Jeff Richardson

The Verizon iPhone started to make its way into customers’ hands this week, elected officials are using and abusing iPads, and the Vatican speaks up on an iPhone app, all in this week’s edition of In the News:

• Lexis Advance is the next generation of LexisNexis, that company’s answer to Westlaw Next.  Lexis Advance is currently only available to solo practitioners, but Lexis is adding new features and working out the kinks and at some point Lexis Advance will be available to all Lexis users.  Attorney Robert Ambrogi reports that Lexis Advance now has an iPhone app.  You can get more information here.  Hopefully it is better than the current Lexis app, which I consider a disappointment.
• Josh Barrett of Tablet Legal reviews TrialPad, an iPad app that can be used for courtroom presentations.
• Michael Grothaus of TUAW reports that the British House of Lords will soon allow the use of iPads during debates.
• As noted in that article and reported by the International Business Times, members of parliament in Italy are allowed to use iPads, and one of them was recently photographed using it to access an escort website.  I’m just glad that we don’t have any elected officials in the U.S. doing similarly dumb things on the Internet and getting caught.
• If you need to go to confession after some of the dumb things that you did on (or off) the Internet, there was lots of news this week about Confession, a $1.99 app for Catholics that aids you in the confessional, helping you with what to say and providing the words for prayers.  Tim Stevens of Engadget reported on the app, saying that it was approved by the Church because it was developed with the Catholic Church.  Then some news outlets started to report that the Vatican condemned the app, but I don’t think that is actually true.  Dan Gilgoff of CNN reports that the Vatican simply does not condone making a confession via an iPhone or any other electronic device, but that is not what this app does; instead, it just helps you to prepare for confession with a real priest, which is appropriate.  Click here for Confession ($1.99): 

  

• Attorney and King & Spalding librarian Greg Lambert of the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog reviews Whistle Phone, an app that allows you to turn an iPad or an iPod touch into a phone.  Click here for Whistle Phone (free): 

  

• Attorney David Sparks of MacSparky explains that using the iPad has caused him to realize that he prefers to write in a plain text format in an article he titles:  The Joy of Text.
• Peter Ha of the new iPad-only newspaper The Daily reports on an interview with Ge Wang, an app developer with Smule, about the great potential for creating content with the iPad.
• Speaking of The Daily, if you have an iPad, I hope that you are taking advantage of this two week period of time when you can subscribe to The Daily for free.  Art of the iPhone posted a comprehensive review of the app.  I am still trying to decide whether I will pay the dollar a week to subscribe when the free trial ends.  On the one hand, the content is usually rather shallow, although every once in a while you see an article with some depth.  Also, this is not an up-to-the-minute news sources, like the New York Times website or CNN.  On the other hand, if you just think of it as a daily magazine with a broad view of the news of the day, and accept that it is just as likely to have a fluff story that you might find in People or Us Weekly, then it isn’t too bad.  I like that you can just swipe right to left to quickly browse thorugh every story in every issue, making it easy to skip over the stories that are of no interest.  One curious omission:  Why doesn’t a publication that is so tightly integrated with the newest technology have a dedicated technology news section?  I’ll mostly likely subscribe to The Daily for at least a while, just to see if it is something that I continue to read and to see what improvements are made to the app, but I’ll continue to turn to sources like The New York Times for the rest of the story.
• Thomas Ricker of Engadget reports that German researchers have discovered a way to decrypt passwords from n iPhone’s keychain such as your GMail password or your corporate VPN password.  So if you plan on losing your iPhone someplace, make sure that you are far away from the Fraunhofer Institute Secure Information Technology (Fraunhofer SIT).
• Anyone who wants a Verizon iPhone can now buy one, although if you are a current Verizon subscriber not yet eligible for an upgrade, you cannot take advantage of the subsidized $200/$300 price.  Matt Peckham of PC World explains that for some, it is actually cheaper to end your Verizon contract and pay cancellation charges to get the best price on a Verizon iPhone.
• The Ronald Reagan library added 250 iPod touches as tour guides, according to Kelly Hodgkins of TUAW.
• If you enjoy being a lawyer so much that you also want to play one on your iPhone, JC Fletcher of Joystiq reports that the game Phoenix Wright is on sale right now for $0.99, along with many other iPhone games from Capcom, Sega and Namco.
• And finally, if you have an iPhone, chances are before long your spouse and kids will want one too.  How do you manage charging all of those iPhones?  Parat Solutions has the product for you — the PARASYNC which can charge 20 iPhones at once from a single iTunes library for the low price of $980.  (via iPhone Download Blog)

The iPad weighs just enough and is just slick enough that if you are walking around carrying it, or just sitting down and reading on it, there is a real danger of it slipping out of your hand.  Thus, I am always interested in devices that make the iPad more secure in your hand.  I recently reviewed a product called FreeOneHand that adds a nub to the back of your iPad to make it easier to hold, and I consider that product to be a good solution to the problem.  Kensington recently sent me a free review unit of a new product called the BlackBelt.  This product, which sells for $39.99 from Kensington (or only $32.00 on Amazon), is sort of like an Apple iPhone Bumper for the iPad, and I thought that it might be another good solution to the problem of an iPad slipping out of your hands.

