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City Web Site Study Released

Brown University's Taubman Center for Public Policy has released its second annual survey of the Web sites of the seventy largest cities in the United States. Overall, the results were positive. Nearly twice as many sites as last
year now offer online services such as requesting information or paying traffic tickets. The survey also found a seventy percent increase in the number of Web sites now offering disability access.

The sites were evaluated on a 100 point scale, with ranking criteria like security, information availability, etc. The highest ranking sites were Minneapolis (up from 11th place last year), Seattle (up from 3rd) and Denver (up from 8th). Some sites have made dramatic progress since last year,
improving their rankings by more than 15 points. Cleveland was up 49 places from the 2001 survey, Dallas was up 47 and San Antonio leaped ahead 45 places.

Unfortunately, some sites dropped as much as 30 points in the rankings, lacking interactive contact information and restricting access to their sites. The bottom three cities according to this survey were Raleigh, Norfolk, and New
Orleans.

The press release with full rankings is available at
http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau//2002-03/02-018.html.

"Digital Media Law & Policy Weekly"

Digital Media Wire, Inc. has launched the premiere issue of its "Digital Media Law & Policy Weekly." This weekly periodical includes new articles about media's convergence with entertainment and technology. It also features
legislative updates as well as litigation and legal news.

Digital Media Wire has also launched the September 2002 edition of its Digital Media Law & Policy Report, which is a service targeted for law professionals and the legal academe. The report, available in hard copy or delivered as
an electronic PDF file, has case studies and covers bill currently pending in Congress. More info on the Weekly and the Report is available at http://www.digitalmedialawreport.com.

A 12-month subscription delivered electronically is $495, with
hard copy delivery costing $595. A 50% discount is available for
students. The press release about the new publication is available
at http://library.northernlight.com/FE20021002310000161.html.

Politics1.com

Since there is not much time until the November elections this site, at http://www.politics1.com/, offers a online guide to American politics. The site's front page has the latest news concerning the races. Right now, they are reporting the polling numbers in some of the closest races. The polls are listed by state in order of release dates. This site also has a search engine that lists results in reverse chronological order. Each result title links to the actual document.

This site has a page for each of the fifty states, plus the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Each state's Candidate Directory includes the candidates who are currently in office as well as the ones running for office. In addition to information about the 2002 elections in each state, the site also list potential candidates who will be running against incumbents in 2004.

In the left margin of Politics1 front page is a site directory, starting with the Presidency and the 2004 race with all of the possible twenty-something Democratic challengers. There is also an extensive list of subjects ranging from Abortion to Women, including Foreign Policy, Health Care and the Environment. Interesting site.

Center for E-Commerce

The Center for E-Commerce, at
http://lawtech.stanford.edu/ecommerce/, focuses on electronic commerce law. The site's goals are to provide legal professionals, as well as business and government professionals access to e-commerce coursework. Coursework focuses on topics under General Technology, Intellectual Property, Life Sciences and Information Sciences. Intellectual Property covers Property
Law, Patents, Copyrights, Property Litigation and more.

You can search the Faculty publications database by author name, title keyword, year and format. Format options include books, working paper, video and journal or newspaper article. Search results are listed by author and include the title with date and format of the document. Additional resources include linking to the Center for Law & the Biosciences and LLM in Law, Science and Technology.

Burke's Peerage And Gentry Books Now Online

The Burke's Peerage & Gentry series of books have been digitized and is now available online as a paid database of over 5,000 records.

The main site is at http://www.burkes-peerage.net/. Access to the records is $25 for 24 hours or $99 for a year's access. Searching is free.

Searching for Dupree found five results. Search results include family name and incumbent name, as well as a little bit of the lineage. To get additional information you'll need to log in. Once logged in, you can view the family home
page or the entire record. The family record contains a little information about the family and lineage of that family.

The full record contains information about lineage of the family (extensive family information, including marriages, deaths, children, and sometimes details like publications and military service) in addition to the family's coat of arms, with description.

This month, the site will be adding U.S. families with British ancestry, and in November the genealogies of all U.S. presidents will be added.