Jeff Richardson

Earlier this year I reviewed PDFpen for iPad, and it remains one of my favorite tools for editing and annotating PDF files on the iPad because it has a great interface and is relatively easy to use, but it also packs in tons of sophisticated features.  About two weeks ago, Smile Software released PDFpen for iPhone.  The company sent me a free review copy of this $5 app to try out, and I’m very impressed.  Editing PDF files on the iPhone is obviously harder than on an iPad because of the smaller screen (although PDFpen for iPhone does take advantage of the larger screen on the iPhone 5), but if you are on the go and only have access to your iPhone, this app can be incredibly useful and includes (as far as I can tell) all of the features of the iPad app.

The main screen of the app shows your documents as thumbnail images, and you can sort by either date or name.  If you enable iCloud sync, then every document in your Documents folder is automatically synced with PDFpen on your iPad (and on your Mac if you use that software too, but I don’t so I wasn’t able to test that).  Since I already use PDFpen on my iPad, that meant that when I first started using PDFpen for iPhone, all of my documents were there waiting for me.  I can edit a document on the iPhone, and then a few seconds later the edited document is there on my iPad.  Very sleek.  Or if you want to create a new document, just tap the plus sign at the top left.  You have several choices, including creating a blank document or copying a file from popular cloud services.

 

Once you open up a document, you’ll see a toolbar at the top, or you can tap once in the middle of the screen to make the toolbar disappear so that you can use the entire screen to view the PDF file. 

 

All of the editing tools that I described for PDFpen for iPad are here.  Thus, you can draw on a document, add shapes, underline, etc.  Once again, highlighting is handled very well.  You can highlight a document even if it isn’t a “readable” document with text, and highlighted words are not painted over with a opaque yellow box like some other apps do, but instead the black text stays dark black even when highlighted after you press the “Done” button.

 

Swipe left or right to move between pages.  There are two ways to see other pages in the document.  First, you can tap the grid icon in the toolbar at the top, which gives you the option to see and edit multiple pages (such as delete a page, move pages around, rotate pages).  Second, if you swipe in from the left side of the screen, a bar pops up with thumbnail images of pages.  Just swipe up or down to find the page you want and then tap to jump straight there.

 

PDFpen for iPhone includes the powerful Library feature.  Just tap the library icon to add text boxes, comments, notes, shapes, photos from your Photo library, annotation marks, etc.  There is also a powerful custom library where you can add an object to easily use that object again in the future.  For example, in my PDFpen for iPad review I showed you that I made a custom exhibit sticker.  Although you cannot automatically sync the custom library between the iPhone and iPad (that would be a great feature to add in the future), it was easy for me to create a new document on the iPad and add the exhibit sticker, wait a second for that file to sync to the iPhone, then select the exhibit sticker and add it to my custom library on the iPhone.  Now I can easily paste an exhibit sticker on any document using my iPhone, and then using the text box function I can give the exhibit a number or letter.

 

This trick is also useful for storing your signature.  You can use the scribble tool to sign a document with PDFpen for iPhone, but the iPhone screen is so small that it is difficult to get a good signature unless you have a very short name.  But you can sign your name on a blank document in PDFpen for iPad on the large iPad screen, and then once that document syncs to the iPhone you can select the signature and add it to your custom library.  Now, if someone ever emails you a document and asks for your signature, just open up the file in PDFpen on your iPhone, add your signature, and then email the file back.

I mentioned above that you can create a new document by copying it from any of the popular cloud document services, such as Dropbox.  Additionally, PDFPen has the ability to sync with one of your Dropbox folders so that you always have instant access to your documents.  (This feature was added to PDFpen for iPad after I wrote my review earlier this year.)  After you choose a folder to sync, PDFpen for iPhone downloads and syncs in the future the names and dates of all files, but doesn’t actually download the documents themselves until you tap a document.  That helps to reduce sync times.  After you edit a document in a Dropbox folder, within just a few seconds the edited file is available in your Dropbox folder on all devices that sync with your Dropbox.  The only flaw I see with the implementation is that I don’t yet see a way to tell PDFpen for iPhone that you no longer want to sync a Dropbox folder.  I presume this will be fixed in the future.

There are a few features that I would love to see added to PDFpen for iPhone, such as the ability to search for text in a document, but I am amazed at all of the advanced features that this app does include.  It even includes the ability to edit the text in a PDF file, assuming that the file is readable.  So if you find a typo or other problem in a PDF file, you can fix it right on your iPhone without having to go back to Microsoft Word or whatever program created the document in the first place.

To see PDFpen for iPhone in action, click here to see a video created for Smile by California attorney David “MacSparky” Sparks.

If you just want to view a PDF file on your iPhone, there are lots of free options available.  My top recommendation is probably Apple’s own iBooks app , which is the fastest PDF viewer I’ve seen on the iPhone.  But if you want to go to the next level to annotate and edit PDF files on the iPhone, PDFpen for iPhone is a great option.  It is a beautifully designed app that is full of sophisticated features.  And if you already use PDFpen for iPad, then it is a no-brainer that you will want this app as well.

Click here to get PDFpen for iPhone ($4.99): 

Click here to get PDFpen for iPad ($9.99): 

MobileLaw is a new app for the iPad and iPhone that contains the text of more than 200 sets of statutes, rules and other legal authorities, and gives you access for the low, low price of free.  The app was developed by attorney Peyton Healey, a commercial litigator with the Dallas law firm Powers Taylor.  The app is nicely designed, and it was just updated this past weekend to support the iPhone, including the longer screen on the iPhone 5.

When you start the app, you will most likely want to tap one of the first two options, either State Texts or Federal Texts.  You will then see at the top, in bold, the sources of law that are already downloaded to your device.  Below, in gray, are the additional sources that you may download for no charge. 

 

To download more law, just tap on it.  For example, in the above list in the Federal Texts section there is one called “Organic Laws.”  It contains the Declaration of Independence, the 1777 Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, and similar sources.  Just tap it to download, which only takes a few seconds.  The State Texts section currently contains laws and rules from Alabama, Alaska, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, New York, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.  The number of sources available to download varies from state to state.  In Florida, for example, there are four selections:  the rules of appellate procedure, civil procedure, criminal procedure, and the Title VII rules on evidence.

