New Draft Rules for Judicial Conduct & Disability

The U.S. Courts Web site has posted the 1/23/08 Draft Rules for Judicial-Conduct and Judicial-Disability Proceedings. The Rules now await consideration by the Judicial Conference on March 11, 2008.

Online Directory of History Departments and Organizations

The American Historical Association has an Online Directory of History Departments and Organizations in the United States and Canada. You can search or browse to find the contact information and Web sites for 848 college and university history departments and historical organizations.

Revised Uniform Limited Liability Company Act

Nicholas G. Karambelas, a partner at Sfikas & Karambelas LLP has written an interesting feature on RULLCA for the February 2008 edition of Washington Lawyer.

You can access a copy of the the Revised Uniform Limited Liability Company Act (RULLCA) via the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) here.

Free Online Teleprompter - No Downloading

eHub always has great posts, but I especially liked Matthew Murphy's mention of CuePrompter. This site turns your browser into a teleprompter.

All you have to do is write or paste your text into the box and press "Start Prompter." You can choose the speed at which your text scrolls. It seems ideal for Webcasting, videoblogging, and podcasting.

Where's George? Where's Willy?

Have you ever wondered where your dollar came from or where it's going? I hadn't until I received a $20 with a wheresgeorge.com stamp on it. That was the first I'd ever heard of this bill-tracking (that's dollar bill-tracking) service. It turns out that my $20 came from North Carolina 250 days ago. According to the site, it has been traveling at an average speed of 1.6 miles per day.

In order to track your bills, you have to register, but registration is free. Just enter your bill's serial number and year, add a note about where you got it and its condition. Then, wait until you get an e-mail update.

When I mentioned this to some friends, they were not impressed. They are already tracking their bills! Apparently a lot of people are doing that. Look at these numbers by state and county.

If you're in Canada, you can track your bills via whereswilly.com. The numbers aren't quite as impressive, but here is the Top 20 Provinces Ranking. Just below it is the Top 20 States Ranking.

In Honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today marks the Martin Luther King, Jr., U.S. Federal Holiday. In honor of Dr. King, a truly amazing human being, I thought I'd provide a few useful links to information about and by him. The following are from Stanford University's The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute:

• The "Voice of King"
• Inventory of Major Papers and Recordings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (many full-text documents available)
• Search the King's Papers Project database
• The King Encyclopedia
• MLK "On This Day"

I leave you with a quote (click on it to read it in its entirety) by Dr. King that begins,

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy."

Newly Revised Online Legislative Source Book

I'm very happy to see that the Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C. (LLSDC) has updated almost all parts of the Legislative Source Book. It is a tremendous, easy-access resource. The principal editor, Rick McKinney is the Assistant Law Librarian at the Federal Reserve Board Law Library and definitely knows his legislative research. If you do any kind of federal legislative research, you must check it out!

National Zoo Ringtones!

For $2.99, you can now download a ringtone of your favorite Zoo animal. You can download the voices of famous pandas, Mei Xiang, Tian Tian, and baby Tai Shan as well as a wide variety of other Zoo and wild animals. The Zoo says they receive 40% of the proceeds from purchases of Zoo animal sounds and 25% for sounds from the wild.

Of course, you can just listen to them for free, too. Personally, my trip to the Zoo isn't complete unless I hear the gibbons, so, I think I know what I'm downloading when I get my new phone.

Web 2.0: Add Tags to LC Photo Collections

The Library of Congress (LC) has posted some photos with "no known copyright restrictions" on Flickr and is asking you to help describe them. On LC's Flickr account, The Commons, it says,

"The best way to get involved is to contribute some tags to the photos provided by the Library of Congress account! If we can show that this is a useful, productive endeavor, we can expand the program to include all sorts of collections!"

For more information, read Matt Raymond's post, My Friend Flickr: A Match Made in Photo Heaven.

2008 Index of Economic Freedom Released

The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation released the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom today. The Top 10 countries ranked as having the greatest economic freedom are:

1. Hong Kong
2. Singapore
3. Ireland
4. Australia
5. U.S.
6. New Zealand
7. Canada
8. Chile
9. Switzerland
10. U.K.

You can find the full list of 162 countries (though only 157 are ranked) listed here. Each country is ranked on 10 factors:

• Business Freedom
• Trade Freedom
• Fiscal Freedom
• Government Size
• Monetary Freedom
• Investment Freedom
• Financial Freedom
• Property rights
• Freedom from Corruption
• Labor Freedom

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Gravesites

Anyone who read AbsTracked back in 2005, knows that I am plagued with a love of the morbid. However, I have managed to blog for several months now with only one mention of dead bodies. So, I think it's time for another.

