KCLL Klues: Washington State Legal Research

Many of you are probably familiar with the “Wayback Machine” as a resource for finding archived web pages. The Wayback Machine is part of the Internet Archive. “Wayback”  is used in the request “Can you do a Wayback on that?”, meaning, can you find archived web pages for that website? See Michael Fagan, Note, “Can you do a Wayback on That?” The Legal Community’s Use of Cached Web Pages In and Out of Trial, 13 B.U. J. Sci. & Tech. L. 46 (2007) (available for free, but without page numbers, at the journal’s website.  Available WITH page numbers from HeinOnline, LEXIS and Westlaw at KCLL). The article covers a lot of ground and speaks mainly to cached web pages in general, including some of the possible difficulties in getting cached web pages admitted under the Federal Rules of Evidence. A more recent law review note analyzes and provides a framework for determining the admissibility of archived web pages from the Wayback Machine under the Federal Rules of Evidence. See Deborah R. Eltgroth, Note, Best Evidence and the Wayback Machine: Toward a Workable Authentication Standard for Archived Internet Evidence, 78 Fordham L.R. 181 (2009) (available at the Fordham Law Review website).

Both articles provide an overview of how the Wayback Machine works. The website itself has extensive FAQ and legal FAQ pages describing how the site works and some of its limitations. There is also an information page for use by lawyers and a standard affidavit  for use by Internet Archive staff in authenticating archived web page printouts, should that be necessary.

The “Wayback Machine” is named in honor of Mr. Peabody’s WABAC (pronounced way-back) machine from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show. See the FAQs Wayback Machine. If these cultural references don’t mean anything to you, then here is a Toonepedia entry on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show and another with an image of the dog Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman with their WABAC Machine.

Launched May 16, 2009, Wolfram|Alpha is one of latest online search engines. Wolfram Alpha is a computational knowledge engine capable of natural language processing, developed by Wolfram Research, a software company. It runs its calculations using Mathematica, an earlier product developed by Wolfram Research.

Wolfram|Alpha and Wolfram Research are the design of Stephen Wolfram. London-born Wolfram is a physicist, software developer, mathematician, inventor, computer programmer, author, businessman and all-around genius. His goal in the development of this site is “bring[ing] expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels.”

Wolfram|Alpha accepts “free-form input” and produces clear and comprehensible results. Instead of producing a results list like other online search sites, Wolfram|Alpha uses its “10+ trillion pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains” to try to compute answers to presented queries. When it is unable to calculate an answer, it states: “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure how to compute an answer from your input”.

Wolfram|Alpha can solve mathematical problems with ease. It can provide statistical information on a variety of topics with numbers, charts and graphs. And, Wolfram Alpha has a sense of humor, quoting both Monty Python and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in response to relevant questions.

Despite all of this goodness, there are still deficits in Wolfram|Alpha’s knowledge. When I ran a computation of my family home in North Carolina, it gave me information on a city with the same name in Oregon as well as information on the state of North Carolina. However, I anticipate that as the core of information contained in Wolfram|Alpha’s databases increase, flubs such as this will happen less and less. And despite these quirks, it’s a lot of fun to play with!

For optimal computation, Wolfram|Alpha requires an up-to-date web browser to run its calculations.

Click on the following links for more information on Wolfram|Alpha or Stephen Wolfram.

In a recent story on National Public Radio, a speaker discussed the results of comparing search engines Bing and Google.  He used a program called Bing-vs-Google.  After a week of searching for an article he was preparing, he thought there were gaps in the Bing results, but that Bing may offer more opportunities for shopping online.  You can run your own test.  Enter your search terms in the search box.  The default display shows the results side-by-side or you can show the results horizontally.  Give it a try.

If you have ever had questions about how to cite something a legal pleading you have no doubt turned to the Bluebook for help.   You can get access to the physical copy in the law library or you can subscribe to the electronic copy online.   However, the Bluebook website is now offering some helpful tips for citations that cost nothing.   Check it out and happy writing!

There is a new document assembly site which allows anyone to put together their documents in a coherent and orderly manner with little to no cost.   Whichdraft.com describes itself as a “self-directed legal resource that allows individuals to build a variety of high quality contracts.”    

The site also describes several of the types of contracts from which it provides sample clauses.   This can be helpful for the novice or expert alike.

I monitor many blogs, listservs, microblogs such as Twitter, social sites such as Facebook and more. Today the story that was repeated many times was that Sony will put out a new wireless e-reader called the Daily Edition. It will be out for the holidays in December. Sony announced other new e-readers recently, but they were wired. This new one will work on a 3G wireless network. Here are links to some of the stories I read today – from a blog at the Los Angeles Times, from Wireless Week and from the Mobile Libraries blog.

So now I have to try to decide between one of the other Sony e-readers, the Kindle e-reader, or this new Sony e-reader.

Have some information that you’d like to present visually?  You could use a standard graph like everyone else or you could experiment with a word cloud.  A word cloud is an image that represents relationships between words in a text document.  The larger a particular word is in the cloud image, the more often it appears in the text block the cloud is based on.  Wordle is a free web site that enables you to create a word cloud image from your own text.  By simply pasting your text into the appropriate spot on Wordle,  you can create and then customize a niffty image.

If you’ve shopped for computer hard drives recently, you may have run across an unfamiliar acronym: SATA.  SATA stands for “Serial Advanced Technology Attachment” and refers to a relatively new type of interface for internal and external hard drives.  You may also see the interface referred to as “Serial ATA”.  Compared to ATA hard drives—now referred to as “PATA” or “Parallel ATA” drives–SATA devices send and receive data faster, are less prone to hardware failures and are easier to install.   The cables used with SATA drives are much smaller than those used with ATA drives and thus take up less room inside your computer and allow for better air flow.  SATA connectors on motherboards are also color-coded to make it easier to determine hard drive priority in those computers with multiple drives.  If you’re purchasing an external SATA drive for your computer, you’ll see the interface referred to as “eSATA”.  Most computer manufacturers are installing SATA rather than PATA drives in new systems and SATA may eventually replace PATA altogether.