 

Once you have a set of laws downloaded, it remains on the device so you can access it in the future even if you don’t have Internet access.  The app uses an accordion style to show the law, so you see a top level list of categories, and you tap on a category to expand the laws underneath that category.

 

If you would prefer to just see a big long list of rules, you can do that too.  At the bottom right, just turn on the Rules button.

Tap on a rule to read the law.  Some rules have better formatting than others.  For example, you can clearly see the hard returns at the end of certain lines in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution — the first sentence ends the line at “perfect” and than picks up with “Union” on a new line.  But other sources, such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, have better formatting.

 

You can easily browse between rules by swiping left or right.

Buttons at the bottom of each rule give you various options.  Tap the bookmark icon to add to a list of bookmarked rules.  Unfortunately, the bookmark icon always looks the same and doesn’t indicate if you have already chosen a rule as one of your favorites.  The next button allows you to add notes.  The third button lets you email the text of a rule, or your notes, or both.  The fourth button let you print the rule and/or your notes.

A search field at the top will let you search for a word or an exact phrase.  The app does not allow for sophisticated searches such as AND / OR searches.  The app searches across all of the downloaded law and displays the rules containing your search term, but unfortunately the app does not highlight the term within the rule.  Thus, you will know that the term you looked for is in there somewhere, but you need to hunt to find it.

You can navigate around the app by tapping the shark button at the top right.  You will then see a number of choices:  the home icon (go to the main page of the app), the State of Texas icon (go to the list of state law, for all states not just Texas), another shark icon (for information about the app), a capital icon (for the list of federal laws) and the bookmark icon.  The icon corresponding to the part of the app that you are currently using doesn’t have a circle around it.

All of the above pictures show the iPhone in portrait mode.  The app does not allow you turn the iPhone to landscape mode.  However, the app also works on an iPad, and on an iPad you can use the app in either portrait or landscape mode.  The layout of the app on the iPad is similar to how it looks on the iPhone, but the buttons are moved to the top and are always visible to take advantage of the larger screen.

Bookmarks and notes do not sync between the iPhone and iPad versions of the app.

I’ve concentrated on the first two parts of this app — federal law and state law — but you can see from the home screen of the app there are other options too.  There is a MobileLaw Review which contains scholarly articles, and then there are options to see a list of attorneys, expert witnesses, meditators and local counsel services.  For many of these options, the only law firm currently listed is Peyton Healey’s own law firm,  Powers Taylor.  On the MobileLaw webpage, there is a form that allows other law firms, mediators, expert witnesses or legal support services companies to add their information to the app for $100/month.  Healey tells me that he doesn’t charge users to download his app because he sees it as a marketing device to promote himself and his law firm, and it is interesting to see that Healey offers the marketing potential to others, too, for a fee.  But none of this information gets in the way of using the app to read state and federal law, and frankly I hope that Healey does receive some financial support for the app because that will help to encourage him to continue to update the app itself and the law contained within.

MobileLaw lacks some of the features found in paid apps such as the Rulebook app I reviewed earlier this year.  For example, the search function is limited (as I noted above), you cannot change the font or font size, and you cannot highlight the rules.  But the app is still relatively new and more features are being planned.  Healey tells me that a highlight feature should be available in about a month.  If you are looking for an app that works on the iPad or iPhone, that has a nice design, and that works well for browsing the law, you should definitely give MobileLaw a look because I suspect that it will fit your needs quite well.

Click here to get MobileLaw (free): 

It’s been a year since Steve Jobs passed away at the much too young age of 56, and a number of publications wrote about the occasion.   Brad Stone, Adam Satariano, and Peter Burrows of Businessweek wrote about how Apple has proceeded without Jobs.  Heather Kelly of CNN wrote a similar article on how Apple has changed under CEO Tim Cook.  Meanwhile, Connie Guglielm of Forbes collects a number of anecdotes about Steve Jobs.  And now for the rest of iPhone and iPad news of note from the past week:

• If you like the idea of using your iPad to present documents in trial or in meetings, yesterday the TrialDirector app was released.  Litigation consultant Ted Brooks reviews the app and notes that while it lacks some features of similar apps, it has the key advantage of being free, plus it integrates with TrialDirector on the PC if you use that.  Click here to get TrialDirector (free): 

  

• Two months ago, I reviewed Stick Texting, a fun app developed by Florida attorney Mitch Robiner.  The app was updated this week to add new animations.  It’s worth checking out if you ever send text messages, but you can use it with emails too.  Click here to get Stick Texting ($0.99): 

  

• California attorney David Sparks has written several books that are of interest to iPad owners such as iPad at Work and Paperless.  His latest ebook, 60 Mountain Lion Tips, is for folks who use the Mac with the latest operating system, OS X 10.8.  Sparks sent me a free review copy, and I’ve learned a bunch from it, even though I (incorrectly) assumed that I already knew most of the tips and tricks on a Mac.  I suppose it is correct to call this a “book,” but since it includes 53 screencasts and over 1.5 hours of video, somehow that doesn’t seem quite right.  In this age of ebooks, I need to expand my personal definition of what a “book” is.  You can get it by clicking here ($6.99): 

  

• Speaking of David Sparks, he offers advice for using the iOS 6 Maps app in a car at night.
• Speaking of Maps, Tim Baran of the Legal Productivity blog discusses Waze, a popular map app for the iPhone.  (The Legal Productivity blog is published by the fine folks behind Rocket Matter.)
• If you are looking for other apps like Waze that you an use to supplement the iOS 6 Maps app, Chris Foresman of Ars Technica looks at the alternatives.
• And if you are missing the Google Street View feature that was a part of the Maps app before iOS 6, Lex Friedman of Macworld notes that Google added it to the web version of Google Maps, so you can still access it on an iPhone or iPad and Friedman explains how.
• One last item on Maps:  Jim Dalrymple of The Loop notes a study by Onavo that determined that Maps in iOS 6 uses much less data than Maps in iOS 5, which is good news when you are downloading Maps on the go and using 3G or 4G for your data.
• Here’s yet another story about using Find My iPhone to find a stolen iPhone or
  
  iPad, but this time it was a sting operation conducted by ABC News /
  
  Nightline, and the crook was a TSA agent.  You can watch the TV segment
  
  and read the article here.  (via San Francisco attorney Kevin Underhill of the always funny Lowering the Bar.)
• When I receive an Outlook appointment invitation on my iPhone or iPad, I sometimes notice weird things happening when I accept or reject the event on my iOS device.  I haven’t taken the time to try to figure out what is going on; instead I just wait until I am back at my computer to accept or reject.  (Just receiving the invitation is enough for it to show up in a tentative fashion on my iPhone/iPad calendar so I can see that the event is there.)  Michael Rose of TUAW writes that there is indeed a flaw, and Microsoft and Apple are pointing figures at each other over who is responsible.  Ugh.
• The camera on the iPhone 5 is so good that even digital camera websites are impressed.  Barney Britton of Digital Photography Review reviews all of the features, advantages and drawbacks of the iPhone 5 camera.
• Similarly, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times reviews the camera on the iPhone 5.
• Dave Caolo of 52 Tiger explains how to use the new Do Not Disturb feature in iOS 6.
• Peter Cohen of The Loop writes that according to a new report from Pew Research Center, 25% of adults in America own a tablet or regularly use one owned by someone else.  More than half of them are using an iPad.
• And finally, it’s iPhone 5 — The Musical!  (Shot and edited entirely on an iPhone 5, by the way.  From The Studio In Your Pocket.)

Thank you to Rocket Matter for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month.  I’ve heard great things about this company for longer than I can remember, and now they have an iPhone app to make it even easier to use their service when you are on the go.

Rocket Matter is an online time and billing service for small to mid-size firms that you pay for on a monthly basis.  Their clients range from solo practitioners to law firms with more than 60 timekeepers.  The core service that they provide is time and billing.  You login to the Rocket Matter website in the morning, and then throughout the day you can add entries for your time.  When it is time to prepare invoices, Rocket Matter does so quickly and easily so that you can concentrate on practicing law, not being an accountant. 

Rocket Matter has lots of well-designed features that make it easy to enter your time.  For example, Rocket Matter has a built-in calendar to help you keep track of your appointments, and then it makes it easy to convert calendar entries into billing entries.  Likewise it includes a sophisticated task manager that can help your organize the work that you need to do, and then easily create time entries based upon those tasks.  And because it is an online service, you can use it with a PC, a Mac, or just about anything else you have.  The website is secure, fast, and easy to use.  And earlier this year, Rocket Matter added sophisticated document assembly tools.

I see one sign of Rocket Matter’s appeal when I attend the large ABA TECHSHOW conference in Chicago every Spring.  The Rocket Matter booth is always full of attorneys talking about how much they love using the product — and suffice it to say that time and billing software is not normally a subject that invites such enthusiasm.  Plus, Rocket Matter’s CEO Larry Port always seems to have something interesting to say about the future of law practice management.  It was no surprise to see him named one of the Fastcase 50 for 2012.

But that is the old news about Rocket Matter.  The new news is that just a few weeks ago, Rocket Matter released an iPhone app.  Rocket Matter was always an online service that could be used from an iPhone or iPad, but the new iPhone app makes it even easier to use the service from the device in your pocket to manage your contacts, calendar and tasks.  Plus, easy access to Rocket Matter makes it even easier to enter your time contemporaneously, reducing the risk that you forget to keep track of your billable work.

The iPhone app makes it easy to create events on your calendar.  Note that you can also choose to use the iPhone’s built-in Calendar app, and if you sync that with Google you can then sync your Google account with Rocket Matter.  But by creating an entry in the iPhone app, you can also add Rocket Matter details such as the client and matter.  Just tap the plus sign at the top right, enter the event info, choose a matter from your list of matters, and you are done.

 

In addition to the month view, you can also view your calendar as a list or daily view.

 

Rocket Matter also keeps track of your clients and other contact and integrates that into the matter management.  You can access your Rocket Matter contacts from the app.

You can also use the app to quickly enter expenses as they occur (e.g. parking at the courthouse) or as a timer for your billable tasks.  Just start the timer, hit stop when you are done, and then select the matter and add a description.  Just that quickly, you are done and your entry is sent to the online Rocket Matter billing system.

 

You can also access matter information from the app.  Thus, if you want to know how much a client currently owes you, or if the client asks you how much billable work you’ve already done this month, the answer is at your fingertips.

 

Because Rocket Matter is an online service, one nice feature of the app is that it works even if you have no signal at all.  But when you do have a signal, the data in the app is synced with your Rocket Matter online account.  And if you ever want the full features of the Rocket Matter website, you can still access that from Safari on your iPhone, just like you can from your iPad or computer.

If you want more information on Rocket Matter and its iPhone app, click here or click on the ad on the left.  And once you are a Rocket Matter customer, you can click below to download the free iPhone app.  Thanks again to all the great folks at Rocket Matter for supporting iPhone J.D.

Click here to get the Rocket Matter iPhone app (free): 

Calculating dates is important for any litigator.  There are several apps that let you take one date and then add a certain number of days to it.  (My favorite remains the very simple DaysFrom which is only a buck.)  More advanced calculators let you take into account legal holidays, and the sophisticated Court Days Pro calculates dates based on sophisticated rules that you establish.  Smart Dockets is a new app from American LegalNet, Inc. that knows the court rules on calculating dates for a number of state and federal jurisdictions.  The app is free and the idea is great, although the app’s execution leaves something to be desired.

When you start the app, you’ll see that you are required to sign up for a free account, and you are asked for a lot of personal information including your phone number, your email address, your firm name and size, etc.  You need to provide an accurate email address, but the app does not appear to check any of the other information.  (For example, the phone number I provided was 555-555-5555 and that worked fine.)

