I mentioned last week that Connected Data, the maker of the Transporter, is hosting a contest for iPhone J.D. readers. The bad news is that for several days last week, the link to enter was not working and might have just brought you to the main page of the Connected Data website. Thus, some of you who thought you were entering the contest for iPhone J.D. readers may not have done so. But fortunately, there is lots of good news to more than make up for that bad news.
First, the link is fixed in that original post, and here it is again: click here to enter. If you clicked on the link last week while it was not working you still might not see the correct form, and if so you'll need to either flush your browser's cache or just use a different browser. To be clear, when you click the link, you need to see a screen that looks like this:
The additional good news is that to make up for the broken link last week, Connected Data is doing two things. First, the company is extending the contest by another week, so you now have until June 22, 2013 to enter. Second, the company is now offering two Transporters as prizes, so two iPhone J.D. readers will win instead of just one lucky duck.
Full disclosure: Connected Data was a sponsor of iPhone J.D. earlier this year. Even so, I consider the current version of the Transporter very useful and I've been using my Transporter extensively on my PC at work, my Mac at home and my iPad and iPhone. If you like the idea of online storage that is private and secure, I think you'll like it too. Better yet, the 2.0 version of the software that is coming out later this month looks like it will make the Transporter even more useful.
Be sure to enter Connected Data's contest for a chance to win, and GOOD LUCK!
It’s been a big week in the world of the iPhone and iPad thanks to Apple’s preview of iOS 7 earlier this week. The more I look at the photographs and videos related by Apple on iOS 7, the more that I like the new look and the opportunities that the new iOS gives Apple for the future. And now, the news of note from the past week:
New York lawyer and TechnoLawyer publisher Neil Squillante reviews Penultimate, an iPad note-taking app. My favorite app for taking notes on an iPad is still GoodNotes, but I know that there are many other good apps out there.
New York lawyer Nicole Black tweeted a link to a list of 50 iOS 7 features by Josh Smith of GottaBe Mobile. It’s a pretty good list of all of the new features.
California attorney David Sparks tweeted a link to a great post by Steven Sommer in which he shows you how to create an iPhone password that is longer than four numbers but still uses only numbers and therefore uses a number pad, not a keyboard, to enter the password.
The iPad app iAnnotate PDF, which you can use to read and annotate PDF files, was updated to version 2.5 this month, adding the ability to auto-sync documents to cloud storage services.
The WestlawNext iPad app was updated this month to version 2.9, adding an improved history tab (including the history of documents you printed from the iPad), the ability to browse using the West Key Number System, and the ability to view and annotate user uploaded documents.
The Lexis Advance HD iPad app was updated this month to version 3.8, adding the ability to browse through a statute or treatise, the ability to save multiple documents to an email or to a folder, and the ability to print on an iPad-compatible printer.
The funny folks at Scoopertino (a humor site I discussed here) offer their own live blog (ahem) of the Apple announcements at WWDC this week.
And finally, yesterday Apple posted the following video called Making a difference. One app at a time. It shows off some iPad apps that truly change people lives. The video is almost 10 minutes long, but it is powerful and inspirational. Worth watching:
J.D. earlier this year, and recently there has been a lot of activity at the company. First, the company is merging with Drobo, which makes sense considering that both companies make unique storage devices, plus the folks who started Connected Data previously helped to invent the Drobo.
Second,
Connected Data is about to release version 2.0 of the software that will
bring lots of improvements and make the software more like Dropbox.
I’ll be sure to post about it once the 2.o software is available.
Third, and the reason for this post, the company is hosting a sweepstakes for iPhone J.D. readers. One lucky iPhone J.D. reader will win a Transporter! But you need to hurry if you want a chance to win. Simply click here to register before midnight (Pacific time) on June 15, 2013 and then cross your fingers. I really love using my Transporter, and whichever of you is the lucky winner will be very happy. Good luck!
To kickoff Apple’s WWDC conference yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook and other Apple executives announced many new Apple products and services, including a really cool looking and super-fast version of the new Mac Pro computer. But today I want to focus on the new iOS 7 features that I think will be of the most interest to lawyers. There’s a lot to like, and I am really looking forward to the release of iOS 7 later this year. (No date was provided, but I presume it will come out around the same time that the next version of the iPhone comes out — my guess is around September.) Here are the highlights:
Comprehensive redesign of the user interface. The new interface looks flatter, but at the same time looks more three-dimensional because of the use of layers. For example, if you have a photograph on your home screen behind your app icons, as you tilt your device there is a parallax effect that makes the apps appear to move and float over your background photograph. The interface also uses a neat, thin font and the built-in apps seem to take better advantage of the full iPhone screen. It’s tough to describe in words; click here to see pictures on Apple’s website of the new design of iOS 7. iOS 7 will look very different from every prior version of iOS, and the new design seems to add a lot more functionality as well.
