Personal Injury and Social Security Disability Blog

Featured Link - Wordnik.com

Wordnik.com is a search engine for words. More than a dictionary, but less than Google, this site hits a sweet spot for people like me who have a genuine interest in words. Here's the description from the site:

What is Wordnik?

Wordnik is a place for all the words, and everything known about them.

Our goal is to show you as much information as possible, as fast as we can find it, for every word in English, and to give you a place where you can make your own opinions about words known.

Traditional dictionaries make you wait until they've found what they consider to be "enough" information about a word before they will show it to you. Wordnik knows you don't want to wait—if you're interested in a word, we're interested too!

By "information," we don't just mean traditional definitions (although we have plenty of those)! This information could be:

• An example sentence—we have tons of examples and gobs of other data for most words. But even if we've only found one sentence, we'll show it to you. And we'll show you where it came from.

• Related words: not just synonyms and antonyms, but words that are used in the same contexts. Cheeseburger, milkshake, and doughnut aren't synonyms, but they show up in the same kinds of sentences.

• Images tagged by our friends at Flickr: want to know what a pout looks like? We'll show you.

• Statistics: how rare is tintinnabulation? Well, we think you'll see it only about once a year.Smile? You might see that word many times, every day.

• An audio pronunciation—and you can record your own!

• Something YOU tell us! Use the "Comments" and "Contribute" links to tell us something—anything—about a word.

What is Wordnik?

Wordnik is a place for all the words, and everything known about them.

Our goal is to show you as much information as possible, as fast as we can find it, for every word in English, and to give you a place where you can make your own opinions about words known.

Traditional dictionaries make you wait until they've found what they consider to be "enough" information about a word before they will show it to you. Wordnik knows you don't want to wait—if you're interested in a word, we're interested too!

By "information," we don't just mean traditional definitions (although we have plenty of those)! This information could be:

• An example sentence—we have tons of examples and gobs of other data for most words. But even if we've only found one sentence, we'll show it to you. And we'll show you where it came from.

• Related words: not just synonyms and antonyms, but words that are used in the same contexts. Cheeseburger, milkshake, and doughnut aren't synonyms, but they show up in the same kinds of sentences.

• Images tagged by our friends at Flickr: want to know what a pout looks like? We'll show you.

• Statistics: how rare is tintinnabulation? Well, we think you'll see it only about once a year. Smile? You might see that word many times, every day.

• An audio pronunciation—and you can record your own!

• Something YOU tell us! Use the "Comments" and "Contribute" links to tell us something—anything—about a word.

Featured Link - AreaCode.org

AreaCode.org is a handy site when you're trying to figure out where that guy who left the phone message is calling from. Or when you get an e-mail inquiry from someone who lists his phone number but not his address. Here's the description from the site:

AreaCode.org is an area codes locator and comprehensive directory of area codes across the United States. Find information on each area code, including coverage area and local dialing instructions. Coverage area is shown with an area code map and list of cities within each code. Other relevant information for telephone area codes is detailed in the comments section. Use AreaCode.org for area code lookup, area code search, and as an area code finder. You could say that AreaCode.org takes the code out of telephone area code.

Featured Link - Top 100 Blogs

I was devastated to learn this blog is not one of the Top 100 Blogs at Technorati. Oh well, I'll keep trying, and maybe next year...

Featured Link - 100 Blogs That Will Make You Smarter

The title says it all: 100 Blogs That Will Make You Smarter.

Featured Link - 123People.com

An interesting search engine for people, not words or phrases, is 123People.com. Here's the description from the site:

About 123people    

123people is a real time people search tool that looks into nearly every corner of the Web. Using our proprietary search algorithm, you can find comprehensive and centralized people related information consisting of images, videos, phone numbers, email addresses, social networking and Wikipedia profiles and much more. All of this rich media profile content is pulled from an extensive list of international as well a regional relevant sources. 123people is also a social activity that applies crowd wisdom. Users can add information to every single search result, giving it more relevance with details that are yet not found in the Internet. This takes the quality of people search to the next level.

