Month: February 2011

I have long been a fan of the GorrillaPod, a portable tripod with legs made of rubberized balls on joints that can be twisted into almost any configuration.  I have an older version of the SLR-Zoom model that I carry with me when I travel on vacation.  You can stand it on a table or chair to steady a camera for taking a photograph, or better yet you can use the flexible legs to wrap it around virtually any surface.  That one device, along with an inexpensive remote for my Nikon camera, makes it easy to take group pictures when I am also in the picture. 

When I saw that Joby, the company that makes the GorillaPod, had come out with an iPad stand with the same flexible legs, I was intrigued.  The version for the iPad is called the GorillaMobile Yogi for iPad.  Joby sent me a free review unit and I have been using it for the last few weeks.  This is a great product that I would recommend to anyone looking for a good way to prop up an iPad at an angle.

The product itself consists of a thin white plastic and gray rubber cover that slips around the back and the sides of the iPad.  It is easy to put on and take off, and the case is nice enough that you might want to keep it on your iPad even when you are not using the Yogi’s legs.  Clips are built-in to two of the sides of the back, giving you two different locations to connect the legs.

Once attached, you can prop up your iPad in either portrait or landscape position.  The flexible legs can be adjusted countless ways so that you can achieve any angle that you want for the iPad.  And yet the legs are also strong enough that you can easily tap and even type on the screen when it is in a position without the stand changing positions.  It is the perfect balance of flexibility and strength.

Because you can twist the legs around, you could even use the Yogi to grip around an object.  You could wrap the legs around the back of a chair or treadmill or other object in front of you if you wanted the iPad in that position.  I also find it easy to position the flexible legs when I want to prop up the iPad on my body while I am sitting or laying back.  Here is a video from Joby showing off many of the Yogi’s positions, with a person in the background doing yoga just to drive home the flexible nature of the product:

The manual that comes with the Yogi suggests several poses and gives them interesting names.  As Scott Stein of Cnet remarked, the manual contains “a number of positions, ranging in inspiration from Yoga poses to ones that border on the Kama Sutra.”

The Yogi doesn’t add that much weight to the 1.5 pound iPad; the case and the legs together weigh just over 8 oz.  Thus, you can also adjust the legs into some comfortable position and use the Yogi to hold the iPad in your hand, achieving many of the advantages of the FreeOneHand iPad holder that I recently reviewed and that I enjoy using.

It is also easy to travel with the Yogi because the legs come right off, so you can make them straight and tuck them into a corner of a suitcase or briefcase, and then either leave the case on the iPad to give it a little protection on the sides and back or store the thin case along with your legal pads and paperwork.

I have tried several other devices that are designed to prop your iPad at an angle for easier viewing, but most of them just have one or a few preset angles.  I love that with the Yogi you get any angle you want, plus the legs let you prop up the iPad on a flat or an uneven surface.  If you are looking for a good stand for your iPad to prop it up when you are actively using it or when the iPad is just sitting on your desk, displaying a movie or pictures, the GorillaMobile Yogi is a great choice.  And because the ball joint design of the legs makes it possible to wrap the Yogi around other objects, I’m sure that you will come up with lots of creative uses for the Yogi even when you are away from your desk.

Click here to get the GorillaMobile Yogi for iPad from Amazon ($49.95)

Yesterday, there were several announcements from Apple, including a new line of MacBook Pro computers, a preview of the next Mac OS, and the 1.0 version of FaceTime for the Mac.  The Mac version of FaceTime is a useful way to use an iPhone 4 to conduct a videochat with someone who has a Mac; I used it when I was on the road last week to say good night to my kids from hundreds of miles away.  But what struck me the most about yesterday’s announcements is that a brand new MacBook Pro — the best-selling computer that Apple makes — is nothing more than news that Apple wants to get out of the way before the iPad announcement next week.  As John Gruber remarked:  “new developer preview of Lion, new FaceTime app for Mac, and an all-new lineup of MacBook Pros — and none of these things warranted a spot in next week’s event.”  I suspect that next Wednesday’s iPad announcement will include some big news.  But before we get too excited about the news of next week, let’s look at some of the iPhone-related news of note from this past week:

