LLRXBuzz – August 19, 2002

Tara Calishain is the co-author of Official Netscape Guide to Internet Research, 2nd Edition, and author or co-author of four other books. She is the owner of CopperSky Writing & Research.



In This Issue:

Arizona Voters Can Register Online

Missouri Blue Book Online

Freedom Info

Utah Online Services

Browser Security Issues

Who’s Who Coming to Cyberspace

Washington Post to Require Some Registration Info

LLRXBu zz Tour of 50 State Web Sites

LLRXBu zz Archives : April 3, 2000 – Present

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Arizona Voters Can Register Online

Folks living in Arizona can now register to vote online much like they renew their driver’s licenses or state ID cards at www.servicearizona.com. The site features a process of digitizing and filing signatures which can be sent to the
county record by clicking on a screen icon. Get the full story from the Arizona Daily Sun at:
http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=46315.

Missouri Blue Book Online

The Official Manual of the State of Missouri, a.k.a. Blue Book, is posted online at http://www.sos.state.mo.us/bluebook/. The 2001-2002 edition provides Missourians information about all levels of government, from local to federal. It also features the winners of a photo contest depicting Missouri’s patriotism.

The front page is the table of contents, click on any chapter to get a rundown of its contents. Each chapter is downloadable as a Adobe PDF file.

The last link in the Blue Book’s table of contents is to a search engine. My query for voter registration listed search results by relevancy, with an abstract and a link to the full document as well as a link to the summary. Another search option is of state personnel. Search results list the person’s department, title and salary. This site is worth a look and while you are there
check the winning photograph.

Freedom Info

Freedominfo.org (http://www.freedominfo.org/) is a portal for freedom of information advocates. Its focuses are best practices, lessons learned and campaign strategies for those defending global information freedom. It also looks at drafting and implementing laws protecting citizen’s rights to governmental information.

The front page links to case studies and a global survey. News articles link to related articles on the same subject. The current analysis compares the 2001 Information Disclosure Law in the Japan with the Freedom of Information Act in the U.S.

Utah Online Services

Utah.gov has added some new options to its Online Services page
at http://www.utah.gov/government/onlineservices.html. Newer
services are grouped as being for citizens or being for businesses.

New services for citizens include Income Tax Return Filing and the Utah Community Services Directory. The Services Directory can be searched by keyword or narrowed by county and type of people needing the service. Services can also be searched by organization name or needed service. The Services Directory also opens a page to anyone in search of a volunteer
opportunity.

Online services on the Business Side include a UCC Lookup from the state’s Department of Commerce. This service allows searching of the Uniform Commercial Core or the Central Filing Search System by number or debtor name. Another new online service is the renewal system for occupational and professional licenses. It’s a straight forward four-step process.

Browser Security Issues A Go-Go

Internet Explorer has a bad security hole; learn more about it at http://news.com.com/2100-1001-949551.html. There doesn’t seem to be a patch available for it yet. In the meantime, Opera has released version 6.05 of its browser, which fixes an OpenSSL security issue. Read about this new
version and download it from http://www.opera.com/windows/changelog/log605.html.

Who’s Who Coming to Cyberspace

Competitive Analysis Technologies (CAT) has released its tenth quarterly update of “Power Utilities on the Internet” with 3,500 natural gas and electric resource profiles. The revised edition is available via the Internet, as a stand-
alone CD-ROM or as a hard copy. Online demonstrations are available from www.catsites.com/demo. Additional industry-specific databases available from CAT include “Oil and Gas on the Internet” in both Upstream and Downstream versions. Get more information from the press release at
http://library.northernlight.com/FC20020731730000023.html.

Washington Post to Require Some Registration Info

Editor and Publisher is reporting (http://tinyurl.com/ytp) that The Washington Post will begin requiring demographic information to read stories on the site. Currently WashingtonPost.com is only asking for readers to voluntarily provide that information, but starting August 14 supplying the information will be mandatory.

If you visit http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/metro/ you’ll see that WashingtonPost.com is making the information request at the top of their page. Click on the “Tell Me More” link at the top of the page and you’ll get a popup box requesting your gender, year of birth, zip code (for US residents only) and zip code.

There is no way to register with a username on this box, so I’m assuming that WashingtonPost.com is tracking this information with cookies, or else we have to enter information every time we visit the site (yuck.) Of course, many people like me either reject cookies or dump them at the end of every browser session. Frankly I’d rather be able to register.

Or even pay! $2 a month or something for access to 30 days’ worth of the Washington Post. Surely the WP would make more from a $2/month subscription fee than they would from my eyeballs looking at ads?

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