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. 

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Google Earth - A 3D interface to the planet

This Google application has a HUGE wow factor. It has been suggested that it is the best thing ever to be given away in the history of free things (This had been a pay service called Keyhole before being purchased by Google) . Google Earth is a map of the world made up of satellite and aerial images. You can type in an address or zip code and zoom right in from outerspace. It's a planet worth of pictures that you can magnify, tilt and explore to your heart's content. You can "fly" from one location to another. It is so powerful that the South Korean government is voicing concerns about disclosure of it's military bases. I could go on and on, but this MUST be downloaded (easy & quick) and seen to be appreciated. Here is the Link: http://earth.google.com/ . Be forewarned, flying around the planet is strangely addicting! To get beyond the basics, check out Chris Sherman's recent article Hacking Google Earth . This is world class COOL!!

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

21st Century Library Workshop

The World Wide Web has changed the way we look for information and do research, but how much do you really know about information sources online and how to find them? Next week the 21st Century Library is holding a series of workshops on using the WWW as a research tool. Each workshop stands alone, but each workshop also deals with a different aspect of research on the web. Attend one or all as your schedule permits. Sign up is not required.

The myth is that you can find the info you need for free on the web, so why does business - including law firms - continue to subscribe to web based databases, i.e. pay for information? When should you use the web and when should you start with a for fee service?

Monday, January 24th from 12:10-1 PM - Fee v. Free: Web based subscription databases v. information offered for free over the World Wide Web.

Do you know what the Invisible Web is and how to find it? Information not retrieved using search engines is the underwater portion of the iceberg web. There is a wealth of information within websites that cannot be found by Google, AltaVista, Teoma, etc. It can be found if you know how and where to look.

Monday, January 24th from 5:10-6 PM and
Wednesday, January 2 6th from 11:10-12 PM - The Invisible Web: The World Wide Web inaccessible to search engines - what is it and how to find it.

The next workshop has proven popular in the past so we are bringing it back. Use Google effectively and efficiently and save time. Learn how to refine your search query so that you retrieve the most relevant sites and not 10,000+ hits.

Wednesday, January 26th from 12:10-1 PM
Advanced Google Searching: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to obtain the best search results from your Google query.

Where: All classes are held in the Lower Level Computer Lab in Deane Law Library

Help us give better workshops.

What kind of workshops would you like in the future?
When should we give workshops? Evenings? Weekends?

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Google Launches Search Plus Your World

Google launched a new update today.  The Google update, known as “Search Plus Your World,” integrates Google+ pages that have been made public in with regular search results on Google.  Click here to read more about Search Plus.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Google to become iTunes of books??

An article in the Sunday Times Online (UK) reports that:

"GOOGLE and some of the world’s top publishers are working on plans that they hope could do for books what Apple’s iPod has done for music"

Their vision is that instead of Google's book search merely offering samples of books and referring buyers to Amazon, surfers would be offered the option of downloading an entire book directly to their computer or blackberry type mobile device.

Interesting concept. Do you think it would catch on like iTunes??

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Bing

The launch of Microsoft's Bing reminds us that search engines other than Google do, in fact, still exist. PC World compares Bing with Google and Yahoo!. (from the Law Librarian Blog).



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

THE WORLD'S MOST INFLUENTIAL BRAND 2005

The Brandchannel.com / Interbrand Fifth Annual Readers Choice Awards for 2005 have just been released. GOOGLE has been named the world's most influential brand, beating out second place APPLE. Demonstrating a growing interest in VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), SKYPE cracked the top five this year, ranking third. STARBUCKS and IKEA round out the Global top five. The entire report can be viewed here. It is a really good read. In addition to the global list, brands are also ranked by region: Asia-Pacific, Europe and Asia, Central and Latin America, and North America. The fifth most influential brand in North America? Lance Armstrong.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Historic Computer Experiences

Those studying for the Bar exam need a break, and it's summer for everyone, so enjoy this slide show revealing the dramatic changes in web design since nine of the most popular websites--including Google, Facebook, and the New York Times--were first introduced.  Brought to you by Mashable.com, "What the World's Biggest Websites Looked Like at Launch" also has some brief information about each home page's initial design.

