunes Music Store feeds (including a way to create your own custom feeds), game feeds, news feeds, developer feeds and a lot more.

Here's where you can find the Apple feeds: http://www.apple.com/rss/