Year: 2004

Disgruntled litigants are getting creative. According to an article in Findlaw, a Manhattan woman put her housing court judge for sale on eBay to attract attention to her case. “After four days on eBay, the best offer for the judge was $127.50.” Source: Stark County Law Library Blawg

Yahoo is beta testing a new video search engine. According to SearchEngineWatch, they are also introducing a new RSS-based video enclosure for producers to include with video content which will help Yahoo (and others) discover and index media content. In the advanced search, you may limit by format, size, duration, domain, and safe search filtered. …

Amy Gannaway has written an informative article on Using the Wisconsin Legislature Web Site which appears in the December issue of The Wisconsin Lawyer. She offers guidance on “looking up and tracking legislative, statutory, and regulatory information, including bills, acts, statutes, and the Administrative Code, and on using the Wisconsin Legislature Web site.” Ms. Gannaway …

The Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission has made the 2004 Equal Rights Decision Digest available on the Web. From the site: The Equal Rights Decision Digest is a digital resource containing summaries of significant administrative and judicial decisions arising under Wisconsin’s equal rights laws. The summaries are organized according to their subject matter. Where …

Kendall F. Svengalis’ Legal Information Buyer’s Guide & Reference Manual 2004 edition is now available on LexisNexis (Library: BUSREF, LEXREF & File: LEGBGD) Law librarians have long known the value of the buyer’s guide which includes information on a variety of legal information products in both print and electronic formats. Divided by publication type and …

Searching the federal budget just got easier with Vivisimo’s specialized search engine for the 1600 page+ United States Budget for Fiscal Year 2005. Vivisimo is a clustering search engine which places your search results into categories. To see the usefulness of this feature, enter education as your search term. On the left, notice that the …

The Department of Administration is seeking vendors to build a public wireless network for downtown Madison and the airport. According to Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, the project won’t use any taxpayer money. It will be installed by the winning bidder who will pay the state, county and city for …

In what appears to be a major expansion of the Google Print service, Google is set to begin an ambitious project of scanning hard-to-find books from five major library collections: New York Public Library, Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Oxford in England. It’s estimated that the project could take more than a decade to complete given …

Boogle is Beta testing a new search tool called Google Suggest which suggests queries as you type in the search box. A drop down box open beneath the search box allowing you to choose a query. The suggestions may help you refine your search by adding additional terms to narrow, or perhaps broaden, your query. …

Anyone with his or her own blog should take a look at LLRX’s Bloggers Beware: Debunking Eight Copyright Myths of the Online World. The author debunks eight common misconceptions about copyright as it pertains to blogs. They are: Myth #1: It’s okay to use anything that doesn’t have a copyright notice. Myth #2: It’s okay …