Month: February 2012

I can’t even begin to count the number of items that I have seen with law firm logos on them over the years:  mugs, pens, T-shirts, hats, legal pads, beer koozies, and down here in New Orleans even Mardi Gras beads.  The idea, of course, is to give clients and potential clients something that they will use again in the future, and hopefully when they do so they will see the firm logo and think about sending the law firm some business.  Has any law firm ever landed a new client or retained an existing client because of a beer koozie with a logo?  I’ll let the legal marketing gurus answer that one.  All I will say is that if you are going to give something to a current or potential client, hopefully it is something that they will enjoy using.

Companies have sent me all kinds of cleaning cloths for the iPhone and iPad over the years, and by far my favorite is the MOBiLE CLOTH, which I originally reviewed a year ago, and then I reviewed again a few months later when the company released a miniature version of the same product.  There is something about the microfiber weave of this product that does an amazing job of cleaning off even the toughest fingerprints, smudges, etc. from the iPhone and iPad.  And by the way, it also does a great job cleaning eyeglasses, computer screens, camera lenses, and similar surfaces.  I keep one at the office, one in my briefcase, one at home, etc., and when I bought my wife an iPad last year, the first accessory that I purchased for her was her own MOBiLE CLOTH.

MOBiLE CLOTH now has a promotional and custom division to print custom logos on these cloths.  When John Hartigan, the founder of MOBiLE CLOTH, first told me about this I was intrigued.  A large number of my clients (and potential clients) have an iPhone or an iPad, so why not give them something that works really well and that they can use every day with the device that they love?  So my firm ordered a shipment, and they just came in last week.  They look and work great.

Each cloth comes in its own resealable bag, and this makes it perfect for handing out.  A card on one side of the package explains what the product is, and on the other side of the package you can see your custom logo.

As you can see, my law firm purchased both the Classic size (9″ x 9 “) and the MC Nano (4″ x 4”).  I usually prefer to use the larger Classic size, but the smaller MC Nano size is convenient for storing in a briefcase or purse and when you are traveling.

While the cloths pictured above are brand new, John Hartigan first told me about custom logos last year, and he sent me a free sample version of a MOBiLE CLOTH Classic that I have been using (extensively) since last October.  After four months of heavy use, it doesn’t look as crisp and clean as a brand new one, and the logo has started to fade a little bit, but it has held up rather well.  Here is what it looks like now:

Regular MOBiLE CLOTHS cost only a few dollars a piece when you buy them in small quantities and they get cheaper as you buy more of them:  2 for $6.99, 5 for $11.99, 7 for $15.99, etc.  Likewise, there are several different options available for the custom logo versions, but as an example, you can get a logo on 100 Classics plus 100 MC Nanos (200 total) for $359.00. 

If you are looking for something to keep your iPhone or iPad clean, I strongly recommend that you get some MOBiLE CLOTH Classics or MC Nanos for yourself.  If you are looking for an interesting branding option for your law firm or for an event, MOBiLE CLOTHs with a custom logo are a great idea because your clients are likely to use them frequently with their iPhones and iPads and enjoy doing so.  Plus, in some small way, a MOBiLE CLOTH with your logo on it helps to associate your brand with the iPhone and iPad that so many people love.  Hopefully, this helps you to look better in the clients’ eyes and results in successful client development.

On the other hand, if anyone out there is a potential client of my law firm and the decision on whether to hire my firm is going to turn upon whether you can get a koozie to keep your beer cold, just let me know; we’ve got those too.

Click here for more information on custom MOBiLE CLOTHs.

Click here for more information on ordering MOBiLE CLOTHs for yourself.

I usually take rumors of upcoming Apple products with a grain of salt, but every once in a while you see all of the most credible publications saying the same thing.  Yesterday, John Paczkowski of the All Things D website (an affiliate of the Wall Street Journal) wrote that Apple will introduce the next version of the iPad in the first week of March.  He reports that sources tell him that the next iPad will look similar to the iPad 2 but will have a vastly improved Retina Display, much like the iPhone 4/4S.  Then Nick Wingfield, Nick Bilton and Brian Chen of the New York Times reported the same thing based on their sources, stating that the next iPad will have a “truly amazing” screen.  Also, the often-in-the-know Jim Dalrymple of The Loop wrote about the All Things D story: “Yep.”  Now that the trinity of the most reliable sources for Apple rumors are in agreement, I think it is safe to predict that we may see a new iPad in just a few weeks — the iPad 2s?  the iPad 2HD?  The iPad 3? — and it will have a vastly improved screen.  If you are about to buy an iPad 2 but you can wait a few weeks, this seems to be a good time to wait.  And now, the rest of the news of the week:

• If you are an AT&T iPhone customer still grandfathered in to an “unlimited” plan, that plan just became a little less valuable.  Mikey Campbell of AppleInsider reports that AT&T has started to throttle users who use a lot of their “unlimited” bandwidth, including people who just use more than 2 GB a month.  Sure, you can keep on downloading files without hitting a limit and paying extra, but the downloads start happening a lot slower.  I gave up my “unlimited” plan about a year ago so that I could add tethering to my package and share my iPhone’s data with my (non-3G) iPad.  I never go over 4 GB of data a month anyway, so the “limit” hasn’t ever been a problem for me, but your mileage may vary.
• The huge Houston-based energy company Halliburton announced that it is giving up on the BlackBerry and moving to the iPhone, according to Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail.
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is also shifting from the BlackBerry to the iPhone, according to Jim Dalrymple of The Loop.
• The $5 iMovie app from Apple does a great job of editing movies on the iPad or iPhone.  Now iMovie has some competition with the $5 Avid Studio app for the iPad.  Leanna Lofte of iMore compares the two apps.
• Torotono attorney Ted Tjaden writes on the Slaw website about the recent LegalTech 2012 Conference that took place in New York and mentions some great iPad apps.
• Here’s a great before and after picture of the world of cellphones before and after the iPhone, via Josh Helfferich.
• I suppose this has nothing to do with the iPhone or iPad, but watching Justice Sotomayor settle disputes among the Muppets on Sesame Street is awesome.  (via San Francisco attorney Kevin Underhill of Lowering the Bar)
• Virginia attorney Rob Dean of WalkingOffice discusses using PDF Expert to review documents.
• Richard Acellow writes for the ABA Journal about iPhone and iPad support by law firm IT departments.
• Alan Cohen of Law Technology News writes about the advantages of attorneys upgrading an iPhone or iPad to iOS 5 — a little curious since iOS 5 has been out since October of last year, but on the other hand, I know lots of attorneys at my own firm who have still not updated yet.
• New York attorney Niki Black recommends iPad apps for attorneys for The Daily Record.
• Microsoft Office on the iPad.  Sounds great, right?  You can now sort of get it with the OnLive app, but Galen Gruman of InfoWorld says that it is a “train wreck,” and California attorney David Sparks agrees.
• For reasons I’ve described before, I like having the ability to use Wi-Fi on airplanes via the GoGo service, but I think that the service is too expensive so I don’t use it very often.  Matt Hamblen of Computerworld writes about this and other reasons that the service still hasn’t caught on much.
• I was impressed when I reviewed the new TranscriptPad app last month.  Indiana attorney Bill Wilson reviews the app for his Third Apple website, and he calls it a “kick-buck iPad app.”
• This guy in China realy likes Apple products.  (via Bryan Chaffin of The Mac Observer.)
• And finally, that guy in China would probably love this video, a quick look at Apple products over the years compiled by Rob Beschizza of BoingBoing.  I used a whole bunch of these over the years; I still remember how amazed I was when I first used the Apple QuickTake 100 my law firm had purchased to take digital photographs at a then-amazing 640×480 resolution.