And, long before they were mobile, Lexis and Westlaw were truly stationary--usable only at the dedicated computer terminals of the 1980's in law libraries and offices. Experience a brief close encounter with the first computer-assisted legal research terminal, introduced by Lexis-Nexis in 1980 and now on display in the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California.  

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

HealthMap

The students around me are absorbed in studying for the bar exam, so it's a good time to prowl the Web for cool sites making news. If you haven't seen HealthMap yet, take a look when you have a chance. HealthMap tracks the latest infectious disease outbreaks throughout the world by gathering and filtering masses of information from news and other web sites, including health organization and government sources. Using Google Maps, it creates a real-time graphical presentation that helps predict and monitor infectious diseases, from the flu to salmonella and plague, sometimes before official agencies have announced a problem. Displaying information by disease, by geographic region, and by level of urgency, with news feeds and alerts, HealthMap is fascinating to explore. For more about HealthMap, I recommend an article in Discovery Channel's Discovery News (Eric Bland, "Web-Crawling Program ID's Disease Outbreaks," July 18, 2008).



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Privacy, Transparency and Yahoo

In the ongoing push and pull over consumer privacy, government security, and access to information, Yahoo.com is at center stage.  On September 6, Yahoo released its first ever Transparency Report, covering requests for user data it had received from the governments of 17 countries, from January through June, 2013.  More about the document, which reports over 12,000 requests from the U.S. government, more than 11,000 of these resulting in data disclosure and over 4500 of them in content disclosure, is available in Yahoo's report overview and in coverage by ComputerWorld. 

Meanwhile, Yahoo has been involved in an ongoing lawsuit (with co-plaintiffs Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn) that challenges federal government restrictions on providing foreign surveillance-related data with greater specificity.  And just this week, Yahoo itself was hit with a class action suit over consumer privacy.  The California consumers' complaint in Kevranian et. al. v. Yahoo Inc. (case number 5:13-cv-04547 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District Of California) claims that Yahoo's practice of accessing and indexing users' email for profiling and targeted advertising violates both California's Invasion of Privacy Act and the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act.  The legal world and the public await further developments.


Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Law Library of Congress: Congressional Hearings

The Law Library of Congress contains approximately 75,000 volumes of printed Congressional Hearings.

"As part of the Law Library’s transition to the digital future, a collaborative pilot project was undertaken with Google, Inc., to digitize the entire collection and make it freely available to Congress and the world. Three collections have been selectively compiled to provide users with a test experience:"

• Census: U.S.
• Freedom of Information/Privacy
• Immigration

For each Hearing, all of the text is in searchable PDF format.
Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

YouTube and copyright

With new technology constantly changing and advancing, new issues keep arising in the area of copyright law. One issue coming to the forefront recently is that of the posting of videos on the website YouTube. After Google purchased YouTube, the chances of website liability lawsuits and settlements have greatly increased. The Christian Science Monitor ran a recent article on the topic titled "The YouTube world opens an untamed frontier for copyright law" written by Daniel B. Wood. This is a good introductory article to the topic.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

21st Century Library Workshops?

What are the 21^st Century Library workshops? Well, it is the virtual information world; Lexis, Westlaw, research databases, Google and everything we can find online. There is so much information available it is easy to develop comfort with one tool and ignore others. How does one start? Where does one start? Why one resource above another? See the previous post for our kick off workshop.

21^st Century Library workshops will demonstrate different tools and provide tips and strategies for effective and efficient research. We have 6 workshops planned for this semester and each will focus on a specific topic. So get a jump start on advanced research and join us. Everyone in the law school is welcome to attend one or all of the workshops.

The next workshop will be announced next week.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat