Month: April 2013

When I reviewed ABBYY TextGrabber + Translator yesterday, I noted that the translation in that app uses Google translation services, which means that an Internet connection is required.  But what if you don’t have Internet access, perhaps because you are in a location with poor reception and no WiFi, or perhaps you are in a foreign country with no data access?  Fortunately, ABBYY makes an iPhone app called Lingvo that can perform translation right on the iPhone with no Internet connection needed.  I purchased it to see how it worked in conjunction with TextGrabber, and while that was disappointing, Lingvo on its own is a fantastic app.

The TextGrabber app has a dictionary button that you can tap to send text to Lingvo, so I thought that I would be able to scan a document, tap a single button to send all of the text to Lingvo, and then have Lingvo translate the entire document — much like the support for Google translation within the TextGrabber app.  But that’s not how it works.  Lingvo can only get 5 words or 200 characters from the clipboard, so sending an entire scanned document from TextGrabber to Lingvo will only give you the translation of the first few words.  Thus, Lingvo has limited utility as an accessory to the TextGrabber app.

But as a stand-alone app, Lingvo is incredibly useful.  The app supports dozens of different dictionaries that you download within the app itself.  Some of the key, core dictionaries can be downloaded at no extra charge when you purchase this app.  This includes basic English translation to (and from) Chinese, Czech, Danish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Turkish.  But you can also purchase additional dictionaries that includes more words, including specialized dictionaries.

For example, the basic, included English to French dictionary has 44,000 entries.  For $9.99 (although currently on sale for $4.99) you can purchase the “Universal” French-English dictionary with 175,000 words.  You can also purchase the Harper Collins French-English dictionary with 86,000 entries for $20.99 or other specialized dictionaries such as the Law, Politics and Economics French-English dictionary with 30,00 entries for $11.99.  If you are interested in Russian, there are specialized dictionaries for computer terms, electronics, marketing, finance, management, law, politics, patents and even wine.

 

Once you download one or more free or paid dictionaries, you are ready to go.  One way to use this dictionary is to simply type in a word in English or some other language.  Then the app will give you a definition and a translation, depending upon which dictionary you selected.  So in this example, I downloaded the free, basic KD English-French dictionary and typed in the word pomme.  The app quickly told me this means apple in English. 

Some definitions are simple like this.  Other times the definitions give you more information.  For example, when I typed bathroom in the basic KD English to French dictionary, I saw two definitions, the first of which was a more literal translation of “bath” and “room,” but the second translation gives you a head’s up that “salle de bains” in French is a room where you take a bath, but you want the “toilettes” if you are looking for a lavatory.  And the Russian to English basic dictionary tells me that Салат can mean either salad or lettuce.

 

There are lots of iPhone apps that can translate between different languages, and one thing that sets Lingvo apart is the ability to download so many different dictionaries.  But Lingvo comes from ABBYY, a company that has specialized in scanning and reading documents since the late 1980s, and what makes Lingvo incredibly neat and different from other apps is the built-in support for ABBYY’s on-device OCR technology for mobile platforms.  The way that it works is almost magic.

Simply take a picture of a document, or choose a picture from your Photos.  In the following example, I’m using the same Russian menu that I used in yesterday’s review.  Tell the app which dictionary to use, such as the Russian to English dictionary, and then give the app a second or two to perform an OCR of the document.  All of this happens in the app itself; no Internet connection is required.  Then you can simply tap on a word to see a translation of each word.  So in this example, I tap on each of the words in the description of one of the salads and I learn that it is a “salad” “out of” “apple” “and” “cabbage” “with” “orange” “dressing.” It is like having a translator at your side telling you what every word in a menu means as you point to it.

 

 

 

 

By comparison, when I used the TextGrabber app yesterday and did the translation using Google translate services, I was told this was a “Salad with apples and cabbage with orange sauce” — essentially the same thing, but it is more helpful to have access to a full dictionary in Lingvo to see that “соусом” in Russian has several translations: sauce; gravy; dressing.

