Jeff Richardson

I listen to my iPhone in my car all the time — mostly podcasts, other times music, occasionally an audio book, and sometimes while using a GPS navigation app at the same time — but I’ve been in the market for a new car kit.  I had been using the Griffin AutoPilot, a device which I liked because it charged the iPhone, provided audio out, and even had a button on top of the part that plugs into the cigarette lighter / auxilary port that could be used to play/pause, FF and RW.  Unfortunately, after about 18 months of use, the button stopped working, and I had really grown to like the button feature.  After looking at all of the current replacement options, I decided to purchase a Kensington LiquidAUX Auciliary Car Kit with Remote, and my verdict after two weeks of use is that I really like it.  You can buy it from Kensington for $59.99, but this link will give you the Amazon price which is currently $45.84.  (Note that Amazon links on iPhone J.D. include an affiliate code that won’t cost you anything but Amazon provides iPhone J.D. with a small referral fee if you buy something.)

The basic features are the ones that you find in any car kit.  You plug one end in to your cigarette lighter / auxilary port and the other end has a standard iPhone dock connector.  It provides power to the iPhone and also acts as an audio out.  A cord comes out of the plug that plugs in to your auxiliary audio input on your car stereo.  I actually don’t have an auxiliary audio input in my car, so instead I use a cassette tape adapter and I use cheap ($5.00) 3.5mm Stereo Coupler to connect the two cords.

What makes the LiquidAUX special is that it comes with a small wireless remote.  The remote has four buttons: play/pause at the top, rewind on the left, fast forward on the right and shuffle at the bottom.  The remote comes with a case in which it sits.  The case includes a velcro strap that is designed to be wrapped around your steering wheel like this:

(By the way, you can click any of the pictures in this post to see larger versions.)  You can attach the remote anywhere on your steering wheel, and the remote easily pops out of the case and can be turned 180º so that the play/pause button is at the top no matter which side of the steering wheel the case is on.

The remote works great and makes it very easy to start, stop and change music on your iPhone while you are driving without having to look at the iPhone screen.  In fact, you don’t even need to look at the remote to use it because the buttons are raised.  Thus, you can feel where you need to press without taking your eyes off of the road.  I found that I actually didn’t like the remote on my steering wheel because as I turned my wheel and felt the wheel slide under my hand, I didn’t like the slight bump of the case for the remote.  But I quickly found a great solution for the layout of my car:  I placed the remote around the emergency break right next to my seat.  That actually places the remote at a perfect position for my right hand and I can easily find and use the remote without needing to look at it at all.  So here is the setup in my car:

You might not mind the remote case on your steering wheel, but in case you do, consider whether you have an optimal alternative location in your car like I do.  Wherever you place it, the remote is really the best part of this product.  By the way, in the above picture, my iPhone is upside down (but it also works right side up because there is a notch for the cord) inside of a Griffin iSqueez, a product that is unfortunately now discontinued.  If you can still find one, it does a nice job of holding an iPod or iPhone in place in a car’s cup holder as long as you don’t use a case.  (With a case, the iPhone is too big for the iSqueez.)

Here are some additional details that might be of interest to you.  The wireless remote uses the 2.4GHz spectrum.  When your car power turns off, the device goes off as well so that it doesn’t drain your car battery.  Unlike some car chargers, this one won’t pop up the warning every time you connect it that “This accessory is not made to work with iPhone” which is nice.  When your car power turns on, the device turns on, and then you can press the play button on the remote to resume playback.  It works with the original iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, and because the cord plugs into the iPhone dock connector port, it works with most cases (assuming that your case has an opening for the dock connector).  [UPDATE 7/5/10:  I’ve been using the Kensington LiquidAUX Auxiliary Car Kit with my iPhone 4 and it works fine.]  The plug has a short cord to go to your audio auxiliary port, but the unit comes with a four foot audio extension cable in case your car’s cigarette lighter / power port is far away from your audio auxiliary port.

I have a slight concern about the iPhone dock connection because you can easily pull the cord out of your iPhone.  For now, the connection is snug enough that this isn’t a problem, but I do wonder whether in the future a slight pull on the cord might result in the cord popping out of my iPhone.  I’ll just have to see how it holds up.