Once you are logged in, you are presented with the main screen, the Event Calculator.  You start by selecting a court rule set.  The app may well have all 50 states, but I couldn’t easily tell because the list is not in any order that I can make sense of.  Fortunately, you can start to enter the name of the jurisdiction and matches will pop up, which saves you the trouble of wading through the entire, unorganized list.  In addition to many state and federal courts, dates from other rule sets are included such as the AAA arbitration rules, rules for the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, etc.

 

Next you select a trigger type.  Again, the list is long and organized, so use the search field at the top to find something.  For this example, I am assuming that I have a hearing on a motion in Louisiana state court.  I know that many dates are calculated once you have a hearing date, such as a memorandum in opposition being due eight days before.  After selecting the trigger type, you then select the date for that trigger type.

 

You can next enter a case number, matter number and case title if you want, but you don’t have to do so.  There are more interface problems here.  For example, if you tap the Case Title field and start to type a case name, the keyboard covers up the field in which you are typing, so you cannot see what you are typing.  Obvious bugs like that make you question whether this feature was even tested before the app was submitted to the App Store.

 

Finally, tap the Generate Events button. This will give you a full list of events that result from your trigger event.  If you turn on a button called Show Rule ID, the app will give you a cite for each event so that you can double-check the calculation.  I encourage you to do so.  You must accept terms and conditions before you first use the app, and one of them is:  “You agree not to rely, in any way, on ALN’s SMART DOCKETS Court Rules
and Software and the ALN website to assist You in complying with any
court’s rule(s).” — which is somewhat humorous considering that is the whole purpose of the app, but I understand that the app developer just doesn’t want to get sued over calculations that they are providing for free.

For example, in my test, with an Oct. 29 hearing date, I know that an opposition is due eight days before, but that would be a Sunday so the app correctly bumps back two more days to Friday, October 19.  And the app shows many other dates that I might not have thought of.  For example, you can see in the next screen that the app tells me that the deadline to move to recuse the judge is Friday, October 26, and the app gives me a cite to La. C.C.P. art. 154.  That rule simply says that a motion to recuse shall be filed prior to the hearing, so I suppose calendaring a deadline of one business day before the hearing makes some sense.

At the bottom of the report screen, you are given three options.  First, you can send an email to yourself with the contents of your report in the body of the email in HTML format.  Second, you can send an email to yourself with the report attached as a PDF file.  Both report types are very nicely formatted and easy to read.  Here is what the PDF report looks like (click to see larger):

The third option at the bottom of the report is called “Email Invites.”  To use this option, select one or more of the events in the list and then tap the button.  The app will email to you a .ics file that you can open in Outlook and many other programs to add the event(s) to your calendar.

One last thing that this app can do is simple date calculation.  On the main screen, ignore all of the fields and just tap the Quick Date Calculator button at the bottom left.  Enter a start date and then count forward or backwards a number of days, with options on what to do when the date falls on a weekend.

The app also works on the iPad, but again I ran into some problems with the interface, such as needing to tap in several different places to get the app to accept entries.  Also, on the iPad, you are limited to using the app in portrait mode. 

If you are using this app on an iPad, keep in mind that you can do everything that the app does on the Smart Dockets website, which you can access in Safari on the iPad in landscape or portrait mode.

As you can tell, I am disappointed with the interface on this app, especially on the iPad, but when it comes to the substance, this app is quite useful.  The app contains court rules from a large number of jurisdictions, and because you can turn on the option to see cites to rules, it is easy to do a calculation and then check the rule itself to double-check the app’s calculation.  Calculating legal deadlines is incredibly important — I have seen a mistake in calculating an appeal deadline lead to a multi-million dollar malpractice lawsuit — so anything that helps you measure twice before you cut once seems like a good idea to me.  Hopefully the developer will update the app with a better interface, but the hard part for an app like this is getting the content, and the app seems to have that covered quite well.  Considering that the app is free, you might as well download it to add it to your arsenal of useful apps — unless you have a problem providing the personal information requested.

Click here to get Smart Dockets (free): 

I’ve heard from a lot of iPhone J.D. readers who purchased an iPhone 5 and are really enjoying the device.  Apple announced earlier this week that it sold over 5 million iPhone 5 devices last weekend, and I’m sure it has sold a ton more since then.  Even after a week of use, I am still finding the speed, the size, and the lightness almost unbelievable.  I also notice that I’ve been coming up with reasons to do things using the iPhone 5 instead of my iPad or computer just because using the device is such a nice experience.  What a great product.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Cheryl Niemeier, the law librarian at Bose McKinney & Evans, recommends iPhone apps for lawyers.  (via Third Apple)
• California attorney David Sparks calls AppleCare+the “$100 invisible iPhone case” because if you purchase the service within the first 30 days of buying an iPhone, Apple will replace your phone if you wreck it on two occasions (although there is also a $49 fee with each replacement).  I did purchase AppleCare with my iPhone 4, figuring that it was a new design so there could be issues.  I did have a problem with the button on my iPhone 4 and Apple replaced it for free; I’m not sure if that was because of AppleCare.  Otherwise I have not purchased AppleCare for any of my iPhones, and I’m not sure if I will do it for my new iPhone 5, but I am thinking about it.
• New York attorney and TechnoLawyer publisher Neil Squillante discusses the TrialWorks Mobile App, a litigation practice management app.
• One Apple accessory that I have always enjoyed using with an iPhone is a dock.  Apple gave them away with the first iPhone and sold them for every model since, but they do not seem to be offered for the iPhone 5.  9 to 5 Mac reports that a person sent Apple VP of Marketing Phil Schiller a question about the dock, and Schiller responded in an email that Apple does not plan to make one for the iPhone 5.  And of course, they do not appear on the Apple Store website.  On the other hand, Apple has said that they plan to sell a Lightning connector to VGA cord and that isn’t on the Apple website yet either, and AppleInsider reports that that the official iPhone 5 user guide references an Apple-made dock.  It could just be part of the iPhone 4S user guide that Apple forgot to update correctly, or maybe there is hope yet for an Apple-branded dock for those of us who use them.  We’ll see.
• Now that the iPhone 5 is out, we are seeing many more reviews.  A few of them are really good and worth reading if you want to learn more about the iPhone 5 — either because you are thinking of buying one, or you just bought one and you want to learn more about the features.  Attorney Jeremy Horwitz wrote a great review for iLounge.  Rene Ritchie up in Montreal wrote a great review for iMore.  Jason Snell wrote a great review for Macworld.  And I also like this review by John Brownlee of Cult of Mac.
• Bryan Gardiner of Wired wrote an in-depth article on the ultrathin, ultrastrong Gorilla Glass used on the iPhone 5.
• James Galbraith of Macworld reports that the battery in the iPhone 5 lasts almost as long as the battery in the iPhone 4 and 4S.
• iFixYouri did a drop test and concluded that the iPhone 5 is the most durable iPhone yet, thanks to the new Gorilla Glass and the light design.
• David Car of BrainYardNews explains how NASA astronauts are using iPads to train for asteroid exploration.
• Eric Slivka of MacRumors reports on a study from Opower that concludes that the electricity cost to fully charge an iPhone 5 once a day for a year is just $0.41.  That’s up three cents from the iPhone 4.
• I use a Bose SoundDock Portable to play music in my living room, but of course the 30-pin dock connector won’t work with the iPhone 5.  I’ve ordered one of the Apple connectors due to ship next month which may be a solution, but I also see in an article by Agam Shah for IDG News Service that Bose is “working to add iPhone 5 compatibility to its popular SoundDock speaker
  
