Month: September 2010

The title of this post is misleading.  I don’t really do game reviews on iPhone J.D., in part because I don’t play a lot of iPhone games so I can’t fairly rate which are better than others, and in part because sites like Touch Arcade and Macworld do a better job than I could ever do.  But I will make rare exceptions, such as when one of my favorite arcade games of my youth comes to the iPhone.

Angry Birds is such a great game that also deserves to be an exception.  This $0.99 game involves physics (setting up the correct angle when you shoot a bird to hit the targets) and puzzles (on each level, you need to figure out the best way to aim your shots to cause different reactions to clear the level).  The game is very simple to learn; my four year old son learned how to play the game in about a minute, so I promise you can figure it out too.  It is a great casual game because there is no time pressure and you can play it in small increments in time, but each level is different so the game can keep you occupied for hours and hours.

 

As noted yesterday by Jeremy Sikora of TiPb, the game was just updated to support Game Center, to add Retina Display support, and to add 15 new levels.

Angry Birds is the best selling game on the App Store, so there is a good chance that you have at least heard about it.  If you enjoy puzzles and casual games, just go ahead and spend the buck on this one.  The game is great fun, and you won’t regret the purchase.

Click here for Angry Birds ($0.99):

 

I’ve looked at a lot of apps from a lot of different companies that provide state statutes — sometimes a subset of the statutes on a particular topic, and sometimes comprehensive apps that include all of the provisions of a state’s statutes, laws, codes, or whatever it is called in each state.  I’ve found my new favorite:  the apps by Tekk Innovations.

I’ve written about Tekk Innovations before, a small technology firm in Mountain View, California.  One of the guys there, Kasim Te, worked as an aviation consultant and helicopter instructor which required him to constantly refer to a few titles of the Code of Federal Regulations. At the time, there were no iPhone apps containing the text of the CFR, so Te decided to make some of his own.  The result was a series of CFR apps (a different app for each Title of the CFR) which I reviewed about a year ago.  Tekk also makes LawStack, an app that I reviewed earlier this year which contains federal rules and statutes in a single app.  Te recently sent me free copies of two of his state statute apps, one containing the entire Louisiana Revised Statutes (Titles 1 to 56) and one containing the complete Florida Statutes (Titles 1 to 48).  Tekk Innovations sells similar apps (which I did not try) for the laws of California, Delaware, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington.  These apps work great and I recommend them to any attorney who wants to carry the full set of statutes for a state on an iPhone.

The app contains a standard browse feature.  The main page of the app lists all of the titles.  Tap a title to see a list of chapters within that title, tap a chapter to see a list of sections within the chapter, and tap the title of the section to see the text of the section.

The app works in either portrait or landscape view.  When you are looking at a section, you can double-tap to remove the menu items and devote your full screen to the text of the statute.

When you are looking at a section, you can tap the e-mail button at the top right to e-mail the full text of the section.

Tap the arrows at the bottom left and right of each statute to browse through each section in order.  Tap the plus sign to add a specific statute to a list of bookmarks.  You can also add a chapter to your bookmarks if you want easy access to a set of statutes within the chapter.  Tap the information button at the top of most of the screens to adjust settings such as font size.

The app also has a very helpful search feature.  There is a search box at the top of every screen that has an information button (every screen except for a screen containing the text of a statute).  If you type multiple search terms, the app will look for every section containing all of the terms.  If you put a phrase in quotes, the app will find every statute containing the exact phrase.  You can use “OR” to find statutes containing either one term or another term.  You can choose to search either the full text of the statutes or just the headers.  The app shows you a list of the matches underneath the title and chapter (so that you have the full context of where the match was found), and when you tap one you will see the text of the statute with your search terms highlighted in yellow.  If there is only one match, the list appears only for a fraction of a second and then the app brings you directly to the match.