When a developer comes out with an update to an app, the app will update automatically. No need to manually update apps.
Control Center. In iOS 6 you often need to dig into the Settings app to flip a switch for something like WiFi, Airplane Mode, etc. In iOS 7, you will be able to swipe up from the bottom of the device to flip those common switches.
And because of Siri improvements, you may not even need to use Control Center. Siri is more powerful in iOS 7, which includes, for example, the ability to just tell your iPhone to turn on Bluetooth or increase brightness. Siri also has an improved voice and is much smarter.
AirDrop. If someone else in the room has an iPhone or iPad, you can easily and quickly share documents or photographs.
If you use folders to organize apps and are frustrated by the limit of only 16 apps per folder on an iPhone 5 (or 12 apps in the iPhone 4S and earlier), iOS 7 will let you have multiple pages within a folder.
In many apps you will be able to swipe your finger from the left towards the middle to go back to the prior screen in an app. This should make it faster to use critical apps like Mail.
If you often switch between apps, you’ll like the multitasking improvements. Apps that you use all the time are allowed to run pretty much all the time. And thanks to intelligent scheduling, apps that you frequently use at a certain time of the day (such as when you wake up) will be already running when you go to use them. The net effect should be to make everything more responsive and the apps more powerful. Plus, iOS 7 has a cool new interface for switching between apps that includes a preview of the app’s screen, in addition to the icon.
Safari. Safari looks vastly improved. You can have even more tabs open at once and there is a cool new 3D interface for flipping between tabbed webpages. Plus more of the screen is devoted to the webpage itself.
Just a few of those features would be great, having all of them is fantastic, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg for iOS 7. Apple also has other new cool features such as new versions of the Camera and Photos apps, iTunes Radio to stream music (similar to Pandora), the ability to view annotations in PDF documents, enterprise improvements that will especially help some lawyers at medium and large firms such as single sign in and per-app VPN, etc. And yesterday, Apple only showed off the iOS 7 features that work on an iPhone; I’m sure there will be even more cool iPad-specific features in iOS 7.
iOS 7 will be a significant redesign for the iPhone and iPad, and we will all get a chance to use it in just a few months. I can’t wait.
Today is the start of WWDC, Apple’s developer conference in San Francisco. Most of the conference is confidential, but the event always starts with a public keynote that provides details on what Apple has planned for the future. Apple CEO Tim Cook will give the keynote presentation today at 10:00 a.m. Pacific / 1:00 p.m. Eastern. I am sure that there will be many announcements that relate to the iPhone and iPad, such as a preview of the next operating system, iOS 7. Indeed, this will be the first major update to iOS since Jony Ive — the designer responsible for Apple’s hardware — has also been placed in charge of the look of Apple software. I suspect that we will see Apple announce a different look for the iOS, design changes that improve how the iPhone and iPad work. There are also rumors that Apple will announce a streaming music service.
If you want to
follow the event as it happens today, there are a number of websites
offering live coverage. Based on their coverage of prior events, I
suspect that these will be some of the best (click to jump to their page
with live coverage):
Many of us let our kids play with our iPads, and it is always amazing to see how quickly young kids figure out how to use these devices. When used in moderation, I consider using the iPad a good thing for kids, but I do sometimes wonder how using an iPad might influence a child’s development. Hanna Rosin wrote a great feature for The Atlantic entitled The Touch-Screen Generation to explore this topic. It’s a great read. I’m not surprised to see that Rosin has a way with words. When I was a high school debater, Rosin and her partner David Coleman debated for Stuyvesant High School in New York. They were one of the smartest and best teams in the country and one of the toughest opponents that my partner and I ever faced. And now, the news of note from the past week:
St. Louis attorney Dennis Kennedy and Larry Port, CEO of Rocket Matter, gave a presentation on iPhone apps at the ABA’s 2013 Spring Law Practice Management Section meeting. The presentation was titled “Planet of the Apps” and the amusing slides that went along with their presentation are available here.
Jim Calloway of the Oklahoma Bar Association told me that iPhone J.D. readers might appreciate this list of 40 “secret” iPhone tips and shortcuts from Kevin Whipps of AppStorm. The list is over a year old, but there are some good tips that might be new to you.
Florida attorney Mitch Robiner created Stick Texting, an app that lets you add funny animations to your text messages. He recently released a new, rated 17+ version called Stick Texting – The College Series. This YouTube video shows off some of the new animations. Click here to get Stick Texting – The College Series ($0.99):
That reminds me: Jean MacDonald of Smile — maker of the PDFpen apps for iPhone and iPad — founded App Camp For Girls, a summer camp for girls age 12 to 14 to
teach them how to write iPhone apps. The goal is to try to do something about the
small number of women who write software; this year there is just one camp, but in the future they hope to expand around the country. Sounds great to me, and you
The iMore website recently started a Hall of Fame section honoring apps that are more than 5 years old and have earned their place in iPhone history.
