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:
USA Today Launches Travel Site
Disciplined Doctor Database on Internet
LLRXBu zz Tour of 50 State Web Sites
LLRXBu zz Archives : April 3, 2000 – Present
The Latest on Legal Research
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USA Today Launches Travel Site
USA Today has launched a travel site at http://www.travel.usatoday.com. Looks like most of the information offered is right up front on one information-packed page. The top of the page gives you a way to look up available flights (powered by Travelocity.)
Also on this page you’ll find travel news (business, tourism, airlines, etc.) deals (various travel bargains), features (current features include information on B&Bs, tennis resorts, and the best airports for business.) Every business day there’s a different column related to travel, from business travel to great deals to vacations.
On the far left of the page you’ll find a variety of links to news and information. Standouts include “10 Great” (10 great places to make the most of a flight delay, 10 great places to ski in the summer, to get breakfast in bed, etc.)
country guides and currency converters, and airport delay information. Worth a look.
Netlitigation
Netlitigation, at http://www.netlitigation.com/netlitigation/, provides netizens with tools for assessing the risk and opportunity before taking a lawsuit to court. These tools are in the form of Headlines and Topics, such as E-Commerce, First Amendment Law and ISP Issues. Each Topic opens to include an Overview with related Cases. Many of the cases I looked at had further analysis, which provided additional information about the cases and in some instances the resolution of the cases.
The search and site map are, handily, both on the same page at http://www.netlitigation.com/netlitigation/search.html. Search results include the (very descriptive) title of the page, brief excerpt, and link.
Korean Legal Resources
You can get a closer look at Korean legal Web resources at
http://www.siu.edu/offices/lawlib/koreanlaw/. I like this site; it’s all on one page with bookmark links to items of interest. From the index, you can link down to information about Korean’s Legal Systems, including the legislative, executive and judiciary branches.
The Korean Law Publications include primary sources and general legal resources. Warning here: the general resources are not links and most of the primary sources that are links are in the Korean language. (Look for “English” in the URL.)
The information is easier to follow when you check out the Internet Resources for Korean Law. The page’s title is followed by its language, URL and a brief explanation. The Web-based resources touch on different legal areas such as immigration, communications and Maritime Law.
While this is an extensive site, it unfortunately hasn’t been updated in over a year. So use it as a jumping-off point but don’t use it as your sole source of research.
Migration Information
The Migration Policy Institute has launched a reference site of migration information at http://www.migrationinformation.org/. The site offers current news about and a focus on migration fundamentals and fast facts.
The site’s Global Data Center features charts and tables showing patterns and trends. The Data Center also offers country profiles for Canada, Germany, Italy and others. The Profiles include migration overviews and history. Different
data sets are available for different countries but potential data available includes inflow of foreign-born population by country of birth, by year, annual number of asylum applications by nationality, by year, and foreign population as a percentage of the total population, by year. Years span 1990-2000.
Additional areas of interest on this site include a look at the next year of planned events about migration and integration as well as a focus on the US with news articles reflecting the immigration Policy Beat. There is also a
Glossary and a Press Room that offers news flashes.
Disciplined Doctor Database on Internet
The group Public Citizen has published a portion of its database of physicians who have been disciplined by state medical boards or who have been convicted of crimes. Currently only California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont are included on the site — that’s information on 6,700 physicians.
The site is at http://www.questionabledoctors.org. There are a couple of ways to view the site: you can browse a list of doctors for free or you can get detailed reports for a subscription free. From the intro page
(http://www.questionabledoctors.org/intro.cfm) pick a state. You’ll get a search interface and a note about the number of doctors in that state (there are over 3,100 doctors from California in this database.) The search interface allows you to enter the first three letters of the physician’s last name and specify which state you want. (You can also leave the name search blank and get all the results for a particular state.)
When you run a search you’ll learn how many results that search got, with the invitation to “click here” for more information. When you click there, you’ll get a brief registration request (name, e-mail, where you heard about the site, and whether or not you want to be contacted by e-mail.) Search results include doctor name, and a link to a summary report. Summary report contains the number of sanctions against the doctor, their city and state at the time of sanction, and who they were sanctioned by.
If you subscribe for $10, you can purchase 10 reports over 3 months. Once you’ve subscribed you’ll have the option to view a full report. The site is very good at letting you know how many reports you’ve viewed and when your
subscription will expire. Report information includes medical license number, offense, action taken, and the date of action taken. There may be multiple offenses listed by different agencies — for example, a doctor may be disciplined by a state and by Medicaid.
Information for doctors in the state of Texas is expected to be added in July, with more states, including Utah, Arizona, and Virginia, expected online in September. The state information page will give you data on how the list of
doctors was compiled and how that particular state compares with other states.
Mozilla 1.0 Released
Mozilla 1.0 is out, for which O Be Joyful! Frankly I can’t see much difference between it and Mozilla 1.0 RC2 (I skipped RC3.) You can download it in several different OS flavors at http://www.mozilla.org/releases/.
I’ve been using it for a little while and find it very stable; but I’ve found Mozilla stable for a while. I wish I knew more about adding skins and messing with the
preferences; if you have a cool Mozilla tip you want to share e-mail me and I’ll compile them into an article.