There are two other things that I like about the search function.  First, if you want a search history, just tap the blue bookmark icon located at the far right of the search bar.  You can tap an old search and you can quickly repeat it without having to type it in again.  Second, the app has a useful ability to search a subset of statutes.  By default, you search the entire set of statutes, in all titles.  However, in the settings you can turn on a feature called “Contextual Search.”  With that on, you can limit your search.  If you are on the screen with all of the chapters listed within a title, you will only search within that title.  If you are on a screen with all of the sections listed within a chapter, you will only search within that chapter.  This makes it much faster to find something when you have a vague sense of where it is and don’t want to get a lot of false hits.

The two apps I tried, Louisiana and Florida, were very fast on my iPhone 4, even when doing searches with lots of hit results.  I didn’t encounter any crashes or other errors, although I like the fact that the app has a built-in ability to report any error that you find in a statute.  (It appears when you tap the button to e-mail a statute, as shown in the picture above.)  One missing feature is that there is no way to jump directly to a statute if you know the number; you need to either browse to find it or do a search to find it.  I also wish that there was a quick way to jump back to the home screen instead of having to page back several times to get there.  It would be nice to see these features added in the future.

These apps are a little more expensive than similar apps sold by others.  For example, last week I reviewed an app called Pocket Legal Florida which contains all of the Florida statutes for only $6.99.  The similar app from Tekk Innovations costs $19.99.  But as noted in my review of version 1.2 of Pocket Legal Florida, I had some problems with that app (it was slow, there is no way to e-mail the text of a statute, etc.)  I’m sure that Pocket Legal will be improved, but at this point, version 1.5 of the Tekk Innovations Florida app is the better product.

Click here for Florida Statutes (48 Titles) ($19.99): 

Click here for Louisiana Laws (Titles 1-56 of LA Revised Statutes) ($19.99): 

And here are links to the versions for other states.  I didn’t test these versions, but they appear to have the same interface as the two versions that I did test.  Note that Illinois and New York are $5 more expensive than the rest.  You can also click here to see all of the Tekk Innovations apps on the App Store.

California ($19.99): 

Delaware ($19.99): 

Illinois ($24.99): 

Michigan ($19.99): 

Missouri ($19.99): 

New York ($24.99): 

North Carolina ($19.99): 

Oregon ($19.99): 

Texas ($19.99): 

Virginia ($19.99): 

Washington ($19.99): 

I received an interesting item in my mailbox today, a 16 page magazine called “AT&T Magazine:  Special iPhone Edition!”  I’ve scanned some of the pages below.  (Click to see larger versions.)  The advertisement is aimed at current iPhone owners; the inside cover says (emphasis added by me):  “Read on for the 10 reasons AT&T and your iPhone are such a prefect fit.”  You can see below that a similar statement is on the cover (bottom, right) of the magazine.  Thus, AT&T has decided to spend money to send out a slick magazine to current AT&T iPhone customers to try to convince them that they should use an iPhone on the AT&T network.  Considering that U.S. customers can only use an iPhone on the AT&T network right now, this entire expensive campaign seems about as necessary as telling people that they should only buy an iPhone that is made by Apple — unless, of course, AT&T thinks that the iPhone is about to come to Verizon.  People often ask me whether the iPhone will soon be available on Verizon, and the existance of this magazine in my mailbox tells me that AT&T thinks it might happen soon.

  

In case you did not (yet) get one of these yourself, here is a summary of the 10 reasons mentioned in the advertisement. 

1. Our innovative network.  AT&T stresses that it has the “best combination of mobile broadband performance and available services” including “an expansive Wi-Fi network and the ability to let you simultaneously talk and surf the web.”

2. Fastest network.  AT&T has already upgraded cell sites and plans to spend another $18 to $19 billion.

3. Expansive network.  360 U.S. cities, 230 million people, 75% of Americans.

4. Talk & surf.  Didn’t they just mention this one in #1?  Of course, I can undestand why they mentioned it twice if they are worried about Verizon.  One of the largest advantages of AT&T’s GSM network is that voice and data transmissions can take place at the same time.  Verizon’s CDMA network can only handle one or the other at a time.