Joanna Stern of ABC News previews August, a device due out later this year that will let you lock and unlock your door using an iPhone. You can even send someone a virtual key that stops working whenever you want, making it unnecessary to leave a spare key under the door mat.
And finally, if you are worried that using an iPhone to make phone calls makes you too modern, Pyle Audio offers the PRT55I, the Authentic Classical Themed Home Telephone System. The device resembles an old-fashioned rotary phone with a wood base and brushed copper parts and can be used with both your landline and an iPhone. The list price is $164.99, but you can get it for only $68.26 on Amazon.
One of my most-used accessories for the iPhone and iPad is my MOBiLE CLOTH. This micro material weave cloth is by far the best cleaning cloth that I’ve ever used, and I always keep one on my desk, in my briefcase, in my study at home, etc. so that I can quickly and completely remove the smudges on my iPhone or iPad. It is nice to have a clean iPhone and iPad screen, not just for yourself but especially if you are showing off something on your device to a client. A MOBiLE CLOTH also works great to clean smudges off of a pair of glasses, a camera lens, and similar surfaces. I’ve reviewed them in the past (1/11/11, 5/31/11, and 2/13/12), and I mention them again today because for a limited time you can get a 25% discount plus free shipping on custom packages, and on any other order over $20.
They come in two sizes — a Classic 9″ x 9″ size that is a great size to keep on your desk and a Nano 4″ x 4″ that is smaller and easier to carry around. Sometimes I think of the big one as being for the iPad and the smaller one as being for the iPhone, but in reality I use both sizes with all of my devices. The prices vary based upon what you order, but they start at $9.99 for a pack of two and then get cheaper per cloth if you order more.
As I noted last year, my law firm has also taken advantage of the promotional and custom services offered by the company so that we can give out MOBiLE CLOTHs with our law firm logo on it. Clients always appreciate receiving them, so you might want to check out those services for your own firm. Unless you consider your firm a competitor to my law firm, in which case I encourage you to not do any innovative marketing at all.
John Hartigan, the founder of MOBiLE CLOTH, tells me that in the early days of his company, many of his initial sales were to iPhone J.D. readers who learned about the MOBiLE CLOTH after I posted my first review back in January of 2011. So as a thank you to iPhone J.D. readers, and for a limited time, MOBiLE CLOTH is offering a 25% discount plus free shipping on all of its custom/promotional packages (a cloth with a custom logo) and a 25% discount plus free shipping on all regular orders over $20. Hartigan tells me that the free shipping is in the continental US only, other restrictions may apply, and the offer expires on Friday, July 5. To take advantage of the offer, add items to your cart, click on the cart icon, and then type IPHONEJD in the Coupon Code field.
If you haven’t tried out a MOBiLE CLOTH yet, I encourage you to take advantage of this discount to check it out yourself. These cloths work really well, and they are a great way to keep your iPad and iPhone looking great.
Click here to order custom MOBiLE CLOTHs printed with a logo that you provide.
I am pleased to welcome Clio as a sponsor of iPhone J.D. Clio offers web-based practice management, time & billing and client collaboration services (including document management) for small and mid-sized law firms. When you use Clio, your important client data is securely accessible anywhere that you have Internet access. Of course that means that you and everyone in your law firm can use a PC or a Mac. But even on an iPhone, you can log in to the Clio mobile interface.
You can use the Clio mobile interface to do virtually everything you can on a computer — tracking time, tasks, expenses, documents, etc.
The few tasks that you cannot do from the mobile interface (such as creating a new matter) are the tasks that you are unlikely to want to do on the road. But even then, if you really needed to you can switch to the full desktop view of Clio from the mobile version and do anything you could do at your desktop.
You can also connect your Clio Calendar to the Calendar app on the iPhone with just a few simple steps. You can also sync your Clio calendar and Contacts to your iPhone via Google. And you can also use Clio Sync for Outlook to access your Clio calendar, contacts and tasks with Microsoft Outlook, even if you are offline. Plus, you can sync your iPhone/iPad with Outlook so that Clio is synchronized with both Outlook and your iPhone/iPad. Clio also offers e-mail integration so that you can easily associate an e-mail (using Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird or Gmail) directly with a matter.
If you have been thinking about trying cloud-based practice management, Clio offers a free 30 day trial so it is easy to find out if Clio will work for you and your law firm.
