As 2011 draws to a close, it is natural to reflect back upon the year. It was certainly a big year for iPhones and iPads. The iPhone came to Verizon earlier this year, and then to Sprint later in the year. Apple released a faster and thinner second generation of the iPad with the innovative Smart Cover. iPhones in the U.S. gained the ability to act as a mobile hotspot. Apple released iOS 5 with big improvements to e-mail and notifications, iCloud, Newsstand and AirPlay mirroring. Apple released the faster iPhone 4S with Siri and an improved camera. Tons of new apps were released, including a large number that are designed for, or at least particularly useful to, attorneys, and surveys suggest that about a third of all lawyers are now using an iPhone and over 10% are using an iPad — numbers that have surely increased recently with new iPhones and iPads given as presents over the last week. (I’ve seen a spike in traffic to iPhone J.D. this week that appears to come from new iPhone and iPad owners.) I hope that in your personal life and your career, you had similar good news throughout 2011, and my hope is that 2012 is an even better year for all of us. And now, the news of the week:
Britain’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, is known to be a fan of the iPad, and The Telegraph reports that the Prime Minister has directed his staff to create a custom iPad app to help him keep abreast of everything that he needs to know to run the U.K.
South Carolina attorney Justin Kahn explains how to backup documents that you create in iPad apps.
Alex Heath of the iDownload Blog recommends 30 great apps for new iPad users. I don’t agree with all of his choices, but there are definitely some good ones in there.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, VA recently created an exhibit to honor Steve Jobs and the patents with his name on it. Jeff Benjamin of the iDownload Blog reports on the exhibit and provides a video of what it looks like. It looks pretty neat.
Apple’s new iTunes Match service costs $25 a year and makes it easy to access all of your music from all of your devices. If you are trying to decide whether the service is right for you, Apple created a new, short video on the iTunes Match page of its website to explain what the service offers.
New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson writes on his PDF for Lawyers site about the new Adobe EchoSign app for iOS that lets you sign legally binding contracts on an iPhone or iPad.
Kevin Tofel of GigaOm reviews Winter Wake-Up, a free alarm clock app that automatically wakes you earlier in case of frost or snow. The reviews on the App Store indicates that the app currently isn’t working for some, but it is a neat idea for an app. I’ll never be able to review it myself because I live in New Orleans (explain to me what this snow thing is again?) but if those of you in colder climates want to give it a spin, click here for Winter Wake-Up (free):
Speaking of snow, please run to your nearest iPad and do this immediately. Open the Safari browser, then type “let it snow” in the Google search window at the top right and then tap the Search button. Then wait and see what happens. I won’t ruin the surprise by telling you what happens next, but after about 15 seconds, be sure to touch your screen. Too funny. (via Justin Kahn)
And finally, if you are looking for something amusing to do with your iPhone’s camera, there is a new, free app from Bad Robot. This is the production company owned by J.J. Abrams that created TV shows such as Lost, Alias and Fringe, and movies such as Cloverfield, Star Trek, Super 8 and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. You can’t deny that Abrams knows a thing or two about special effects, and his new iPhone app, Action Movie FX, allows you to add a special effect to a video that you shoot. The app comes with two free special effects: (1) Missile Attack! and (2) Car Smash. You can buy two additional effects for a buck as an in-app purchase, and there are currently two 2-packs available for purchase (in other words, four additional effects). Here’s a video from Matt Pearce of Los Angeles to give you a sense of what you can create if you want to spice up your next iMovie. Click here to get Action Movie FX (free):
Tomorrow is the last day to vote for your favorite websites in this year’s ABA Journal Blawg 100 list. iPhone J.D. is one of the 10 websites in the “Legal Technology” category, and if you find this website useful from time to time, I’d certainly appreciate your vote. Don’t worry, it only takes about 30 seconds; just click here or on the graphic below, provide a name and e-mail address to register (an attempt to reduce people voting more than once), and then vote for your favorite websites in several categories. The only prize is publicity, but I’d love to increase awareness of all of the things that lawyers can do with an iPhone or iPad.
I see that George Washington Law Professor Jonathan Turley is pulling out the big guns to get votes this year in the “Opinion” category by invoking the inspiring words of Bluto from Animal House. I won’t try to top that, but I do want to thank those of you who have already voted for iPhone J.D., as well as those of you who will vote today or tomorrow.
I am constantly hearing attorneys tell me that they find their iPad so useful that they no longer carry around a laptop, whether that means taking the laptop home from the office every night or taking the laptop with them on trips. That’s certainly what I do. But sometimes when you are away from a computer, you need to do something that requires the computer, such as access a document that you left on your desktop or access some software that can only run (or runs best) on a PC, such as your law firm’s document management system. One popular culprit: restaurant websites that require Flash. I will be out of town, looking for info on a restaurant, and when I try to pull up the website on my iPad I see nothing. Arrgh! A solution is to use remote access software so that my iPad (or iPhone) can access one of my computers, whether it be the PC at my office or the Mac at my home. I can run the software or access the Flash website on that computer, and my iPad acts like an external monitor for that computer so that I can see whatever I need to see.
There are lots of remote access solutions for the iPad and iPhone, but the one that I have used for a long time is LogMeIn Ignition. (My 2009 iPhone app review is here, my 2010 iPad app review is here.) My only hesitation in recommending it was the price; it cost $30 and there are other, free solutions in the app store. But the app is nicely done and I’ve considered it worth it.
LogMeIn recently announced that they are changing their prices and you can now use LogMeIn on your iPad for free. If you want advanced functions, you can pay more, but the free product will be all that many people need. This is fantastic news.
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the differences between the free and paid options, and here is what I have learned so far.
1. Free computer to computer access
LogMeIn has long offered a free product called LogMeIn Free that lets one computer access another computer, and I’m mentioning this first just to provide context. For example, you can install the LogMeIn Free software on your office computer and your home computer, and then if you need to do some work at home at night, you can just connect to your work computer and you will see it on your screen (even full screen if you want) and you’ll be working just like you were in your office. Note that if your IT folks want to manage this access, they can use a product called LogMeIn Central for $300/year.
2. Paid computer to computer access
For $70 a year, you can purchase LogMeIn Pro for a single computer, such as your PC at work or your Mac at home. (Or you can purchase a monthly subscription for $12.20 a month.) This adds lots of extra features such as the ability to transfer a file between the two computers, although you can do something similar in the LogMeIn Free product just by e-mailing a file to yourself on one computer and then downloading that file from your inbox on the other computer. You can also print something from your remote computer running LogMeIn Pro and have it print on the printer attached to your local computer. (Again, e-mailing the file to yourself gives you a similar ability with the free product.) A full feature comparison list can be seen here.
A new feature just announced a few days ago is HD. When a PC is running LogMeIn Pro, the image that it sends to a remote client is even better. If you play a video on the host computer running LogMeIn Pro, the video looks much better on any remote computer. HD is being added to LogMeIn Pro for Mac in the future. For more information and a video showing the difference, read this post on the official LogMeIn blog.
3. Free iPad or iPhone to computer access
The big news for users of the iPhone and iPad is that you no longer have to pay $30 for the LogMeIn Ignition app. With the new, free LogMeIn app, you can now use your iPad to access a computer, either Mac or PC, as long as you installed either LogMeIn Free or LogMeIn Pro on that computer. And for most users, I think that the new, free LogMeIn app on the iPad/iPhone and the free LogMeIn Free software on each computer is all that the user will ever need. You get great remote access from a product that has been around for a very long time.
4. Upgrade to Pro from the free app for $40
If you use the new free LogMeIn app, you have the ability to make a $39.99/year in-app purchase (I’ll just round it up to $40 for simplicity) to add advanced features. First, you can use that new HD feature with a PC (Mac support coming soon). Second, you can now access cloud storage services from within the app (Dropbox, Google docs and a WebDav server). Third, you can save files from a remote computer to your iPad/iPhone or transfer files (a feature that has been in the LogMeIn Ignition app for a while). When you make this $40/year in-app purchase, the upgrade only applies to one computer. In other words, if you pay $40 and apply it to the PC in your office, you will have HD video from your office PC and the ability to transfer files between your office PC and your iPad or iPhone, but you won’t have those features when you connect to the Mac at your house.
Note that if you already have LogMeIn Pro running on that computer in your office, you don’t need to pay the $40 in-app fee to get the extra iPad/iPhone app features. But as far as I can tell from what I have read (and I haven’t tried this out myself to confirm), I don’t see any difference between paying $70 on your computer to purchase LogMeIn Pro versus paying just $40 on your iPad or iPhone to get the same LogMeIn Pro. The app does state that $40 is an “introductory price” so perhaps it will increase by $30 at some point in the future. For now, however, if you want the advanced features of LogMeIn Pro, you can slash the price by paying for it through your iPad or iPhone instead of on your computer.
5. LogMeIn Ignition remains for current customers, and costs $100 for new customers
Here is the part that seems a little strange but I suppose makes sense after you think about it. The LogMeIn Ignition app that used to cost $30 (and would occasionally go on sale for $20, such as the day that I wrote this review) remains in the app store. The company says that it is doing this so that it can continue to support customers who previously paid for the app. I’m one of those customers, so I appreciate the continued support. And people who use the LogMeIn Ignition app get all of the features that the iPad/iPhone app has when it connects to a computer running LogMeIn Pro even if that computer is just running the free version of LogMeIn.
If you previously purchased LogMeIn Ignition, this is good news for you. You can access the new features that I mentioned above (HD and cloud services access) plus the features that the Ignition app has always had but which are missing from the new free app (the ability to save files locally and transfer files between computers) without having to pay a yearly subscription for each of your computers, either the $70/year or the new $40/year. The $30 you paid for LogMeIn Ignition in the past (or $20 if you got the app on sale) now seems like a real bargain.
While the company is leaving the Ignition app in the App Store so that the company can continue to support it, I’m sure that LogMeIn would rather have new customers get the free app and then pay the yearly LogMeIn Pro rates. Thus, the company has raised the price of the LogMeIn Ignition app to $99.99. At first I considered that massive price increase a way to discourage people from buying the app at all. On further reflection, however, that is a reasonable price compared to what people are paying for LogMeIn Pro. If the main reason that you want LogMeIn Pro is to get the advanced features on your iPad or iPhone, and if you want to access two (or more) computers such as your office and your home computer, paying $100 once may seem better than paying $80 every year for two computers via in-app subscription, or for that matter $140 every year if you were going to pay for LogMeIn Pro on the computer instead of through the in-app purchase.
Bottom Line
If you were an early adopter and purchased LogMeIn Ignition for $30 (or less), that app is now even more valuable. It now has new features (HD and cloud services) and you don’t have to pay a yearly fee to keep those features.
If you stayed away from LogMeIn in the past because you wanted a free alternative, the new LogMeIn app may be exactly what you need. While I haven’t done an exhaustive comparison of LogMeIn with all of the free remote access products on the App Store, my sense is that the free LogMeIn app is more advanced. If nothing else, it is supported by a large company with a long history in remote access software.
If you haven’t yet purchased LogMeIn for your iPad/iPhone and you now want to do so, and if you also want access to the advanced features such as the new HD or the helpful ability to transfer files from a remote computer to your iPad without having to use a work-around such as e-mailing the file to yourself, you are now going to pay more. Instead of the $30 (or less) you could have paid, you’ll now have to either make a one-time payment of $100 or you will have to make yearly payments of $40 for each computer you want to access.
The new prices are somewhat confusing — and for some new customers are more expensive — but I’m happy that LogMeIn has continued to update its iOS products over the years. The new features make the app even more valuable (and for basic use, more affordable), and I presume that in 2012 and beyond we will see even more added to the apps.
Apple has a tradition of producing some great Christmas-themed commercials. This year, they are running a commercial showing Santa Claus using Siri. I believe that the commercial started this past weekend (I first saw it on Sunday during the Saints football game) so perhaps you have seen it already, but if not, it is worth watching. Here it is:
Last year, Apple ran this ad with “Santa” using FaceTime:
The year before, in 2009, Apple ran an iPhone ad called The 12 Apps of Christmas:
One of my all-time favorite Apple Christmas commercials was this one that ran in 2007 as a part of its Mac vs. PC ads. I suppose that I’m a sucker for the Rankin/Bass-style during the holiday season:
The follow-up to commercials in 2008 were also cute:
And finally, here is an older Apple ad that ran during the holiday season. I think that this one was from 1994, and it is called The Nightmare Before Christmas:
It’s a short week on iPhone J.D. due to the holidays. Hopefully, you have Friday and Monday off like we do at my firm. Here are the iPhone and iPad news items of note from the past week:
Indiana attorney Bill Wilson considers TrialPad the best app of 2011 for lawyers.
Michael Rose of TUAW recommends iPad apps and accessories as gifts for business colleagues.
Click here for a funny Dilbert cartoon regarding Siri on the iPhone 4S.
Do you sometimes forget where you parked your car? Find My Car Smart is a $25 device that you leave in your car, and using the advanced Bluetooth Smart technology in the iPhone 4S, your iPhone can show you how to get back to your car, even in a crowded parking lot. This is a Kickstarter project, but it has already far surpassed the $10,000 goal so it looks like this one will be made.
Mike Schramm of TUAW reports that, if you are a Verizon customer, you’ll be able to watch the Super Bowl live on your iPhone or iPad.
And finally, I didn’t believe this video when I first saw it, but then I read Jim Dalrymple’s post at The Loop explaining how it is done. Some smart folks who work at Yamaha figured out how to use Siri to tell a Yamaha Disklavier player piano to play songs:
If you are looking to get some new apps for your iPhone (or iPad), it’s the most wonderful time of the year. You see, a whole bunch of people are going to be getting a new iPhone, iPod touch or iPad on December 25, and many will also receive iTunes gift cards to purchase apps for their existing or new devices. That means that a HUGE number of people are going to be purchasing apps starting in just a few days. If you are an app developer, you want your app to be high on the lists of the most popular apps. What’s a quick way to make a lot of sales this week and get higher on those lists of popular apps? Reduce the price of your app substantially, or even make it free.
As a result, you can currently load up your iPhone and iPad with lots and lots of apps — especially games — at a fraction of the normal price. For example:
1Password for iPhone ($9.99 -> $5.99)
1Password for iPad ($9.99 -> $5.99)
Wolfram Lawyer’s Professional Assistant for iPhone and iPad ($4.99 -> $2.99)
The Monster at the End of This Book ($3.99 -> $0.99)
Madden NFL 12 for iPhone ($4.99 -> $0.99)
Madden NFL 12 for iPad ($9.99 -> $0.99)
Scrabble for iPhone ($1.99 -> $0.99)
Scrabble for iPad ($9.99 -> $0.99)
Trivial Pursuit Master Edition for iPad ($4.99 -> $0.99)
Tapper World Tour HD ($1.99 -> $0.99)
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 for iPad ($4.99 -> $0.99)
Yahtzee HD for iPad ($4.99 -> $0.99)
Monopoly for iPad ($9.99 -> $0.99)
Mirror’s Edge HD for iPad ($9.99 -> $0.99)
Risk for iPhone ($2.99 -> $0.99)
Risk HD for iPad ($9.99 ->$0.99)
A few that I can personally recommend from that list: (1) if you are looking for something fun to do with your kids, my six-year-old son and my four-year-old daughter both love The Monster at the End of This Book; (2) Scrabble for for the iPad is fantastic if you love word games; (3) Tapper World Tour HD is a lot of fun if you have great memories of the Tapper arcade game when you were younger (as I do); and (4) Mirror’s Edge is a fun, fast-paced game.
[UPDATE 2/11/2013: This app is no longer available in the App Store, apparently because Apple didn’t like on-screen notifications being used this way.] Many of my favorite iPhone apps share a quality: they do one simple thing, and do it well. Dan Friedlander, an attorney in Irvine, CA, has produced many iPhone apps through his company LawOnMyPhone that aim to do just that. For example, his Court Days Pro app does a great job of calculating dates based on rules that you provide. He recently released a new app called Do Date that does one thing and does it well — it reminds you how many days are left until an event. How many days do you have before your next anniversary? Your spouse’s birthday? Your next trial? Your vacation? Do Date gives you a prompt with that number every day, using Apple’s Notification features in iOS 5.
Creating an event is simple. Tap the Add Date button at the bottom of the app, type in a name for the event, and then scroll the date wheels to assign a date. That’s it. If you tap on the first icon at the bottom, Do Dates, you’ll see a list of all of your upcoming events.
Every night at midnight, the app provides a new set of notifications with the number of days that you have until your next event. So if you have notifications on your lock screen turned on in the iPhone Settings, and assuming that you go to sleep before midnight, you’ll wake up every morning with notifications on the screen of your iPhone telling you which events are upcoming and how many days you have until the events occur:
You can also view the events in the Notification Center, a pop-up window that you access by swiping down from the top of your iPhone’s screen:
The app’s built-in Settings let you change just a few things, such as toggling the reminder on or off again and changing the date format.
The first thought that I had when I tried out this app is that it would be useful if the app let you set the time of day that the notifications occur. If you are night owl (like me) you are often up past midnight, and it would be better to have the notifications take place at a different time, such as 5am, so they are fresh when you wake up every morning. Friendlander told me that he received that suggestion from other users as well, and he has already submitted an update to Apple that adds this feature.
In the Settings app on the iPhone, you can allow any app to provide up to 10 notifications. The default is lower than that, so if you use this app you’ll probably want to increase the notification to the maximu of 10. That also serves as a limitation of the app; you can’t be shown more than 10 notifications at one time. Thus, you’ll want to save this app for just a few important events such as the date that a trial begins, as opposed to every pre-trial deadline. But this limitation is not a big problem because if you were to have dozens of events listed, you probably wouldn’t focus on all of them anyway. Limit use of this app to your major events, and then the daily reminders of how long you have until the event occurs will have more impact.
Do Date is a focused, nicely designed app that provides a useful reminder of the number of days until an event takes place. And at only $0.99, the price is right.
If you are an attorney, then I suspect that you already know that PACER is a service that provides online access to U.S. Appellate, District, and Bankruptcy court records and documents for all federal courts in the U.S. If you have ever tried to access PACER while you are on-the-go on your iPhone, then you know that it is not a pleasant experience. You can access the PACER website, but the screen is not formatted for an iPhone screen so the text is tiny and thus hard to read. You can view the docket of a case, but then once you try to view a specific document you often only see the first few pages of the document, and it is impossible to move the document into another app.
I am having trouble finding a link right now, but I have seen in the past a reference to an upcoming version of the PACER website that will work with the iPhone. There is already a version of the PACER case locater that is formatted for mobile devices (you can access it here) and that helps when you are trying to find a case, but then once you find it and you want to get into the details of the case, you run into the same problems that I noted above.
Newton Oldfather, a recent graduate of UCLA Law School, decided to do something about this and thus, with the assistance of his father and another friend, he created the app FedCtRecords. The app usually sells for $19.99 but for a limited time during the holiday season, it is FREE so I encourage you to download it now. [UPDATE 12/31/11: The free promotion is over; the app is now priced at $9.99.] The app does a good job of providing an iPhone interface to the PACER service.
You start by entering your PACER login and password, which the app saves for future use (already an improvement on the website). Then yous select a court from a pop-up list and then enter your query, using any of the traditional PACER fields such as case number, party or attorney.
You wait a few seconds while the app sends the query to PACER, and then you see the PACER results, nicely organized into sections. For example, tap the Attorney section to see a list of attorneys involved in a case. If you tap on a name you get the full information such as the attorney’s address and the client represented.
But of course, you will often want to use this app to access the docket, and the app does this well. Tap on Docket Report to see a list every docket entry. Tap on an entry to see the transaction receipt, including information on how much it will cost (if anything) to view the document.
Tap the View button at the top right to view the PDF file. The file will appear on the screen, and you can read it. Unfortunately, the app doesn’t include the often-standard iPhone button to open the PDF in another app. (As I’ve noted in the past, the best apps for reading an a PDF on the iPhone are iBooks and the Adobe Acrobat app.) However, you can tap the EMail button at the top right, and then send the PDF file to yourself as an e-mail attachment, and then once you receive that e-mail you can open up the attached PDF file in whatever app you want.
The app also give you the option to save a case that you located via a query in a My Cases area. That way, in the future, insted of typing the case number you can just tap the case name from a list to quickly pull the PACER information.
Because the iPad can run iPhone apps, you can use this app on an iPad, but the app is not formatted for the iPad screen. Of course, once you find a document and e-mail the PDF to yourself, you may prefer using an iPad so that you can use the larger screen to view the PDF file. Oldfather tells me that if there is sufficient interest in the iPhone app, he would consider creating an iPad version.
[UPDATE: As several have pointed out in the comments, note that this app currently does not access Bankruptcy files.]
Not surprisingly, you cannot use this app to file documents in federal court. For that, you need to use a computer. But if you just want to receive information about a case on PACER, this app works great.
The interface of the FedCtRecords app is not as polished as some other iPhone apps, but that is not really a problem. The app is very functional, and infinitely better than accessing the current PACER website from an iPhone.
If you practice law in federal courts, this is a useful app to have. As noted above, it typically costs $19.99, but during this introductory period during the holiday season it is free, so I encourage you to download it so that you are ready to access PACER the next time that you are away from the office and need to do so on your iPhone.
This late in the year, there isn’t much in the way of iPhone and iPad news. If you are looking for something else to do after reading the stories I list below, please remember that the voting booths are open in the ABA Journal’s Fifth Annual Blawg 100, which you can access by going to this page. After taking about 10 seconds to register, you can vote for up to 12 of your favorite blogs. If you enjoy reading iPhone J.D., I would certainly appreciate your vote in the legal technology category. And now, a look at the (minimal) iPhone and iPad news of note from the past week:
Massachusetts attorney Robert Ambrogi relates the story of Jamie Daigle, a Portland attorney who has an idea for a better iPad case that he is trying to fund through Kickstarter.
St. Louis attorney Spencer Farris writes about the TrialPad app on the iPad to present evidence during trial.
Louisville, KY attorney Finis Price writes about ExhibitView, another trial presentation app for the iPad.
The Law Firm Mobile website reports that of the 200 firms on the AmLaw 200 list, 37 of them have versions of their websites optimized for a mobile device like the iPhone. My own firm, Adams and Reese, is one such firm; here is a direct link to our mobile website, but it comes up automatically if you access the main website address from an iPhone.
Matthew Berg, the director of IT at the Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks law firm, writes about integrating iPads into a law firm in an article on the TechnoLawyer Blog.
Monica Bay, the editor-in-chief of Law Technology News, reports on a recent survey about lawyers’ use of mobile devices.
Are you a frequent traveler? Mark Sullivan of PCWorld reports on the the 20 best U.S. airports for tech-savvy travelers (Dallas-Ft. Worth International is #1) and the most tech-friendly airlines (Delta is #1).
John Mello of PCWorld reports that adults spend more time with mobile devices than with print media. That’s certainly true for me. (via Niki Black)
Dr. Iltifat Husain provides three reasons that doctors love Apple products: simplicity, solid build quality and uniformity. (via Brett Burney)
And finally, David Pogue of the New York Times has some interesting tech-related gift suggestions, such as $300 light bulbs that are also speakers and the Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter, a $300 four-propeller craft that you control from your iPhone.
Most iPhone J.D. readers access this site from a computer, but I have something really neat to show you on your iPhone or iPad. Go to this page on your iOS device:
That’s the page for the brand new Apple Store in Grand Central Station in New York. On that page, on the left, click on “View More Photos.” You will see a list of photos on the right. Click on the bottom right photo, this one that I have a yellow circle around:
The picture that comes up is a 360º picture. Using the gyroscope in your iPhone or your iPad, you can move your device, and as you do so, the picture adjusts too just as if you were standing there in the middle of Grand Central Station and your iPhone or iPad was your view to the world. You can even point your device all the way up to look at the ceiling. Very cool stuff. According to Matthew Panzarino at The Next Web, this works with an iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad 2 or iPod touch 4G.
By the way, you can also see this picture in some browsers on a computer, such as Safari on a Mac. On a computer, you can click and drag to manually move the photo around. But that is not nearly as cool as tilting or moving your iPhone or iPad and feeling … almost … as if you are actually there.