• Legal consultant Ed Scanlan of Total Attorneys was recently the victim of a mugging.  The thieves took his money and his iPhone, but then Scanlan used the Find my iPhone feature to trace the criminals for the cops.  Frank Main of the Chicago Sun Times tells the rest of the story.
• David Martin of Cult of Mac shares a similar story from Texas.  A woman’s iPhone was stolen, so she used her iPad to track down the criminals.
• John Marellaro of The Mac Observer writes that once you have an iPad, you find that you no longer want to use certain apps on the iPhone because they work so much better on the iPad.  I’ve noticed this myself.
• Peter Ha explains in an article in The Daily why he is giving up his BlackBerry for an iPhone.
• John Edwards writes an article for Law Technology News in which he predicts better input solutions for mobile devices in the future.  We’ll see.
• David Pogue of the New York Times wrote an interesting article about whether it is okay to let your child (in his case, a six year old) use your iPad.
• College Humor has a funny Angry Birds Public Service Announcement (PSA) to encourage you to save the birds and pigs.  Worth watching.
• And finally, if you cannot wait until next week to see what Apple has in store for the new iPad, here’s a guy who is ready to show you now:

On January 27, 2010, Apple announced the original iPad, and it went on sale in April of 2010.  Yesterday, Apple alerted the press that will announce the next generation of the iPad at 10:00 Pacific on Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at an invitation-only event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.  There are tons of rumors on the features of the new iPad — lighter? thinner? camera for FaceTime? — and we’ll finally get the official word next week.

There is a picture on the invitation of a calendar with the top corner peeled back to reveal an iPad.  The text on the iniviation reads:  “Come see what 2011 will be the year of.”  I look forward to learning what Apple has planned for the 2.0 version of the iPad and when it will be available for sale.  [UPDATE:  Macworld has a good list of 11 features that the magazine’s editors would like to see in a future iPad.]

Attorneys frequently have to calculate dates to determine the deadlines for trial court pleadings, appellate briefs, contractual obligations, etc.  Almost two years ago I reviewed a $0.99 app called Court Days from attorney Dan Friedlander (who runs the website Law on my Phone) which gives you the ability to calculate dates even when you need to exclude legal holidays such as weekends and holidays.

Last night, Friedlander released an advanced version of that app called Court Days Pro.  Court Days Pro is the first rules-based legal calendering app for the iPhone.  This means that the app is designed to take one event (the trigger event) and then calculate one or more other deadlines based on that trigger event.  You simply set up each of your rules once, and then you can use them again and again in the future.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is by an example.  Appellate practice in Louisiana state court is a big part of my law practice.  The deadline for filing a notice of appeal in Louisiana state court is computed based on a trigger date of when the clerk of court mails a notice of the trial court’s judgment.  Once that happens, parties have 7 court days (excluding weekends and holidays) to file post-trial motions such as a motion for new trial of motion for JNOV.  Assuming that no such motions are filed, the deadline for a suspensive appeal (an appeal that suspends the execution of the judgment) is 30 days later, and the deadline for a devolutive appeal (an appeal that doesn’t suspend the execution of judgment, something a defendant will rarely use but plaintiffs often use when they lose at trial because there is no judgment on which one can execute anyway) is 60 days later.  You set up rules by giving the app a trigger date and then other dates that come after it.  So in this example, my trigger date is the date on which the clerk of court mails a notice of the trial court’s judgment.  Then my first resulting date is 7 court days later (i.e. days on which the court is open, excluding weekends and holidays).  To set up this date, I just tell the app to take the trigger date and add 7 court days to it:

 

Next, I set up my second result item, the deadline for a suspensive appeal.  Three calculations are required to figure out this date.  First, I have to count the 7 court day deadline to file post-trial motions.  Second, I have to add 30 calendar days (including weekends and holidays) to that 7 court day deadline.  Finally, if that 30th day falls on a weekend or a holiday, Louisiana law advances the deadline to the next court day.  On this screen you can see that I have told the app to perform all three of those calculations:

 

I performed the third calculation by selecting “cal fwd.”  The other choices include “cal” which would apply if the 30th day were the deadline even if it falls on a holiday.  The “cal bk” choice would have given me the last court day that falls just before the 30th day when the 30th day falls on a holiday.

I then set up a similar rule for a devolutive appeal.  Everything is the same as a suspensive appeal, except that the second calculation is 60 days instead of 30 days.  Once I have all of those entered, I can see that my rule looks like this:

 

It obviously takes a little time and thought to set up your rule, but then once you have done it, it will be in the app forever.  So now, I can always use my rule to perform a calculation without my needing to do any math at all.  Let’s say for example that I want to see what my appeal deadlines would be if I get a notice of judgment mailed on March 1, 2011.  All I need to do is select the first date (3/1/11) and the app instantly shows me the deadlines:

You can see in the prior image that for each deadline, you are also shown the number of days from today based on a calendar and based on the court (non-weekend, non-holiday) days.  How does the app know the holidays?  The app comes pre-populated with the federal court holidays.  You can then modify that list to add your local holidays.  For example, you can see on the following image that I told the app that Tuesday, March 8, 2011 is a court holiday in Louisiana (Mardi Gras), and as you can see in the prior image, the app took the Mardi Gras holiday into account when counting the 7 court days for post-trial motions and then using that date to calculate the two appeal deadlines.

 

You can set up as many rules as you want.  For example, here is another rule that I set up that calculates several appeal dates in Louisiana state court such as an Appellant’s Original Brief, an Appellee Brief, and a Reply Brief:

I had to fudge a little in this rule because technically the reply brief is due 10 days after the Appellee Brief is filed, but there is no way to tell this app to calculate a resulting date based upon the previously computed date; everything has to come from the trigger date.  Thus, in my rule, I just told the app to count 55 days from the date that the record is lodged, which in the example shown in the above images is actually a little early.  Nevertheless, the app can give me a sense of how all of the deadlines will work out.  Perhaps in a future update Friedlander will add the ability to make rules even more sophisticated to account for situations like this one.

Note that in these two examples I created my own rules, but the app comes with a number of sample deadlines based on the California Code of Civil Procedure.  If you don’t practice law in California, you can delete those entries, but I left them in when I created this image just to give you a sense of some of what is there, along with my two Louisiana appellate rules that I created:

 

This is a universal app, so you can also use it on an iPad and the app is formatted for the iPad’s larger screen.  Frankly, though, the app works just fine on an iPhone and I don’t think that you gain much with the iPad screen.

Calculating dates may seem simple because it is just math, but it is very easy to make a mistake when you do so, and I know several examples of attorneys missing appeal deadlines, resulting in prejudice to their client and a malpractice lawsuit for the attorney.  You may know of some of these examples yourself.  An app like Court Days Pro is incredibly useful because after you take the time to carefully set up a rule-based calculation just once, in the future you can just give the app a start date and have the app do all of the hard work for you, making it easier to calculate dates for your clients (note to mention avoid malpractice lawsuits based on miscalculating dates).  There is a slight learning curve to using this app — just as there is a slight learning curve to figuring out how dates are calculated based on the federal and state rules of procedure – but once you get over that learning curve, this is an incredibly useful app that I encourage every lawyer to consider buying.  Note that the app will cost $3.99 starting next week, but if you buy it this week you can pay the introductory price of $2.99, so save yourself a buck and buy it today.

Click here to get Court Days Pro ($2.99 this week, then $3.99): 

Like many iPad owners, I find myself wishing that I could covert all of my paper periodical subscriptions into iPad subscriptions.  I enjoy reading magazines on a bright iPad screen, and I like having a large collection of reading materials on my iPad rather that carrying around a bunch of magazines when I travel.  Thus, I am always happy to learn that another good magazine is now available in a digital version.

Most lawyers are familiar with The American Lawyer (often just called “Am Law”), a monthly magazine covering the business of law firms.  Am Law has a free iPhone and iPad app, and it is excellent.  (Disclosure:  The American Lawyer is part of the Law.com network and iPhone J.D. is an affiliate of the Law.com network — which mostly just means that I include that banner at the right that shows you headlines from recent Law.com stories and I receive some revenue from the ad that appears below that banner.  Am Law didn’t ask me to write this review; I just find that I’m really enjoying the app.)

On the iPhone, you can use the Am Law app to view the current and last few recent editions.  Tap on the cover of the magazine to see the contents.

 

You can tap the View button to browse through the pages of the magazine.  You can bring up a pop-up window at the bottom showing thumbnails of the pages so that you can easily jump to another page.  It is nice to see every full page of the magazine, but unfortunately even at the maximum zoom it is difficult to read the small text on an iPhone screen.