5. The Wi-Fi advantage.  Didn’t they just mention this one also in #1?  This repeats that AT&T has a lot of Wi-Fi Hot Spots around the country that you can use for free with an iPhone.

6. iPhone 4.  AT&T touts the advantages of the iPhone 4 and iOS 4.  If the point of this is to respond to a potential iPhone on Verizon, I’m not sure how this is relevant.

7. Global coverage.  “With more phones that work in more places, it’s no surpise that AT&T received the award for Best Mobile Phone Coverage in the World from Business Traveler magazine.”  This is another advantage of using GSM (which is popular throughout the world) versus CDMA (which is rare outside of the U.S.).  So once again, this is really just a comparison to Verizon.

  

8. Family-friendly services.  Here, AT&T touts three of its apps and four services.  (1) AT&T Navigator, a GPS app for when “you’re lost on the way to a soccer game across town”; (2) AT&T FamilyMap, an app that works in conjunction with the $9.99/month AT&T service that lets you locate two family members with an AT&T phone (or $14.99/month for up to five family members) so you can “stay connected to your newly independent teens”; (3) MyWireless Mobile to manage your wireless account, (4) the ability to add lines to your plan for when “your daughter is ready for her first cell phone”; (5) rollover minutes; (6) unlimited text messages for $30/month; and (7) Smart Limits for Wireless which lets you set limtis on your kids’ web browsing and purchasing on their smartphone.

9. Forward thinking.  “With 100 years of innovations, eight Nobel prizes and more than 7,000 pending and issued patents, you know you can count on AT&T to stay on the cutting edge.”

10. Sustainable solutions.  Touts some of the envonmental initiatives of AT&T such as recycling and power saving.

I get the feeling that AT&T came up with the number “ten” first and then figured out later how to match up its services with that number, even at the risk of repeating itself, although to be fair many of the listed features are true advantages of AT&T over Verizon.  Again, however, what I really got from this advertisement is the feeling that AT&T believes that we are close to a day when Apple offers a Verizon iPhone.  The fact that I received this advertisement today doesn’t necessary mean that a Verizon iPhone will happen in the next month, next year, or even next decade.  But I can’t imagine why AT&T would send this out unless the possibility was real and on the short-term horizon.

 

If I am listening to something in my car, it is virtually always music or podcasts on my iPhone.  My current automobile solution works pretty well, but I would love to see better iPhone-car integration.  Apparently, Apple feels the same way because one of the features of iOS 4 is a technology called iPod out.  This is an interface for controlling the iPod app on the iPhone that is generated by the iPhone itself.  You connect your iPhone to your car and you see a menu on your car’s display that looks much like a traditional iPhone interface, including album art.  TUAW discussed this feature this past April.

  

One of the nice things about iPod out is that it is controlled by the iPhone itself.  Thus, if Apple updates the iOS to support some new iPod feature, that new feature can show up your car’s display without you needing to update the car’s navigation system.  Plus, the interface has the advantage of being familiar to anyone who knows how to use an iPhone.

In July of this year, BMW announced that it would support iPod out on some of its cars.  According to a report from Kyle Thibuat of CrunchGear, BMW recently showed off the feature at the Paris Motor Show.  I hope that we see more car manufacturers taking advantage of this very soon.

Here is a video that BMW posted this past July in which it talks about the technology:

If you are one of the hundreds of people in town for the 2010 Federal Bar Association convention, welcome to New Orleans!  Please join me and Ernie Svenson at 10:50 this morning for our session “Social Media, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs: I am a Lawyer—Why Do I Care?”  And afterwards, please introduce yourself.  I’d love to hear about how you are using your iPhone in the practice of law.  And now, the iPhone news items of interest from this past week:

