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Directory of CPAs Now Available

CPAdirectory.com claims a directory of over 450,000 licensed CPAs worldwide. The advanced search form for this directory (http://CPAdirectory.com/search_advanced.cfm) allows you to search by name, service provided, industry served, and state. A search for corporate tax CPAs in Utah found none, while a search for audit CPAs in New York state found over a dozen results. If you just want to get a list of CPAs in a certain area, use the quick zip code search on the left side of the screen, which will get you a list of CPAs and firms without having to specify an industry or service provided.

USPTO Launches Pilot of Trademark Electronic Search Systems

The US Patent and Trademark Office has launched a pilot version of TESS, short for Trademark Electronic Search System, at http://tess.uspto.gov/. (This is actually a jump page to a REALLY messy URL.) You have three options in searching this database. You can browse the dictionary -- enter words and see what matches or what's close to matching. You too can learn that Mr. Noggin is a trademark for a travel pillow with suction cups. You can do an advanced, free-form search which I don't recommend unless you really know what you're doing. Or you can do a Structured Form search, which allows you to search for keywords in specified fields and use one Boolean operator. There are currently over 2.6 million records in the database.

PAC Info Additions of the Week

Pac-Info (http://www.pac-info.com) has added several new items this week:

New York Corporations 
Hawaii - Business Name Search
Hawaii - State Legislature - Status and Documents
Hawaii - State Phone Book
Hawaii - Campaign Expenditures & Contributions
Hawaii - State Rules
Hawaii - State Constitution
Texas - Harris County Voters
New York - Inmate Database URL corrected
Canada - British Columbia - Abbotsford Police Reports
Utah - Sex Offenders URL corrected         
Utah - Escapees 
Utah - Sex Offenders URL corrected         
Utah - Most Wanted Escapees  
Nationwide - Pacer US Party/Case Index (fee)

Gary Price Keeps Up-to-Date on Audio/Video Offerings

After I mentioned another A/V service on ResearchBuzz, heroic librarian Gary Price wrote in to remind me about his exhaustive audio/video current awareness page at http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/audio.htm. This huge, mostly text page provides lists of live, continuous-feed broadcasts, news on the hour, public affairs programming, government and government-related programming, and several other categories. A new category he has just added is major market news, which provides broadcast and feed information for major markets in the US and Canada. Access that at http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/majmkt.htm. Complete access to Gary's list-of-lists is available at http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/listof.htm.

Alacourt.com Offers Access to Alabama State Trial Court Records

Alacourt.com (http://www.Alacourt.com/) is now offering two services to help researchers of Alabama Trial court records. The first, real-time access to court records, allows access to current live trial court information for every state trial court in Alabama. This access includes civil, criminal, traffic, and domestic relations cases. All active cases are included. Most counties also contain records of disposed cases, which in some casts go back as far as the late 1970s. A variety of search types are available, including case number and party name. Alacourt.com also allows you to track trials by case number, with e-mail sent to you whenever a case variable (like trial setting, case date, etc.) changes. You can also track by attorney code and get e-mail reminders of court date, notifications of setting changes, etc. This is a pay service, and as such you'll want to review the sample screen shots and other information carefully. You may also wish to use the e-mail contact address on the site; there are far too many instances here where information is "coming soon," and has apparently been marked that way since last October.

Search for Information on Pension and Benefits Plans at FreeERISA

FreeERISA, at http://www.freeerisa.com/, offers information on employers' pension and benefit plans. The Employement Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) requires that this information be filed annually with the IRS and department of Labor. In order to search the freeERISA system, you'll have to register with freeERISA, and their privacy policy says "We may also, upon occasion, share e-mail addresses with certain partners, or with other well-established companies so that they can send you product and service offers that may be of interest." Be Warned.

SearchUK Searches the UK (No False Advertising Claims Here)

SearchUK ( http://www.searchuk.com/ ) offers several ways to search UK Web sites. There's a searchable subject index that provides a count of URLs and subdirectories, giving you an idea of what's available before you get too deeply into exploring. There's an address search that allows you to supply an address and get a map. There's a business search that allows you to search for business type within area. For example, I was able to discover that there are 28 florists serving the Leatherhead area. The service I really liked, however, was the Explore URL feature at http://www.searchuk.com/explorer/index.cgi . With this service you can enter the URL of a UK site, and get the following information:

1.) All the pages in SearchUK for that domain (try it with http://www.amazon.co.uk)

2.) Information about the particular domain, including title, date last indexed, file size, etc.

3.) Keywords pulled for that particular page. It's a very interesting way to pull out information for a single domain name without resorting to special syntaxes and result pages of only ten entries each.