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AMT Tax Reform Site Launched

A group of volunteers have created a Web site dedicated to the nationwide tax reform movement, and taxpayers who have been hurt by the Alternative Minimum Tax.

http://www.reformamt.org/ provides news, educational materials, legislation tracking, and informs interested parties on how to join the movement. Materials include an FAQ ("What makes the AMT's treatment of employee stock options so unfair?"), real-life AMT stories, and a link list.

EDS, EzGov Partner to Make MA Government More Business-Friendly

Electronic Data Systems Corporation and EzGov Inc., have completed a project which will now allow businesses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to file annual reports online. Previously, paper reports were
filled and manually entered into a database. Now a business can log onto the Web site, enter identifying numbers and then complete and submit the form along with a credit card payment. Read more about the project in their press release: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/010523/daw015.html.

U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Site

Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute has a database of US Circuit Court of Appeals opinions at http://www.law.cornell.edu:9999/USCA-ALL/search.html.

The site includes all eleven circuit courts plus the D.C. and Federal circuits, some with decisions as far back as 1992 (though it doesn't go back to 1992 for all courts; more commonly it goes back to 1995.) Also included are the US District and Bankruptcy Courts, along with US Courts of Special Jurisdiction.

Searching is simple. On the front page there's a search box with a drop box allowing you to search in a specific court or all circuit courts. + specifies that
a term must be included in the search, - specifies it must be excluded.

Accenture Aids in Revamping "NYC.Gov" Site

Accenture has assisted with the revamping off New York City's government services Web site, "which previously could only be accessed at 'brick and mortar offices' or by visiting multiple web pages." The site employs a "I Want To" directory to link to frequently sought services.

The front page of the site employees a Yahooesque subject index with a variety of categories, including health, recreation, transportation, and information for those visiting New York City. The categories contain different types of things. For example, the Health category contains information on getting birth or death certificates, dog license (dog license?), information on Mental Health Awareness Month, and the 2000 Senior Drug Survey (in PDF format.)

The site also has a variety of information on the personnel of the city, including plenty of information on the mayor, an org chart of the city government (that thing is huge!) and contact information (and the occasional Web link) for city elected officials.

Adobe Releases Acrobat Reader for Palm OS

Adobe announced yesterday the availability of Acrobat Reader for the Palm OS. It's available at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html.
At the moment it's available for Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows ME, and Windows 2000. Users must have Palm Desktop 3.0.1 or better, and Palm devices with Palm OS 3.1 or higher and at least 200K available memory. You
can get more information about the reader at
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readerforpalm.html.

International Affairs Resources

If you're looking for information on international affairs, http://www.etown.edu/vl/ will do the trick. This site, which is part of the WWW Virtual Library,
contains over 2000 links pertaining to international affairs.

Check out the front page for a bevy of categories, including International and Comparative Education, World Religions, Health, and Global and Cross-Cultural Issues. Each page has a listing of sites in subcategories, with mostly good annotation. Sometimes the background makes the text slightly difficult to read; I would appreciate the site more if it had a plain white or gray background. There are plenty of resources here, however.

Quick Takes

2Q "Oil and Gas on the Internet" Released

Competitive Analysis Technologies has released the second quarter edition its "Oil and Gas on the Internet" listing Upstream and Downstream industry
databases. The June release contains 3,174 Upstream and 2,537 Downstream profiles. Subscriptions to the databases are available in hard copy or electronic
formats for "drop- in" on corporate Intranets. You can get more information and demo information at http://www.catsites.com/publications.html.