I know that I talk about password managers frequently, but that’s because I think that in this day and age of new security concerns every week, having unique and complicated passwords is a critical primary defense between your confidential information and the bad guys. There is a slight learning curve when you first start using a password manager, but trust me, you are smart enough to figure it out. And if you use a service that offers a family plan, you can share some passwords with your spouse and other friends and family while keeping other passwords private to you. Geoffrey Fowler of the Washington Post agrees with me and recommends that you use a password manager. He prefers Dashlane, but also recommends 1Password (my favorite) and LastPass. Password managers are going to be even easier to use on the iPhone and iPad when iOS 12 comes out in a few months because they will be more integrated, reducing the number of times that you need to open the password manager app to copy a password and then switch back to the previous app to paste it. If you are not using a password manager yet, you could wait until iOS 12 comes out, but I recommend that you get one now and start to enter all of your current passwords and secure information (which takes time to do, but fortunately you only have to do it once) and that way you will be ready when iOS 12 comes out. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- I enjoyed listening to the latest episode of Brett Burney’s Apps in Law podcast. He talks with Pennsylvania attorney Evan Kline, and they discuss the DEVONthink app. (Evan Kline was one of the folks who did the awesome Galactic Empire v. Han Solo CLE that I discussed a few years ago.)
- Burney also posted a video in which he discusses version 4.5 of iAnnotate, a PDF annotation and file management app, which I reviewed back in 2013. As Burney notes, one of the neatest features of iAnnotate is that you can customize the toolbar to just include the tools that make the most sense for your practice.
- Yesterday, Thomson Reuters announced the next generation of Westlaw, which will be called Westlaw Edge. Law librarian Jean O’Grady did a good job of describing all of the new features of Westlaw Edge in a post on her Dewey B Strategic blog. She notes that there will be a new iOS app. (Note that Westlaw is a current sponsor of iPhone J.D.)
- If you use Quicken, the iPhone app should be getting new features soon. Quicken CEO Eric Dunn announced yesterday that at the end of this month, Quicken will release “an all-new mobile app which works better, looks better, and does more than the existing app.”
- In light of the App Store celebrating its 10th anniversary this week, Alex Guyot of MacStories looks back at the last 10 years of apps.
- Jonny Evans of Computerworld recommends some neat iCloud tips.
- Trevor Daugherty of 9to5Toys recommends portable Apple Watch chargers for travel. My travel solution is to just bring a USB charging cable with me (the one that comes with the watch) along with an Anker PowerPort, which I use in my hotel room every night to charge my Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, etc.
- When I was in college, I very much wanted a device like the iPhone, but that technology was far away. Instead I used a Sharp YO-620 electronic organizer, and I followed with much interest a company called General Magic, which was rumored to be working on something very neat in this product category. The company itself didn’t make it, but the folks who worked there went on to create lots of technology that we use every day. Thus, I was interested to see a report by Stephen Silver of AppleInsider about a documentary about General Magic that first debuted earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival. His post includes the trailer.
- And finally, Frederic van Strydonck created a really neat short film using an iPhone partially submerged underwater. He calls it Spltch, and it is worth watching: