Become a Google Power User

Do more than just search and read email with Google.  Find out how to search cases for free, use advanced techniques to search web sites, set up search alerts and make voice and video calls.

Googlerific Workshop will be on Tues. Feb. 24 12:10-1pm in Room 243.  R.S.V.P to lawdek@hofstra.edu .  

Pizza and surprise gift also included.


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Google tricks

does so much more than just search the web.  Try a few of these Google tricks 

• use Google as a timer
• play zerg rush or Atari Breakout
• get movie times, translations, conversions to/from metric, currency conversions
• narrow your web search to a particular site - a really useful research tool, btw

For more, check out 20 Awesome Things Google Can Do from {Life}Buzz

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Better Google Searching

Google returns very good search results with basic effort, but as a graduate student you can make Google results even better with some helpful tips and tricks.  Legal Productivity has a great list of ways to improve your search results here.

And don't forget the Hofstra Law Library's Spring 2014 workshop which goes over even more ways to improve your Google skills.  View the archived webcast here.

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Did you know Google has advanced searching techniques as well as cloud storage and collaborate document drafting tools?  To find out more, register for our Googlerific workshop - the last in our Research Life-line workshop series.

Date:  Wed. March 26
Time:  12:10 - 1pm
Location:  Room 014
R.S.V.P:  lawdek@hofstra.edu

Lunch and surprise gift included.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Research alert - check out Google Scholar Library

Those engineers at Google don't rest much.  They have introduced an enhancement to Google Scholar, called Google Scholar Library.

Google Scholar, for the uninitiated, searches scholarly articles and will sometimes even provide links when Hofstra subscribes .  Google Scholar Library enhances functionality by allowing you to save, organize and search articles of interest.    

See Google Scholar blog for details.
                                                        Hat tip to Prof Hacker



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Google Tips

Google has created a site called Google Tips that will help you find the information you need for all kinds of Google apps and services made easy.

Read more about it here.  Check out the Google Tips page here.

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Google's New Transparency Report

Last Thursday Google released the latest of its semi-annual Transparency Reports. The Report, covering the first half of 2013, provides an overview of the requests Google received from governments, including the United States government, for personal data gathered from the online activities of its users. The latest Transparency Report shows not only an increase in government requests over the previous six-month period, but also a rise in the number of requests rejected by Google.

An interesting overview of the report by the Associated Press is available here at the ABC News website. See my earlier post on the recent transparency report by Yahoo and ongoing data disclosure litigation.

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50 Ways to Market Your Practice

The ABA Journal recently published an interesting article entitled "50 Simple Ways You Can Market Your Practice."  The article was compiled from strategies straight from successful lawyers and consultants who who have focused on a marketing plan to increase their practice.  Some tips include volunteering at various organizations, taking advantage of Google tools, increasing social media and more.  For the full article, click here.

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Free Field Trips Add Fun to Google's App

This month Google has made life better for anyone who's running its Field Trip app on a phone. The Google Field Trip app was designed to make exploring fun places easier by suggesting cool cultural attractions near your current location and providing instant helpful information on these museums, historical sites, zoos and entertainment centers. Now, through the end of July, your phone's Field Trip App will automatically provide a free pass when you are close to 23 of the most popular art, nature, and history attractions in major U.S. metropolitan areas, including the Bronx Zoo and six others in New York City.  Mashable explains more about it and provides the full list of free admission sites.         

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Google Launches "Account Activity"

I'm really trying to nap more during Spring Break while the Library is quiet.  However, a new announcement from Google this week got my attention.  On Wednesday, Google's official blog posted an announcement of a new feature called Account Activity.  If you sign up, Google will send you each month a link to a password-protected report giving you information about how you use your Google account services.  Items in the report include which browsers you searched, how many emails you sent, your top queries, and even a chart depicting "How You Spend Your Time Per Week," based on information Google has collected.  While promoted as a good way to manage your information and protect your account, it also provides insight into the information Google collects about us in the form of a simple report.  Take a look.  Google is also asking for feedback from those who try it out.

Hat tip to Law Librarian Blog.

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New Google Privacy Policy

Yesterday Google announced on the Official Google Blog and via email notices that it was changing its privacy policies, effective March 1, 2012.  One general privacy policy covering most of its products will replace the more than 70 privacy documents existing today.

A main objective behind the new policy, as stated in the announcement, will be to "[make] clear that, if you're signed in", Google "may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services."  In other words, Google will combine information gathered from different products your may have used (for example, Gmail, Google Docs, Google+ posts, shared photos, and calendars) and "treat you as a single user across all our products."  This permits Google to offer its new feature, "Search Plus Your World," described in a previous post. Google is also simplifying matters by revising its Terms of Service, also posted now but effective March 1.