The BlackBelt is simply a thick silicone rubber rectangle that fits around the iPad.  Unlike the Apple iPhone Bumper which is reinforced with plastic and thus is fairly sturdy, this is completely flexible.  Placing it around an iPad is extremely easy.

There are holes cut on the sides for the iPhone buttons, except that for the power button at the top of the iPad, there is instead just a rubber button that allows you to easily press the iPad button through the rubber.

The Kensington website says that the “Kensington BlackBelt™ protects the edges and cushions your iPad while offering a secure grip for handling in any iPad orientation.”  It certainly does provide some cushion to the edge of the iPad, so I suppose if you hit the edge of an iPad with the BlackBelt on it, there would be added protection.  But if you drop an iPad, I doubt that this product would provide very much protection with the entire screen and back exposed.

What I really expected was for this product to provide a “secure grip for handling” the iPad.  It does to some extent, but not as much as I had hoped.  The rubber on the BlackBelt is actually somewhat slippery — less so than a naked iPad, but still slippery enough that it is still fairly easy for an iPad wearing the BlackBelt to slip out of my hand.

I’m usually a big fan of Kensington products.  I love the Kensginton AssistOne in my car just as much today as I did when I reviewed it several months ago.  And the PowerLift battery / stand that I recently reviewed is a useful gadget.  The BlackBelt does make it somewhat more pleasent to hold an iPad in your hands because it is soft and it has some give, so I’m sure that some people will like this product.  But because it is more slippery than I had hoped, I wouldn’t feel comfortable relying on this device while I walk around a courtroom holding an iPad, and thus I cannot recommend the BlackBelt.

Click here to get the Kensginton BlackBelt from Amazon ($32.00).

This app is amazing.  Okay, now that I have that off my chest, let me explain what I am talking about.  The new Google Translate app for the iPhone, released yesterday, allows you to enter text in one language — you can type it, or easier still, just speak the words out loud — and then in about a second the app displays your words in a different language — and with one touch can speak those words out loud.  For example, make sure your the app is in English to French mode, press one button in the app, say to your iPhone “where is the train station,” and then a second later your iPhone displays “où est la gare” and you can tap one button to have that spoken in French so that the person in Paris can hear and understand you and point in a direction.  You could even press one button to switch the translation from French to English, have the other person speak the answer in French, and then you can see the answer in English.  You need to have Internet access for this app to work, but I can imagine being in a foreign country in a Wi-Fi spot and using this app to communicate back and forth with someone even though neither one of us speak the language of the other.  And you get all of this for the price of free.  Amazing.

Here is a little more detail on how the app works.  When you launch the app you will see two languages displayed at the top (if you have used the app before, they are the last two languages that you used).  The “from” language is on the left, the “go” language is on the right.  You can quickly swap those by tapping the arrows between the listed languages. Just below that, there is a text box.  You can either tap in the box and type some words, or you can tap the microphone button just to the right of the box and speak.  If you choose to speak to the app, the app notices when you stop speaking for a second and then starts to process your words.  The app will only let you talk for about five seconds or so, long enough to say a short to medium length sentence.

After only a second or so, the app will then display the translated text in the language that you selected.  For 24 languages — Arabic, Chinese (both simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish — the app will display a speaker icon to the right of the words.  Tap that icon to have the app speak the phrase in a very authentic-sounding voice.  Google says that the voices are speech synthesized, but they sound quite authentic to my ear.  Note that the text-to-speech translation is limited to 100 characters, another reason that this app works best for shorter sentences. For an additional 34 languages — such as Azerbaijani, Hebrew, Irish, Swahili, Thai and Vietnamese — the app will display the text but does not offer to speak the text.

For many languages that do not use the Roman (Latin) alphabet used in America, Europe and elsewhere, just below the translated text the app will display a romanized version of the text, the idea being that if you try to pronounce those letters, you will roughly pronounce the words.  For example, in the Russian example picture above, the first word displayed is “Простите.”  If you are not familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russia, you won’t know how to say that, but romanization gives you a hint, telling you for example that a “П” in Russian sounds like a “P” in English, a “р” in Russian sounds like an “r” in English, etc.

Be aware that the translation is quite literal and thus even a “perfect” translation might not get the result that you want.  For example, in the above pictures, you can see that the text that I said in English was “where is the bathroom.”  But note that in many other countries such as France and Russia, the “bathroom” is the place that you take a bath, whereas the “toilet” is the place that you take care of other important bodily functions.  So to get a more precise translation, you would need to know to ask “where is the toilet” like this:

Another very useful feature is a full screen mode that lets you enlarge the translated text.  Tap the box with the four arrows in it and the app will show, in large type and in landscape mode, the translated text.  If you are in a noisy area, the other person may not be able to hear your iPhone very well, but someone can easily see the words on an iPhone in this mode.

 

 

There are a few more features in the app.  You can tap the star next to a translation to add it to a list of saved translations.  One good reason to save a translation that you can use it someplace even if you don’t have a network connection.  Thus, in your hotel using Wi-Fi, you can say some phrases that you plan to use and get translations, and then when you are out and about in a foreign country and not using a data plan, you can still use the translations you prepared ahead of time.  If you tapped the speaker icon when you had that Internet connection, the audio file is saved in the app and can be used later when you do not have a data connection.  Even if you don’t add a star to a translation, tapping the Home button at the bottom left will always show you a list of your most recent translations.  (In the Settings, you can clear that history if you want.)

This app is incredible right now, but I cannot wait to see what comes next.  For example, although this app is new to the iPhone, a similar app has been available for Google’s Android operating system for over a year.  The Android version of the app currently has in beta a feature called conversation mode.  Google describes it as follows:

In conversation mode, simply press the microphone for your language and start speaking. Google Translate will translate your speech and read the translation out loud. Your conversation partner can then respond in their language, and you’ll hear the translation spoken back to you. Because this technology is still in alpha, factors like regional accents, background noise or rapid speech may make it difficult to understand what you’re saying. Even with these caveats, we’re excited about the future promise of this technology to be able to help people connect across languages.

 

This conversation mode currently only works for English and Spanish, but it gives a sneak peak of what could be coming soon to the iPhone app.

Note that this is currently just an iPhone app.  It runs on an iPad, but is not optimized for the iPad’s screen.  Having said that, I can still see an advantage of using this app on an iPad (in 2x mode) because of its large screen.  Speak a sentence, tap the full screen button, and then you can hold up your iPad like a huge sign making it easy for the non-English speaker to see the translation even from far away.

It has been possible to use the Google Translate website with the iPhone for a while now, and the website was even nicely formatted for the iPhone screen, but the “web app” version of Google translate couldn’t hear what you said nor could it speak translations out loud, plus it lacked the other features like full screen mode.  This new Google Translate app brings translation on the iPhone to a new level.  If you think that you ever might encounter someone who does not speak English, I urge you to get this app immediately.

Click here to get Google Translate (free): 

Two years ago I reviewed an app from Law ToGo that contains the Internal Revenue Code.  The developer has now released new apps for the iPhone and iPad (different apps) that contain the latest text of both the Internal Revenue Code and the Treasury Regulations in a single app.  I don’t practice tax law, but the developer was kind enough to send me two free copies for review, so I gave one of the copies to my colleague David Wolf who practices public finance law and uses the Tax Code and Regs all the time.  Wolf and I agree that these look like useful apps for any attorney for whom tax law is a part of his or her practice.

When you launch the app, the you are instantly given the choice to use either the Code or the Regs.  Once you select a body of law, you are then brought to the search screen where you can enter a number of a specific prevision.

Use the wheels to enter a specific number and press the Search button to jump to that section.  For example, Wolf frequently helps clients draft various types of debt instruments such as bonds, so he often uses Section 149:

If you don’t know the specific number, you can also do a full text search.  For example, I did a full text search for “volunteer fire department” and saw the two key sections.  Tap on a provision to see the full text with your terms highlighted.  Searches of the Code are pretty quick.  Wolf tells me that some of his searches in the Treasury Regulations took 20 seconds.  (The app warns you that the process might take a while and give you a progress indicator so that you can estimate how much time you have left for the search to complete.)

In the screens that I have shown above, you see menu bars at the top and bottom.  Using the buttons at the bottom, you can tap the left or right arrow to browse through the sections, you can tap the four arrows pointing out to increase the font size (or get the opposite result by tapping the button with four arrows pointing in), you can press the plus sign to add a section to a list o bookmarks, and the envelope lets you e-mail the text of a section.  However, if you don’t press any buttons for a few seconds, the menu bars disappear so that you can see more of the statute at one time:

If you just want to browse through headings, you can tap the Code button to see the outline of the Code.

 

If you use an iPad, there is also an iPad version of this app.  Unfortunately, there is not a single universal app; you need to buy another app for the iPad.  It works the same way as the iPhone app, you just have more space to see more of the text at one time.  By the way, the iPhone and iPad apps can both be used in either portrait or landscape mode.

 

Unlike some other apps that contain legal statutes, these apps lack hyperlinks.  Those would make the app more useful, but Wolf told me that this might be difficult for an app like this because a typical cross-reference in this area law might be “as described in paragraph (b)(3)(ii) of this section” rather than “as described in Section 149(e).”

Note that there are a few other apps in the App Store which contain the tax code, but I cannot tell how up to date they are (and people have posted reviews on many of them complaining that they have not been updated).  The developer of this app says in the app description that this app will be updated throughout 2011, noting:

This upgrade will provide you with all of the 2011 updates as they become available to us. We expect there will be three updates to the Internal Revenue Code and one update to the Treasury Regulations in 2011. The initial version will start with the February 2, 2010 version of the IRC and April 2009 version of the Treasury Regulations.

Should you get this app?  Wolf told me that when is sitting at his desk, he is still more likely to use the paper books just because that is what he is used to doing, but when away from his desk it is very useful to have this extensive body of law readily available on an iPhone that is always with him without having to lug around the books.  You can find this same law on the Internet for free, but it is much more convenient to use an app like this that has everything in one place, formatted for the iPhone or iPad screen and easy to search and bookmark, and ready to use even if you don’t have an internet connection.  At $25 and $35, these are some of the more expensive apps that you might purchase, but if the tax code is a part of your practice, I suspect that it would be very useful to have one or both of these apps on your iPhone and/or iPad.

Click here to get Internal Revenue Code & Treasury Regulations 2011 for iPhone ($24.99): 

Click here to get Internal Revenue Code & Treasury Regulations 2011 for iPad ($34.99): 

For those of us here in New Orleans, last year’s Super Bowl will always be considered the best Super Bowl ever.  Yesterday for Super Bowl XLV, I wasn’t particularly interested in either of the teams playing, so like many others I mostly watched for the ads — which in my opinion were just so-so.  Apple did not purchase an ad yesterday, but it was interesting to see that the iPhone and iPad still had a presence.

As I’m sure that you know, many credit Apple for helping to cement the Super Bowl as the most important venue for running commercials because Apple ran its famous 1984 commercial during Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984.  Many still consider that commercial — the introduction of the Macintosh computer — to be the best commercial ever made.  I’m sure that most of you reading this have seen it before, but here it is again:

Although Apple did not run a commercial yesterday, its presence was felt several times.  First, Motorola ran a commercial called “Empower the People” to promote its upcoming Xoom, an Android 3.0 based tablet computer that will compete with the iPad.  The commercial is an obvious homage to Apple’s famous 1984 commercial, except that the ad tries to portray Apple users as undifferentiated drones.  (It is interesting that Apple’s white earphones are so iconic that simply showing someone with white cords hanging from their ears instantly identifies them as an iPod/iPhone/iPad user.)  I don’t have a direct link to the commercial, but you can see it here on YouTube where Ad Blitz is showing all of the Super Bowl XLV commercials.  Here is the Motorola commercial:

Then there was the new iPad-only newspaper, The Daily, which ran an ad during the Super Bowl.  I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a commercial on TV for an iPhone or iPad app before (except for the Apple ads that promote several apps at a time) and I certainly have never seen an app advertised in the Super Bowl before.  Between the $3 million that The Daily reportedly spent to run this ad and the other money that is behind this app, it is obvious that Rupert Murdoch expects The Daily to be a big deal.  (I have mixed emotions about The Daily myself; the stories don’t have a lot of depth and it is slow to load, but I am holding out hope that it will improve over time.)  Here is The Daily commercial:

Then there was Verizon’s ad for the new Verizon iPhone, in which they brought back their “can you hear me now” guy:

And finally, there was the commercial for the upcoming animated movie Rio.  At first blush, the commercial just seems like a normal ad for a movie.  Here is that ad:

But if you pause the ad at the 28 second mark, you see this for just a fraction of a second:

Look on that wooden box on the right and you see this:

That is a hint telling you to play level 13-12 in the hit iPhone and iPad game Angry Birds — one of the few games that I love so much that I actually reviewed it on iPhone J.D., even though this is certainly not a game review website.  (Level 13-12 is one of several new levels recently added to the game in a free update.)  I did some digging on the Internet and learned that you can unlock a golden egg on Level 13-12 by doing the following.  Your first bird is a yellow bird; do whatever you want with him.  For your second bird, the white bird, pull the slingshot the wrong direction so that he is headed BEHIND the spot where the birds line up:

Then release and just after he passes the other birds, tap your finger to drop an egg:

That will cause Golden Egg to appear which unlocks a new level in the game:

To activate that new level, go to the Golden Egg screen in the game, where you will see a special egg that is shaped like a football instead of the normal egg shape:

Tap the football to play the special level:

Once you beat the level, you will see a globe with an arrow pointing to a Rio icon.  Tap that arrow:

The app then opens up Safari and you are brought to a special webpage on which you can sign up to win a trip to Rio de Janeiro to see the world premiere of the movie:

While the football game itself was nothing special as far as I was concerned, I enjoyed seeing the references in the Super Bowl to Apple products in these four different ads, and I enjoyed playing the new level of Angry Birds on my iPhone.  Having said that, next year, I’d rather just see the Saints in the Super Bowl again.

There is no question about the biggest iPhone story of the week — it’s the iPhone on Verizon.  I know many lawyers who have told me that they have been waiting a long time to get a Verizon iPhone and now are excited to finally be able to do so.  I am sure that we will soon see reports of phenomenal sales.  Here are the iPhone stories of note from this past week:

• As I thought might be the case, pre-ordering an iPhone from Verizon wasn’t easy and its website got overloaded, as reported by Jenna Wortham of the New York Times.
• Nevertheless, Josh Ong of AppleInsider reports that both Verizon and Apple ran out of their pre-sale stock last night.  Verizon confirms this on its website.
• For those lucky enough to make a pre-order yesterday, David Quilty of TUAW reports that the Verizon iPhone are apparently already shipping with delivery expected later today.
• Apple better make some more of the Verizon iPhones fast.  Josh Ong of AppleInsider reports that according to one study, over half of Verizon’s current Android and Blackberry users are likely to switch to the Verizon iPhone.
• Apple gave a number of tech journalists a Verizon iPhone to try out last week, and the early reviews are coming in.  They are pretty consistent.  The Verizon iPhone 4 is essentially identical an AT&T iPhone 4.  The main improvement is that, in most areas, there are fewer dead spots on Verizon so it is easier to make and receive calls and not have them drop, plus the calls often sound better, although of course this varies from location to location and there are still some spots with better AT&T coverage than Verizon coverage.  On the other hand, the data on the Verizon iPhone is slower, and in some cases much slower, than data on the AT&T iPhone.  The other difference is that you cannot use data while you are making a phone call on Verizon, so you can’t send an e-mail or check a website while you are on the phone.  If you want to read some of the notable reviews, I recommend…
• David Pogue’s review for the New York Times
• John Gruber’s review on Daring Fireball
• MG Siegler’s review for TechCrunch
• Josh Topolsky’s review for Engadget
• Jason Snell’s review for Macworld
• For now, only the Verizon iPhone has the Mobile Hotspot feature, but according to Dan Moren of Macworld, this feature is coming to AT&T on Feburary 13.  You have to be using AT&T’s $25/month 2GB plan (which means giving up, potentially forever, your $30/month unlimited plan if you have one), and for an extra $20/month you get the Mobile Hospot feature plus an additional 2GB (4GB total). 
• Lonely Planet makes travel guides for the iPhone that normally cost about $5.99 per city.  But to give travel inspiration to those trapped inside with the winter weather right now, a number of the guides are now free.  However, this deal ends at 9pm Eastern tonight, so act quickly.  You can currently get free apps for my home town of New Orleans or other great cities including Boston, Chicago, Fort Myers, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, New York, San Fancisco, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington, D.C.  (Those are all App Store links.)  I’ve gone through the New Orleans guide, and it is quite good; hopefully the other city guides are just as helpful.  (Thanks to Jason Bergmann for the tip.)
• Joe Wilcox of Beta News points out that ten years ago in 2001, Apple made some investments and decisions that had major importance for the company:  (1) Apple launched iTunes in January, (2) Apple launched Mac OS X in March (which of course is the basis for the iOS), (3) Apple opened the first two Apple Stores in May, and (4) the first iPod debuted in October.  All four of those events ten years ago played a critical role in the iPhone being what it is today.
• The top two operating systems on the global Internet are of course Windows and Mac, but iOS is now #3.  According to Vlad Savov of Engadget, iOS’s 2.05% share ie enough to put it ahead of Linux, Java, Android, etc.
• Alan Cohen wrote a great article for Law Technology News about how lawyers are demanding devices like the iPhone and iPad and this is causing law firms to find a way to support these devices.
• Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is apparently a big fan of the iPad, and shortly before she was shot in Tucson, she talked to Elizabeth Saab of the new iPad-centric newspaper The Daily about how she uses the iPad.  You can see the video report here, and this is a link on the web so you don’t need to use the iPad app to read the story and watch the video.  It’s worth watching.
• As we prepare for the Super Bowl, it is a good time to remember the famous 1984 Apple commercial.  Steve Hayden of AdWeek wrote a good article on the commercial.
• Ben Brooks of The Brooks Reviews explains why the iPad is a great tool to take to meetings.  He makes some good points.
• Chad Garrett of TiPb compares iWork and Documents to Go on the iPad.
• Ted Brooks reviews Jury Duty, a $39.99 iPad app that can be used to assist with jury selection.
• And finally, if you are looking to do something unique with your iPhone while it sits on your desk, a company called Apps-and-More has designed a cardboard cuckoo clock and other faceplates that work with an iPhone app to display the time.  The cost is $13.20, and you can see everything about how the app works in three YouTube videos.  The first and second ones provide the setup info, and here is the third one that shows the final product in use.  Silly, tacky, but sort of fun:

Yesterday, Rupert Murdoch and Apple VP Eddy Cue (the guy who runs iTunes and the App Store) announced the new iPad-only daily newspaper called The Daily.  It has a ton of content and lots of pictures, and has a New York Post and USA Today sort of feel to it.  Many stories can be viewed in either portrait or landscape mode, but some stories only show a large picture in landscape mode with an icon at the bottom left telling you that you need to turn your iPad to see the story.

If you want a more comprehensive review of the app, I recommend these articles:

• Hands-On With the Daily for iPad by Darrell Etherington of GigaOM.
• First thoughts on The Daily by Jim Dalrymple of The Loop
• First look:  ‘The Daily’ for iPad promises in-depth, interactive news by Neil Hughes of AppleInsider
• Another look at The Daily by Dave Caolo of TUAW
• News Corp. lauches The Daily news magazine for iPad by Philip Michaels of Macworld
• News Corporation Introduces The Daily, a Digital-Only Newspaper by Jeremy Peters and Brian Stelter of The New York Times

Interesting tidbit from that New York Times article for people like me who grew up loving Superman:  Murdoch originally wanted to call the new publication “The Daily Planet,” but DC Comics would not agree to grant the rights to use the name.

There is little reason for me to discuss The Daily itself because if you own an iPad, just go ahead and download it yourself and see what you think.  For the next two weeks, The Daily is free (thanks to a sponsorship by Verizon).  After that, it will cost $0.99 a week or $39.99 a year to subscribe, with subscriptions taking place through iTunes.  I haven’t decided yet whether I will subscribe to The Daily after the free period has ended.

It is the subscription model itself that I find most interesting.  I love reading news on my iPad, and I would love it if all of my print magazine subscriptions suddenly turned into iPad-only subscriptions so that I would always have my magazines with me when I travel or just find a few minutes to read.  The good news is that the subscription model used by The Daily will be available for other publications, so I hope that in the future we will see lots of subscription options for the iPad.  The bad news for publishers is that, according to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is now requiring that any publisher who sells content — both books and subscriptions — must sell that content as an in-app purchase, which means that Apple keeps 30% of the sale.  Some of that is used to pay for the credit card processing fee, so the publisher does realize some savings by having Apple handle the transaction, but my suspicion is that this will reduce per-book or per-issue profits for publishers.  If the publisher sees a huge increase in sales by being on the iPad, I suppose it is worth it.  But if not, this could result in higher prices for consumers who want to consume the content on the iPad.

It is still way to early to tell how all of this will sort out, but I’m optimistic that we will soon live in a world in which I no longer have to pay for publications to be printed and mailed or delivered to me and instead I can just pay to have the latest issues instantly appear on my iPad and/or iPhone, all in a format that really take advantage of the iPad/iPhone and the iOS. 

Finally, I like this quote from Rupert Murdoch yesterday, talking about Steve Jobs and the promising future of the iPad:  “Here we have the man who invented the personal computer, then the laptop.  He’s now destroying them.  That is an amazing life.”

Click here for The Daily (free for two weeks; then $0.99/day, $39.99/year): 

If you are a Verizon customer who has been waiting for the iPhone to come to Verizon before joining the rest of us iPhone users, your time has come.  Or, at least, it will tonight.  The Verizon website says that early tomorrow morning, at Midnight Pacific / 3am eastern, you can finally place an order for a Verizon iPhone 4 to be available for pickup on or after February 10.  In the past, when AT&T has started to allow pre-orders of a new model of the iPhone, the phone lines and websites have been jammed on Day 1, making it very difficult to place an order that will make it possible to receive the phone on the first day of availability.  It will be interesting to see how Verizon handles what might be a huge influx in traffic.  Perhaps by opening up the lines in the middle of the night, Verizon hopes to limit somewhat the people trying to be first in line.

Having said that, as I noted in my original post on the Verizon iPhone, you should consider whether you want a few more months.  I suspect that the 2011 version of the iPhone will be available on both AT&T and Verizon in July or perhaps the end of June.  If you are a power user who is likely to appreciate having all of the latest cool features, I’d probably wait.  If you are just a normal smartphone user who is frustrated with whatever Verizon phone that you are using now and aren’t the sort of person who seeks to exploit every possible feature of your gadgets, go ahead and order now.  The iPhone 4 is a great phone; I love mine, and I’m sure that you will love yours.

I love reading documents on my iPad.  Having said that, the combination of the weight of 1.5 pounds (1.6 if you have a 3G model like I do) and the need to pinch the sides to stop it from slipping out of my hands means that I experience hand fatigue after holding the iPad for a while.  Sometimes I find that I can get a better grip on my iPad when it is in its case, but that also adds to the bulk and the weight.  I hope that the next model of the iPad is even lighter, but even with a lighter model there is not an ideal way to hold the iPad for long periods of time.

[UPDATE 5/23/2012:  This review is of the original FreeOneHand as used with the first generation iPad.  There is a second generation FreeOneHand that works with the iPad 2 and the third generation iPad, and my review of the new FreeOneHand is here.]

 

FreeOneHand is an iPad accessory that aims to solve this problem, and it does it very well.  The company sent me a free sample for review purposes, and I have been using for the last few weeks.  The product has a sort of flexible, rubbery, plastic feel to it.  The website for the product says that it is “constructed of flexible and resilient elastomers that snugly fit the edges of the iPad. FreeOneHand’s elastomer construction provides an excellent combination of lightweight properties, rigidity to function as a stand, tackiness to protect the iPad from falls by gripping almost any surface, and a rubber-like softness for comfort during use.”  That description seems about right to me.

 

To use the FreeOneHand, you simply slip the four corners around the corners of your iPad.  This takes only seconds to do.  Once attached, you can easily hold your iPad with just one hand by using the knob and the holes.  I find myself using the device three different ways.  Sometimes I slip the knob between my second and third finger.  Sometimes I slip my fingers into the holes underneath the knob.  Here are pictures showing those two methods:

But the pose that I use the most is to put my thumb through one of the bottom holes and then grip the knob, much like you would grip a door knob:

 

In any of these poses, you can hold the iPad up for a long period of time before your hand gets tired — much longer than would be possible without the FreeOneHand.  I frequently find myself reading PDF versions of legal opinions using the GoodReader app with the FreeOneHand in my left hand and a BoxWave stylus in my right hand, which I use to highlight important passages in the opinions.  To be fair, after using the FreeOneHand for a very long period of time, I often find that it too can become uncomfortable — which usually leads me to just shift my grip position, which helps for a while.  The point is not that FreeOneHand lets you effortlessly hold your iPad forever, but instead that it allows you to hold the iPad with a single hand for much longer than you could without the FreeOneHand.

The FreeOneHand’s hold on the iPad is very secure so you don’t have to worry about dropping the iPad.  I hear lawyers talk about using an iPad in a courtroom, but I can’t imagine walking around holding an iPad instead of a legal pad or document because it is so easy to imagine the iPad slipping through my fingers and crashing to the ground.  But with a FreeOneHand attached, I have no hesitation walking around with an iPad in one hand.

Even if I am just sitting in a chair or sitting up in bed, the FreeOneHand makes it much easier to hold an iPad.  (It is equally easily to hold an iPad in a landscape or a portrait position with the FreeOneHand.)  Here are two pictures from the FreeOneHand website showing these sorts of positions:

 

 

Here is another picture from the FreeOneHand website.  I’m not sure what this couple is looking at on their iPad as they are wearing their PJs, but they certainly seem to be enjoying themselves:

 

The FreeOneHand also props up the iPad at an angle when it is sitting on a desk.  This puts the iPad at a nice viewing angle for reading or watching a video.  The knob slips on a table too much for me to type on the iPad while it is at this angle, but the website shows people doing this, so perhaps with a different table surface you will experience better results.  But to be honest, if I were just looking to put my iPad at an angle, there are other products I would use that provide multiple different angles.  The unique advantage of the FreeOneHand it to let you easily hold an iPad with one hand.

If you want to see a video of the FreeOneHand in action, this post on the AppAdvice website has a video of use of the device taken at CES.  Also, here is a promotional video that the manufacturer put on YouTube:

This post on the Tech Bucket Blog also includes picture of the FreeOneHand taken at CES, including a picture of a belt clip (presumably an accessory currently in development) that can be used to carry an iPad on your belt.  I encourage any iPhone J.D. reader to please slap some sense into me if you ever see me walking around town with an iPad on my belt.

The FreeOneHand comes in six different colors and can be purchased on the FreeOneHand website for $39.94 with free shipping.  Having said that, I see distributors selling it through Amazon for up to half that price with $4.49 shipping.

If you ever find yourself wishing that there was an easier way to hold an iPad with one hand for an extended period of time, I think that you will really like this product.  It has certainly made it much easier for me to use my iPad in my office and at home.

A large number of iPhone and iPad accessories and apps were announced at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) a few weeks ago (see my posts 1, 2, 3, 4).  I am currently trying out some of those new products and will post about them soon.  Over the last few days, the Macworld Expo was held in San Francisco, and a number of new iPhone/iPad products were announced and demonstrated.  Macworld magazine selected a number of Best of Show winners — most of which were for the Mac, but a few were for the iPhone and iPad.  Beatweek also selected its favorite products at Macworld, and the website 148Apps announced the 2010 Best App Ever Awards at Macworld Expo.  Here are some of the products voted “best” that struck me as potentially attractive for iPhone J.D. readers:

BusyToDo.  This is an iPhone to-do list app that syncs with BusyCal or iCal on the Mac.  I haven’t tried it myself, but it appears to have a clean interface and lots of features.  You can get more info on the program by going here on the developer’s website.  Click here for BusyToDo ($0.99): 

  

iRest Tablet Stand.  This $49.90 device raises an iPad at an angle for when you are using your iPad on your lap or on a table.  Roman Loyola of Macworld says that it features “foam cushions for resting the stand on your lap, and a torque hinge that allows you to adjust the angle.”

myTrek.  This item, which doesn’t even show up yet on the Scosche website, is a heart rate monitor that uses Bluetooth to talk to the upcoming myTrek app on your iPhone to help your manage your training.

Fling.  This device adds a joystick to your iPad.  It attaches to the iPad’s screen with small suction cups and works with about 100 games that have virtual on-screen joysticks.  I rarely play these sorts of games on my iPad, in part because the touch controls are a little awkward, and I can imagine that for the right game this could be a big help.  They cost $20 each or you can get a pair for $30, for those games that have virtual joysticks on both the the left and right of the screen.

Pocket Informant.  I know that a lot of people swear by the Getting Things Done strategy for task management pioneered by David Allen, although I haven’t tried the system myself.  This app includes a calendar and a task list to help you get things done using Allen’s GTD methods.  Click here for Pocket Informant for iPhone ($4.99):    Click here for Pocket Informant for iPad ($6.99): 

  

ZAGGmate with keyboard.  This $99.99 hard aluminum iPad case matches the iPad, props the iPad up an an angle, and includes a keyboard that talks to the iPad via Bluetooth.  When I travel, I find it very useful to use a Bluetooth keyboard for typing longer e-mail messages, editing documents, etc.  I can imagine the advantage of having a keyboard built-in to the case.

FastMac Impact Shield iPhone 4 case.  If you need extreme protection for your iPhone, this might be the case for you.  As Beatweek says:  “Made of super thin rubber-like material, it appears to be just another (very thin) iPhone case. But start whacking the material with a hammer, as the FastMac folks loved doing at their Macworld 2011 booth this week, and you realize that the Impact Shield is nearly indestructible.”  I don’t see a price for the iPhone version, but I see on the website that there is also a version for the iPad for $39.95.

Angry Birds.  The game won 148Apps’s overall award for Best App Ever.  My review of the iPhone version is here, but having now played this game on the iPhone, iPad and my 27″ iMac, I think that the best version is the iPad version.  Click here for Angry Birds ($0.99):   Click here for Angry Birds HD for iPad ($4.99): 

Camera+.  This utility won 148App’s Best Visual Design and Best Photography App categories.  My review is here.  The app was removed from the App Store because Apple didn’t like the use of the volume button to snap a picture, but it is now back with that feature removed and other new features.  Click here for Camera+ ($1.99): 

Shop Savvy Barcode Scanner.  This app, which won 148App’s Best Use of iOS Hardware category, let’s you scan a barcode and then tells you where you can get the item for cheaper.  Click here for Shop Savvy Barcode Scanner (free): 

IMDb.  This app won 148App’s Best Reference App category for the iPad.  I use it all the time on my iPhone or iPad (I especially love the iPad version) when I am watching a movie or TV show at home and i find myself wondering about an actor in the show or other information related to the show.  Click here for IMDb (free): 

FlightTrack Pro.  I keep hearing good things about this travel app which won the 148App Best Travel App category for the iPad.  It syncs with Tripit for those who use that service, it includes maps and even works in an offline mode so you can see the location of your airplane while you are flying (as estimated by the app), and it has real-time status updates for gates, delays and cancellations.  There is also a non-pro version for half the price that doesn’t sync with Tripit, lacks push alerts for flight updates, and doesn’t include maps of airports.  I haven’t yet tried this app myself, but hope to do so soon.  Click here for FlightTrack ($4.99):    Click here for FlightTrack Pro ($9.99):