Fortunately, you are not limited to reading just a scan of the page.  You can also tap on articles in the index and read a text version of articles, with controls that let you increase or decrease the font size.  You an also easily search that full text to find all articles in recent editions that contain a word.

You also tap the News & Views button to see the latest articles from the Am Law website.

Am Law is very nicely implemented on the iPhone, but where it really shines is on the iPad where the app is designed to take full advantage of the iPad screen.  I have no problems reading articles in the full page view, and it is easy to swipe through the pages of the magazine to read each issue.

 

 

 

You can also turn your iPad sideways to view two pages at a time:

 

The content of Am Law has always been great, but I must admit that it has been a long time since I subscribed to the paper magazine.  Instead, I prefer to read Am Law articles online.  Now that there is a free digital version of the magazine, I find myself reading the magazine again, sometimes on my iPhone but mostly on my iPad.  I’m sure that Am Law likes this because I am once again looking at the ads, and frankly I don’t mind the ads in a niche magazine like Am Law or Macworld because the ads are likely to be targeted to my areas of interest anyway.  I only have one real complaint with this app; I wish that the scans of each page were of a higher resolution and I wish that you could zoom in even more.  Nevertheless, if you are a lawyer with any interest in the business of practicing law, I encourage you to download this app for your iPhone and iPad.

Click here to get The American Lawyer (free): 

No post here at iPhone J.D. today, but if you are looking for something good to read, check out this great article by Andy Ihnatko posted at Macworld.com yesterday in which the Chicago Sun-Times tech columnist thinks about how fun it would be if Apple let its engineers go crazy and make something — anything — that is neat (regardless of how functional it is) so long as it costs under $50.  I’d probably buy it.

It was a relatively quiet week in iPhone and iPad news.  We learned more details on Apple’s plans for allowing subscriptions within apps, people continue to write articles geared at the new Verizon iPhone users, and there were a few good articles this week of particular interest to attorneys using iPhones:

• Attorney Dan Friedlander writes for TechnoLawyer about how lawyers can develop Enterprise Apps for the iPhone.  That article appeared in the free TechnoLawyer BigLaw newsletter a month ago, but it is now available on the TechnoLawyer website for those who don’t subscribe.
• Christina Koch, a paralegal at Inserra & Kelley, writes for Atkinson-Baker’s website about the use of the iPad by lawyers and paralegals.
• Similarly, John Paczkowski of All Things D writes about how more and more businesses are embracing the iPad.
• We got a sneak peek at iPhone and iPad subscriptions with the recent debut of The Daily, but this week Apple officially announced its policies for subscriptions.  David Chartier of Macworld posts an analysis.  I know that there are pros and cons for publishers, but I hope that there is widespread support becasue I love the idea of subscribing to periodicals on my iPad.
• Jenna Wortham of the New York Times explains how the Shazam iPhone app can identify songs so well.
• Trial and legal tech consultant Ted Brooks posted an extensive review of Exhibit A, an iPad app that can be used for trial presentation.
• Ted Brooks also reviewed the Litigator iPad app in an article that appears in Law Technology News.
• Om Malik of GigaOm gave up on the iPhone a while ago because of his problems with getting good AT&T coverage in New York in San Francisco, but he now has a Verizon iPhone and says that he is “in love again.”
• Sam Grobart of the New York Times suggets apps for new Verizon iPhone users.  (I posted my list on Monday.)
• Feel like giving up on your law practice and getting a job at Apple?  Or just interested in how Apple employees end up there?  James Holland writes for ElectricPig about how to get a job at Apple.  Based on what I have heard, this article is actually pretty accurate.
• To help the new Verizon iPhone users, the New York Times has a short video with tips for new iPhone users on topics such as double-clicking the Home button, creating folders for apps, etc.
• Following up on the recent release of the Google Translate app, Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times writes about other translation apps.
• And finally, iPhone J.D. wasn’t the only website to recently top a million page views.  The Apple parody site Scoopertino also did so this week, and wrote this  funny post.  If you like to laugh, I encourage you to read that site regularly for funny articles like this recent one on the App Store Express, the fastest way to give Apple your money.  And for more info on that site, I wrote about the guys behind Scoopertino in this post.

When I first started iPhone J.D., I wasn’t sure how much interest there would be in a specialized website of this sort.  Back in 2008, most attorneys used BlackBerries, but even so there wasn’t any website focused on attorneys using BlackBerries, nor were there websites devoted to teachers using Treos, insurance agents using iPods, etc.  I remember thinking that it was amazing when I first saw over 200 visitors to the website in a single day.

