The Consumer WebWatch "mission is to investigate; inform; and improve the credibility of information published on the World Wide Web."

As the business page noted yesterday, you can now sign up for the Homeland Security Department's National Cyber Alert System, which "provides timely information about current and emerging threats and vulnerabilities as well as advice about protecting your computer and networks."

Phishing is Net speak for spoofing someone with fake e-mail. Antiphishing.org keeps you up to date on the latest scams.

UNESCO has published a study (PDF) of freedom of information laws in ten countries: Bulgaria, India, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Remember that e-mail is a public record and you can demand to see it through an open record request (although there is some dispute about whether personal e-mail on public computers must be handed over). Here's some online information about the law and how Kentucky agencies manage e-mail:

• The governor's office for technology on "The Status of Electronic Mail as a Public Record"
• The Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives "Guidelines for Managing E-Mail in Kentucky Government." (PDF)
• KDLA's Understanding Records Management- E-Mail Records

I love this story in the Houston Press about restaurants serving veal that is really pork. Al's Morning Meeting reports that such fraud is not uncommon.

"Seven federal district courts are participating in a pilot program to make transcripts of courtroom proceedings available online. Those participating are the district courts for the Southern District of Alabama, District of Columbia, District of Kansas, District of Maine, Eastern District of Missouri, District of Nebraska, and the Eastern District of New York."

NICAR has updated its Consumer Production Safety Council database with 2002 data, the latest available. "The CPSC dataset includes information about potential injuries, deaths and investigations related to consumer products. Some of the products include children's toys, bicycles, swimming pools, ATV's (three- and four-wheelers), sports equipment, hobby items, lawn mowers, hair dryers, playground equipment and many more."

If you want to find who is linking to a Web page you can type link: before the page's address in Google. For example, to find sites linking to The Courier-Journal, type link:www.courier-journal.com in Google's search box. Gary Price of the ResourceShelf points out that not all sites that link to a site will be listed - only those that score high enough on Google's page ranking system.

Science News has an article on how statistics and computers are making it easier than ever to identify the true author of a work. This is known as stylometry- "the science of measuring literary style."

Factiva is rating the frequency the presidential candidates appear in the media from now through the general election.

Editor and Publisher reports a "significant cultural shift" at the Washington Post, where "Many if not most print-side reporters now want their significant, breaking stories to be published online right away."

This election season the Oregonian's Web site is hosting Weblogs of two undecided voters "detailing how they make their choice."

Jim Malone points out that the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A & M offers a Web page devoted to Kentucky county emergency contacts. Indiana's are here.

PR Newswire now offers an RSS feed. Their page explains what that is.

Knowledge Hound claims to be "the Web's biggest directory of free how-tos."

MyZiva.Net is "a free, objective and easy-to-use nursing home resource for prospective residents, caregivers and healthcare professionals."

4 Girls Health offers basic health information for adolescent girls.

electionline.org offers a summary of absentee voting laws by state, as well as summary of voter registration deadlines.

WeatherBug is a free advertiser-supported program that brings current weather updates to your desktop.

Here's an inflation calculator for 1800 to 2002.

A LLRX.com article on "Who Isn't Covered by the FOIA."

An AP reporter shares his experience cooking with his dishwasher.

Lake Superior State University offers a "banished word list" of words "Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness." By the evidence of our own publications, they're dead-on by putting "Meterosexual" at the top of the list.

The National Environmental Directory is a "directory of more than 13,000 organizations in the United States concerned with environmental issues and environmental education."

Furl.net is an experimental "online filing cabinet" where you can store, add comments to, and categorize Web pages found while surfing the Web. It's free, for now, anyway. It is discussed more fully on Webtips.

Egads - now you can search for someone's DNA at Family Tree DNA: "Our service is dedicated to helping genealogists find lost relatives when the paper trail ends and the brick wall takes its place. We use a painless cheek scraping to obtain DNA that can help accurately determine a relationship with either a 99.9% probability of YES or a 100% certainly that no near term relationship existed."

Eurekster.com offers personalized search where the results depend on you and your interests.

Don't miss that e-mail. You can set up Outlook to give you a pop-up message whenever you get a new e-mail message. The message will pop up over whatever program you're working in - say, CCI, for example. In Outlook, go to Tools > Options. Click on the Preferences tab. Click on the E-mail options button. Select the box next to where it says "Display a notification message when new mail arrives." Click OK, then OK again.

You can see current newspaper front pages from around the world at the online Newseum. You can do the same thing at PressDisplay.

Cyberjournalist.net reports that The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, is doing some innovative things with camera phones and online blogs. There new media guru, Ken Sands, is leading the APME reader advisory project we are participating in.

The International Food Information Council Foundation is "your nutrition and food safety resource."

Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Doug Clifton is reputedly the first major newspaper editor to have his own Weblog, which he launched last week.

Yahoo has added a new, still experimental, news search.

BookBrowse "carefully selects from the most interesting current books and provides you with multiple reviews and a substantial excerpt of each."

Rand offers a report on "Conducting Research Surveys via E-mail and the Web."

The Identity Theft Resource Center "is a nationwide nonprofit organization dedicated to developing and implementing a comprehensive program against identity theft."

Should bloggers "Adopt-A-Reporter" with the aim of evaluating the reporter's work?

Governing.com rates and writes about the tax schemes of all 50 states. Kentucky got two stars out of a possible four.

The CJR's Campaign Desk offers "Critique and analysis of 2004 campaign coverage."

Factcheck.org is "a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 'consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding." They offer regular e-mail updates of their findings.

A fine column from CJR on how interviewees have gained the upper hand on journalists.

If you enter an area code in Google's search box it will give you the option of viewing a map of that area code.

A Canadian journalism professor's CAR links page.

An Australian has registered computer-assisted-reporting.com, which takes you to his personal CAR page.

File Notes Organizer, which has free and paid versions, allows you to attach notes to your electronic files so you can figure out what they are weeks, months or years later.

Follow the Kentucky General Assembly live online via KET.

The CyberJournalist.net claims to offer the Internet's "most complete" directory of journalist's Weblogs.

The Journalist's Toolbox has a collection of links on IRS form 990s, which are a great source of information on non-profits.

Research Connect "is an integrated research database connecting the media and investors with leading independent financial, business, economic, political, technical, legal, medical, scientific, and social research."

epicurious brags it has "The World's Greatest Recipe Collection."

The Librarians' Index to the Internet has a page on where to go to keep up with new Internet sites.

Washington state's mad cow page.

SearchEngineWatch.com reports that when you search for "miserable failure" on Google, the first result you get is the official biography of George W. Bush. The operator of SearchEngineWatch calls that a failure of Google, not Bush, and explains how "Google bombing" can distort its search results.

Turbo10 is a new metasearch engine that promises to search the "deep net" - database-driven Web pages missed by other search engines - and cluster the results by subtopics to making finding relevant pages easier.

Poynter's Web Tips offers resources on mad cows.

The new IRS 1040 Central site is supposed to offer everything you need to know about filing your tax return this year.

Links on the 2004 election from e-democracy.

The Mormons give you free access to the Social Security Death Index.

You can convert some PDF documents to text via Adobe Acrobat's Web site.

TRAC databases allow you to examine the work of federal judges.

BBC country profiles offer "an instant guide to history, politics and economic background of countries."

Changing Links displays random links so "All you have to do is click one button with your mouse, and we will help you discover cool, funny, interesting, weird & free reciprocal links."

Find 800 numbers at the Internet 800 directory.

Regulations.gov is "your one stop site to comment on federal regulations."

You can search multiple federal databases - including the Congressional Record, the U.S. Government Manual, the federal budget, and much more on this GPO Access Page.

This survey (PDF) tells how local governments are using GIS - Geographical Information System mapping. The agency responsible for GIS in Jefferson County is LOJIC.

This being a leap year you may need this explanation of why it's so.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau exists "To promote profitable employment opportunities for women, to empower them by enhancing their skills and improving their working conditions, and to provide employers with more alternatives to meet their labor needs."

NewspaperArchive.com is digitizing old newspapers that have expired copyrights.

Mooter is a new search engine that clusters its results into groups of similar pages.

BlogPulse is devoted to "automated trend discovery for Weblogs."

The Librarians' Index to the Internet devoted much of a recent mailing to wine. Some highlights:

• If you are too embarrassed to order a foreign wine from a sommelier you need the "Living, audio" Wine Dictionary. Never again be ashamed of your inability to pronounce Aleatico di Gradoli.
• The Alchemist's Wine Perspective offers "articles, reviews and commentary from an educational viewpoint."
• LocalWineEvents.com claims to be "The World's Leading Food and Wine Events Calendar."

Fans of vintage toothpaste should check out Toothpaste World, founded by a Michigan dentist who desperately needs to broaden his interests.

Maybe he should trade hobbies with the guy who put together the Swizzle Sticks Collection.

NASA maintains the "Aviation Safety Reporting System" database. This site only makes summary reports available, such as one highlighted on Al's Morning Meeting about airplane "bird or animal strikes." An online version of part of the database is offered by the FAA.

The U.S. Senate and House have home pages where you can find out about bills, elected officials, and so on.

The Journalist's Toolbox has lots of links on "writing with numbers."

At GeoSnapper.com people upload photographs and the precise geographical coordinates where they were taken so others can find those spots and experience them for themselves.

Find significant terrorism incidents and dates at the Web site for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City.