BlawgSearch.com and Blawgs.FM

The folks at Justia have released the first beta version of BlawgSearch.com, a search tool for legal blogs. The database of more than 1,000 editorially selected legal blogs is updated throughout the day with new posts. You can sort your search results by relevance or posting date, and you can subscribe to RSS feeds of your searches.

There is also a blawg directory, with subject and locality categories, and a blawg-rankings system. Thousands more legal blogs, as well as additional features and functionality, will be added.

If you are looking for podcasts and other multimedia files, try Blawgs.fm. Now available in its first alpha version, Blawgs.fm searches all of the posts that are included in BlawgSearch.com, but just returns those posts that have audio or video files attached to them. There is also a directory of legal podcasts and vidcasts, categorized by subject and locality, and ranking of the podcasts.

See the Justia Legal Marketing Blog for more information, including forms for suggesting a legal blog, podcast, or vidcast.

Google Patent Search

Google has added another specialized index, Google Patents. You can search over 7 million patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office—from those issued in the 1790s up to mid-2006. See About Google Patents for more information.

Hat tip to Steve Nipper at The Invent Blog.

New Tools for Finding Blawgs

Friday, an upgraded and redesigned Blawg was unveiled. It has been moved to a faster, more stable platform and can now be found at Blawg.com. Blawg's calculations for determining "Most Popular Legal Blogs" have been refined, and each category in the directory is now automatically sorted by popularity.

Blawg's front page also has an option to Search the Blawgosphere, a Featured Feed, a Featured Podcast, and a list of Recently Added Blogs, to which you can subscribe. To learn about features and functions that are still in the pipeline, visit the Blawg blog or subscribe to its feed.

Wednesday, Robert Ambrogi's LawSites had news that Justia would be introducing BlawgSearch, a search engine for legal blogs. BlawgSearch currently indexes about 1,000 blawgs, with an emphasis on academic and technology blawgs according to Ambrogi.

The BlawgSearch directory is arranged by category and jurisdiction, each of which has its own feed to which you can subscribe. The front page also lists the Most Popular Blawgs and Recent Blawg Posts, highlights a Featured Blawger, and displays clouds of recent search terms and blawg post tags.

See also Finding Blawgs on Any Legal Topic.

Research Tip: FirstGov Search Upgrade

The government web portal, FirstGov.gov, has upgraded its Search to give users the choice of searching federal and state government websites, just news, or just images. The Web search option includes news and images in its search results. FirstGov Search just received a major overhaul in January, finally becoming a useful research tool, and it is now even better.

Once you have chosen a Web, Images, or News search, click on Advanced Search to make your search even more specific. For example, with a Web search, you can limit your search to federal sites or to a specific state. With a News search, you can limit your search to news from a specific source. See Search Tips for other options.

Search results are categorized using Vivísimo's clustering technology, and they can be sorted by topic, agency, or source. On some search-results screens there is a tabbed box at the top with selected links to FAQs, forms, jobs, and podcasts. Other search results may be topped by blocks of categorized news links. Featured images may be displayed in a box below the list of clusters.

For an excellent review of FirstGov Search as both a search tool and an information discovery tool, see FirstGovSearch Adds Image and News Search and Continues to Provide Dynamic Clustering on ResourceShelf.

See also Peggy Garvin, The Government Domain: FirstGov becomes First in Government Search on LLRX.com.