• Dan Moren of Macworld reports that for the fourth straight year — so in other words, as long as the iPhone has been in existance — the iPhone topped the J.D. Power survey on U.S. wireless smartphone customer satisfaction.
• Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Fortune reports on a new study showing that while Apple makes only 3% of the mobile handsets sold in the world, it rakes in 39% of the profit.  Wow.
• Thanks to all of this profit, Bloombert reports that Apple was briefly the second largest company in the world yesterday when its stock peaked at $292.76, putting it ahead of PetroChina Co. and behind only ExxonMobil.  The stock then dropped somewhat, putting the company value at $263.9 billion, just behind PetroChina’s $265.5 billion valuation.  But still.  Wow.  I bought Apple stock in 2000 when the stock was at $18 a share and sold it in 2004 when it was at almost $30.  After that, the stock split in February of 2005 (so it’s like I bought it at $9 a share at current prices) and now it’s up to almost $300 a share, so that means that if I had held on to the stock I could have made, ummm… let’s just say that it’s a good thing that I’m a much better lawyer than a stock analyst.  My only advice to you is that if you ever see me say something on iPhone J.D. that sounds like stock advice, IGNORE IT.
• Douglas Adams taught us that the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is 42.  Josh Ong of AppleInsider reports that it is also the rank of Steve Jobs on the Forbes 2010 list of the richest Americans.
• If you use Dropbox, did you know that there are now 57 different iPhone and iPad apps that can access your files?  Visit this page to see all of those apps.
• One such app that works with Dropbox is the official Dropbox app.  David Cartier of Macworld reports on the new features in version 1.3 of that app.  Click here for Dropbox (free): 

  

• Vlad Savov of Engadget discusses “Awareness!  The Headphone App,” an app that lets you play music but also turns on the microphone on the iPhone.  If a loud noise is sensed — such as someone talking to you or an oncoming bus (but not normal background noise) — then that noise is played through your headphones along with your music.  That way, you can still hear what you need to in the outside world even while your headphones are blaring your music.  Unfortunately, there is a valid reason for an app like this; WPIX-TV in New York (Channel 11) recently reported that a 12 year old boy was killed by a New Jersey Transit train.  It appears that he was listening to his iPod, not paying attention, and walked across the tracks.  The train engineer sounded his horm and pulled the emergency brakes, but it was too late.  What a tragic tale.  Click here for Awareness! The Headphone App ($4.99): 

  

• Are you someone who knows nothing about computer programming but would like to learn how to write an app for the iPhone?  Attorney David Sparks of MacSparky.com reviews Objective C for Absolute Beginners and says that it is a great way to get up and running.
• Nick Bilton of the New York Times wrote a fascinating article on Asians in New York City buying iPhones without a contract for $600 from the Apple Store and selling them for a profit to be shipped to China.  The iPhone 4 debuts in China this weekend, which may put an end to this practice.
• Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal wrote that he went to Paris for 10 days and left his laptop at home, relying solely on his iPad and iPhone.  There were a few things that he missed, but overall he says that it worked great.  I’m hearing more and more about attorneys leaving the laptop at home and traveling with just an iPhone and/or iPad.
• Thomas Ricker of Engadget reviews the Mili PowerSpring 4 and the Mophie Juice Pack Air, two thin external battery cases that can extend your iPhone’s life for more than 16 hours.
• And finally, if you own an iPad and want to be fashionable, than clearly you need to spend hundreds of dollars on an iPad case from Oscar de la Renta, Gucci, Hugo Boss or Louis Vuitton.  Stephen Williams of The New York Times tells you what you need to know to spend that money.  For example, here are the Louis Vuitton iPad cases, priced at only $390:

I often hear lawyers talk about how they want to create an iPhone app to promote their practice.  My advice is to offer something more than just a mobile version of your website in an app; offer potential clients something that they can actually use.  Latham & Watkins, a law firm with over 2,000 lawyers in 30 offices around the world, has done just that in their new, free iPhone app called The Book of Jargon – Corporate and Bank Finance.

The firm says that the purpose of the app is to assist new members of the finance community in learning to talk the talk of corporate and bank finance, describing the app as a sort of “Berlitz Course” for recent law school and business school graduates seeking initiation in to the world of Wall Street, as well as a desktop reference for not-so-recent graduates.  The firm says that the approximately 750 terms listed include acronyms regularly used to describe key government regulations, slang phrases adopted by professionals in the corporate finance and banking arenas, and other legal phrases and definitions.

 

 

You can view terms either by browsing or searching.  Browsing is nicely implemented.  Flick through the screens to page through the list of terms, or slide your finger along the right to quickly scroll from A to Z.  When you see a term that interests you, just tap the term to see the definition.

If you know the term you are looking for, then start to type it in the search window.  If you type enough letters for the app to realize that there is only one match, the app auto-completes the rest of term for you.  Otherwise, when you are done typing just tap search.  This will bring up a list of matching terms.  Note that you can only search the terms themselves; you are not searching the words in the definitions of the terms.

I don’t practice in this area of law so I cannot critique the content of the definitions, but they do seem like they would be helpful for someone trying to learn about this field.  A New York Times article by Andrew Ross Sorkin notes that even with 750 terms, the glossary is incomplete:  “The firm’s compendium isn’t comprehensive, though: While it has definitions for ‘material adverse change,’ ‘Rule 144a offering’ and ‘white knight,’ it lacks definitions for more au courant terms like’ collateralized debt obligation’ and ‘credit default swap.'”  According to an AmLaw article by Brian Baxter, the content of this app came from a print publication that Latham first prepared in 2008 for lawyers and clients.  It was well received, and this app was conceived as a way to increase circulation without the cost of print publication.

If you think that this app might possibly help you in your law practice, go ahead and download it.  It is free.  But more than anything, this app fascinates me because it is such a great example of law firm marketing using the iPhone.  The app provides a useful service and — quite literally — demonstrates to potential clients of Latham that the firm knows what it is taking about when it comes to this field of law.  According to the AmLaw article cited above, the firm plans to release similar apps for other fields, such as project finance and outsourcing manuals.

Click here for The Book of Jargon – Corporate and Bank Finance (free): 

This past weekend, I was working with New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson to prepare for a presentation that we are giving this Friday.  (If you are in New Orleans for the 2010 Federal Bar Association Annual Convention this week, check out our session “Social Media, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs: I am a Lawyer—Why Do I Care?”)  One of the features of iOS 4 is that you can use the iPhone with an external bluetooth keyboard.  Ernie has an Apple Wireless Keyboard that he uses with his iMac, and I borrowed it for a short time to try it out with my iPhone 4.  I did not use it for very long, so this is just a mini-review, but I must admit that I was really impressed.  If you ever decide to travel with just an iPhone, leaving your laptop at home, the Apple Wireless Keyboard could be very handy.

Pairing the keyboard with the iPhone could not be more easy.  Just go to the Settings app and turn on Bluetooth and you will see the keyboard listed.  Select it, type the code that appears on your screen on the keyboard, and then the iPhone and the keyboard are paired.

Once the iPhone is paired with the keyboard, you can use the keyboard with a number of apps.  One app that I tried was the recently updated version of Documents to Go.  I propped up my iPhone, put the keyboard in front of it, and typed instead of tapped out the text.  I consider myself a pretty good typist on the iPhone’s keyboard, but you simply cannot compare that with typing on a real keyboard.  Entering text on the iPhone with the Apple Wireless Keyboard is so much more precise, so much faster, and just so much more natural.

 

One great feature that I had not previously considered is that when you are using an external keyboard, you do not need to fill the bottom portion of the iPhone screen with the virtual keyboard.  Thus, you can see a lot more text at one time.  Indeed, if you press the eject button at the top right of the keyboard, you can trigger the appearance or disappearance of the virtual keyboard.

Another nice advantge of the keyboard is that you can easily type alternative keyboard characters.  For example to type the section symbol § on an iPhone, you need to remember to hold down the & key until you see the option to instead enter §.  But with the keyboard, you can just type Option 6 — the same keystroke that you use on a Mac — to type the symbol.

