Year: 2010

Jason Turchin is a Florida plaintiffs’ personal injury attorney.  Like many attorneys who represent victims, it is important that he find ways to publicize himself to potential clients, whether it be through television ads or search-optimized websites.  He recently started a new way of making his services known:  a free iPhone app called My Attorney App.

I suppose the most compelling reason for a potential client to download the app is that it includes Accident Checklists.  The app includes helpful tips for people who are victims of various unfortunate circumstances such as a car accident, slip and fall and even dog bite.  By having the app on their iPhone, a victim can immediately review a handy checklist of things to do, such as “call the police” and “do not give any statements to the insurance company or sign any release without having your lawyer review the case first.”

Of course, the main reason for an app like this is to get a victim to call the attorney.  Upon starting the app, you see a splash screen with Turchin’s name, and it appears proimantly throughout the app.  There are also buttons at the bottom of every screen to contact Turchin, and from the main screen you can follow Turchin on Facebook or Twitter and get more information about his past successful representations.

Turchin is not the only one with a promotional iPhone app.  I also ran across an app called LawFirm, published by Spar & Bernstein, a New York law firm that specializes in immigration law but also has a full service practice.  From the main screen of the app, you are presented with four practice areas.

Upon choosing an area, you have to wait as a list of items loads from the Internet.  For three of the items (criminal defense, divorce and personal injury) you are given a list of issues / crimes and related information and tips from the law firm.  For the immigration law item, you see a list of up to date news items from an unidentified source.  Only the first few paragraphs of each news item are loaded into the app, and the end of the news item frequently cuts off in mid sentence.  The app also provides links to the law firm’s Twitter updates and quick access to a large number of video and audio podcasts called Immigration Link from attorney Brad Bernstein.

I don’t know whether Turchin developed his app himself or hired an outside consultant.  The publisher of the Spar & Bernstein app is Cariplex Studios, a web design company which I presume developed that app.  I know that there are many companies out there who will develop an iPhone app for under $1,000.  I haven’t tried these services myself so I cannot vouch for them, but within just the last few days I have seen references to Mobile Roadie, a company that started by developing apps for bands but now will develop personal apps for anyone for about $500 start up and then about $30 a month, and AppMakr, which will also create an app for around $500, or even for as little as $200 if you choose for AppMakr to be the publisher (although since the purpose of a law firm app is self-promotion, I imagine that many law firms would want for the law firm to be the publisher).  Obviously the costs will increase as you add more of a personal touch, but the point is that developing an iPhone app could easily fall within the marketing budget of most any law firm.

I wish Jason Turchin and Spar & Bernstein the best of luck with their iPhone apps.  I’m sure that before long there will be many more law firm apps in the App Store.

Click here to get My Attorney App (free): 

Click here to get LawFirm (free): 

In March of 2009, Apple previewed iPhone Software 3.0.  Many of the features would be immediately useful, such as copy and paste, but other parts of the 3.0 software were there simply to lay the groundwork for developers to bring the iPhone to a whole new level.  We saw some real innovations in 2009, such as Dragon Dictation’s voice recognition, amazing photo apps and a number of apps to send and receive video from the iPhone, but those were all on the software side.  What about hardware?  When iPhone Software 3.0 was announced, I was particularly excited to see what new hardware would be available.  As I wrote back on March 18, 2009:

iPhone app interaction with accessories.  This is another neat one that I am sure has ramifications that I
haven’t even begun to imagine.  The iPhone will be able to talk to and
control accessories, either wirelessly (using Bluetooth) or by
connecting the accessory to the port on the bottom of the iPhone. 
Apple gave an example of connecting the iPhone to a speaker and using
the iPhone to control levels on the speaker.  A medical company showed
off a glucose monitor that can communicate with the iPhone wirelessly
so that a diabetic can log and monitor blood sugar using the iPhone.  I
can see the iPhone communicating with document scanners, bar code
readers, printers, etc.  And it would be nice to be able to connect the
iPhone to a small external keyboard to type longer e-mails, messages,
etc.  (Apple was specifically asked yesterday if this would work, and
simply answered that they had nothing to announce.  But I presume this
will be possible.)  Like many of the other improvements announced
today, I’m sure we can’t even begin to predict what imaginative
developers will do with this feature.

I presumed that Apple was describing this feature in March so that developers would have time to get their hardware ready for introduction soon after 3.0 was released on June 17, 2009.  I looked forward to a huge number of interesting third party devices that could be added to the iPhone.

But it didn’t happen.  Even today, most of the external hardware for the iPhone consists of speakers and headphones, batteries, and cases.  Where are all of the cool add-ons for the iPhone?

On January 1, 2010, Jenna Wortham of the New York Times predicted Five Tech Themes for 2010.  Her first prediction of what might be big in 2010 is hardware attachments for the iPhone:

The third wave of mobile applications: Mobile app
stores continue to evolve from kitschy collections of games and novelty
programs into robust catalogs of applications that push the limits of
what a cellphone can do. So where can we expect to see the next big
innovation? External attachments. So far, Square, a device that plugs
into the audio jack of a mobile phone, turning it into a credit card
machine, has made the splashiest entrance
into the market, but that is just the beginning. Example: a glucose
monitor that could directly port blood sugar readings and other health
information into a program for analysis.

The glucose monitor that she mentions is, of course, the same device that Lifescan previewed a live demo of back in March of 2009 when Apple announced iPhone Software 3.0.  Almost eight months later, we are still waiting for this device to appear. 

The other device that she mentions, Square, was announced last month but is still in limited testing.  A similar device from Mophie that will also allow you to scan credit cards with an iPhone is scheduled to be debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in a few days.

I’m glad to see Square and Mophie testing their products, and hopefully they will be available soon.  Nevertheless, I am surprised that we saw so little innovation in external hardware for the iPhone in 2009.  I hope that Wortham is correct and that now, in 2010, we are about to see a new wave of hardware attachments for the iPhone.