Today, Mary Persyn at The Valpo Law Blog mentioned that you can get a nice (Google) map to U.S. Supreme Court Justice burial sites at oyez.org. Here's where all the A-L Justices are buried and here's where all the M-Z Justices are buried. Road trip!

LexisNexis Digital Congressional Record & Freebies on the Web

LexisNexis announced that they will be adding the following U.S. congressional debate volumes to their Congressional Digital Collection:

• Annals of Congress (1789-1824)
  Currently available for free on the Web here
• Register of Debates (1824-1837)
  Currently available for free on the Web here
• Congressional Globe (1833-1873)
  Currently available for free on the Web here
• Congressional Record (1873-to date)
  Currently 1873-1875 for free on the Web here, and 1989-present for free on the Web here (you can also access the Congressional Record for free at GPO, but it only goes back to 1994)

What Lexis is doing is unique because right now there is no one place to access and search all of these online at once. Lexis plans to finish adding all materials in 2009.

Links: Identity Theft and Other Financial Crimes

PInow.com has a useful list of links in yesterday's post entitled, Top 10 Resources Every Victim of Identity Fraud Should Have. That list goes along nicely with USA.gov's updated list of Financial Crimes and Scams U.S. government links.

Library of Congress's Digital Future 2008-2013

The Library of Congress's Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI) has just issued a Strategic Plan for 2008-2013 (PDF).

"The plan is intended as a living document that will guide OSI as it develops programs, plans and strategies for the Library of Congress's digital future.

You can read more about LC's Digital Preservation here.

Time's 50 Best Web Sites

Thanks to Quick Online Tips for pointing out that Time has put out a 50 Best Websites 2007. You'll find the complete list here.

Cool Health Tools

MayoClinic.com has some great online health tools. They have a very good Symptom Checker (one for adults and one for kids), an A-Z list of Diseases & Conditions, and a First Aid Guide to help with medical emergencies (I'm not sure I'd be calm enough to browse through through that one....).

There are also a lot of Health Tools to help with your New Year's resolutions. There is a Body Mass Index (BMI) calculator to let you know if your underweight, normal, overweight, or obese. You just enter your weight and height (in lbs. and ft. or kg. and cm.) and voila! You're overweight! Now you might want to check out the Healthy Weight Pyramid Tool. You can also calculate what your daily calorie intake should be, what your cholesterol level should be, figure out your pregnancy due date, assess various problems you may have, and take quizzes.

History of U.S. Presidential Primaries 1912-2004

Bob Benenson, CQ Politics Editor, has written an 8 part series entitled, "A History of U.S. Presidential Primaries." The parts are divided as follows:

1. Part One: 1912-64
2. Part Two: 1968-72
3. Part Three: 1976-84
4. Part Four: 1988
5. Part Five: 1992
6. Part Six: 1996
7. Part Seven: 2000
8. Part Eight: 2004

Improved SOPR Search for Lobbyist Filings

Bill Lowrance of the Private Investigators Association of Virginia blog mentioned, today, that the U.S. Senate Office of Public Records has made improvements for finding Lobbying Disclosure Act filings. It looks like the changes were made on January 1, 2008. You can check out the new, enhanced search as well as downloadable databases back to 1999 here. You can find filing search result help information here.

A new Lobbying Act Disclosure Guidance document (effective January 1, 2008) is also available.

TV Converter Box (Analog to Digital) Coupon Program

Thanks to my brother, Steve (who doesn't have a blog to which I can link ... that I know of .... Steve?) for being the first to point out dtv2009.gov to me. It's a U.S. government site that provides information on what consumers need to know about the event that will take place on midnight, February 17, 2009. In a nutshell:

"All full-power television stations in the United States will stop broadcasting in analog and switch to 100% digital broadcasting."

The site explains that we analog TV users have three main options:

1. Keep our existing analog TV and purchase a TV converter box (A converter box plugs into the TV and keeps it working after Feb. 17, 2009.)
2. Connect to cable, satellite, or another pay service
3. Purchase a TV with a digital tuner

You can apply for a coupon here.

Google's New Year's Doodle

Did you happen to notice Google's 2008 New Year's doodle (I think it should show up here after today)? If you clicked on it, you saw that it was not only for the new year, but also for the invention of TCP/IP.

Did you also notice what was written in confetti underneath? It says "Syn Syn Ack Ack." Here's an explanation. I think there might be something written at the top too, but my ChromaDepth^TM 3-D image glasses gave me a headache trying to read "Syn Syn Ack Ack," so I'll let someone else figure that one out.

Top 100 Alternative Search Engines of the Year

Charles Knight at AltSearchEngines.com has listed the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines of 2007 as downloadable lists in PDF or Excel (scroll down the page for the full lists). You can also download the lists of the 227 that appeared in his monthly Top 100 during the past year.

Quintura was the big winner named "Search Engine of the Year."

Happy New Year!