Over time, readership has increased and this website now sees thousands of visitors a day. As a result, at some point during the day today (most likely right around lunch time), this website will cross over the threshold of 1 million page views.

I try to keep being self-referential to a minimum on this website, but I see a greater significance in a niche site like this one crossing the 1 million page view threshold.  Even though iPhone J.D. gets a huge number of non-attorney visitors (everyone is welcome!), I believe that the increase in traffic here reflects a growing number of attorneys using iPhones and iPads … a fact that will hopefully translate into even more development of apps and hardware accessories that are helpful for attorneys and other professionals using the iOS.

To all of you who have visited iPhone J.D. since it debuted in November of 2008, thanks a million!

If you will be in Chicago for ABA TECHSHOW this year, I am hosting one of the Taste of Techshow dinners along with Josh Barrett of Tablet Legal.  At the dinner, I’m sure that we will discuss all things iPhone and iPad, share stories, and have a lot of laughs.  The dinner will be on April 11, 2011 at 8:15pm at Tutto Italiano, an Italian restaurant. 

I am writing about this today to alert you to a change.  In past years, you signed up for these dinners during the conference itself.  This year, however, you need to sign up beforehand by following the instructions on this webpage.  I’m sure that many of the dinners on April 11 and 12 will fill up quickly, so sign up now if you plan to be in Chicago.  I hope to see many of you at the dinner, or at least at the conference, in April.

It has been over two years since I wrote about using the iPhone as a boarding pass, but I never had the opportunity to try it myself until yesterday.  I had a Delta flight, and when checking in online, I saw that I was offered the option to obtain an eBoarding Pass in addition (or instead of) a printed boarding pass.  I played it safe and chose both options.

Here is what Delta says on its website about using an eBoarding Pass:

What is an eBoarding Pass?

Now, when you’re departing from certain airports, you can go completely paperless by having an eBoarding Pass sent directly to your Web-enabled mobile device. It’s the fastest, most convenient way to check in.

Here’s how it works:

• While you’re checking in online, choose the eBoarding Pass option—instead of the normal paper boarding pass.

• When you’ve completed the check-in process, instead of printing your boarding pass, your eBoarding Pass, flight information and barcode will be sent directly to your mobile device.

• Once you’re at the airport, if you’re checking bags, you can save time by using Curbside Check-in or one of our Baggage Drops.

• When you reach security, an agent will check your ID and scan the eBoarding Pass on your mobile device.

• Then you can head straight to your departure gate and show your eBoarding Pass to the gate agent when it’s time to board.

The list of airports at which you can use an eBoarding Pass is contained on this page on the Delta website.  It includes my hometown of New Orleans and airports in other cites like Boston, Chicago, Miami, New York (LGA) and Seattle but doesn’t yet include major airports such as San Francisco (SFO), the other big New York-area airports (JFK and EWR) and Dallas (DFW).

When I selected the option for an eBoarding Pass, I received an e-mail with a link to a webpage.  When I clicked the link, I was brought to a page containing a QR Code to show to the appropriate agents.  I don’t know if this contains personal information, so I added some black bar redactions to these images:

  

It worked great.  When I got to the security check-in, I saw a device on the front of the podium where the TSA agent was standing.  He told me to scan the code on my iPhone, and I saw my name appear on a small display on his side of the podium, which he compared to my driver’s license.  When it was time to board the plane, the gate agent simply directed me to scan the front of my iPhone on the same machine she was using to scan paper boarding passes.  Nobody acted as if I was doing anything unusual, even though it was a new experience for me.

Many years ago, I managed to lose “real” paper tickets before an international flight.  The only solution was for me to buy another set of tickets for me and my wife, and then the airline said that once nobody showed up using my original tickets, I would receive a refund on my credit card.  The refund did eventually show up, but I was a little nervous about it until that refund appeared on my statement.  Nowadays, for most flights, we are long past the age of “real” paper tickets that you need to worry about losing; we all just use electronic tickets that can be reprinted at any time on a computer or at the airport.  Even so, it is nice to have the option to use an eBoarding Pass without dealing with any paper at all.  It worked so well for me yesterday that I will always use this option again in the future when I can.