Featured Link - Cuil.com

There's a new rival to search engine powerhouse Google —this time from former Google employees. Their new site is Cuil.com, and here is their explanation:

Welcome to Cuil—the world’s biggest search engine. The Internet has grown. We think it’s time search did too.  

The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private.

Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil.

It's Independence Day - When Did We Lose Our Privacy?

This is the 4th of July, and I'm on the computer in the time between a picnic this morning and dinner and fireworks this evening. I was struck by the irony of an article in the New York Times on this Independence Day. The article is evidence of the chipping away at our individual liberties, fought for over the past 232 years at such enormous cost to American citizens.

The story has to do with a lawsuit between corporate giants Viacom and Google. The frightening part is that a federal judge has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube. I personally wouldn't be embarrassed if anyone knew which videos I've watched on YouTube, but I do not believe that my viewing habits are should be available to employees of Viacom (or Google, for that matter). What's happening to our right to privacy? Does Google have to monitor everything we do? And can anyone who sues Google get access to all our personal information? This has got to stop somewhere. Here are excerpts from the article:

The order raised concerns among YouTube users and privacy advocates that the video viewing habits of tens of millions of people could be exposed. But Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of the site’s visitors.

Still, the judge’s order, which was made public late Wednesday, renewed concerns among privacy advocates that Internet companies like Google are collecting unprecedented amounts of private information that could be misused or fall unexpectedly into the hands of third parties.

“These very large databases of transactional information become honey pots for law enforcement or for litigants,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

The amount of data covered by the order is staggering, as it includes every video watched on YouTube since its founding in 2005. In April alone, 82 million people in the United States watched 4.1 billion clips there, according to comScore. Some experts say virtually every Internet user has visited YouTube.

Interestingly, Google has rejected demands by privacy groups for more stringent protections for I.P. address records, saying that in most cases the addresses cannot be used to identify users. Yet Google argued that YouTube viewing data should be kept from Viacom, in part, to protect the privacy of its users.

Judge Louis L. Stanton of the Southern District of New York, who is presiding over Viacom’s lawsuit against Google and YouTube, referenced Google’s past statements on I.P. addresses to conclude that its “privacy concerns are speculative.”

“It is an ‘I told you so’ moment,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington.

Featured Link - ChunkIt! Web Search Assistant

I got an e-mail ad for this product, and it actually looks as if it might be helpful for Internet searches. Here's a quote from the ad:

It's called ChunkIt and it's a FREE browser search tool you can add to your Web page to make searching easier on every Web site. For example, if you are searching for something specific or with multiple search terms that's not coming up in your searches, ChunkIt pulls up the "chunk" of the page that mentions all your search terms together and highlights them, without you having to click on one link at a time to find the result you are looking for. ChunkIt makes it quick and easy to find exactly what you are looking for instead of wasting time digging through countless words, pages and links. Below is a link to the ChunkIt Cool Examples page where you can see more details about how this helps you to search any documents and Web sites online, and where you can also download it and try it out. http://www.tigerlogic.com/ChunkIt/sec-edgar-chunkit.html

Featured Link - All My Faves

All My Faves is a handy site that shows icons for dozens of the Internet's most popular Web sites. No more searching required — just go here and click on whatever you're looking for.

Featured Link - Public Library Of Law

The Public Library of Law bills itself as the world's largest free law library. For lawyers on a budget, or motivated non-lawyers, it's a great resource. Here's the site's description:

Searching the Web is easy. Why should searching the law be any different? That's why Fastcase has created the Public Library of Law -- to make it easy to find the law online. PLoL is the largest free law library in the world, because we assemble law available for free scattered across many different sites -- all in one place. PLoL is the best starting place to find law on the Web.

What is available on PLoL?

• Cases from the U.S. Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals
• Cases from all 50 states back to 1997
• Federal statutory law and codes from all 50 states
• Regulations, court rules, constitutions, and more!

PLoL also includes free links to paid content on Fastcase. PLoL is already the Web's largest free law library, but with additional links from Fastcase, it is one of the most comprehensive law libraries in the world.