  dock, which will become available later this year, a Bose spokeswoman
  
  said.”  That’s good news.
• Using iOS 6 on an iPad?  Geoffrey Goetz of GigaOm has 10 tips for you.
• Erica Sadun of TUAW compiled a good list of what you can say to Siri in iOS 6.
• I really like Apple’s new Maps app, but it is clearly a 1.0 product.  The 3D renderings are amazing, and the turn-by-turn directions are usually very good, but it needs more information on places (Points of Interest).  Others, however, are more negative on Maps.  David Pogue of the New York Times wrote a negative review of Maps.  John Paczkowski of All Things D explains the business reasons behind Apple releasing a new Maps app based on its own data instead of Google data.  And while Google’s Motorola subsidiary has been running ads making fun of an address in New York that an Android phone can find but not an iPhone 5, Daniel Eran Dilger of AppleInsider explains that it is actually a misleading address that was picked to produce what looks like a wrong result.  [UPDATE:  Apple’s CEO Tim Cook issued a public statement this morning on the Maps app.]
• Another week, another Find My iPhone to the rescue story.  According to an AP article in USA Today, a Nevada man left his iPad on an airplane, but then used Find My iPhone to trace it to the house of the flight attendant on the plane.  She told the police that she had planned to turn it in, but the police saw that she had already started putting her personal information on the iPad, so she was arrested and the iPad was returned.  (via the Jonathan Turley blog, which has a picture of the flight attendant.)
• And finally, just a month ago I linked to a concept design for a manual-style typewriter that works with the iPad.  Here is a more elegant solution, a USB typewriter for the computer or iPad.  Too funny, and this one is not just a concept video; you can buy a kit to convert your old typewriter for $74.

Attorney Andrew Weber, the Legislative Information Systems Manager the Law Library of Congress, recently sent me a note to announce the debut this month of Congress.gov, a free public site for accessing legislative information.  The new site will eventually replace the THOMAS system which has served as the official database for legislative information since 1995.  Because Congress.gov is based on a new infrastructure, it is much more powerful than THOMAS.  For example, you can now search across all content in the system at once.

You can use Congress.gov from virtually any device, but I’m mentioning the site today because it looks especially nice on an iPhone, a result of the website being designed to dynamically fit the size of the screen that you are using.  This change was intentional; improving mobile access was one of the goals of the new Congress.gov site.  For example, on a computer it looks like this:

On an iPhone 5 in landscape mode, the site adjusts itself to look like this:

And on an iPhone 5 in portrait mode, it looks like this.  The second picture shows what you see when you tap the small “menu” button at the top left to show the menu choices that are two small to fit across the screen in this view:

 

You can easily see the dynamic resizing in action on your computer if you go to Congress.gov and drag the corner of your window to make it smaller.

You can access a wealth of legislative information at Congress.gov, including the text of bills, bill summary and status, and profiles of Members of Congress.  The Congressional Record will be added soon, but note that the Library of Congress already has a free app that lets you view the CR on an iPhone or iPad.

 

If you want a more traditional look, Congress.gov lets you view PDF versions of bills and laws:

Easy to access, public information about congressional activity is of course essential if you are a governmental relations lawyer, but it is also important for the rest of us too.  Kudos to Andrew Weber and the rest of the tech-savvy folks at the Library of Congress for working to keep the legislative process open so that U.S. citizens have the opportunity to be informed.

Click here to access Congress.gov (free).

Earlier this year, I reviewed Rulebook, a free app by Utah attorney Greg Hoole that lets you purchase bodies of statutory law and rules so that you can access them on your iPhone and iPad.  I was impressed with the app because it includes all of the features that you would want for such an app (browse, search, bookmark, highlight, annotate), plus at least one innovative feature — the ability to save your notes and highlighting even when the rule itself is updated.  My only somewhat negative comment about the app was that I wanted to see more content, because at the time the app only offered the major federal rules (Appellate, Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure
and Evidence) plus the state and local rules for California, New York,
Texas and Utah.

Some content from others states has been added over the last few months (Arizona, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio), but the exciting new content added last month is the addition of The Bluebook.  Yes, The Bluebook, the arguably authoritative guide to legal citation for over 80 years, a joint venture from the fine folks behind the law reviews of Harvard, Columbia, U. Penn. and Yale, now in its 19th edition.  (Fun fact:  the first fourteen editions were simply called “A Uniform System of Citation,” and it was not until the fifteenth edition released in 1991 — when I started law school — that “The Bluebook” was added to the title.)  I’ve been working with a review copy of The Bluebook for the last few weeks, and I’m impressed.

If you went to law school, I don’t need to tell you what is in The Bluebook.  Suffice it to say that all of the content is here, the entire text of The Bluebook including all of the Bluepages, all of the rules, and all of the tables.  But in a great app like Rulebook, it is easier than ever to use the Bluebook.