Note that the photo translation function does not work for the Kazakh or Chinese dictionaries.  Note also that while this is a universal app that works on the iPad, the photo input feature only works on the iPhone and iPod touch.  [UPDATE:  ABBYY posted a comment to this review to state that they are working on adding photo input to the iPad.]

If you just want to translate a specific word or phrase, you can also use the crop tool to create a smaller rectangle on the screen.  Then the app will only OCR and translate the words in the crop rectangle.

The free dictionaries for the most part work fine, but a few times I noticed that they did not contain a word I was looking for.  For example, in that Russian menu, the basic dictionary did not understand кальмарами.  If you have an Internet connection, the app gives you the option to search online using another service such as Google or Wikipedia, which in this case will tell you that кальмарами means squid — which is probably information that you would want to know before you order that dish.  But as noted, you can purchase additional dictionaries with more words, including specialized dictionaries such as legal dictionaries.

The app includes a flash card feature to help you learn a foreign language.  Select any dictionary entry and tap the card button.  Then when you are ready to start a lesson, the app will quiz you with the word in one language and when you tap the card it turns over to show you the translation in another language. 

Some of the dictionaries have recorded pronunciations of words, but none of the free ones that I tried have that feature.  The FAQ gives you a list of which dictionaries have recorded pronunciations.

I’m impressed with Lingvo.  It performs well as a basic dictionary app when you need to look up a word, but the ability to use ABBYY’s top-notch OCR technology to scan and translate words on-the-fly makes this an incredibly useful app.  And all of this talk about reading menus in French, Russian and other languages is making me want to plan a vacation abroad!

Click here to get Lingvo ($5.99):

As much as many attorneys want to go paperless, we still encounter paper every day.  If you are in your office and you want digitize a document, you can feed it in your scanner and perform OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on your computer using Adobe Acrobat or other software.  But if you are away from the office, your iPhone can help to digitize documents.  I’ve reviewed lots of apps that can scan (take a picture of) a document, but if you need get the text on that document so that you can email it, revise it, etc., you need an app that can do OCR.  Earlier this year I reviewed ABBYY FineReader Touch, an app that can scan and OCR a document, but that app performs the OCR function by uploading data to the FineReader Online OCR Service.  If you don’t have an Internet connection, or if you just don’t like the idea of sending confidential text to a third party, you instead want an app that can perform the OCR right on the iPhone itself.  ABBYY recently sent me a free review copy of its TextGrabber + Translator app, a $9.99 app that performs OCR using ABBYY’s on-device OCR technology for mobile platforms.  ABBYY has been creating software to scan and translate documents since the late 1980s, so there is a lot of experience that goes into the technology used in this app.  I’ve been using this app for several weeks now, and I’m impressed.

The app is simple to use.  You start by snapping a picture of a document.  In the following pictures, I am using a sample document I created when I reviewed Readdle’s Scanner Pro app last year, an app that can scan but cannot OCR documents.  By default the app is prepared to do an OCR in the English language but the app has support for 61 different languages.  Press the gear icon to change that language.  You can tap an icon at the top to activate the iPhone’s LED light to shine additional light on a document.  Tap another icon to turn the crop tool on and off to indicate whether you want to select a portion of a document to OCR, as I have done in the following example.  You can also select a picture from your Camera roll to perform OCR.

 

After a few seconds — and with no Internet connection required — the app performs OCR to read the text in the document.  In my tests, if the quality of the original is decent, the OCR is excellent with virtually no errors.  I only encountered trouble when I tried to scan an old copy of a contract with very small text, but even my own eyes had trouble with that one.  The resulting text is then displayed on the screen and you can edit it if you need to correct any mistakes.  From here, you can select and copy some of the text so that you can paste it elsewhere, or you can tap the button in the bottom right corner to see more options such as copy all text to the clipboard, place the text in the body of an email, send the text to Evernote, etc.

 

As the name of the app suggests, you can also use this app to translate text.  For example, I told the app that I wanted to perform OCR in Russian and then scanned a Russian menu.  The app correctly read the text from the menu.

 

You can then tap the Translate button at the bottom to translate to English.  Note that the app uses Google to perform the translation, so you have to have an Internet connection from this to work.  But if you do have an Internet connection, you can translate from 45 languages to 50 languages, giving you the ability to read pretty much any menu or other document you are likely to encounter no matter where you are in the world.  In my experience, Google translation is often not perfect, but is good enough to get by, and in this example was more than good enough to navigate this menu.

If you are in a foreign country, you might not have a data connection to perform the translation, but ABBYY makes a separate $5.99 app called Lingvo Dictionaries that can perform translation right on the iPhone and that works with this app.  My review of Lingvo Dictionaries is coming soon.

As a lawyer, I consider this app useful because I can take text from a paper document without having to retype it and then use the text in an email or another document, but this app is also useful for those with vision difficulties.  For example, the app can display the text in larger fonts, so this app can literally help you read the fine print in a document.  The new version 3.0 of this app released earlier this month also has full support for VoiceOver, an Apple technology built-in to the iPhone that can help those who are blind or have poor vision use an iPhone.

ABBYY TextGrabber does an excellent job of taking words in a physical document and converting them to text using OCR.  I love that you don’t even need an Internet connection to perform the OCR.  For those with an international practice, the ability to read text in so many different languages is a plus.  And for those who encounter foreign languages or need to work with people who do not speak English, the ability to use Google to translate (if you have an Internet connection) is very useful. 

Click here to get ABBYY TextGrabber + Translator ($9.99): 

This week, Apple announced that its conference for software developers, WWDC, will be held on June 10-14, 2013.  Originally this was a conference for developers of Mac software, but starting in 2008 (the year that Apple allowed third party apps on the iPhone), the scope expanded to iOS developers.  Not coincidentally, 2008 was the first year that WWDC sold out.  It sold out again in 2009, 30 days after tickets went on sale.  In 2010, it sold out in 8 days.  In 2011, in 10 hours.  In 2012, in 2 hours.  This week, WWDC was completely sold out only 2 minutes after tickets went on sale.  I love this statistic because it shows the increasing eagerness to develop apps for the iPhone and iPad, which should mean even more, better apps for those of us who use an iPhone and an iPad every day.  And now, the news of note from the past week … and there isn’t much, because it was a pretty slow news week in the world of iOS:

• Would you like to have coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook at Apple headquarters?  The website CharityBuzz is taking bids to do so, with the proceeds to benefit the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights.  The bidding started at $50,000 and as of Thursday night was up to $230,000 … and there are still 19 days left to bid.  [UPDATE:  As of Friday morning the highest bid is up to $560,000.]
• Fahmida Rashid of PC Magazine reviews the Transporter, a current sponsor of iPhone J.D.
• Apple celebrated the 10th anniversary of the iTunes Store this week.  I purchased quite a bit of music for my iPod when the iTunes Store went live, and I see that some of my first purchases were Soak Up The Sun by Sheryl Crow, Clocks by Coldplay and an accoustic version of Unwell by Matchbox Twenty (which doesn’t seem to be in the iTunes Store anymore) — three songs that I like but haven’t listened to in a while, so now I’m listening to them as I type this post.
• If you want to dial back the nostalgia even more, John Biggs of TechCrunch reviews Classic Note, a $3.99 iPhone app that makes your iPhone take notes like a 1980s Macintosh computer.  The app reminds me of the Mac Plus that I bought my sophomore year in college with the money I had earned working over the summer.  I added an external 20 MB hard drive, which made it almost as cool as my roommate’s fancy Macintosh SE.  I’ve been buying and using Apple products ever since.
• Joe White of AppAdvice reports on recent iPhone sales by U.S. carriers as announced in their latest quarterly earnings reports.  In the last quarter, AT&T sold 4.8 million iPhones (out of a total of 6 million smartphones), Verizon sold 4 million iPhones (out of a total 7.2 million smartphones) and Sprint sold 1.5 million iPhones (out of a total 5 million smartphones).
• And finally, one of the most expensive iPhone accessories was unveiled this week by Volkswagen: the new iBeetle car, due out in 2014.  This specially-designed Beetle has an iPhone dock and integrates with a special app in lots of different ways.  The app can compare driving times, distances and fuel economy value for different routes; a Postcard function sends a digital postcard to your friends with a map of your current location; and the iPhone can work as an extended on-board instrument with an oil and coolant temperature gauge, a chronometer, and a compass.  Click here for the press release.

Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2013 fiscal second
quarter (which ran from December 30, 2012 to March 30, 2013) and held a
call with analysts to discuss the results. Apple reported revenue of $43.6 billion and net profit of $9.5 billion.  Revenue was higher, but profit was lower, than the same quarter last year.  But as always, I’m less interested in the financial aspects and more interested in the iPhone and iPad-related announcements.  If you want to get all of the nitty gritty details, you can download the audio from the announcement conference call from iTunes, or you can read a rough transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha.  Apple’s official press release is here. 
But if you just want the highlights of the call that might of be of
interest to iPhone and iPad users, then let’s get started.

• Apple sold 37.4 million iPhones in the quarter.  By my count, that means that as of March 30, 2013, Apple had sold over 352 million iPhones.  Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer cited a comScore report that the iPhone was the #1 smartphone from December 2012 to February 2013 with a 39% share.
• Over 30,000 companies are creating their own iPhone apps to be used by their employees.
• Apple sold 19.5 million iPads in the quarter.  By my count, that means that as of March 30, 2013, Apple had sold over 140 million iPads.
• Cook said that iPads are now being used in 95% of businesses in the Fortune 500.
• Over 45 billion iOS apps have been downloaded.  App developers have made over $9 billion in sales, and Apple is now paying developers over $1 billion every quarter.  Oppenheimer said that 74% of all smartphone apps sold in the world during the last quarter were iOS apps.
• As always, Apple has some new cool products planned for later this year.  Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a prepared statement:  “We see great opportunities in front of us, particularly given the long-term prospects of the smartphone and tablet market, the strength of our incredible ecosystem which we’ve planned to continue to augment with new services, our plans for expanded distribution and the potential of exciting new product categories.  …  Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software and services that we can’t wait to introduce this Fall and throughout 2014. …  And of course, we have a tremendous culture of innovation with a relentless focus on making the world’s best products that change people’s lives. This is the same culture and company that brought the world the iPhone and the iPad and we’ve got a lot more surprises in the works.” 
• Note that Cook did not just say new products, he said “new product categories,” which implies something brand new.  Gene Munster — an analyst who asks almost every quarter whether Apple plans to start selling TVs — asked Cook to confirm that he had said that there would be a new product category.  In response, Cook confirmed that “one of our areas for growth are potential new categories, and we’re very excited about those.”
• When will we see new products and new product categories?  Cook’s prepared statement referred to the “Fall and throughout 2014” so an analyst asked whether that meant that Apple would not announce any new products before Fall of this year.  Oppenheimer responded:  “I don’t want to be more specific, but I’m just saying we’ve got some really great stuff coming in the Fall and across all of 2014.”  That sort of sounds like a “yes” to me, but we’ll see.
• One analyst asked Tim Cook whether Apple is considering making an iPhone with a larger screen.  Obviously, Apple is not going to spill the beans on any future product plans, but here is what Cook did say in response:  “My view continues to be that iPhone 5 has the absolute best display in the industry.  And we always strive to create the very best display for our customers.  Some customers value large screen size, others value also other factors such as resolution, color quality, white balance, brightness, reflectivity, screen longevity, power consumption, portability, compatibility with apps, many things.  Our competitors have made some significant trade-offs in many of these areas in order to ship a larger display.  We would not ship a larger display iPhone while these trade-offs exist.”  That’s an interesting answer because I don’t hear Cook saying no.  I hear him saying that Apple won’t create an iPhone with a larger screen until the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, which of course could happen at any time in the future as technology advances.  So maybe, in the future, we will see iPhones in more than one screen size, just like we now have both the iPad and the iPad mini.

It’s been a long time since I have reviewed time entry apps on the iPhone, mainly because I don’t currently use those apps in my practice.  One app that I looked at four years ago (and then again in September of 2009) is Time Master + Billing by On-Core Software, an app that has changed substantially since I last mentioned it.  Denver attorney Gary Marsh recently told me how much he likes this app, and he gave me permission to share his thoughts here.  If you are considering using your iPhone or iPad to handle time entry and billing, here is Gary’s perspective on how this app has worked in his practice:

– – – – –

Time Master, by On-Core Software, LLC, is now in Version 5.7 (support documentation most recently revised February 5, 2013).  It has grown into a full-featured program that rivals or, indeed, exceeds any PC or Mac desktop programs that I’ve seen – and I’ve tried quite a few. 

The basic package is $9.99 (for timekeeping); the invoicing add-on module is another $9.99; and the synchronization add-on module, which allows the user to sync the app back and forth between an iPad and an iPhone, is another $6.99.  (The also has a $5.99 Quickbooks export module, but I haven’t purchased that component and so don’t feel qualified to comment on it.)

I’ve been using Time Master for over a month now, and it has changed the whole way the financial side of my practice works.  Formerly, I was using the desktop SaaS program TurboLaw Time & Billing, at $30 per month per computer.  I was dictating my time into my iPhone’s recorder; then using iTunes to burn the recordings to a DVD disk; then handing off the disk each week to an outside bookkeeper, who was then listening to the recordings and posting them, one at a time, to TurboLaw.  Why the DVDs?  The files, which were in Microsoft Access .mdb format, could not be sent
as e-mail attachments because the servers viewed them as being
virus-infected; thus, a physical hand-off of disks every week had to be
carried out.

The fact she did this on a second computer meant I had to pay for two separate TurboLaw licenses.  I had to pay the outside bookkeeper $800+ per month just to post all of my time and expense entries.  Then she would run preliminary invoices, which I would have to review and correct for misspellings, mispostings, and other problems.  I would then hand-deliver the corrected versions back to the bookkeeper, who would then run final versions and send them out.

At the end of our typical monthly billing period, we were usually lucky to have our client invoices out the door by the 10th of the following month – in a good month.  When instances arose where I was tied up in meetings, or court appearances, or out of the country, sometimes we just rolled the entire month over into the next month, and redid the whole process all over again.  Not exactly the preferred way for a law firm to manage its cash-flow.

Enter Time Master, which lets me post my own entries for both time and expenses on-the-fly, to either my iPhone or my iPad, whichever happens to be the most convenient at the time.  For this past month of March, we had all of our client invoices out by April 3rd.  And that was just because we were still familiarizing ourselves with the program, which is extremely user-friendly.  By the time the month of April is concluded, I fully expect we will be ready and able to send all of our client invoices out on the evening of April 30th.

 

Time Master has made great strides  since your September, 2009 review.  It should be in every lawyer’s briefcase on an iPad, or at the very least on every lawyer’s smart phone.  With the money I’ll be saving on my former TurboLaw subscription ($720 per year), plus what I’ll save from not having to have the outside bookkeeper manually post entries ($9,600 per year), plus the increased regularity of cash-flow I’ll achieve by being able to get invoices out immediately at the end of each calendar month (priceless), the Time Master app more than paid for itself on the very first day I started using it.  It would be pretty hard to beat that R.O.I. any other way, with any other app of which I’ve ever heard!

– – – – –

Thanks, Gary, for sharing your thoughts on this app.  I see that it also has integrated support for TextExpander, which can make it even faster to enter your time.  I’ve also seen other attorneys rave about this app in the past (such as Alabama attorney Clark Stewart), so I know that it can be a great solution.

Click here to get Time Master + Billing ($9.99): 

In a week in which the real news has been terrifying and bordered on the absurd, perhaps we can all gain from a break in which we just think about fun topics like mobile technology.  Here is the iPhone and iPad news of note that caught my attention this week:

• Missouri attorney Todd Hendrickson identifies his top 5 iOS apps in a post for Lawyerist.com.
• The Law Firm Mobile website reports that 22 firms on the 2012 AmLaw 200 list have mobile apps, while 54 have mobile compatible websites.
• Houston attorney Reginald Hirsch wrote to tell me that the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad, which was almost $100 when I posted a review a few months ago, is now selling on Amazon for about $75.  One of my partners picked up one of these a few weeks ago and he loves it.  I’m still not a fan of any keyboard with keys smaller than full-size, but if that doesn’t bother you, this is a very nice keyboard.
• We all know that you need to silence your iPhone in court or you might get sanctioned by the judge.  Laurel Newby reports on the Law.com Legal Blog Watch that a Michigan judge found himself in contempt after his unidentified phone started talking (sounds like Siri, but this is unclear).
• South Carolina attorney Justin Kahn discusses some apps that can scan documents and create a PDF.
• Alan Cohen of Law Technology News warns of some mistakes to avoid when you are buying and using a smartphone.
• South Carolina attorney Bill Latham of the Hytech Lawyer reviews the Seagate GoFlex Mobile Wireless Plus 1TB mobile drive, a wireless hard drive that you can use with an iPad.
• The ABA has posted a ton of pictures from ABA TECHSHOW 2013 on Facebook.
• If you need to take a full-size screenshot of an entire webpage, you’ll want to check out this review of the Barry app by Federico Viticci of Macstories.
• Joseph Keller of iMore reports that the YouTube app can now stream live events.
• Harry McCracken on Time compares the numbers on iOS and Android. 
• The humor website Funny or Die released its first movie this week, iSteve, staring Justin Long as Steve Jobs.
• And finally, it occurs to me that my children will look at cassette tapes (and albums) the same way that I look at eight-track cartridges:  something that I know my parents used for playing music, but something that I only barely remember myself.  If you want to combine the nostalgia of old technology with the new technology of your iPhone 5, then you’ll want to check out the $14.99 Cassette Case by Rocket Cases, available in six different colors.  Killian Bell of Cult of Mac posted this review.

BNA is a well-established and trusted name when it comes to legal information, both for researching the latest news and researching specific topics.  For example, I’ve frequently used the excellent ABA/BNA Lawyers’ Manual on Professional Conduct when researching legal ethics issues.  At ABA TECHSHOW 2013, some folks from Bloomberg BNA showed me their latest app that allows those who subscribe to BNA Law Reports to read the latest news reports on an iPhone or iPad.  BNA gave me a free two-week trial to try out the app, and it works well.

Subscribers to BNA Law Reports receive emails with news updates, but email is not always an ideal platform for receiving and reading the news, and the emails do not always contain the full article.  But if you use the Law Reports app, you have a central location for viewing the news items in the reports to which you subscribe.  On the main screen of the app, you see a list of the available reports.  Tap a report to see the latest news stories.

 

Tap a story to download and read it on your device.  A few seconds after you start reading the article, the menu bars at the top and bottom of the iPhone app disappear so that you can use the full screen of your iPhone to read an article.

 

Normally you need Internet access to download and read articles.  But if you select a report as a favorite, your iPhone will download all of the latest articles so that you can read them later even without Internet access (such as on a plane).

The app includes the option to read an article on the BNA website.  You can also email someone a link to an article, but they will have to be a subscriber to that BNA Law Report in order to read the article, so this is mainly useful for sharing an article with one of your partners when your entire office has a subscription to the report.

The app runs on both the iPhone and iPad, and in theory you are supposed to be able to use both devices and even use iCloud to sync between devices.  Unfortunately, I had trouble logging in from more than one device at a time, and BNA tells me that they are working on a fix to this right now. 

If you subscribe to a Bloomberg BNA Law Report, this is a must-have app.  It is free, and presents a clean, efficient interface for viewing the latest legal news.

Click here to download Law Reports from Bloomberg BNA (free, but BNA subscription required): 

I was too busy at ABA TECHSHOW last week to write an In the news post, so this week I’m mentioning stories from the last two weeks that I think might be of interest:

• In addition to writing on iPhone J.D., I also write iPhone and iPad articles for the TechnoLawyer BigLaw and SmallLaw newsletters.  Those newsletters are free and full of useful articles, so I encourage you to sign up for both.  This week, for example, Brett Burney of Burney Consultants wrote a great article comparing the different task manager apps for the iPad.  You must be a subscriber to get the current articles, but older articles are sometimes posted on the web, and I see that an article I wrote in 2012 recommending the best iPad apps is now online.  My recommendations are a little different now than they were a year ago, but there are still some great apps mentioned there that most any attorney would find useful.
• California attorney David Sparks discusses the recent rumors that Microsoft is holding back Microsoft Office for the iPad and will not release it until the end of next year.
• New York attorney Nicole Black discusses all of the mobile-related announcements at ABA TECHSHOW 2013.
• South Carolina attorney Ben Stevens reviews the FrameShfit iPad stand, a neat little stand that he showed the audience during a presentation that he and I gave together at ABA TECHSHOW 2013.
• Virginia attorney Sharon Nelson and her husband, security expert John Simek, provide 16 security tips for smartphones in an article for Wisconsin Lawyer.
• Carlos Motta is a Brazilian attorney with Tauil & Chequer Advogados, an affiliate of the U.S. law firm Mayer Brown.  He asked that I mention that he created an iPhone app called MindMob, an app that contains legal content (mostly for Brazil, but there is some U.S. content) and can be used to create notes and send messages to other users.
• MyCase, a company that provides web-based law practice management software, now had an iPhone app, and Josh Camson of Lawyerist.com reviews it.
• Today is the first day you can get an iPhone 5 from T-Mobile.  T-Mobile offers some unique features, such as no contracts so you can leave at any time and a lower cost over the course of two years than you will pay to get and use an iPhone 5 on other carriers.  T-Mobie’s 4G LTE network is currently very small but it is growing, and T-Mobile is the first U.S. carrier to support HD Voice, which Brent Rose of Gizmodo tried out and found to be “a bit richer, and definitely fuller. I wouldn’t say it was like night and day, but it’s definitely a noticeable improvement.”  
• Meanwhile, Jeff Blagdon of The Verge reports that AT&T will start to support HD Voice later this year.
• Macworld created a new ebook called The iPad Office.  I haven’t read it yet, but it looks to be full of information on how to get work done with an iPad.  Get more details here.
• Nick Guy of iLounge reviews the new Bose SoundDocks Series III, an iPhone speaker that now includes a Lightning connector for the iPhone 5.
• Now that nice weather is returning, you might want to take your iPhone with you when you go to the beach.  Bonnie Cha of All Things D reviews three cases that waterproof an iPhone.  Last year I reviewed the DryCASE, one of the products mentioned in Cha’s article, and it worked well for me.
• Joe Kissell of Macworld discusses options for editing PowerPoint presentations on an iPad.
• And finally, John Browlee of Cult of Mac collected a baker’s dozen pictures of Apple cakes.  Many of them relate to the iPhone or iPad, such as this one by Samantha of Scrumptious Buns in the UK:

Thank you to Rocket Matter
for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month.  Rocket Matter sells legal
practice management software for small to
mid-size firms.  The software is online, so you can use it on a PC or a
Mac to track your time and manage your clients and matters, plus it works on the iPad and iPhone.

Rocket Matter had one of the most popular booths at ABA TECHSHOW 2013 last week, not only because of interaction with the attorneys who are using Rocket Matter (I heard nothing but rave reviews), but also because the company just launched Rocket X1, an Internet marketing service for attorneys that offers a full range of services:  website construction, SEO, social
media, PR, graphic design, content creation, and strategic consulting.

If you haven’t downloaded it yet, Rocket Matter is currently offering a free ebook to all attorneys. 
Attorney Michael Moore, who is the CFO and VP of Business Affairs for
Rocket Matter, wrote Ridiculously Remarkable Legal Billing:  How Better Billing Practices Improve Your Law Firm and Your Life. 
This book is in PDF format, and is only 60 pages with a font that is
large and easy-to-read on your iPad.  It only took me about 15 minutes
to read the book, but it is full of helpful tips for any attorney in
private practice — i.e., any attorney who bills clients. 

Click here to learn more about Rocket Matter, click here to learn more about Rocket X1, click here to get the free ebook, and don’t forget that you can download the free Rocket Matter iPhone app on the App Store: 

Ah, the pencil.  We all grew up using a pencil, as did our parents, our grandparents, etc.  According to Wikipedia, the pencil dates back to the 1500s.  The eraser on the back of a pencil was added in the mid-1800s, and is even the subject of a Supreme Court opinion, Reckendorfer v. Faber, 92 U.S. 347 (1875) (declaring patent for eraser on the end of a pencil invalid; it was “more convenient” but not a “new result”).  The now traditional yellow color and hexagonal shape was created in 1890 by L. & C. Hardtmuth Company of Austria-Hungary.  That particular model, the Koh-I-Noor, became so popular that the company renamed itself Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth, and the same pencil is still sold today and looks like this:

While the Europeans use a scale that ranges from 9H (hard) to 9B (soft), here in the U.S. we use a number grading system.  The No. 2 pencil (equivalent to the European HB pencil) is, of course, the most popular and the one that we all grew up using.

Thanks to the popularity of the iPad, it now seems like there is an endless variety of styluses on the market.  My current two favorites are the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo and the second generation of the Adonit Jot Pro.  But when iPad accessories manufacturer Griffin sent me a free review sample of their new No. 2 Pencil Stylus for Touchscreens, I couldn’t help but smile.  It is a stylus that looks like a No. 2 pencil.

At first I thought that this would be just a novelty, but to my surprise, it is actually a pretty nice stylus.  The size of the tip is smaller than that of a typical stylus, closer to the size of the Wacom Bamboo stylus, which I find helps to make a stylus more precise.  The tip is firmer than the Wacom Bamboo tip so you have to push down a little bit harder to use it — not my preference, but I know that some people like this, which is why Wacom sells firmer tips for those who want one for their Bamboo.  But once you get used to pushing down a little harder, the tip works well.  Here is the Grifin No. 2 Pencil Stylus next to a Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo:

The best thing going for this stylus is also the most obvious — it looks like a pencil.  As I noted above, the now-traditional pencil design has been around for a long time, and for good reason: the hexagonal shape feels good in your hand and stops it from rolling off of a desk.  When you hold this stylus, you can tell that it has a plasticky feel unlike the wood of a real pencil, but otherwise it actually feels very much like you are holding a pencil in your hand.  It has the same size and weight.  I also like the longer length as compared to most othe iPad styluses being sold todaly. 

Note that the “eraser” on the end is just colored plastic.  It would have been fun if the back had a rubbery feel and could also be used as a stylus, perhaps with a softer tip to contrast to the other end. 

Here it is next to a real pencil that happened to be in the cup holder on my desk:

When you use this No. 2 Stylus in public, you are sure to get some stares and likely a few smiles as well.  I’m sure that many will buy this stylus simply for the amusement value.  But this stylus has more than just form going for it; it is quite functional.  The size and shape feels good in your hand and I can honestly recommend this stylus just based on its utility.  Griffin did a nice job with this stylus.

Click here to get the No. 2 Pencil Stylus for Touchscreens from Griffin ($16.99)