Kensington makes some other models in the LiquidAUX line that I did not try.  a “Deluxe” model costs $20 more than the version I bought and has a sturdy arm that comes out of the power plug with the dock on the top that your iPhone fits into.  There were some mixed reviews on Amazon about how well the arm works.  There is also a Bluetooth model for $40 more than the model I purchased which doesn’t need a physical connection to the iPhone at all — music streams from your iPhone to the LiquidAUX using Bluetooth A2DP — but that model doesn’t charge the iPhone while in the car.

I’ve used the Kensington LiquidAUX both on short trips around town and on long road trips while using MotionX GPS Drive and listenin
g to an Audible audio book and all of my experiences with this product have been positive.  The remote works great and is so convenient to have at my fingertips.  The price (at Amazon) was right, the device powers my iPhone, the sound quality is good through my car stereo, and the remote works great.  If you are in the market for an auxiliary car kit for your iPhone, this one is worth a look.

Click here for the Kensington LiquidAUX Auxiliary Car Kit with Remote from Amazon ($45.84).

I am a huge fan of Nuance’s Dragon Dictation, the free iPhone app that lets you speak a few sentences to your iPhone and have them quickly transcribed for an e-mail, text, etc.  The app works great, and when it makes mistakes they are very easy to correct.  The Nuance technology is also used in Siri, another useful app that I recently reviewed.  Dragon products have been available for the computer for a long time now and even come in special editions for lawyers and doctors.  I’ve been wondering whether Nuance would use its special knowledge of legal and medical terms to improve the iPhone app.  We now know that the answer to half of that question is yes.

This week, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is holding its annual conference and exhibition in Atlanta.  One of the exhibitors is Nuance, and yesterday Nuance announced a new line of Dragon Dictation iPhone products for people in the medical field, all of which are discussed here on the Nuance website.

First, Dragon Medical Mobile Search is an app that will let you use your voice to search for medical information on sites such as MedScape, MedLine, Epocrates and Google.  That app should be available by April 30th.  Second, Dragon Medical Mobile Dictation is a version of the iPhone Dragon Dictation app that understands medical terms.  Thus, doctors can use it to dictate their medical notes.  Third, Dragon Medical Mobile Recorder will record longer dictation, send it to the Nuance website, and have the transcription sent back to the doctor as a “high quality draft document” for the clinician to “review and sign-off.”  That last service requires a subscription to Nuance’s transcription services.

Additionally, Nuance announced a Dragon Medial Mobile SDK that third parties can use to add Dragon Medical Dictation technology directly into their medical iPhone apps.

Nuance has not yet announced a price for its medical apps.

Why am I writing about this?  I don’t think that I have a huge audience of doctors who read iPhone J.D., except perhaps for my brother (hi, Kevin!) but if you look at the Nuance press release and replace the word “medical” with the word “legal,” you can easily imagine some great new Dragon Dictation apps for lawyers.  We know that Nuance has a lot of experience understanding words spoken by lawyers and translating those words into written legalese, so it seems like a natural product for Nuance to develop.  I see that Nuance will have a booth at the ABA TECHSHOW in just a few weeks, so you know what my first question will be when I visit with the folks from Nuance.

As much as I love Dragon Dictation on the iPhone, I should note that I am not a fan of the same product on my computer.  I have tested the Dragon Naturally Speaking several times over the years, and I find it cumbersome to have to wear a special headset to dictate my briefs.  I also get frustrated by the accuracy because even though it is almost 100%, those few errors always seem to take me a long time to fix, plus fixing them disrupts my writing process.  As someone who can type fairly quickly and has always avoided dictation in favor of just typing everything myself, using Dragon on a computer just slows me down.  On the iPhone, however, I can speak and fix any mistakes faster than I can type on the virtual keyboard, and I say that as someone who actually does pretty well typing on the iPhone keyboard.  Having the ability to dictate sentences that include legal terms, legal cites, etc. on my iPhone when I am away from a computer would be very useful.

I have no inside knowledge about whether Nuance is developing anything for lawyers who use iPhones, but with yesterday’s announcement of the Dragon  Medical Mobile suite of apps, I am now crossing my fingers that this is something that we see soon.  In the meantime, lawyers who work on medical malpractice cases, medical paralegals, and other lawyers who frequently deal with medical terms might find something useful these latest announcements from Nuance.