In the iPad version, you see a list of rules on the left.  Simply tap a rule to see the text of The Bluebook on the right.  When there is a reference to another part of The Bluebook, you can simply tap the hyperlink to jump right there.  And any references to external websites will launch the website in Safari when you tap them.

You can also add bookmarks.  For example, I try to follow Bluebook format when I abbreviate case names, so my paper version of The Bluebook contains a Post-It Note for Table T6.  In the app, I can simply add T6 to my list of bookmarks.

Instead of simply browsing the rules or using the Bookmarks feature to find something, you can access the Index.  Just scroll down to the bottom of the list on the left, select the first letter, and then tap an entry to jump to the section of The Bluebook.

You also perform a full text search, something that is not possible with the paper version.  So, for example, let’s say that I want to cite the treatise that we all simply call “Wright & Miller,” which I remember is an example somewhere in The Bluebook.  I can do a search for “Wright” and just tap on the first result (Section B8.1 from the Bluepages) to see the correct citation format for a brief:

You can also do more complicated AND/OR searches by selecting whether you want to search for an exact phrase, all words, or any word. 

Note that some parts of The Bluebook will not show up in a full text search.  For example, the entries in Table T6 (shown above) are a static graphic.  Thus, I cannot do a search for “Maritime” to find the part of T6 that says to use “Mar.”

You can also use all of the formatting functions that Rulebook offers for other content.  So if you want to read The Bluebook in 19 point Marker Felt, have at it.  I won’t judge you for it, although I cannot speak for the editors of the Harvard Law Review.

The above images are all from the iPad version of The Bluebook, but it works on the iPhone as well.  The format is adjusted for the smaller iPhone screen, but all of the content is there.

 

Because of the unique way that Rulebook handles content updates, the content of The Bluebook can be updated without you losing your annotations.  For example, the current 19th edition was released 2010, but it has been updated twice since then.  Greg Hoole tells me that any future updates to the 19th edition will be included free of charge.  I presume that the 20th edition of The Bluebook will be released around 2015 (they appear to be on a five year release cycle right now); whenever it does come out, Hoole tells me that will be a separate charge.

Speaking of cost, you pay for virtually all content in the Rulebook app, and The Bluebook costs $39.99.  To put this price in perspective, the paper version of The Bluebook costs $34 but that doesn’t include updates, search, hyperlinks, etc.  There is also an online subscription version of The Bluebook that costs $32 for one year or $50 for three years.  I’m told that when you purchase The Bluebook on one iOS device (such as an iPad) you will also be able to use it on your other iOS devices as well (such as your iPhone) but I wasn’t able to confirm that with my review copy.

Working with The Bluebook reminds me a lot of the Black’s Law Dictionary app.  I reviewed that $54.99 app two years ago, but I continue to use it today mainly just because it is always with me.  I would never think to carry a hard copy of Black’s Law Dictionary to court, but there have been times when I’ve wanted to use the right words to explain something in a hearing so I’ve pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and looked up the definition of a legal term to help me come up with the right way to say something.  A paper copy of The Bluebook is smaller and lighter, but unless you are in law school and working on a law review article, you are unlikely to ever carry it around … but you might find yourself at home one night working on a brief and wondering how to cite a blog post, and then you might find instant access to Rule 18.2.2 using the device on you desk or in your pocket very useful.

I suppose I should point out that I don’t always follow the citation formats in The Bluebook.  For example, we have some citation customs here in Louisiana that are different.  (I know … big surprise to learn that things are different in Louisiana, the only state based on the French Civil Code instead of English common law.)  But I appreciate having access to The Bluebook as a reference guide, and now that it is on my iPad and iPhone, access is easier than ever.

If you are a litigator, in academia, or citations are otherwise a part of your law practice, then you may appreciate seeing The Bluebook available for the iPhone and iPad as much as I do.  And I’m especially happy to see it part of a well-designed app like Rulebook.

Click here to get Rulebook (free): 

(You can then purchase The Bluebook by tapping the Library icon at the bottom left and selecting “Style Manuals”)

After the iPhone 5 was announced, I discussed the reasons that I thought that lawyers would love it.  I received my iPhone 5 on Friday and I’ve using it extensively over the weekend.  Here are some additional thoughts that I have after using this outstanding device.

Size and weight.  Every review of the iPhone 5 notes that it is thinner and lighter, but boy is it noticeable.  I usually wear a shirt with a front pocket and I’ve been keeping devices there since I first got a Palm III in 1998.  Over these last 14 years, the devices that I have kept in that pocket have, for the most part, gotten thinner and lighter every year, but I can’t remember a change as noticeable as this one before.  It’s not even that my iPhone 4S was that heavy, it’s just that the iPhone 5 is first device I’ve used that crosses the threshold over to being barely noticeable in my pocket.  Additionally, the weight feels great in the hand, not at all heavy but with a premium feel.  I’ve heard some people wonder why Apple is always working so hard to make devices thinner and lighter, but after a weekend with the iPhone 5, I now understand why this is worth pursuing.

Longer screen.  As you know, the width of the iPhone 5 remains unchanged from earlier models, but the screen is longer.  In daily use, this is an amazing improvement.  The iPhone 5 feels just as good in your hand, but you can now see more.  When I look at a list of emails, a list of tweets, a list in the Settings app, or any other list on the iPhone 5, I really notice that I can see so much more.  It’s like being seated in coach on an airplane and then being notified that you have been upgraded and you can move up to First Class.  Suddenly you have that extra space to stretch out, you don’t feel cramped by the seat in front of you, and you find that you can be even more productive.  It’s really nice.

Plus, the extra length means that you have an extra row on each of your Home Screens.  If you are like me, then your first Home Screen is prime real estate — the Boardwalk and Park Place of apps.  Whenever a really good app comes along that I want to add to my first home screen, I have to make a difficult decision of what gets bumped back.  Two apps enter the ring; only one survives.  It can be a bloody process.  But now suddenly I have four more spots on my first home screen.  After using an iPhone all of these years, this is a major change, and I’m still deciding how to distribute the riches.

