Legal Research

Windows Plunges to 89% of Desktops Worldwide; Linux Surges Towards 1%

Posted on December 02, 2008
A new survey from Net Applications indicates that worldwide market share for Windows and Internet Explorer continues to drop. On the operating system side, it shakes out thusly: Windows - a bit over 89% Mac OSX - just about 9% Linux - almost nudging 1% (after like 17 years of development) For browsers, here’s the top 3 (all others need [...

The Essential Guide for First-Time Homeowners: Maximize Your Investment & Enjoy Your New Home

Posted on December 01, 2008
By Ilona Bray, Alayna SchroederWith Nolo’s Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home you’ll get the crucial information that will make the difference between worrying about your home and enjoying every minute you spend there. Packed with tips and timely reminders, the book gives you the information on: prioritizing purchases, maintenance and repairs, insurance, [...

Facebook Says, “Only Connect.”

Posted on December 01, 2008
Two articles today about Facebook’s upcoming Connect service, which will allow you to sign in to Web sites using your Facebook credentials.  They’re being very cautious with the rollout of Connect — after all, it was only a year ago that they ticked everybody off with Beacon...

Justice, But For The Wrong Reason?

Posted on December 01, 2008
Last Wednesday a federal jury in Los Angeles convicted Lori Drew of Missouri of three misdemeanors for her part in the suicide of teenager Megan Meier. Back in 2006, Drew created a fake MySpace account in the name of “Josh Evans”.  She used the fictional teenager to flirt with Megan Meier, a young neighbor of Ms...

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The Evolution of the Citizen Journalist

Posted on December 01, 2008
Back in the early 1990s, an amateur with a $300 video camera exposed police brutality and changed the way that news was reported.  During the 2004 Asian tsunami, bloggers on the scene posted updates every few minutes with details that matched, or exceeded, those provided by the mainstream press...

This Is What Happens When All Your Eggs Are In One Basket

Posted on November 26, 2008
Here’s a warning posted on the Google Online Security Blog: beware of phishing sites that want to steal your Gmail account credentials: “To keep your Google account secure online, we recommend you only ever enter your Gmail sign-in credentials to web addresses starting with https://www...

No Kindle 2 Under The Tree This Year

Posted on November 25, 2008
Apparently Amazon has delayed the release of the Kindle 2 until 1Q of 2009.  If the leaked images of the next-gen version that made the rounds in October are real, it looks much more polished that its predecessor.

Death Penalty in a Nutshell

Posted on November 24, 2008
By Victor StreibCovering both the substantive and the procedural law of the death penalty, this title begins with an explanation of its basic constitutional challenges and limitations. Major sections cover capital crimes and defenses, as well as trial level and post trial procedural issues...

Microsoft Knows It Has a Branding Problem

Posted on November 24, 2008
MSN Search just didn’t sound Googley enough.  So Microsoft changed the name to Live Search.  Still not catchy.  Next year, they may call their search service … Kumo? Personally, I vote for Moist and Chewy Search.

If You Build It, They Will Come

Posted on November 21, 2008
And then you’ll have to build it again.  The architects of the new Europeana digital cultural library designed the site to handle 5 million hits (to oversimplify, think “visits”) per hour.  They got 10 million instead, so the site’s now down a day after it launched...

Google SearchWiki

Posted on November 21, 2008
Yesterday Google launched SearchWiki, which allows you to reorder your Google search results, delete sites from the hit list, add sites to the results, and annotate your results page.  For each hit, you’ll see an up-arrow (to reorder), an “X” (to delete), and a speech balloon (for comments)...

A Half-Hour to Boot? Even Vista’s Not That Slow

Posted on November 20, 2008
The National Law Journal reports on a spate of lawsuits being filed by hourly workers against their employers over time spent booting their computers.  The article quotes Las Vegas solo lawyer Mark Thierman, who has filed of few of these suits himself: “‘These are hourly employees who are not making much more than minimum wage,’ Thierman [...

From Hurricanes to Hollywood

Posted on November 19, 2008
1) Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: Outstanding Need, Slow Progress 2) Editing Hollywood’s Editors: Cleaning Flicks for Families 3) Steroids in Sports: Cheating the System… What do all of these things have in common? They are all the titles of hearings before the U...

Microsoft Will Offer Free Security Software Next Year

Posted on November 19, 2008
From the announcement: “Code-named ‘Morro’, this streamlined solution will be available in the second half of 2009 and will provide comprehensive protection from malware including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans.  This new solution, to be offered at no charge to consumers, will be architected for a smaller footprint that will use fewer computing resources, making it [...

Free Download: Doc Scrubber

Posted on November 19, 2008
If you create and distribute documents with MS Office, you need to be aware of metadata.  What’s that, you say?  Metadata is data about data.  It describes how, when, and by whom a document was created. You can manually remove this hidden information, or you can purchase one of the metadata scrubbers available on the market [...

PC Magazine, Print Edition, Will Cease in January 2009

Posted on November 19, 2008
Ziff Davis says that, following the lead of some newspapers, they will now go all-digital. I dunno … there’s nothing like the print version of a magazine or a newspaper.  You can read it anywhere.  Leave it stuffed in the couch to finish later...

… And Speaking (Yet Again) of the iPhone

Posted on November 19, 2008
The SearchMe application for the iPhone is now available.  In case you’ve never used the Web-based version, SearchMe displays your hits the same way that Apple’s iTunes Cover Flow does album covers.  You flip through your hits by clicking on the “forward” and “back” arrows...

More Halos for Wal-Mart

Posted on November 19, 2008
Previously I blogged about how Wal-Mart’s selling the G1 Android phone 30 bucks cheaper than the T-Mobile store.  Come December 28, they’ll also be selling the iPhone 3G, so says Boy Genius Report.  Right now, there’s no info on what Wal-Mart’s discount will be, if any.

We Haven’t Come To Bury Jerry, But To Buy Yahoo Stock To Kick Him While He’s Down

Posted on November 18, 2008
Amid the flurry of stories about Jerry Yang’s resignation as Yahoo’s CEO, two posts stand out.  The NY Times reported that Yahoo’s market value rose $2.3 billion in pre-market trading this morning, hours after Yang’s resignation was announced...

No “Over the River and Through the Woods” This Year

Posted on November 18, 2008
Hitwise reports that, just a week or so before Thanksgiving, visits to airline Web sites are at their lowest levels in 3 years.  On the other hand, searches for “cheap flights” have increased, which indicates that travelers are being forced to pinch pennies this year...

The Good Earth, Revisited

Posted on November 18, 2008
Google has digitized millions of photos, most of them previously unpublished, from LIFE magazine and has made them available via a special archive that’s part of Google Image Search. The first thing that I looked at was the Earthrise images snapped 40 years ago by the astronauts of Apollo 8...

Pennsylvania Trust Guide: A Handbook for Trustees and Their Advisors, 2008 Edition

Posted on November 17, 2008
By Julieanne E. Steinbacher, Esq. and Adrianne J. Stahl, Esq.This timely new book is a practical guide for those in the profession who practice trust law, fund trusts, or advise trustees. The experienced authors have crafted an easy-to-use book that allows practitioners to examine the applicable statutes, benefit from insightful practice tips, and read [...

It’s Hard to Imagine Life Without USB

Posted on November 17, 2008
Wired reports that the next-gen version of the USB standard, USB 3.0 (”SuperSpeed USB”) has been introduced and will be available late next year.  This is the first upgrade to USB in eight years.  USB 3.0 will be about 10x faster that USB 2...

Yet Another Reason Why Jenkins Really Oughta Sorta Think About Considering Getting Me An iPhone (Please)

Posted on November 14, 2008
The NY Times reports that today Google is expected to release a free voice-recognition application that will allow iPhone users to submit their queries verbally, rather than by typing them using the iPhone’s virtual keyboard.  The app will be available from the iTunes store...

FBI Investigating Threat to Reveal Patient Prescription Data

Posted on November 12, 2008
An article in the WIRED Blog Network reported on an extortion plot to divulge millions of patients’ prescription information. Express Scripts, a St. Louis company that manages the prescription benefits of 50 million people, recently asked the FBI to investigate an extortion plot which threatened to expose the personal information, including the prescriptions, of [...

There You Have It — AVG Thinks Windows Is A Virus

Posted on November 12, 2008
To be precise, it mistakenly thinks the Windows file user32.dll contains a Trojan Horse, but I enjoyed coming up with the smarmy title.  If you are running AVG and you see the warning, do not delete the file.  AVG has released an updated version of the virus definitions that corrects this problem.

Google Flu Trends

Posted on November 12, 2008
I was on the Michael Smerconish radio show this morning, talking about Google Flu Trends, which tracks user search activity for flu-related terms.  Google has analyzed 5 years’ worth of search data and discovered that search activity correlates with the CDC’s data on flu outbreaks...

Remembrance Day 2008

Posted on November 11, 2008
I bet if I asked fifty people on the street why Veterans Day is celebrated on November 11, most of ‘em wouldn’t have a clue.  But if I asked fifty Europeans, particularly the Brits, they’d know why November 11 is special.  It’s Remembrance Day, the day that the armistice was signed ending World War I...

Nonprofit Meetings, Minutes & Records: How to Run Your Nonprofit Corporation So You Don't Run Into Trouble

Posted on November 10, 2008
By Anthony MancusoNearly 1.5 million nonprofit organizations are busy preserving historic sites, saving libraries, helping the homeless, greening our cities- and so much more. Yet, while some have sophisticated record-keeping systems, most nonprofits are staffed by volunteers who need help running the organization and keeping up a proper — and legal –paper trail...

One Response for Every 12.5 Million Emails and Spammers Still Make $7,000 a Day [UPDATED]

Posted on November 10, 2008
The BBC reports on a study by the International Computer Science Institute at Berkeley and the Computer Science and Engineering Department of UCSD on spam conversions — people who actually click on a link in a spam email in order to buy what’s being offered...

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