Ramble On, Rosie

It's good to see Sandra Rosenzweig updating her blog regularly. Sandra writes the Technicalities column for the California Lawyer (almost always my first stop in the magazine). Here's a great tip from her about number patterns recognized by Google:

Google now recognizes a whole lot of number patterns: FedEx, UPS, and USPS tracking numbers; vehicle ID numbers: U.S. patent numbers; UPC codes; area codes or whole phone numbers; and even FCC equipment IDs and FAA airplane reservation numbers. Usually, all you need to type into the usual Google search box is the number, and Google does the rest. However, for patent numbers you have to add the word patent to the beginning of the number, and for FCC equipment IDs you need to add fcc at the beginning. For flight information you need to type in the airline name or code before the flight number. Google says you need to enter the FCC airplane registration numbers that appear on each plane's tail, but I've never found that necessary.

Xeni Goes Public

Xeni Jardin recently discussed the INDUCE Act on NPR's Day to Day:

At first glance, there seems nothing threatening about the iPod. People bop along listening to the songs they've stored on it, apparently harming no one. But within the halls of the United States Senate, there is concern.

[...]

Of course, if the Act should pass you might have one less way to know something like this. (Don't forget to read the blog.)

But Is It A BitTorrent?

David Starkoff, from a fascinating post on medium neutral citations: "It's almost a Napster for the legal publishing community: publishing companies being forced to demonstrate value or develop new revenue streams in the face of the increasing use of the Internet."

Got Milk?

World Breastfeeding Week starts tomorrow.

Down Underware*

David Starkoff has been on my blawgroll for awhile, but I just now checked out his "somewhat meagre and humble case citation to URL translator." Meagerness and humilty aside, this is a cool idea. The concept is brilliantly simple: if you know the reporter citation of a case, you plug it into the translator and it points you to where the case resides on the Web. David is in Australia and the translator focuses on his courts, but the U.S. Supreme Court is represented. So is the WIPO UDRP arbitration tribunal. How great would it be if:

1. courts put their decisions online in HTML (for a recent example of the power of putting frequently cited documents in HTML see Kottke's version of the The 9/11 Commission Report executive summary), and


2. there was a comprehensive tool like David's?

I've been preoccupied lately with how technologies available today but largely unutilized by the legal field will shape how we practice law and access legal decisions and thinkers. (More on this soon I hope on the Blawg Channel.) One thing happening right here and now (as David also notes): interesting congressmen (Boucher) and judges (Posner) are guest-blogging for interesting vacationing law professors.

*Not to be confused with...