Is this just simplification, just service, or just scary?  The media and the lawmakers are already weighing in on that question, as explained here by Mark Hachman of PCMag.com.  Whatever your personal take on the new Google policies and features may be, it's good to be informed. 

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Google+ is Here

While some of you have been (understandably) occupied with bar exam study and work assignments, Google announced its new social networking project, Google+, on June 28. This lead to the predictable speculation about how this latest Google foray into social network building would fare against Facebook. Right now Google+ is in a limited field trial, available to a limited group of invited users and temporarily at user capacity. However, you can still take an interactive tour on the Google+ site, and read a little about what the tech experts and bloggers are saying, while you wait for your chance to try it out. The major features are reviewed in Avi Rappoport's article this week in Information Today. For a more conceptual take on Google+ and its social network vision, read Scott Rosenberg's post on Open Salon.
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Google and Content Farms

Google has been getting some press over the last two weeks for its attempt to purge "search engine spam" from its search results. Santa Clara Prof. Eric Goldman posted some related links and thoughts here. Part of Google's purge is aimed at online stores that use less than savory methods to get their products to appear ahead of their competitors' products in Google search results. Another part of its purge is aimed at "content farms": sites like eHow that pay (often unqualified) contributors around $10 or $15 a pop to write short, quick articles that will turn up in Google search results. (We mentioned these before when talking about the new search engine blekko.)

For people using Google for legal research (usually to get background before using specialized legal research sites and databases), Google's purge should not make much of a different, since the top results in searches for legal research usually lead to sites (government websites, law firm websites, and wikipedia) that may offer incomplete or out-of-date information, but don't often offer information that is simply wrong, the way content farms can. But if you are a lawyer or law student and do happen upon something like eHow's "How to Research Federal Law" and consider it reliable, we just hope that you're not affiliated with Hofstra.

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Blekko

Search engines that are not Google do still exist. Some of them are even being started today. Blekko, which launched this week, has been getting a lot of press. (An NY Times article is here; a ComputerWorld article is here.)

This search engine is a bit of a throwback, in that it relies largely on human-edited search results. Blekko's goal is to only list results from reputable sources, mostly by weeding out content farms and those public answer trees where the answers people provide are almost invariably wrong. Time will tell if this works, and some people grow used to searching with a system of slashtags.


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Gmail Chat

Students, were you aware that you can ask reference questions via Gmail Chat (or Gchat, Google Chat, or whatever else you might call it)?

You can. However, since this service is only available to the Hofstra Law School community, you will have to call or visit the library to get the library's contact information for Gmail Chat. (Or MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, etc. if you use one of those.)

Update: Because of the software we use, we will sometimes appear as offline or idle until you contact us. We can reply to your questions whenever there is a librarian at the reference desk (i.e. 9-9 Monday-Thursday, 9-5 Friday, 10-6 Saturday, and 12-8 Sunday).


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The Environmental Impact of Google Searches

Although internet searches may not appear to have any environmental impact, they require servers, which require electricity. You may have even heard the rumor that every Google search uses as much energy as a 100 watt light bulb uses in one hour. This is not true. The Slaw blog outlines how much energy Google searches actually require--Google has tried to limit this energy consumption for both environmental and cost-saving reasons.


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Google Evidence

No, it's not a new web application for court clerks. Joel Cohen and Katherine A. Helm have an interesting new article on Law.com about a recent 2nd Circuit opinion which states that judges can take judicial notice of information published on the internet. The authors make a good point--judges who do this should probably also reveal the websites they've used and how they found those websites. As all librarians know, it is possible for very smart people to use very bad Google search terms.

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Google search tricks

It seems almost all of us use Google on a regular basis, but do we know everything it can do for us? This New York Times article lists 10 simple Google search tricks that can help you save time.


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Search for Legal Opinions using Google Scholar

Google Scholar has added full text searching of caselaw and legal journals. Just go to scholar.google.com and choose the "Legal Opinions and Journals" radio button. You can also use the advanced search feature to limit your search by jurisdiction.

In addition to the text of the case, Google Scholar offers a nice looking "How Cited" feature that shows how the case has been cited and provides a list of citing cases and related documents.

Many bloggers have already expressed excitement about this development and are naturally wondering how this will affect Westlaw/Lexis products. Read more about it here,
here and here.


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