The Manual of Patent Examining Procedure is a publication of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that contains the laws and regulations applicable to the examination of patent applications.  Drew Smith, an IP patent agent at Bruzga & Associates in New York (he just passed the New York bar but has not yet been sworn in), tells me that he got tired of having to navigate his way through the USPTO website to find key patent documents, so he created the MPEP Plus app to collect the key documents in one location.  Smith just started programming a few months ago, and he admits that the app is not much more than a collection of PDFs and a patent searching tool, but he thought that the app might be useful to others so he released it to the App Store.  He gave me a free copy of the app so that I could check it out.

At the top left of the main screen of the app there is a link to the current version of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (8th Edition, July 2010).  Tap to see the full index of the publication, where you can easily to jump to different sections.

The app also contains a patent finder.  Simply enter a number (done using cards just to keep it interesting) to pull a patent, or you can even tap the Random button to let serendipity guide you.  Here is an example of retrieving Apple’s patent on the iPhone “slide to unlock” feature:

The app also includes links to key legal authorities on patents such as Title 37, CFR Chapter 35, some key Supreme Court opinions, etc.

Drew Smith tells me that he is working on an update to MPEP to add some animation.  He also plans to add a tool to calculate patent term adjustments, something not currently addressed by any other app.

If patents are a part of your practice, then this inexpensive app may be worth checking out.

Click here to get MPEP Plus ($1.99): 

There are lots of apps that let you take notes on an iPad.  The Noterize app was around for a while until it was purchased by Nuance in the Fall of 2011.  Nuance subsequently changed the name to PaperPort Notes, made the app free, and incorporated its Dragon speech-to-text technology into the app.  Today, PaperPort Notes a free app that you can use to take notes on an iPad using either a keyboard, your handwriting, or your voice.

PaperPort Notes lets you create Note Sets, each of which can contain multiple pages.  You can create pages with various background such as a blank white page, a grid, or a page that looks like a white or yellow legal pad. If you are looking for an app that you can use to type notes during a meeting (I recommend using an external keyboard if you can), the app works reasonably well.  There are some limitations versus a true word processor app, such as the inability to change the style of individual words, but if you are just looking for a clean interface to type and perhaps draw something using your finger or a stylus, this app works fine for that purpose.

Now that Nuance owns this app, it includes a voice-to-text feature that sets it apart from other note-taking apps.  For the most part, it works quite well.  I did encounter one small bug: you can usually say “cap” to tell software using the Nuance’s Dragon engine (such as Siri or the Dragon Dictation app) that you want the next word to have a capital first letter, but when you say “cap” in this app, for some reason it fails to transcribe at all.  Strange, but hopefully a bug that will be fixed soon.

I expect Apple to add Siri technology to the iPad at some point, so perhaps in the future all iPad note-taking apps will have voice-to-text capabilities.  But for now, I don’t know of any other note-taking app with this feature.  This feature works best when you speak close to the iPad, so I don’t think that you could use this app to transcribe on-the-fly when someone else is speaking such as in a meeting or in class.  (Plus, you can only talk for about 30-40 seconds before the app needs to pause and translate that to text.).  Having said that, the app does give you the ability to record audio for each page, so you could record a lecture while you take notes if you just want to listen to it later.

You can also draw on the screen, but I don’t recommend using PaperPort Notes to take extensive handwritten notes because it lacks the zoom feature used by apps like Note Taker HD and Notes Plus that allows you to write larger text that is shrunk down on the page.  As a result, you cannot get as many words on the page, and the quality of your handwriting decreases substantially.

In addition to a pen, the app has a highlighter feature.  And you can do more than just annotate your own notes; you can import a PDF document, including documents in cloud services like Dropbox.  The app also lets you add a text box that looks like a sticky note, and you can adjust the rotation of that note.

Pages of notes that you create with PaperPort Notes can be exported as PDF files and sent to an e-mail, sent to another app on your iPad, or saved to a cloud service such as Dropbox.

I don’t think that this is an app that I will use very often.  For typing notes, I’m more likely to use either an app that lets me adjust styles (such as Pages), or one of the many pure-text apps if I just want to get words on a page.  For handwritten notes, I’ve explained above why I far prefer apps like Note Taker HD and Notes Plus with a zoom box.  The voice-to-text feature is neat, but it’s not something that I will use very often when taking notes.  I do sometimes dictate an e-mail on the iPad, and the free Dragon Dictation app on the iPad does that quite well, but I don’t think that I have a big need to dictate longer notes on my iPad.

Having said that, this is still a nice app, and perhaps it will fit more into your practice than it does for me — especially if dictating notes could be useful to you.  The app is free, so try it out and see what you think.

Click here to get PaperPort Notes (free): 

If you are interested in technology and want a good way to get CLE credit this year, we are approaching the Early Bird Deadline (February 17) for ABA TECHSHOW 2012, which takes place March 29 to 31 in Chicago.  I’m speaking at two sessions.  First, on March 29th, I’m on a panel called Smartphone Wars where I will be talking about using the iPhone in a law practice, Dan Pinnington will discuss Blackberry, and Jennifer Ellis will discuss Android.  It will be interesting to compare and contrasts the hottest smartphones.  Second, on March 31st, Josh Barrett and I will once again present 60 iOS Apps for Lawyers in 60 Minutes, a fast-paced look at some of the best iPad and iPhone apps.  Because Reid Trautz is the Chair of TECHSHOW 2012, this is the first year that he won’t be a part of 60 Apps, but I’m thrilled that Brett Burney will be taking his place.  Josh Barrett and I are also hosting a Taste of TECHSHOW dinner on Thursday, March 29; more details are here if you’d like to join us.  [UPDATE 2/14/12:  Our dinner is now sold out, but there are sometimes last minute cancellations, so get on the waiting list on that same page if you want to try to join us.]  And now, on to the news of note from the past week:

• Speaking of Brett Burney, the Lexblog Network interviewed Burney at the recent LegalTech New York regarding the use of iPads by lawyers.
• Horace Dediu of Asymco put together some fascinating graphs that show how Apple has risen to prominence in the mobile phone market.  The third graph is particularly interesting, showing that Apple sees 40% of mobile phone revenue, and a staggering 75% of all profits on mobile phones.
• More interesting numbers:  Matt Brian of The Next Web reports that 70% of all smartphones sold by AT&T and Verizon last quarter were iPhones.
• Jeff Gray of Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail reports that more and more Canadian lawyers are using the iPhone over the Canadian-produced BlackBerry.
• Arizona attorney Joseph Kanefield, who is currently president of the Arizona Bar, wrote about how he uses the iPhone and iPad in his law practice in this article for Arizona Attorney magazine.
• Daniel Eran Dilger of AppleInsider offers some theories on why IT departments at large companies are embracing the iPhone more than Android.
• Similarly, Ryan Faas of Computerworld looks back at the use of Apple products in enterprise over the years.
• Here’s another story of an iPhone thief being caught by Find My iPhone.  As C.J. Hughes of the New York Times reports, this time, it was the police who thought to take advantage of the service.
• Former Apple executive Bob Borchers provided some details on the early development of the iPhone in a lecture reported on by Katie Marsal of AppleInsider.  Borchers said that Steve Jobs “wanted to create something that was so instrumental and integrated in peoples’ lives that you’d rather leave your wallet at home than your iPhone.”
• New York attorney Neil Squillante of TechnoLawyer discusses TranscriptPad, a great iPad app that I reviewed on January 18th.
• Trial presentation consultant Ted Brooks reviewed iJury, a voir dire app for the iPad.
• Virginia attorney Rob Dean of WalkingOffice reviews Tom Mighell’s book iPad in One Hour for Lawyers.  (My review of that book is here.)
• And finally, I recently reviewed the Chef Sleeve, a device to protect your iPad in a kitchen and other environment.  But for those of you who need EXTREME protection from your iPad, Traci Dauphin of Cult of Mac reviews the Grid Tablet by Watershed, a bag for the iPad that Navy Seals use so that they can use their iPads at a depth of up to 300 feet.  If you need to practice law while you are deep underwater, than You’ll want to spend $100 on this: