As reported by Lex Friedman of Macworld, Apple announced this week that over 1 billion podcasts have been subscribed to on iTunes. I love listening to podcasts on my iPhone in the car or when doing things around the house, although sometimes I instead use my iPod nano which is convenient because it is so portable. My
favorite podcasts currently include MacBreak Weekly, Mac Power Users, The Talk
Show with John Gruber, This Week in Law, the Macworld podcast, the iMore
show and The Incomparable, but I'm listening to new ones all the time. So far I like the new Clockwise podcast from TechHive, and my brother recently encouraged me to start listening to the Radiolab podcast from WNYC and the Accidental Tech Podcast. Too many podcasts, not enough time ... especially considering that I also like to listen to audiobooks on my iPhone every once in a while. And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:
- Virginia attorney Rob Dean discusses building a trial notebook on an iPad on his Walking Office site.
- New Jersey attorney Richard Console explains why he likes the apps Fishead Analytics, SpeakWrite and JotNot Scanner Pro in a post on Attorney at Work.
- Rulebook is a great app that I've reviewed in the past (here and here). Not only can you download statutes in it, you can also purchase a digital copy of the Bluebook. This week, the Rulebook announced that it is adding new sources from the Texas Law Review Association: (1) The Greenbook: Texas Rules of Form (a style guide for legal citation in Texas) and (2) Manual on Usage & Style (a writing guide).
- South Carolina attorney Bill Latham of The Hytech Lawyer reviews the New Trent Arcadia Grabbit iPad case that lets you hold an iPad with one hand while you are giving a presentation.
- Kevin Parrish of Tom's Hardware reviews an interesting iPad (or iPhone) accessory, the SanDisk Connect. It is a tiny device — either a small flash drive or a slightly larger hard drive — that connects via WiFi to your iPad. They come in capacities of 16, 32 or 64 GB, and the larger model also has an SD slot. The idea is that you can store lots of media on these devices, such as pictures or video, so that they don't take up space on your iPad, but the devices are so small that it is easy to carry them around with you. I often tell attorneys that documents and apps are only going to take up so much space on an iPad; the real deciding factor on whether you need to spend extra money on a larger model is how much space you want to have available for photos and movies. But if you keep your media on a SanDisk Connect, I suppose you can get a less expensive iPad. As you can see, I'm intrigued by this new device. Prices range from $49 for the 16 GB flash drive to $99 for the slightly larger 64 GB Media Drive (with SD slot). (Thanks to Houston attorney Reginald Hirsch for the link.)
- Mary Ellen Gordon, Ph.D., has an interesting post on the Flurry site analyzing the price of apps. She notes that the average cost of an iOS app is 19 cents.
- Nick Bilton and Brian Chen of the New York Times speculate on what might be Apple's next new product.
- If you use DirecTV, you can now talk to your iPhone to find a show.
- And finally, Mike Wehner of TUAW shows off some of the more ridiculous iPhone-related items on Etsy, such as the Cowboy Hat iPhone Charger, perfect for all of the times when you ... um ... oh I give up.