When I think of iOS, I think of iPhones and iPad, but of course there is also the iPod touch, aka the iPhone-without-the-phone. I’ve heard of a few lawyers who used an iPod touch, but that was a while ago and was because they had to use another smartphone too (such as a BlackBerry back when some firms required that) and they wanted something to run iOS apps. Nowadays, I suspect that virtually all lawyers would find an iPhone far more valuable than an iPod touch. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see that this week Apple announced a new, cheaper version ($229, with of course no cell phone contract) of the iPod touch, a 16GB version that comes only in black and lacks a camera on the back. I agree with Jim Dalrymple of The Loop that it looks like a great portable game machine for kids. With the new iPod touch, Apple also announced that it has sold more than 100 million iPod touch units. By my count, Apple has sold over 350 million iPhones and over 140 million iPads, so that means that historical iOS sales are about 59% iPhone, 24% iPad and 17% iPod touch. That’s actually more popular than I would have expected for the iPod touch … but still doesn’t make me want to launch iPod J.D. And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:
San Francisco attorney Morgan Smith describes four apps that make his life easier. I only use one of those myself (TripIt) but that app is essential for me when I travel.
Eric Slivka of Mac Rumors reports that, according to research firm IDC, tablet shipments were surpass notebook computer shipments in 2013, and tablets will take over the entire PC market in 2015.
Peter Cohen of The Loop reports that Apple hired former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to head up Apple’s environmental efforts. Jackson grew up here in New Orleans, and after getting a B.S. from Tulane and a Masters from Princeton in chemical engineering, spent most of her professional life working for the EPA and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
I became a big fan of 1Password when I started using it late last year. I still use the app every single day, and I like the app even more now than when I wrote my review four months ago. If you haven’t tried it yet, now may be the time because, for a limited time, 1Password for iOS, Mac and PC is 50% off.
A few weeks ago, I ended In the news with the video of Candian astronaut singing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” on the International Space Station. The Economist has an interesting article on how copyright works in space.
And finally, how many times have you been frustrated that you couldn’t access a floppy disk from your iPad? Okay, probably never, but did you know that you can actually use Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit to access photos on a floppy disk if they are organized the right way? YouTube user “napabar” shows you how to do it in this video. Useful? Perhaps not, but interesting.
Attorneys frequently have to look up contact information for courts, whether it be to call a judge’s chambers, send an email to the court with a draft of a proposed order, or ask a question of a clerk of court. By this point I presume that all of this information is available on court websites, but if you are out of the office using your iPhone that means that you still need to search for the website and find the part of the website with contact information — and many of these pages are not optimized for the iPhone’s screen so you may have to squint. An easier solution is to use the Court Directory app from Bloomberg BNA. This app contains detailed contact information for judges, clerks of course, and other courthouse personnel for federal and state courts. The app doesn’t have contact information on every single judge, but it is darn close. Bloomberg BNA says that the 2013 edition contains listings for 2,133 state courts, 216 federal courts, 16,025 judges and 5,319 clerks and court administrators in the 50 states, D.C., U.S. territories, and more. In Louisiana, for example, I see all of the courts in which I practice, but I don’t see some courts of limited jurisdiction such as Justice of the Peace courts or traffic courts.
The app is not fancy, but it is quick and easy to use. By default, when you launch the app it displays the state court information for the state where you are currently located, but you can change the home page to another jurisdiction of you prefer. For states, the app divides up courts by level. So here in Louisiana, the “1st Court Level” is our Supreme Court, the “2nd Court Level” is our five courts of appeal, and “3rd Court Level” is our trial courts.
Tap on a court to see more information such as the list of judges. There is typically also an entry called “Geographic Jurisdiction” that will give you a list of each county (or “parish” for Louisiana) covered by that court. Tap on a judge (or clerk etc.) to see the contact information. The information included varies from state to state but always includes a phone number and typically includes other information such as the public email address, address, fax number, etc. You can tap on an address to see it on a map, and you can tap on a phone number to dial it.
The app lets you designate any court as a “favorite” to make it easier to access later. The app also includes a simple search feature.
Bloomberg BNA tells me that the app will be updated over the next few months to add even more information including social media links for some judges who use services like Facebook or Twitter. It will be interesting to see that added, especially considering that the use of social media by judges is such a hot topic of legal ethics right now.
The information provided in this app is information that you could find elsewhere, but it is very handy to have it all contained in one place. Buying this app saves you from having to create (and update) contact entries in your address book for every single court that you might want to contact, not to mention the time that you would have to take to look up the information. For attorneys who practice before many different courts, especially those who practice in many different jurisdictions, this is a very convenient app to have on your iPhone. This is a universal app so it works on the iPad too, which is nice, but for me this app has been most useful on my iPhone.
Click here to get Court Directory from Bloomberg BNA ($9.99):