Unfortunately, not all keyboard shortcuts work.  Documents to Go has an option to make text bold, but hitting Command-B on the keyboard will not trigger the option to turn on bold, nor can you use keyboard shortcuts to trigger underlining, italics, etc.

I also used the keyboard with the e-mail app, which worked just as well as Documents to Go.

 

 

It is also nice that the buttons at the top of the keyboard can be used to control the iPhone.  The increase and decrease brightness buttons will adjust the brightness on the iPhone.  The volume buttons adjust volume.  The play/pause, forward and reverse buttons can control the iPod app.  And as noted above, the eject button can trigger the virtual keyboard appearance.  The tab button works, as do the shortcuts to cut, copy and paste.

One other nice feature about the Apple Wireless Keyboard is that it is ultra thin.  It would be very easy to pack this in a suitcase or briefcase for travel.

 

Note that there have been several versions of the Apple Wireless Keyboard over the years.  The versions released in 2009 (aluminium case and uses two AA batteries) and in 2007 (aluminum case and uses three AA batteries) work with the iPhone.  The version released in 2003 (white case and uses four AA batteries) does not work with the iPhone, as noted in this article on Apple’s website.

You can purchase the Apple Wireless Keyboard at the Apple Store or on Amazon for $69.  Or if you already have this wireless keyboard (it comes with many new Macs), considering taking it along on your next trip.

 

Yesterday, I got the good news that I passed the Florida Bar Exam.  No, I’m not moving to Florida; I just have a client who asked me to help with some litigation there.  Florida pro hac rules are very restrictive (only three cases a year) and bar reciprocity is very restrictive, even if you have been practicing law elsewhere for a long time (16 years, in my case).  Thus, to handle any real volume of litigation in Florida, you need to take the bar exam.  With Florida law on my mind this Summer, I’ve been thinking about what apps I might want to get on my iPhone to assist with practicing law in Florida.  Coincidentally, I received an e-mail a few weeks ago from Nick Manzoli.  His company, LegalMesh, developed an iPhone app called Pocket Legal Florida which contains all 48 titles of the Florida Statutes.  Manzoli sent me a free copy of the app to review.  There are things in the app that I would like to see revised in a future version, but the app is not very expensive ($6.99) and worth a look if you practice law in Florida.

There are three buttons at the bottom of the app.  The “Go To” button lists the titles.  Tap a title to see the chapters, tap a chapter to see the sections, and tap a section to see the law.

Unfortunately, the app can be slow.  I often found myself watching a “Loading” alert for a long time.  A few times it stayed on the screen so long that I am pretty sure that the app had hung, so I forced the app to quit.  Moreover, when you are looking at a long list, such as a list of titles, a long list of sections, etc., the app only loads the first 10 items in the list.  You then have to scroll down and tap “More Results” to load the next set of 10.  If the items you are looking for as far down on the list, you’ll have to tap that “More Results” button many times.  This really slows down browsing.

When you are viewing a section that you plan to view again in the future, you can add it to a “Saved” list to make it easier to come back to later.  Tap the Saved button at the bottom right of the app to see your list of saved sections.  Unfortunately, the Saved list does not automatically update itself so it is sometimes necessary to tap a Refresh button to see the latest sections that you added to the list.

 

The third button at the bottom of the app is the Search button.  The search feature will give you a list of all sections containing the search terms.  Unfortunately, the app does not highlight your search terms, so you’ll just have to skim through the statute to find your search term.

I like having legal reference apps on my iPhone for two reasons.  First, it is handy to have the law with you so that you can quickly look something up.  Second, it is often handy to copy a part of a statute or rule and paste it into an e-mail.  A major drawback of the current version of this app is that you cannot copy the text.  Tapping on text doesn’t do anything.  There is an e-mail button at the top of each statute, but unfortunately that button only creates an e-mail with the cite of the statute, not the text of the statute.  I asked Manzoli about this, and he told me that a new version is coming out in a few weeks that allows you to e-mail the text of a statute.  He also told me that they are coming out with versions of this app for other states in the near future.  [UPDATE 12/11/10:  Version 2.0 of this app was just released, which adds the ability to e-mail the full text of a statute.]

Pocket Legal Florida is not the only source of Florida law on the iPhone.  For example, Tekk Innovations (who created the LawStack app that I reviewed earlier this year) also sells a $19.99 app called “Florida Statutes (48 Titles)”.  If you use the LawBox app that I reviewed earlier this year, you can purchase Florida Statutes within the LawBox app for $0.99 for each Title — a bargain if you just want a few titles, more expensive if you want all 48.  And if you just want Title VI, Florida Civil Practice and Procedure, PDA Wizard has a $5.99 app called “Florida Civil Practice & Procedure – FL Laws Title VI.”

[UPDATE:  And remember, if you have Internet access over 3G or Wi-Fi you have even more options, such as the Fastcase app which shows you Florida statutes for free.  But sometimes in a courthouse or elsewhere, you don’t have that, which is why it is helpful to have an app with self-contained law.]

Pocket Legal Florida is definitely the cheapest way to get all 48 Titles of the Florida Statutes on your iPhone.  The current version of this app can sometimes be frustrating because of the problems that I described above, but I was glad to hear Manzoli say that he and his team are working to improve the app in the near future.

Click here to get Pocket Legal Florida ($6.99): 

Yesterday I was in Jackson Square in the French Quarter in New Orleans.  It was a bright sunny day, but because of the trees in the park there were lots of areas of shadows.  I thought that this would be a good opportunity to try out the HDR features of the iPhone 4 and iOS 4.

HDR is not right for every photograph, but it can sometimes make a big difference and result in much nicer pictures.  Here are two pictures (original on the left, HDR version on the right) for which I first tapped on the St. Louis Cathedral to make that the focus of the picture.  (In all pictures in this post, you can click on the picture to see the full size version.)  The HDR version brings out more detail in the tree and the rest of the picture.  On the other hand, the HDR version also reduces the shadows on the surface of the cathedral, which makes the surface of the church more striking in the non-HDR version:

   

Here is another example where I feel that the HDR version is better than the regular version.  There is more detail and a wider range of color.  In all of these examples, you can also see one side effect of HDR in iOS 4; it tends to make the picture as a whole lighter.

   

Because HDR works by taking three pictures in a row, HDR can create problems when there is movement during the three pictures.  For example, in the next set, you can see the movement of a person (especially around his head) in the HDR version on the right.

   

Similarly, you need to be careful to hold the camera very steady.  I didn’t do so when I took this picture of a statue of Andrew Jackson, and here is the HDR result.  I suppose that one could argue that there is something to be said for the illusion that the horse is moving, but that wasn’t what I was trying to do.

The built-in HDR function of iOS 4 is fast and nice, but you don’t have any control over the process.  You can get more control with the app Pro HDR ($1.99).  I purchased that app shortly before Apple had announced that HDR would be built-in to iOS 4, and after I learned that HDR would be a part of iOS 4, my first thought was that I had wasted my money on the app.  To the contrary, my experience is that you can often get better results with Pro HDR.  

When you launch Pro HDR, you are given both an automatic and a manual HDR option:

If you choose automatic, once you tap your screen to start the process you will watch the screen go from very light to very dark as the app analyzes the image with different exposure settings.  Then the app will take one light picture and one dark picture.  The app tells you it is doing so and you can hear the sound of a picture being taken each time, so unlike the iOS 4 version of the Camera app, you actually know when the pictures are being taken.  Then the app analyzes the two pictures, and then you are given the result with the option to further refine a number of settings:  brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth and tint.

Although the automatic setting can work well, I prefer the manual setting.  In this mode, the app asks you to first select somewhere on the image that is bright, then to select somewhere on the image that is dark.  After those two taps, the app then takes two pictures to get the best exposure for those two areas of the image, and then goes through the same steps noted above.  

The process of taking an HDR picture with Pro HDR takes more time than using iOS 4.  However, the end result is sometimes (although not always) a much better HDR picture than what you get with iOS 4.  For example, here is a set of pictures taken using the normal Camera app (original on left, iOS 4 HDR on the right):

   

Here is a version using Pro HDR, which I consider a vast improvement over the iOS 4 HDR picture:

I really love the iPhone 4 camera.  The picture quality often rivals point-and-shoot cameras, and thus you can just leave the “real” camera at home.  And with the iOS 4 HDR function, the pictures can be better than what you get with point-and-shoot.  With Pro HDR, you need to take a little more time taking each photograph, but the end result can be really amazing.  I’ll end with the following non-HDR picture taken across the street from Jackson Square in a spot where millions of tourists and locals have taken pictures.  Very expensive cameras have surely resulted in better versions of this picture, but the iPhone 4 holds its own:

Click here for Pro HDR ($1.99):  

 

It wasn’t a very busy week for iPhone news, perhaps best evidenced by one of the top stories this week being whether Steve Jobs tried to take ninja throwing stars on an airplane in Japan.  (Bloomberg originally said yes, but then Apple told them no.)  That story did spark some amusing posts, such as this great one by John Moltz and this great one by the guys at Scoopertino.  It’s hard to compete with ninja throwing stars, but here is the rest of the iPhone news of the week that might be of interest:

• Hugo Miller of Bloomberg reports that very large companies such as JPMorgan Chase are now considering the iPhone as an alternative to the Blackberry, noting that “BlackBerry loyalty may be fading among the bankers, lawyers and government workers who drove RIM’s initial success. About 42 percent of BlackBerry users say they want to stick with the brand when they buy a new phone, according to an August survey by Nielsen Co. The rate is 89 percent for iPhone owners and 71 percent for Android devices.”
• Frederik Balfour and Tim Culpan of BusinessWeek wrote an interesting article on Terry Gou, the founder of Foxconn, the Chinese company that makes iPhones to Apple’s exacting standards at a rate of “137,000 iPhones a day, or about 90 a minute.”
• Marianne Schultz of AppShopper reviews LogMeIn Ignition for the iPhone and iPad.  I consider it one of the most useful apps on my iPhone.  Click here for LogMeIn Ignition ($29.99): 

  

• Roman Loyola of Macworld reports that if you get the new Parallels 6 for Mac, you can also get for free Parallels Mobile, an iPhone app that acts as a remote client for the virtual Windows environment on your Mac.  Frankly, this is very similar to what LogMeIn ignition does.  For me, instead of a virtual Windows machine, I have LogMeIn installed on both my PC at work and my Mac at home so that I can remotely control either computer from my iPhone using the LogMeIn Ignition app.
• I was honored to be named in the 2009 ABA Journal Blawg 100, and now the ABA Journal is getting ready to select the 2010 nominees.  If you want to tell the ABA Journal about the law-related websites that you read regularly, click here to nominate your favorites.  It only takes a few seconds to do.
• If you want a quick way to find an iPhone app, try the new App Store Instant.  Modeled on the recent update to Google, start to type the name of an app and choices pop up instantly.
• Ed Sperling of Forbes writes that the iPad is the beginning of a new trend towards mobile hardware.
• Sam Grobart of the New York Times reports on the Chase app that lets you deposit checks on your iPhone.  I reviewed this app last month, and I continue to use the app all the time.
• Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times reports that you can use your iPhone as a guide at New York museums.
• Ryan Faas of Computerworld looked at the updated iPhone Configuration Utility, software used by companies to configure their employees’ iPhones.
• Chris Foresman of Ars Technia discusses the new HDR capabilities of the iPhone 4.
• And finally, if you have an extra $100 bill and don’t know what to do with it, why not make an iPhone stand?  Or you can just be cheap and do the same thing with a buck.