4G LTE speed.  I figured that fast 4G LTE service would make a difference, and that’s why I wrote about it before we even knew for sure that it would be a feature in the iPhone 5.  But now that I’ve spent a weekend with it … WOW.  I have the AT&T version of the iPhone 5, and here in New Orleans, LTE is unbelievably fast.  As a point of comparison, at my home I have the most expensive cable modem service that Cox sells in this market.  On my computer (using a wired connection), I usually see download speeds in the 20 Mbps to 35 Mbps range, which I consider quite fast.  The speed of WiFi in my house depends upon where I am located.  If am very close to my WiFi router (an Airport Extreme Base Station), I can get speeds of 25 Mbps to 30 Mbps on an iPhone 5 or an iPhone 4S, and as I move to other spots in my house the speed drops to around 10 Mbps.

But if I turn off WiFi on the iPhone 5 and rely on AT&T LTE, the speeds are higher.  I have been running speed tests all weekend using the free Speedtest.net Mobile Speed Test app () and the FCC Mobile Broadband Test app ().  I usually see speeds in the 20-35 Mbps range, but very often, at least 25% of the time, I am seeing speeds in the 40-50 Mbps range.  Yesterday afternoon, I attended the Saints football game at the Superdome, and while the game itself was a painful experience, the LTE speeds were impressive.  That was a confined area with 70,000 other people in one spot, and presumably at least some of them were using AT&T LTE, but I still got consistent results in the 30-40 Mbps range.  And late Saturday night, and again last night, I saw speeds over 50 Mbps:

 

I have never before seen download speeds this fast on any device.  The speeds are fast enough to make me wish I could use LTE all the time and just ignore WiFi.  Of course, if I did so, I’m sure that I would exceed my AT&T monthly data cap. 

These are just numbers.  What does 4G LTE on the iPhone 5 mean in real life?  It means that webpages load incredibly quickly.  Large attachments download with virtually no delay.  When network speed is critical for an app (for example, LogMeIn), these apps work brilliantly over LTE.  When I need to access a large PDF file in my Dropbox, it just pops up after a few seconds.  It’s a big deal, and it means that the iPhone always has a fast connection without needing to worry about whether I am using WiFi or not. 

LTE might be slower in your city than it is here in the Crescent City.  (If you have an iPhone 5 and you have run speed tests in your city, feel free to comment on this post and share your speeds; I’d love to see them.).  And perhaps over time as more people use LTE services we will all see speed decline.  But for now, I’m finding that unlike every prior iPhone, I actually get faster network speeds if I turn off WiFi — which seems completely backwards to me.

Camera.  I’ve noticed two big differences in the Camera app.  First, because the iPhone 5 is so much faster than previous iPhones, you can take pictures much more quickly.  I stated in my prior post that “the iPhone is now 40% faster when taking photographs, making it easier
to take a large number of pictures in a row — just like a fashion
photographer.”  I’ve definitely noticed this.

Second, if you are in an area with low light, the camera works much better.  Sure, low light pictures can be grainy, but on prior iPhones a low light picture can just look black.  Now, I actually get a usable picture.  For example, here are two photographs.  I took the first photograph with my iPhone 4S in a room with the light dimmed.  For the second picture, I put my iPhone 5 in the extra same spot and didn’t change the lights at all.  The difference is astonishing. 

Each of the above pictures is reduced to 500 pixels wide.  If you click on each one, you can see a version that is 1000 pixels wide. I reduced the size from the normal 3,264 pixel width in the interest of your bandwidth, but I did not otherwise manipulate the images in any way.  And note that when I did try to manipulate both pictures in Photoshop, I was able to make the iPhone 4S picture look better but still not as good as the original iPhone 5 picture, whereas I could use Photoshop to get the iPhone 5 picture even better than what you see above.

If you are outside during the day, none of this will matter.  But how often have you tried to take a picture with the iPhone in the evening or inside only to discover that there simply isn’t enough light to create a usable picture?  With the iPhone 5, you have a much better chance of getting a picture that captures the memory.

iPhone speed.  I’ve already mentioned how the faster chip in the iPhone 5 lets you take pictures faster.  Everything else on the iPhone 5 is faster as well.  I expect to see speed with each new iPhone so I can’t say that this change was unexpected, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t appreciated.

Battery.  The iPhone 5 battery lasts all day long, even when I am using it a lot, which has been the case this weekend.  The same was true for my iPhone 4S, but with the increased speed and larger screen to power, it is nice to see that the battery life is still very good.  This is especially important right now because the iPhone 5 has the new Lightning connector, and I currently only have the cord that came with the iPhone 5 to charge it.  With my iPhone 4S, I have charging cords and docks in multiple locations in my house and also in my car.  I ordered some adapters so that I can still use those cables to charge the iPhone 5, but they are still on backorder from Apple.com so for now I’m going to need to rely on that battery holding up on its own.

So in summary, the iPhone 5 is incredible.  I never used the original iPhone that came out in 2007, but I’ve used every one since then:  the iPhone 3G, the 3GS, the iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S, and now the iPhone 5.  The iPhone 5 upgrade seems more significant to me than any prior upgrade.  Before this weekend, I would have said that the iPhone 4 was the biggest upgrade.  The iPhone 4 added the amazing retina screen, a great new thinner design, a better camera, and was faster.  But the iPhone 5 seems like an even more significant change.  The longer screen is fantastic just like the retina display was fantastic at the time.  The overall speed increase (faster chip, fast 4G LTE) is much more noticeable than every prior speed increase I’ve experienced — although I’m told that the iPhone 3G was a major network speed increase over the original iPhone which could only use the slow Edge network.  And as I noted above, the iPhone 5 is not just lighter but is noticeably lighter, enough to really make a difference.  The other changes such as the amazing design, the improved camera, etc. are just icing on the cake.

I purchased an iPhone 4S last year so I am not yet eligible to pay the subsidized price to upgrade to an iPhone 5.  (For what it’s worth, I opted for the black 64GB model.)  If you want the latest and greatest but you are also not yet eligible, perhaps you can take advantage of the approach that I used.  Unlike me, my wife was eligible for an upgrade.  (She uses an iPhone 4 — although I’ll soon move her over to my 4S.)  AT&T had no problem with me ordering an iPhone 5 using her phone number, and then once I had the device in my hand, before I activated it, I called AT&T.  On the phone they were able to transfer the device to my phone number, and a few minutes later my iPhone 4S stopped getting an AT&T signal and the iPhone 5 started working.  It was very easy; the only annoying part was having to wait on hold with AT&T for 20 minutes before I was connected to a representative.  By the way, AT&T calls this a “cross upgrade,” so you know what to ask for when you talk to the AT&T representative to do this.

The iPhone 5 is the best iPhone yet.  Of course that is true; every new iPhone is always the best iPhone yet.  This year, however, the improvements are more substantial than in prior years.  Using an iPhone 5 this weekend has been really delightful, and no matter what model iPhone you are using now, you are going to be very happy whenever you make the upgrade.

Today is the day that the iPhone 5 goes on sale.  If you stayed up late or woke up very early last Friday, you may have been lucky enough to preorder from the first batch, in which case your shiny new iPhone 5 will be delivered to you today by UPS or FedEx.  A number of iPhone 5 devices will also be sold in stores today, but if you are not already in line by the time you are reading this, it may be too late to get one today.  Demand for the iPhone 5 has been incredible.  Back in June of 2010, Apple was delighted to announce that it had taken over 600,000 preorders for the iPhone 4 in the first 24 hours.  In October of 2011, Apple announced that it had taken over one million preorders for the iPhone 4S in the first 24 hours.  This year, Apple announced over two million preorders for the iPhone 5 in the first 24 hours.  As you can imagine, the iPhone 5, along with the new iOS 6, dominated the news of note from this past week:

• Speaking of the lines for the iPhone 5, editorial cartoonist Walt Handelsman of Newsday offered this amusing take.
• New York attorney Neil Squillante of TechnoLawyer wrote an interesting analysis of Apple and Google’s rise to prominence at the expensive of Microsoft and what this means in the legal industry.
• If you want to try to get an iPhone 5 over the next few days, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times offers advice for doing so.
• One of the nice new features in the iPhone 5 is support for 4G LTE, but of course you must be in a city that offers that service to take advantage of LTE.  Last week I identified the cities with AT&T, Verizon and Sprint LTE, and that list has already become outdated.  Chris Parsons of iMore identifies eight cities that just gained AT&T LTE service and wrote a similar post with new Verizon LTE cities.
• Glenn Flesighman of TechHive explains LTE.
• Now that people are spending more time with iOS 6, we are learning a lot more about what it can do.  Two good and comprehensive reviews of iOS 6 were written by Dan Moren of Macworld and Rene Ritchie of iMore.
• Chad Williams wrote this interesting post on less well known iOS 6 features.
• Similarly, Jessee Hollington of iLounge explores secrets and features of iOS 6.
• The 16 people on Apple’s design team are responsible for some of the best looking technology in the world.  Sam Oliver of AppleInsider reports that all of them traveled to London to receive an award for being the best design studio of the last 50 years.
• Daniel Eran Dilger of AppleInsider reminds us that you can use the new panorama feature in the Camera app to take long vertical pictures, and his article has some interesting examples.
• Nick Heath of TechRepublic reports that the iPhone is now as secure as the BlackBerry.  That’s good to hear, but I’ve been listening to BlackBerry advocates say for years that the iPhone is lacking in security, and yet I’m not aware of even one example of a lawyer having confidential information breached because the lawyer used an iPhone instead of a BlackBerry.  And I’m sure it isn’t for lack of effort — just think of the notoriety that a bad guy could get for doing so.  We all need to exercise common sense when it comes to smartphone security, but I’m much more worried about leaving a briefcase with confidential papers in a cab or on a plane.
• I recently talked about why lawyers will love the iPhone 5.  Jason Hiner of TechRepublic similarly reports on why business professionals will love the iPhone 5.  As you can imagine, there is a lot of overlap in the reasons.
• Here’s a similar story: Tony Bradley of PCWorld on how the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 can benefit business users.
• iFixIt shows us what the inside of an iPhone 5 looks like and has all sorts of geeky details about the electronics and components used.  For example, iFixIt reports that the new home button “sports an integrated metal support bracket, which we hope will greatly strengthen the oft-used switch.”  I’ve heard of people having problems with the home buton on previous models of the iPhone.
• Are you planning to use your iPhone while you travel abroad?  Darren Murph of Engadget recommends a service called iPhoneTrip that lets you rent a SIM before you leave the U.S. that will work while you are abroad.  Prices vary from $5.99/day for only 50MB of data to $14.99/day for a generous 500MB.
• I’ve reviewed a bunch of styluses for iPhone J.D., and my current favorite is the Wacom Bamboo Stylus duo.  Dan Sung of Pocket-Lint reviews the new Wacom Bamboo Stylus pocket, a tiny version of the stylus that shrinks to fit in a pocket.  I’ve never had a problem with the size of the “duo” version, but if you have, this may be of interest.
• Biam Beam of Macworld reviews Twist, an app that can automatically send text messages to people to let you know how close you are to arriving at your next meeting.  I haven’t used the app and frankly I’m not sure that it is something that I would ever want to use, but California attorney David Sparks says that he has come to rely upon the app, so maybe there is something there.
• Christopher Breen of Macworld has an interesting article on the evolution of the iPhone since 2007.
• The iPhone 5 come with new earphones that Apple calls the EarPods.  Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times likes them and offers this review.  The other reviews that I have seen seem to all agree that they are an improvement over the former earphones that came free with an iPhone, but everyone also agrees that if you want to pay more you can get nicer ones from third parties.  Still, it is nice to see an improvement in the default “free” option.
• Christopher Seward of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes that two armed robbers were caught last week thanks to Find My iPhone.
• And finally, I’ve written before about the amusing fake iPhone videos from JLE.  Here is their latest funny video, the Banned iPhone 5 Promo: