Jeff Richardson

This post was updated in January 2025. Thanksgiving is about family, so for this Thanksgiving week I want to congratulate my father, Bob Richardson, on the release of his first set of songs on iTunes. 

My father is an architect by day, but he has had a passion for music his entire life, and he wrote the music and lyrics for a number of songs before and after Hurricane Katrina. His band’s name is Beau Swank, and the band just released four songs on their new EP entitled Gras Deux.

I know I’m biased, but all four of them are great songs.

Bob was inspired to write these songs in the years following Hurricane Katrina. The songs celebrate the unique culture in South Louisiana between New Orleans and Lafayette. After performing and perfecting many of those songs with Ronnie Rauber (often under the band name “Dos Bobs”), Bob recorded a number of these songs at Radionic Studios in New Orleans.

Bob recruited some great musicians to join him in the studio. In addition to Bob on rhythm guitar and Ronnie on bass guitar, Zen Crook—a seasoned Nashville musician who has played with many music legends—played keyboards, fiddle, banjo, accordion and horns, Mike Loupe played horns and guitar, Buzzy Beano played guitar and bass guitar, and Mike Barras played drums. Originally, Bob provided vocals, but later Pete Adams came on board to provide lead vocals and enhance the lyrics. (In the 1960s, Pete and Ronnie were in the popular band The Roamin’ Togas.)

The first track, “The New New Orleans,” was written by Bob immediately after Hurricane Katrina. It describes the optimism shared by many New Orleanians that the city could come back stronger than ever.

The second track, “The Living is Easy,” describes the love affair that many New Orleanians have with their city.

The third track, “Marigny Mambo,” was inspired by Bob’s son (and my brother) Conner, who loves the sections of town adjacent to the French Quarter, including the Marigny and Bywater.

The final track, “Lafayette Waltz,” was written for Bob’s wife (and my mother) Connie and grows out of the time that they spent living together in Lafayette as newlyweds.

Click here to find Beau Swank’s album Gras Deux on Apple Music. Click here to find that album on Spotify.

You can also watch the band perform on YouTube. The songs there are Back in Thibodaux, Mexican Eyes, and The Living is Easy Down in New Orleans.

A slow version of my father’s song Back in Thibodaux was covered by the Abita Stumps. Click here for Apple Music.

Enjoy!

 

If you work at a desk and you are looking for a useful accessory for your iPhone 5 or iPhone 5s — or a gift for someone else who uses one — and if you don’t use a case with your iPhone, I’m a big fan of the iPhone 5s Dock made by Apple.  Back in 2008, I reviewed the iPhone 3G Dock.  In 2010 I reviewed the iPhone 4 Dock and the Apple Universal Dock.  In September of 2013, Apple released its first dock with a Lightning connector, the iPhone 5s Dock.  I bought it as soon as it came out and I’ve been using it for about two months.  It works great with my iPhone 5s, and note that despite the name, it also works with the iPhone 5 since the two iPhones are the same size.

The dock itself is a simple device.  You plug a Lightning cable into the back of it and either connect it to your computer or to a wall outlet.  Then you place your iPhone in the dock and it charges (or syncs, if connected to a computer).

The reason that I am such a big fan of this dock (and the prior models) is that it is useful for attorneys and other folks who spend a lot of their time working at a desk.  For the past year, I used my iPhone 5 without a dock, and when I was at my desk I would frequently set down the iPhone, then shuffle some papers, and then the next thing you know my iPhone was buried and hidden.  Very frustrating.

But with the dock, I always have a central place to place my iPhone so I always know where it is.  Better yet, the dock holds the iPhone in a nice upright position so it is easy to glance at the screen to look at alerts for new emails, see the time, etc.  In a dock, your iPhone acts sort of like a small, second monitor.  Best of all, as long as my iPhone is in the dock, it is charging.  As a result, I will often pick up my iPhone and walk out of the office for a meeting, deposition or court and will see that I am starting with a 100% charge, so I can use my iPhone intensely for hours on end without worrying about the battery.

The back of the iPhone 5s Dock has a port for a Lightning cable and a line-out plug that you can use to hook up your iPhone to external speakers.

The bottom of the dock is rubber so that it stays in place on your desk.

I sync my iPhone with the Mac at my home, not with my work computer, so while I use my iPhone 5s Dock right next to my computer in my office, I don’t connect it to my computer at all.  Instead I just run a Lightning cord to an Apple power supply plugged in to a power strip on my floor.  Unless you have a power outlet close to the surface of your desk, a long Lightning cable works well for this, such as the iBoltz XL that I reviewed earlier this year or the similar Lightning to USB Cable (2 m) sold by Apple.

Note that the iPhone 5s Dock is a perfect fit for the iPhone 5 or 5s — which means that it won’t work at all if you use a case.  Also, it means that whenever you upgrade to a new iPhone — such as whatever model Apple releases in the Fall of 2014 — chances are that this dock won’t work with it.  For this reason, I have quite a few Apple iPhone docks in my collection — although to be fair, I actually purchased the Universal Dock (the second one below) as an additional dock to connect my iPhone to my TV back in the days before we had an Apple TV to accomplish the same thing wirelessly.

I might not use this new dock for more than a year, but I know that I’ll use it every single day, so I’ll definitely get $29.00 of value out of it.  If you don’t use an iPhone case and you want a great spot to place your iPhone while you are working at your desk, I highly recommend the iPhone 5s Dock.

Click here to get iPhone 5s Dock from Apple ($29.99).

If you want to order a new device from Apple such as an iPhone 5s, an iPad Air or a Retina iPad mini, I recommend that you wait a few days.  A week from today — Black Friday — is typically the only day each year that Apple discounts its products in the U.S.  The discounts are not that huge, we’re not talking 50% off an iPad or anything crazy like that, but you can typically save a few bucks when you order from the online Apple Store or visit one of the retail Apple Stores.  The new iPad Air and Retina iPad Mini are so new and in such high demand that Apple may not even discount them, but we’ll see.  By the way, if you are still trying to decide between a new Retina iPad mini and an iPad Air, and you are wondering how much easier it is to read documents on the larger screen of the iPad Air, I suggest that you look at this post from Rene Ritchie of iMore.  He shows a comparison of reading a comic book on the two devices, and that gives you a good sense of how documents look on the different screen sizes.  And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week.

• D.C. attorney Reid Trautz created his 9th Annual Holiday Gift Guide for Lawyers.  The new iPad Air is on the list, as are lots of other interesting products.
• Philadelphia attorney Jennifer Ellis reviews Dictamus, a new dictation app.
• Anand Lal Shimpi of AnandTech wrote an extensive and interesting review of the new Retina iPad mini.
• Here is David Pogue’s review of the iPad mini.
• Rene Ritchie of iMore reports that AT&T online is offering $100 off the price of a 16GB iPhone 5s.
• Katie Fehrenbacher of GigaOm has an interesting report on the solar panels and other clean energy used by Apple to power its new data centers.  Nice to know that my Siri request is being processed with help by the Sun.
• Kyle Vanhemert of Wired reviews Pencil, an interesting new stylus from the makes of the great Paper drawing app that I reviewed last year.
• If you are looking for something small to prop up your iPad, TwoHands looks like an interesting, and very portable, solution for only $25.
• The Birth of the iPhone is an interesting excerpt from the new book Jony Ive by Leander Kahney.
• If you use an external keyboard with your iPad, iOS 7 introduced some new keyboard shortcuts, such as Command-N to create a new message in the Mail app.  Federico Vitici of Macstories wrote about all the new shortcuts.
• Do you work better when you have background noise, such as the background noise in a coffee shop?  The new app Coffitivity provides you with exactly that background noise.  If you go to the Coffitivity website you can hear the ambiance that the app gives you.
• According to Alan Farnham and Mark Mooney of ABC News, the Apple Store in Christiana, Delaware sells more iPhones than any other store in the country, largely because Delaware lacks sales tax.
• And finally, Apple has a new page on its website that shows the interesting ways that different professionals are using the iPad including Broadway dancers, wind power industry technicians and doctors.  What, no lawyers?  Apple, whenever you want to tell the world about the fascinating ways that I use my iPad to draft discovery responses, just let me know.

There are lots of apps that can work with PDF files on the iPad and iPhone, but PDFpen by Smile Software is one that I frequently recommend because it has a nice set of features and is easy to use.  I have reviewed both PDFpen for iPad and PDFpen for iPhone.  About two months ago, Smile Software came out with PDFpen Scan+, an app that can scan a document using the iPhone’s camera, create a PDF file, and perform OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to recognize the words in the document and thus create a readable PDF file.  Readable PDF files are far better than PDF files that simply contain an image of the document because you can search for words in readable PDF files and you can more easily highlight and otherwise annotate the text.

I bought PDFpen Scan+, a $4.99 app, and I have been using it whenever I have a need to scan a document on my iPhone — a need that I don’t have very often, but when I do it is nice to have a good app.  After using this app from time to time over the past two months, I’m not very impressed with the app as a scanner, but it I love the OCR feature, not only becuase it is usually quite accurate but also because the OCR occurs right on the iPhone itself without sending my document to some third party who I do not know or trust.

Scanning

You can always take a picture of a document using the iPhone with the built-in Camera app, and there are quite a few apps that go one step farther and let you save the scanned image(s) as a PDF document, making it easier to work with and share the file.  For over a year now, my favorite app for scanning a document has been Scanner Pro by Readdle.

PDFpen Scan+ works okay as a scanner, but it is not as good as Scanner Pro for two reasons.  First, an iPhone scanner program needs to have a good way to find the four corners of the document to straighten the image since you will rarely be lucky enough to hold your iPhone directly on top of a document 100% parallel to the document itself.  PDFpen Scan + automatically tries to find the edges and four corners of a document after it takes a picture, and it does a decent job, but if you want to make adjustments it is difficult to do so.  You make adjustments by dragging blue dots to each of the four corners of the document, but because your finger is on top of the dot when you are dragging, your finger makes it difficult to find the exact edges of the document, often resulting in frustrating experience.  [UPDATE 5/8/14:  The latest version of PDFpen Scan+ has completely changed how the app handles page edges, and addresses all of my concerns.  See this video from David Sparks to see the new version of the app in action.]

Scanner Pro has two solutions for the can’t-see-under-your-finger problem. First, when you are holding your iPhone over the document and before you even press the button to take the picture, the app already starts trying to find the edges of the document and shows you what it is doing on screen.  Thus, you can tilt your iPhone until the app best sees all edges and corners of the document before you take your picture.  Second, if you have to make further adjustments (and it is rare that you need to do so), Scanner Pro displays a circle with a zoomed image of what is under your finger and places the circle far from your finger so that your finger is not covering it up, making it easy to move the blue dot to the exact corner of the document.  The following two images show Scanner Plus in action, and I wish that PDFpen Scan+ worked the same way:

 

My second complaint about PDFpen Scan+ as a scanner is that the quality of the image is not great.  On the plus side, it gives you the option of converting your document to pure black-and-white, which typically results in a far better image and can often compensate for your any uneven lighting of your document.  But even in black and white mode, the quality of the image resembles something that you might expect from a fax machine.  In the following two images, I’m showing a close-up part of the same document, first scanned in PDFpen Scan+ and second scanned in Scanner Pro:

The difference in quality is obvious to the eye, but is confirmed by the file size (although a larger size is not always synonymous with a better image).  PDF files created by PDFpen Scan+ are about a third of the size of PDF files created by Scanner Pro.

So overall, PDFpen Scan+ does just an okay job with scanning a document, and I prefer to use Scanner Pro.

OCR’ing a document

What sets PDFpen Scan+ apart from Scanner Pro and most other iPhone document scanners is that PDFpen Scan+ can OCR the text in an image and create a readable PDF file.  And unlike some apps like ABBYY FineReader Touch that accomplish this by sending the document off to a service on the Internet and then downloading the document later, PDFpen Scan+ performs the OCR right on the iPhone itself.  I like this approach much better because it is faster and it is more secure.  If I am scanning a confidential document, I don’t want it sent off to some computer owned by a third party to have the text in the document read by a machine that isn’t under my control.

The process of creating an OCR version of a document is simple.  Just select the document and tap the OCR button.  You can actually “see” the app working because yellow lines go down the screen as it scans each line of text — a fun animation that is also useful keeping tabs on the process.

 

Once the OCR process is complete, you then have two options.  First, you can copy the text of the document to the clipboard, useful if you want to paste it into a word processing document or an email.  In the first image below, I pasted the text into the iPhone’s Notes app, which shows you that the quality of the OCR with a good original is excellent.  In this example, the only error in the entire document was on the RE: line of the correspondence; the original said “Doe v. Jones” and PDFpen instead read “|_)oe v” and didn’t see the “Jones” part at all.  It’s not perfect, but I never expect OCR to be perfect even on a computer, let alone on an iPhone.

The second option is to share the readable PDF file.  You can email the document, open it in another app on your iPhone, or export it to a cloud storage service such as Dropbox.  Every option I would ever want is in there.

 

The best part of the OCR function of PDFpen Scan+ is that you aren’t limited to using it with scans created by the app.  I noted above that Scanner Pro creates better scans then PDFpen Scan+, but Scanner Pro doesn’t have an OCR function.  What I’ve been doing over the last few months is scan the document with Scanner Pro, then send that PDF file to PDFpen Scan+, and then OCR the file using PDFpen Scan+.  The result is the best of both worlds — a higher quality document that is readable thanks to the OCR process.

Moreover, I’ve had other attorneys send me non-readable PDF documents — PDF files that simply contain an image of the document.  I use PDFpen Scan+ to create a readable version of the document so that I can search through the document to find the part of the document that uses a specific word.  And if I want to highlight a document, this is far easier to do when you are working with a readable PDF file. 

OCR works best with a simple document such as a letter with black text on a white background.  If the image quality is poor, or if you have a complicated document such as one with two columns of text, the app misses words or misreads words.  In my real world tests, the documents that I have worked with in my law practice have been of good enough quality for PDFpen Scan+ to give me great results, even though accuracy is not always 100%.

Do note that the results are not as good as what you can get on your computer using software that can perform OCR.  First, scanning documents on an iPhone or iPad is slower.  Second, when PDFpen Scan+ creates a readable PDF file, it vastly increases the file size.  I’ve seen 45 KB PDF files become 500 KB PDF files after this app performs OCR.  Third, although the quality of the OCR is quite good, I get better results using software on my computer such as Adobe Acrobat Pro or Nuance PDF Converter.  On the other hand, I love the convenience of performing a complicated task like OCR on an iPhone that I can slip in my pocket and that is always with me.

A few more points…

When I am using PDFpen Scan+ to scan a document, I use it on my iPhone, but the app also works on an iPad.  It is far easier to take a picture using the easy to hold iPhone, and unless you have an old iPhone and a new iPad you probably have a better camera on your iPhone, so I recommend using this app as a scanner with your iPhone, not your iPad.  But if you are working with a document scanned by another app or sent to you as a PDF file and you just want to use this app to do OCR, then PDFpen Scan+ is useful on the iPad.

Also, if you want to see PDFpen Scan+ in action, California attorney David Sparks prepared a video that you can see here on his MacSparky website.

Conclusion

PDFpen Scan+ is a decent scanner, but I cannot recommend it over Readdle’s Scanner Pro.  But the + in the name of this app refers to the OCR capabilities, and Smile Software gets an A+ for that + feature.  If you are looking for a way to take a non-readable PDF file and turn it into a readable PDF file, PDFpen Scan+ is an excellent and useful app.  Perhaps one day PDFpen Scan+ will get improved scanner capabilities, or perhaps one day Scanner Pro will gain the ability to OCR a document, and then we will have one app that does everything well.  For now, if you do what I do and use PDFpen Scan+ in conjunction with Scanner Pro, you have a powerful combination. 

Click here to get PDFpen Scan+ ($4.99):

On November 17, 2008, I wrote the first post on iPhone J.D., explaining why I had been using an iPhone for a few months.  The subject seemed appropriate for starting a new website, but it was also quite topical at the time.  According to a 2008 Am Law Tech Survey, only 5% of law firms reported that they had any lawyers using an iPhone.  Instead, most attorneys who used a smartphone at the time used a BlackBerry, Palm Treo or Windows Mobile device.  A lot of folks wondered if a device with an all-glass front and without a miniature keyboard could ever appeal to more than a small percentage of attorneys.  Many thought it would be a repeat of the Windows-versus-Mac world in which a single digit percentage of lawyers used and loved their Macs but the overwhelming majority used PCs.  So when I started a website in 2008 aimed at attorneys who used iPhones, the market seemed about as much of a niche as architects who played the banjo.  But it was the niche I was in, and you write about what you know.

Five years later, the world has changed quite a bit.  Almost all attorneys now use a smartphone, over half of them use an iPhone, and 100% of AmLaw 200 law firms now have attorneys using iPhones.  The tablet market is still in its growing stage — about half of all attorneys now use one — but of that half, over 90% use an iPad.  We used to live in a world where you would have to visit graphic design firms or college campuses to see Apple logos everywhere.  It astounds me that you can now say the same thing about law firms.

And iPhone J.D. has grown too.  Back in 2008, I was tickled whenever I saw that a few dozen folks had visited the site in a day.  Over the last five years, the site has had well over 3.5 million page views, and more than a million of those occurred in 2013.  The site now includes over 1,000 posts and you have written over 2,000 comments.

Popular posts this year.  It’s a tradition on iPhone J.D.’s anniversary (1, 2, 3, 4) to identify the most popular posts over the prior 12 months because it reveals something about the topics that iPhone and iPad owners have been thinking about lately.  Here they are.

1. The iPhone’s Do Not Disturb Feature.  I love my iPhone for being such a helpful assistant, but sometimes you don’t want to be bothered by that assistant because you are in an important meeting or in court.  My post on the iPhone’s do not disturb feature was the most popular article I wrote this year.  I suspect that was in part because so many of us started to receive Wireless Emergency Alerts this year (my post on those was also a popular post in the past year) and a lot of folks were looking for ways to manage all of the alerts that you can receive on an iPhone.

2. Strategies for reading and editing Microsoft Word files on the iPhone and iPad remains a popular topic.  The post I wrote this year on using Polaris Office to do so was very popular, as were older posts on using similar apps such as Documents to Go.

3. Security is always an important topic for attorneys, and my review of 1Password was one of the most popular posts this year.  It is rare for a new app to so quickly become a part of my daily life, but 1Password has certainly done so, both on my iPhone/iPad and on my PC at work and my Mac at home.  I used to hate managing passwords, and I’ll admit that my distaste for doing so led me into some unsafe practices such as using easy-to-remember (and thus easy-to-guess) passwords and using the same password in different places.  Now, my passwords are very secure, and managing them is almost fun, something I never would have thought possible.

4. Sometimes I encounter something that annoys me on the iPhone, so I research the topic and then write about it here.  I did that earlier this year when I noticed that the AirPlay icon was missing from my iPhone and then I found a bizarre solution, and that was one of the most popular posts this year.  I guess I wasn’t the only one to have the problem.  Now that we have iOS 7, AirPlay works better and is easier to manage thanks to the Control Center that you can quickly access just by swiping up from the bottom.  Another example: I must not have been the only one to develop a spot on the lens of my iPhone 5 camera considering how popular that post was this year.

5. About a year ago, Apple replaced the 30-pin connector that had been in use since it debuted on the iPod in 2003 with the new Lightning connector.  As a result, a lot of iPhone and iPad users had to purchase new accessories, and my review of Apple’s Lightning-to-VGA connector was very popular this year.  I give a lot of presentations from my iPad and I far prefer the Lightning-to-VGA connector over the older 30 pin-to-VGA connector because it does a better job of staying in place, it is faster, and I like that you can charge your iPad at the same time that you are using it.

6. I love that the iPhone is so easy to use, but it also has a lot of powerful features if you just know where to look for them.  Thus, I try to post tips and tricks for using the iPhone and iPad whenever I come across a good one.  I posted a tip earlier this year on keeping track of birthdays of your Contacts, and it was one of the most popular posts this year.  My tip on saving a draft of an email was read by almost as many people.

7. I know that a lot of attorneys like to use a stylus with an iPad when highlighting a document or taking notes.  There are hundreds of models available, but the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo is one of the very best.  The post I wrote this year on buying replacement nibs was very popular.

8. There are lots of great apps that you can use to read and annotate PDF files on an iPad, but one of the very best is iAnnotate, and my review of iAnnotate was a very popular post.  One of the features that I love in that app is that you can send a Word document to iAnnotate and the app saves your annotations in PDF format.  That way, you can easily send someone a marked-up version of a document that shows your handwritten edits.  I use that feature all the time in my law practice.

The iPhone J.D. Hall of Fame.  Those were the most popular posts written this past year, but here are the most popular iPhone J.D. posts of all time:

1. iPhone “No SIM card installed” message.  When I first had this problem with my iPhone 4, it didn’t seem like many other people were talking about it.  However, this post from July of 2010 was viewed well over 100,000 times and is the most-read iPhone J.D. post of all time, so clearly I was not alone.  As I noted in a follow up, the only real solution was to have the Apple Store replace my iPhone 4.

2. My favorite iPhone shortcuts.  iPhone J.D. was only a week old when I wrote this post in November of 2008, and over the past five years, it has also been read well over 100,000 times.  Most of the tips are just as useful today as they were when iPhone J.D. was in its infancy.

3. A look at the iPhone passcode lock feature.  This post from September of 2009 continues to be popular, and I hope that means that lots of people — especially attorneys — are using the passcode lock feature on the iPhone.  You never know when someone else might pick up your iPhone.

4. The iPhone’s do not disturb feature.  I mentioned this one above, and it was my only post from 2013 to break into the all-time top 10.

5. iPhone Tip: create an Apple folder.  I wrote this tip in June of 2010, and I continue to use an “Apple folder” on my iPads and iPhones.

6. Email improvements in iOS 5.  When Apple released iOS 5 in 2001, one of the best parts of the updates for lawyers and others who use email all the time were the improvements to the Mail app such as better notifications, rich text formatting and the ability to dictate an email via Siri.

7. Review: Dragon Dictation.  You no longer need to use the Dragon Dictation app unless you use an older iPhone or iPad because dictation is built-in thanks to Siri, but before Siri, the Dragon Dictation app was very popular for lawyers and others, and so was this post.

8. Review: Notes Plus and Review: GoodNotes.  These are both excellent apps for taking notes on an iPad using a stylus, and my reviews of those apps are among the all-time most popular reviews on iPhone J.D.

9. Review: Lightning to 30-pin adapters.  As noted above, the change to the Lightning adapter was a huge transition for the iPhone and iPad, and these adapters are great for using your new device with your older accessories.

10. Why the “i” in iPhone?  I had a lot of fun researching and writing this post back in 2009, so I’m glad to see that so many folks have read it and still do so today.  If you were ever curious about the origin of the name of the iPhone, this is the post for you.

Visitors to iPhone J.D.  It’s an annual tradition to use this opportunity to share a little about what I know about those of you who read this website besides the obvious — you have impeccable taste.

About 33% of iPhone J.D. readers during the past year accessed this site using Windows, about 28% used an iPhone, about 18% used an iPad, about 16% used a Mac, about 3% used Android and about 1% used a BlackBerry.

About two-thirds of iPhone J.D. visitors are in the U.S., but the site also gets a huge number of visitors from the U.K., Canada and Australia, and for the first time ever, five of the top 10 cities were not in the U.S.  For the fifth year in a row, there were more visitors from New York than any other city.  London moved up from #3 to #2, and for the first time ever, two cities in Australia — Sydney and Melbourne — were in the top 10.

1. New York
2. London
3. Los Angeles
4. Chicago
5. Sydney
6. Melbourne
7. Houston
8. San Francisco
9. Toronto
10. Singapore

I enjoy taking this opportunity every year to talk about iPhone J.D. readers because without a doubt, my favorite part of publishing iPhone J.D. is that it has given me a reason to meet so many other interesting attorneys.  Whether we met a conference or we first corresponded via email when you shared an iPhone tip with me, I have really enjoyed getting to know and hearing from so many of you.  The niche of attorneys using an iOS device may be a lot larger than it was five years ago, but I still think of us as a select group of intelligent and friendly folks who enjoy using elegant technology to help us to get our work done.  Not a bad group of folks to get to know.

The new iPads were the big news this week.  The iPad mini with Retina Display made a surprise appearance on Tuesday, and people continue to talk about the new iPad Air.  I hear from many attorneys who are struggling with the decision of which one to get.  Both are powerful and light, so you need to decide whether you prefer a bigger screen — great for reading documents — or a smaller and even lighter design that makes it even more portable.  I understand the appeal of the new iPad mini, especially if you already carry around a laptop like the MacBook Air that you can use when you want a larger screen.  But my laptop never leaves my office desk, so the iPad Air is the best choice for me.

• Most folks read iPhone J.D. using a computer or an iPad, but if you read the website from an iPhone, you may have noticed that the site now has new, clean mobile design.  A big thanks to Vincent DePalma, a recent graduate of University of San Diego School of Law, for doing all of the hard work and being patient with me as I tweaked it.  Hopefully, the project gave Vincent something else to focus his mind on while he waits for bar results to come back next week — a feeling that I can still recall as if it was yesterday.  By the way, some of you may have noticed that, for a short time Wednesday night, some of the words on iPhone J.D. were about 10 feet tall.  That was my fault, and Vincent helped me to fix my error.  If you have any web design needs for your own law firm or personal website, Vincent’s company is Invincible Creative, and I recommend that you get in touch with him.
• New York attorney and TechnoLawyer publisher Neil Squillante reviews the new Livescribe 3, a pen that records what you write and also doubles as an iPad stylus.
• Indiana attorney Bill Wilson, publisher of the Third Apple website, reviews the new Adonit Jot Script Evernote Edition stylus, a stylus that uses Bluetooth so that it can have a tiny tip unlike most traditional styluses.
• Phil Schiller, the head of Apple marketing, is currently testifying in a trial between Apple and Samsung.  He started his testimony yesterday, but according to Shara Tibken of CNet only went for 11 minutes.  I suspect he’ll have some interesting things to say about the iPhone when he returns to the stand.  Yesterday, he noted that Apple took “huge risks” when it started working on the iPhone and that it was viewed as a “bet-the-company product.”  He also noted that Apple was already working on the iPad when it started on the iPhone, even though the iPhone hit the market in 2007 and the iPad didn’t go on sale until 2010.
• South Carolina attorney Justin Kahn, publisher of the website iPad Notebook, reviews the latest version of Notes Plus, a powerful app that you can use to take notes on an iPad.
• California attorney David Sparks provides his first impressions of the new iPad mini.
• Jason Snell of Macworld wrote a great review of the new Retina iPad mini.
• Damon Darlin of the New York Times compares the iPad Air and the new iPad mini.
• Jim Dalrymple of The Loop provides his thoughts on the new iPad mini.
• If you are trying to find a new iPad mini, supplies are very limited right now.  Richard Padilla of MacRumors links to a website that shows the current inventory of every iPad mini model at every U.S. Apple Store.  Apple typically frowns on websites like these so it may not last long before Apple shuts this one down, but even if you just look at the graphic in the MacRumors article you can see that it is relatively easy to find a WiFI-only model of the new iPad mini, but if you want a model with built-in cellular, they are much harder to find right now.
• John Gruber of Daring Fireball notes that it was because iPad mini supplies are so limited that Apple was relatively quiet when it started to sell the new iPad mini this week.
• Rene Ritchie of iMore published a good review of the iPad Air.
• MobileCloth recently became an advertiser on iPhone J.D., but for a long time now, the company has made my favorite cloths for cleaning smudges off of the screens of my iPads and iPhones.  This week, the company debuted a new Z5 pack consisting of 5 cloths with colors on the edges for $17.95.  Looks like a great Christmas gift for anyone who uses an iOS device.
• Dana Wollman of Endgadget reports that Gogo is working on a service that will let you send and receive text messages while you are in flight.  Of course you can already send and receive iMessages using the Gogo WiFi service, but this service will work with a regular text message sent to your mobile phone number.
• Apple released iOS 7.0.4 yesterday to fix some bugs.
• I enjoyed watching this video of Steve Jobs being posthumously inducted into the Bay Area Council Business Hall of Fame.  The ceremony includes a nice video compilation of the accomplishments of Steve Jobs.
• And finally, if you are wondering why the new iPad Air doesn’t come in gold like the new iPhone 5s does, you can wonder no longer.  The folks at Goldgenie are are happy to sell you an iPad Air covered in 24 ct. gold for around $2000.   Cue the James Bond Goldfinger song.  (via iMore)

David Sparks is an attorney in Orange County, CA.  He is well known for his MacSparky website and the Mac Power Users podcast that he does with Florida attorney Katie Floyd.  He has also published many books, including two that I have reviewed on iPhone J.D.: Paperless and iPad at Work.  And he is also one of the most talented folks out there when it comes to self-publishing books for the iPad in the iBookstore — titles that stretch the definition of what it means to be a “book” becuase they are full of graphics, videos and audio.  Yesterday, Sparks released his latest book called Email, which Sparks says is all about “the best methods, technologies, services, apps, and workflows to make email work for you.”  Sparks sent me a free review copy of the book yesterday, and I made my way through just about all of it last night.  It is a great book that offers wonderful information and tips for anyone who uses email on the Mac, iPhone or iPad.

The book includes general tips for working with emails, great strategies for reading, replying to and storing emails, an informative chapter on how email works and tips on fighting spam and email security.  No matter what device you use for your email, all of that content is useful. 

Sparks then goes deep into the Apple Mail app for the Mac, and this book will be most useful for folks who use a Mac and the built-in mail app.  He also reviews many of the best programs for the Mac and apps for the iPhone/iPad that you can use to work with email, and devotes a chapter to Gmail.

The last part of the book is the part that I have only just started to get through.  It is called Email workflows, and starts with a long description of how Sparks handles his own email.  The book then has audio interviews with a number of folks (a writer, a doctor, an actor, an IT specialist, an educator, etc.) who use email in many different ways in which they share their strategies and tips.  The interviews that I have listened to so far were great, and I look forward to hearing them all over the next week.

As good as the content is, Sparks is famous for making his books full of rich audio and video.  Email is no exception.  The book is full of colorful graphics, video screencasts, sidebars with additional pop-up information, etc.  Although I’ve now been through the book once, I look forward to going back through it again take advantage of all of the media and extra information that is sprinkled throughout the book.

Although the book will be useful to anyone who uses email because so much of the book is devoted to general principles, you’ll get the most out of the book if you use a Mac.  The book also has a lot of information on using email on the iPhone and iPad, which I really liked, but the book does not offer any specific advice for using email on a PC.  If you are looking for specific tips on using Outlook on your PC at work, you won’t find it in this book.  (When I searched the book for the word “Windows” the only reference I saw was on page 69 where Sparks notes that a PC running Windows 7 is “sitting sadly in the corner of my office.”)

Perhaps best of all, Sparks has a great writing style.  He covers complicated topics but explains things in a way that my grandmother would understand.  Hopefully I’ll never find myself on the opposite side of Sparks in front of a jury; I suspect he gives one heck of a closing argument.

We all use email every day, throughout the day. If you want to become even more productive with your email, you’ll enjoy this book.

Click here to get Email by David Sparks ($9.99): 

When Apple first announced the iPad Air and the iPad mini with Retina Display last month, it said that the iPad mini would be available later in the month of November.  I assumed that meant that it would be available at the very end of the month, but early this morning, Apple started selling the new iPad mini in the online Apple Store.  Supplies are presumably limited right now, and it is unclear when you still be able to start buying one from a physical Apple Store.

My original post on why lawyers would like the new iPad mini is here.  I suspect that if the new iPad mini is the right iPad for you, you already know it.  But if you are on the fence, I will note that I’ve had my new iPad Air for over a week now, and in that time I haven’t had a desire to use my iPad mini at all.  Of course I have a first generation iPad mini, not the new model with a Retina Display, but my lack of desire to use it this past week was not because of the lack of a Retina Display.  Over the last year, I have always reached for my iPad mini for the same reason — I wanted something light and easy to carry around.  Now that the iPad Air is so light and easy to carry around, I just haven’t had a desire to use the iPad mini.  To be fair, the iPad Air is my latest new gadget, so perhaps after the newness wears off I’ll become more excited about the iPad mini again.  But for me, the iPad Air is the best of both worlds.

But that’s just me.  I know many people who say that the iPad mini is the perfect size and weight for them, and if you are one of those people, now you can get the brand new model.  Enjoy!

The last time that I wrote about Cleveland appellate attorney David Mills was in early 2009 when he started the website Courtoons, where he regularly published funny law-related cartoons.  He has since stopped updating the website, although I frequently tell Mills that I hope that he starts it up again one day; they were great, and if you haven’t read his cartoons, you should check them out now because they are just as funny today.  In the meantime, Mills went on to argue and win a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, a case that led to him being profiled in a cover story for the ABA Journal.  Most recently, Mills teamed up with his brother and two friends to create a new iPhone app called DestroyMail, which debuted on the App Store today.  It’s an email client with a humorous twist; instead of deleting an email message, the app lets you DESTROY the email message, and you are provided with funny graphics and sound as you do so.

You probably cannot use this app for your work email if your firm uses Microsoft Exchange, but it works with many online email providers:  iCloud, Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, Outlook.com and IMAP servers.  I have a Yahoo Mail account that I have used when making online purchases for about 15 years now, so as you can imagine that account is full of spam — a perfect target for this app.  You start by providing DestroyMail with your user account information.  (The app needs your username and password to get your email, but the DestoyMail FAQ emphasizes that the developers cannot see your email messages or your account information.)  You can then use DestroyMail just like any other email client to read, reply to, forward email, etc.

The fun comes when you are ready to delete a message.  When you are viewing a list of email messages, swipe to the left on an individual message, just as you would do in the iPhone’s built-in Mail app.  But instead of seeing an option to move the item to the trash, you’ll see an option to destroy the message.  Tap that, and you will see and hear an amusing animation of the email message being destroyed. 

 

If you want to be more efficient, you can swipe to the right, which destroys the email immediately with a shorter animation.

The free app includes only a single weapon, a grenade launcher, but I spent $0.99 for an in-app purchase to get access to others, which adds the ability to use an flamethrower, a bomb, and various other Sci-Fi-worthy weapons of mass destruction.  And more (less violent) animations are coming, as noted on the developer’s blog.

 

When you destroy a message, it isn’t actually moved to your trash.  Instead, a folder called “Destroyed” is created and the messages are moved there.  You can always select all of those messages and move them to the trash yourself, but this safety valve let’s you show off to someone else that you are destroying their email just to get a laugh while still having the ability to easily locate the message later.

DestroyMail may help you get out your frustration over an email.  I can think of quite a few messages I’ve received of late that I would have loved to have incinerated with a flame thrower instead of just putting them in the trash!  But this is primarily just a joke app, and while I’m sure that the joke will get old soon, the app itself is free and even getting all of the additional weapons will only set you back a buck, so I have no problem recommending that you check out the app.  It’s nice to see that David Mills still has a good sense of humor, and I look forward to seeing whatever he comes out with next.

Click here to get DestroyMail (free): 

I reviewed the iPad Air earlier this week, and I continue to be impressed by this product.  Because it is so light, I find myself using my iPad more than ever, and I love how fast everything works.  A number of others folks posted iPad Air reviews this week, and if you are trying to decide whether an iPad Air is right for you, the best ones that I have seen this week are Jason Snell’s review for Macworld, Andrew Cunningham’s review for Ars Technica and attorney Jeremy Horwitz’s review for iLounge.  And now, the rest of the news of note from this past week:

• An article in The Australian discusses a successful appeal by attorney Charlie Young resulting in a first-of-its-kind opinion from the Supreme Court of Queensland, Australia, in which the Court upheld the validity of a will typed in the Notes app of an iPhone shortly before the man ended his life.
• West Palm Beach attorney Christopher Hopkins recently gave a presentation on about 50 apps that are useful for Florida attorneys.  You can see the apps he discussed by clicking here (PDF file) to view his slides.  Hopkins also published an article (PDF file) with tips for using iOS 7.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote a persuasive editorial for the Wall Street Journal this week on the importance of workplace equality.
• Ever wondered why Apple was named Apple, why Google was named Google, why Sony was named Sony, etc.?  Evan Dashevsky of TechHive provides all the answers in this article.
• Macworld has started posting a great series of reviews on apps created by Apple that were updated significantly for iOS7.  Apps reviewed so far include Pages, Keynote and iPhoto.
• Earlier this year, I discussed the Transporter (here, here and here), a device I started using because the company sponsored iPhone J.D.  Since then, I’ve continued to use the product quite a bit.  It provides many of the advantages of Dropbox without any of the security concerns because you own and have possession of the hard drive on which your files are located.  Steven Sande of TUAW discusses a related, new product from the same company called Transporter Sync.  It is cheaper (only $100) and you add your own storage, either a USB hard drive or even a thumb drive.  If you are interested in any of the Transporter products, the company was nice enough to give iPhone J.D. readers a 10% discount off of any model purchased at at filetransporterstore.com when you use the offer code iphonejd.
• This time last week, I linked to two reviews of Fantastical 2, a fantastic app for working with your calendar.  This week I saw another great review of the app by Federico Viticci of MacStories.
• Wired has a fascinating excerpt from an upcoming book by Fred Vogelstein called Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution.  In the excerpt, Vogelstein describes the origin of the iPad.  It’s a great read.
• And finally, if you love grilling as much as you love your iPhone, then you’ll love the new iGrillmini, a $39.99 device coming out soon that will let you monitor the temperature of your meat from your iPhone.  The gadget comes from iDevices, the same company that makes the iShower, a Bluetooth speaker I reviewed earlier this year that lets you listen to music from your iPhone while you take a shower.  So this company has already figured out how to connect an iPhone to a wet shower and a hot BBQ pit.  Makes you wonder what they will connect the iPhone to next.