One of the things that I most love about the iPhone is that it gives you so much power when you are away from the office.  But last week, in my review of the ZeroTap app, I mentioned that there are some things that I prefer to do on my iPhone even while I am sitting at my desk.  Oxford, Mississippi attorney Tom Freeland who runs the great NMissCommentor site, posted a comment asking about other iPhone apps that I use at my desk even though I have a computer in front of me that is presumably much faster than the iPhone and with a much bigger screen.  This is a great question and is a topic that frequently comes up when I talk to people about the iPhone.

Many built-in iPhone apps are stripped down version of desktop programs, such as Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Maps, etc.  At first glance, you might think that there is no reason to use the limited iPhone version when there is a computer nearby, and often this is correct.  But sometimes I have a bunch of windows open on my screen and I don’t want to disrupt my work flow.  When I hear a beep telling me that I have a new e-mail, it is often easier to just pick up my iPhone and read the message there without disrupting my screen.  For the same reason, I may pick up my iPhone to glance at my calendar, even though I could do the same thing by switching to Outlook.  In this way, my iPhone acts sort of like a second computer monitor, a way to get information without disturbing the layout of my main monitor.

Additionally, there are many third party apps that do their job so well that I find it easier to use that app than to use (or find) the desktop equivalent.  A few good examples:

• DaysFrom — if I need to calculate dates, nothing on the desktop works as fast as DaysFrom on the iPhone.
• FRCP, La. Civil Code and other rule and statutory compilations — I have soft cover paper versions of rules, codal provisions, etc. and sometimes I like to browse through the pages, but other times I want to do a word search which is much faster using a dedicated iPhone app then working through an index.  Also, rules and laws that I view often are set as bookmarks in those apps so I can quickly jump to them.  (To be fair, I often put a flag on the page of the paper book which also works very quickly.)  And I love that if I want to put the text in a brief, these apps include a way to send the text in an e-mail to myself which I can then copy and paste into my brief.
• Twitterrific and Facebook — I find it faster and easier to use the Twitter and Facebook social networking services on the iPhone with these great apps then to use the desktop versions.  I still access both services in a web browser on my computer from time to time, but most of the time I just use my iPhone regardless of whether a computer is nearby.
• Weather — when I want a quick look at the weather forecast, it is faster to just pick up my iPhone and glance at one of the weather apps I use such as The Weather Channel, AccuWeather, or Weather Underground (which is a web app, not a full app).
• Quickoffice — I have lots of tidbits of information stored in Quickoffice.  I could use the iPhone’s built in Notes app, but I like it that Quickoffice has an option to require a password when launching.  That way, even if my son uses my iPhone without me watching, I don’t need to worry about him getting into my list of frequent flier numbers and changing a number.
• NotifyMe — I love this little app for sending myself a reminder in the future.  There are ways I could do the same thing on a computer, such as making an event in my Outlook calendar and adding an alarm to it, but them I clutter up my calendar with things like “remember to do such-and-such.”  Plus, it fast and easy to just use NotifyMe.
• Black’s Law Dictionary — there is a version of Black’s that you can install on a computer, but I don’t own it.  I do own a hard cover bound edition, but it sits on my shelf and collects dust.  I don’t use Black’s very often, but when I do, it is much more convenient to just use it on the iPhone.  I’ll sometimes use it in conjunction with doing Westlaw searches on my computer; looking up some basic legal concepts in the Black’s app sometimes helps me to think about better ways to formulate my search terms.
• DirecTV — sometimes someone will mention a TV show to me, or I’ll see a reference to it online, and I want to set my DirectTV DVR to record the program.  One can do this on the DirecTV website, but it is faster to just use the iPhone app.

If you also have some iPhone apps that work so well for you that you use them even when a computer is close by, I’d be curious to hear about them.  Post a comment or send me an e-mail.

MobileMe’s “Find my iPhone” feature is in the news, AT&T and Apple have reasons to be proud, developers of raunchy apps have reasons to be sad, and love is in the air at the Apple Store, all in this week’s edition of iPhone J.D. In The News:

• A few weeks ago, I wrote about two leading Word and Excel document readers on the iPhone, Quickoffice and Documents to Go.  iPhone J.D. reader King Tower, an attorney in Richmond, VA, pointed out to me that Documents to Go is on sale right now.  The basic version is discounted from $9.99 to $7.99, and the premium version which includes Exchange sync has been discounted from $14.99 to $11.99.  Thanks, King, for the heads up.  Click here for Documents to Go ($7.99 sale): 

  

    Click here for Documents to Go Premium ($11.99 sale): 

  

• As Ramu Nagappan of Macworld reports, Apple recently updated the MobileMe website so that when viewed on an iPhone, you can do a little more with it.  Most notably, you can now access the Find my iPhone feature so if you lose your iPhone, you can find a friend with an iPhone and track down yours using theirs.
• Speaking of which, I always enjoy a good “Find my iPhone” story, and this is one of them.  The St. Petersburg Times reports of a mother and daughter whose iPhones were stolen while they were on a ride at Busch Gardens.  The daughter told the park security about MobileMe, they brought up the site on a security guard’s laptop, and the police were able to track down and arrest the thief.  The story is told quite well, so it is worth a read.  (Link via Daring Fireball, TUAW.)
• The results from PC World’s second 3G wireless performance test are in, and AT&T — which has been talking about recent improvements to its network — is now on top.  Indeed, AT&T’s numbers are a full 72% better than eight months ago.
• Even if AT&T is getting better in your city, it might not work that well in your house.  If you have Internet access, a solution could be the AT&T MicroCell, a product I last mentioned in September of 2009 when it was only available in Charlotte, NC.  According to Electronista, the product is soon coming to Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, San Diego and Las Vegas.
• Apple COO Tim Cook gave a presentation at a Goldman Sachs investor conference this week.  As Philip Michaels of Macworld reports, most of his presentation focused on the upcoming iPad, but he also talked about Macs and the iPhone.
• One of the earliest posts on iPhone J.D. was an interview with iPhone developer Cliff Maier.  Tablet Legal, a new site for lawyers interested in the iPad, features a nice interview with Cliff Maier in which he shares his thought on developing apps for the iPad.
• New York attorney Jeff Dupler told me that pursuant to new rules adopted by the S.D.N.Y., starting on April 1, 2010, lawyers will be able to bring iPhones and other smartphones into the courthouse.  John Eligon also writes on this story for the New York Times.  The federal courthouse in New Orleans used to ban smartphones, but thank goodness they ended that a long time ago.  There are countless reasons that it is useful to have an iPhone in court, and I feel for any attorneys who are still restricted by these outdated rules.
• For example, I’ve been in trial for the past week and I used my iPhone extensively.  One of the apps that I used quite a bit was LogMeIn Ignition, an app that I reviewed last December, so that I could access and control my PC at work while I was in court.  Nicholas Bonsack of Macworld reports on some upcoming improvements to the service, including a viewer app that you can use to let someone view, but not control, your PC’s screen.  Click here to get LogMeIn Ignition ($29.99): 

  

• Jenna Wortham of the New York Times reports that Apple has removed thousands of apps from the App Store featuring sexually suggestive material.  On Daring Fireball, John Gruber shares his thoughts on why Apple may be doing this.
• AppleInsider reports that TomTom owes a good bit of its profit this quarter to its very successful iPhone navigation app.  Click here for TomTom U.S. & Canada ($79.99): 

  

  .  Click here for TomTom U.S.A. ($59.99):

  

• MacRumors reports on on a new BusinessWeek survey that finds Apple ranks third in customer service, behind only L.L. Bean and USAA.
• Apple is running three new ads for the iPhone.  If you haven’t already seen them on TV, you can see them here on Apple’s website.  They are called “Family Travel,” “On Hold” and “First Steps.”  These new ads share a new format, an update from 2009’s “there’s an app for that” series of ads.
• AppleInsider reports that at an Apple stockholder meeting yesterday, Steve Jobs said that the company has a massive war chest of $40 billion and is looking to use it for “big, bold” risks.  And if I haven’t mentioned it lately, just think how big and bold, not to mention risky, it would be for Apple to spend $40 billion to buy iPhone J.D.  Dan Frakes of Macworld has a more comprehensive report on the meeting, at which it sounds like Steve Jobs was quite animated.
• And finally, on Valentine’s Day this year, two lovebirds who met while shopping for iPods decided to return to the site that brought them together and get married at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York.  The officiant dressed up like, and even quoted from, Steve Jobs and read his speech from his iPhone.  It appears that this was not done with permission from the Apple Store, but the employees didn’t seem to mind.  Entertainment Weekly has the story (and yes, this is the first time that I’ve ever had a reason to link to EW on iPhone J.D.) and the video is here:

I am a big fan of Dragon Dictation, the free app that allows you to speak short messages to your iPhone, after which the audio is uploaded to a server which quickly transcribes the audio and then sends the text to your iPhone.  The accuracy is very impressive, but because the transcription is done by a computer and not a person, there are some mistakes.  Moreover, Dragon Dictation doesn’t know legal jargon such as F.2d or So.2d let alone the proper format of legal cites.  If you want to use your iPhone to record and transcribe text but want a more sophisticated product, SpeakWrite is a great solution.

SpeakWrite is a free app that allows you to record audio, then upload the audio so that it can be transcribed.  But unlike Dragon Dictation, SpeakWrite uses real typists located in the U.S. and Canada (who have signed confidentiality agreements).  SpeakWrite boasts an average turnaround time of three hours, and the service is available 24/7.  In my tests with short paragraphs of text, turnaround time has frequently been only ten minutes.  Of course, using real typists comes with a price.  There are no setup fees or other charges, but SpeakWrite charges you by the word, 1.5 cents per word.  (You can also setup a general non-legal account, which costs only 1.25 cents per word, but then you lose the ability to have your recording transcribed by a legal typist, and once you establish one kind of account you cannot submit jobs under a different plan.  Thus, lawyers will probably want 1.5 cents per word legal account.)

Start the app and you are quickly given the option to begin recording.  When you are done, just press the large “Pause” button.

Once you pause you are given the option to playback your recording, erase it, add to it, save it or submit it.  If you submit it, just give your job a title and the recording is uploaded to the SpeakWrite server where it is transcribed.  If you want to save it, just give the audio file a title and it is added to your list of saved audio.  You can come back later and listen to the audio, e-mail it, add to it or edit it, and then when you are ready you can finally submit it.

SpeakWrite sends you an e-mail to confirm that it has received your file and then another e-mail when the file is done, with the text attached to the e-mail.  You can also access a list of your completed jobs on the iPhone, and you can view any completed job to see the text.  Normal iPhone copy-and-paste functions work in the app, so you can easily copy text and put it where it belongs, such as an e-mail.  Completed jobs include not only the transcribed text but also the original audio so that you can go back and listen to the recording again if you want.

I haven’t tried dictating anything longer than a few paragraphs, but in my tests the transcription has been excellent.  Indeed, in my last test before starting this review, I recorded in an environment with lots of loud background noise plus I purposely interrupted my dictation to say things like “no, strike that” and then said it differently etc.  A product like Dragon Dictation would, of course, actually type out the words “no, strike that.”  Because SpeakWrite uses real people as typists and not just a computer, SpeakWrite can understand instructions in the middle of your dictation.  Thus, even my “torture case” submission cam back perfectly.

The app includes some other interesting features such as the ability to place a phone call from within the app and have the phone call transcribed.  (Group conversations are a little more expensive at two cents per word.)  Of course, the legality of recording a conversation on the phone without telling the other parties varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, so check the applicable laws and rules in your state before you do so.  You can also maintain a personal “Word List” so that the typist will know how to spell some of your unique favorite words, and you can even upload templates of frequently used documents such as a memorandum, correspondence on letterhead, etc. to SpeakWrite that can be used for your transcriptions.  You can also take a photo with your iPhone and have that photo included with your transcription, including geotags to indicate where you were when you took the photo.

Note that SpeakWrite is not just an iPhone app.  The company itself
has been doing transcriptions for 10 years and now offers a similar app
for the Blackberry and the Android, plus you can record audio on your
computer and upload that to SpeakWrite to have it transcribed.  There
is even a number you can call, enter your account, and then speak to
have whatever you say on the phone transcribed.  Plus there are other
options for getting your audio to SpeakWrite; click here
to see the full list.  SpeakWrite seems to be saying that it doesn’t
care how it gets your audio, it just wants to get it and quickly
transcribe it for you.

SpeakWrite is a really useful app to have on your iPhone just in case you ever have the need to record and then quickly transcribe a conversation with a witness, an insert for a legal brief, etc.  The only downside is the price, since $0.015 per word can add up quickly when there is a lot to say.  I understand that when you establish a new account, the first 1,000 words are free so that you can get a feel for the service.  (SpeakWrite gave me a 60 day trial period to use in connection with this review.)  Of course, since this is a pay-as-you-go service, you don’t have complete control over how much the service costs you.

I myself only rarely have the need for dictation services like this in my law practice, and in the past when I have needed something like this I have just recorded the audio and then had my secretary transcribe it for me.  But if this type of service fits into your law practice, SpeakWrite has done a very nice job with its iPhone app and its service in general, so you will want to check it out.

Click here for SpeakWrite (free app + service charges): 

I am pleased to announce that Law.com asked iPhone J.D. to be an
affiliate of the Law.com network.  Law.com, as those of you who are lawyers already know, is a leading source of legal news and
information.  Law.com is affiliated with over 20 award-winning national and regional online legal publications including The American Lawyer, The National Law Journal, The New York Law Journal, Legal Times and Law Technology News.  And if you are like me, you already receive in your e-mail every day the informative Law.com Daily Newswire with the latest in legal news and the Law Technology News Daily Alert with the latest legal tech news.

The Law.com Blog Network currently includes 35 great law-related blogs run by these fine folks.  Just a few of my personal favorites include:

• The Common Scold — Monica Bay’s blog about legal technology, law firm management, and more.
• FutureLawyer — This blog from Florida attorney Rick Georges is a great source of legal technology news.
• How Appealing — Pennsylvania lawyer Howar Bashman started the first blog on appellate litigation back in May of 2002, and the blog is still going strong.
• Legal Technology — good source for legal tech news
• Wired GC — a former general counsel, John Wallbillich, writes about the iPhone and Apple from time to time in his blog, including this recent post on the iPad.

The main reason I accepted Law.com’s invitation was to try to drive more attention to this site from lawyers.  I know from personal experience that once lawyers see what the iPhone can do for them, they quickly want one, so I’d like to have more lawyers learn about this site and others that cover the use of the iPhone by lawyers to perhaps increase the number of attorneys using iPhones.  And with more attorneys using iPhones, hopefully we will see even more apps designed for attorneys.

Being an affiliate also means that there is now a Law.com newswire ticker on the right side of this blog, which is a place to glance to see the latest legal news.  Below the news ticker is an ad provided by Law.com, and it will be a nice change to see ads that have something to do with the law on this website.  I also have a Google ad on the right and an Amazon ad on the left.  Hopefully you don’t find all of the ads too distracting.  As you probably know, ads on small websites like this provide only a tiny amount of revenue, but as the readership of iPhone J.D. has grown, the ads do now provide enough income to offset the monthly fee I pay to host this site and some of the other associated costs, which is nice.

Thanks to Law.com for reaching out to me, and if you are a new iPhone J.D. reader who came here via Law.com, welcome!

The iPhone is incredibly useful when you are on the go, but I often find myself using my iPhone even when I am at my desk.  Many tasks are just easier to do on the iPhone than on a computer.  Of course, some tasks, such as text entry, are always faster on a computer with a real keyboard.

If you ever find yourself wishing you could have the best of both worlds, getting something done on your iPhone but having the ability to use your computer’s keyboard to enter text, there is a new and free app that does this very well called ZeroTap.  The app was created by Daniele Orru, a student in Italy studying computer science.

 

The app is quick and easy to use.  On your iPhone, install the free app and register a username, e-mail address and password.  On your computer, go to the ZeroTap website, login and click on the second tab at the top called MagicBox.  Once everything it set up, anything that you type in the MagicBox on your computer…

 

…almost instantly shows up on your iPhone in the ZeroTap app:

With the tap of a single button, you can copy the text to paste it into some other app on your iPhone where you wanted to have the text but didn’t want to do a lot of typing on the iPhone keyboard. 

[UPDATE:  As Jon Bloor points out in his Comment to this post, this app is not only useful when  you want to type something on a real keyboard, but also when you want to copy something on your computer to the iPhone.  In the above example screenshot, I didn’t actually type the text of the First Amendment, but instead I copied that text from the Wikipedia website and then pasted it into the MagicBox, which caused it to instantly appear on my iPhone.  Bloor points out that you can also copy something like a bit.ly link that has a lot of random characters that you might mistype if you tried to type it by hand on the iPhone.]

ZeroTap is a one trick pony, but it performs its function quickly and easily, and costs you nothing to use.  Keep this app in mind in case you have a need for something like this in the future.

Click here to get ZeroTap (free): 

I’m currently working on a trial, and I thought I would share a tidbit that has come in handy for me.  I’m spending some of my time working out of a trial site that is just a block from the courthouse, a central location to house our exhibits, for co-counsel to meet and discuss strategy, and for the attorneys to work on submissions to the court.  The location is great, except that AT&T coverage is somewhat weak in this area and completely nonexistant inside of the building where we have our trial site.  Plus, we have few phones at the trial site, so I have lots of reasons to want to use my iPhone as a phone to, for example, call back to the office.

However, while we lack cell phone coverage, we do have Wi-Fi internet access here.  And because I have the free Skype app on my iPhone plus I still have a few dollars of Skype credit on my account left over from last year, I can easily make calls on my iPhone just by using the Skype app for the low price of only about 2¢ a minute.  I reviewed the Skype app last summer when I traveled to Russia, and for all of the reasons that Skype worked great on a hotel Wi-Fi in another country, it works great at a trial site or any other building in the U.S. where you have Wi-Fi but your cell phone coverage is limited to nonexistent.

I don’t have Skype configured for me to receive calls, nor do I want to have to give people a new number to call.  But people can easily send me an e-mail which I receive on the iPhone and then, as necessary, I can call them back via Skype.

If you find yourself in a situation like this, I encourage you to download the free Skype app and put the minimum amount of Skype credit on it (which I think is $10).  So far, I have spent less than $0.50 using Skype while at this trial site, and the ability to use my cell phone when otherwise there would be no coverage has been worth a heck of  a lot more than that.

Click here to get Skype (free): 

New competitors on the horizon for the iPhone, new apps for iPhone users, raising the limits for iPhone owners to download those apps, prior inconsistent statements from Steve Jobs on the iPhone, and delicious and “powerful” oranges … all in this Friday’s edition of iPhone J.D. In The News:

• DataViz showed off Documents to Go to the folks at The iPhone Blog
  
  at the Mobile World Congress 2010 that was held this week in Barcelona,
  
  and the result is this YouTube video. 
  
  Upcoming features revealed by DataViz in this video include (1)
  
  upcoming support for multiple Exchange and/or Gmail accounts; (2)
  
  support for Google Docs in an update that will be submitted to the App
  
  Store in a few weeks, and (3) support for other cloud services similar
  
  to Google Docs in the future.  Right now, Quickoffice has the edge on access to cloud services, but it looks like DataViz is working hard to catch up on that front.  And as I noted just the other day,
  
  DataViz already has other advantages over Quickoffice such as the
  
  ability to edit PowerPoint files and the ability to work with footnotes.
• Microsoft has been making operating systems for smartphones for a long time, but for a very long time now has shown very little innovation and there has been little reason for someone to go with a Windows Mobile phone over an iPhone, Blackberry or Palm Pre.  This week, however, Microsoft announced its next version of Windows Mobile called Windows Phone 7 Series.  Phones using this WP7S won’t be available until later this year, but Engadget has a hands on with a demo unit and it has a very interesting interface, one which reminds me of a Zune HD.  Hopefully, Microsoft will have a competitive product that will help make all smartphones better, including of course the iPhone.
• Attorney Reid Trautz and I are preparing for our 60 iPhone Apps in 60 Minutes session at the ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago next month.  As a result of our starting to put our heads together, Reid posted a great list of the Top Ten iPhone Apps for Busy Lawyers.
• Speaking of cool apps, the L.A. Times talks about 21 useful travel apps for the iPhone.
• Moreover, Tom Kaneshige of InfoWorld talks about the Six Best iPhone Apps You’ve Never Heard Of.
• Apparently Kaneshige is thinking a lot about the iPhone right now, because he also wrote on article for CIO about iPhone security, in which he offers opinions that iPhone owners are too lax about security concerns.  As even Kaneshige hints at in his article, many of these concerns are unfounded except for users who have jailbroken their iPhones.  As I’ve written in the past, I do not recommend that you jailbreak your iPhone because of potential security risks, but otherwise iPhones are very secure.
• Curious what a magazine might look like on an iPad?  Wired posted a video preview of a version of its magazine on a tablet, and it looks pretty darn cool.
• It used to be that if you were using 3G on your iPhone and wanted to download an app, a song, a podcast, a video, etc., you could only do so if the file was under 10MB.  As widely reported on sites like MacNN and TUAW, Apple has just raised this limit around the world to 20MB.  You are still going to need Wi-Fi to download a very large app or other file, but it is nice to get a little extra breathing room.  For example, I like to listen to the daily Mac OS Ken podcast when I can, and sometimes when I am away from my Mac (the computer I use to sync my iPhone) I try to download the latest episode on my iPhone over 3G, but the editions tend to vary from around 7MB to 13MB so in the past I had mixed success.  Going forward I suspect that I’ll rarely have a problem downloading that podcast over 3G.
• It’s a good thing that the ceiling was lifted somewhat, because apparently we need it.  Charles Starrett of iLounge reports
  
  on a study prepared for Consumer Reports that reports that iPhone users consume, on average, 274 MB of data per month,
  
  compared to 54 MB for Blackberry users and 150 MB for other smartphone
  
  users.
• In 2003, Steve Jobs told Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal that Apple wasn’t interested in making a smartphone: “We didn’t think we’d do well in the cellphone business. What we’ve done
  
  instead is we’ve written what we think is some of the best software in
  
  the world to start syncing information between devices.”  Clearly, Jobs changed his mind on that one, and Wired’s Bryan Chen complies a fun list of what he calles “Steve Jobs’ Six Sneakiest Statements.”
• I reported last month that the $999.99 bar review app BarMax is now the most expensive app in the App Store.  MG Siegler reports for TechCrunch that just a few weeks after BarMax came out, competitor BarBri has already made some changes to compete, even though BarBri has been in this business a heck of a lot longer than BarMax.  It appears that this app is actually getting pretty good reviews, so if you are a law student in California — Click here for BarMax ($999.99): 

  

• I see that BarMax now also offers a free MPRE prep app, and a slimmed down MBE-only version of its app.  Click here for BarMax MPRE (free): 

  

    Click here for BarMax MBE ($499.99): 

  

• Aron Trimble of TUAW reports on ZoomMediaPlus, an upcoming $60 device ($50 if you pre-order now) that adds an SD card reader to your iPhone.
• Patently Apple reports that as of February 9, 2010, Apple now officially owns the trademark for “iPhone.”  Well it’s about time.
• And finally, PR company Imperial Leisure came up with a viral marketing campaign to raise awareness of Jaffa oranges, a sweet orange exported by Israel:  they produced a video showing how many oranges it would take to power an iPhone.  Too funny:

Attorney Mike Mintz has worked for LexisNexis for almost a decade and currently serves as the Community Manager for Martindale-Hubbell Connected, a professional networking site for lawyers.  Mintz also runs an interesting tech blog called Mintz’s Words and another blog that he hopes to turn into a book called Lurkers Anonymous.  He used to work here in the U.S., but he and his family recently moved to Israel where he telecommutes with LexisNexis, so as you can imagine he makes extensive use of technology.  He is also an avid iPhone user.

In early 2010, Mintz started a series of video interviews called Connected Pulse that appear on the Martindale-Hubbell YouTube channel.  Past installments of Connected Pulse have included interviews with e-discovery expert and legal blogger Tom Mighell of Fios, Law Professor Jim Carey at Cooley Law School (who has written about social media as it applies to regulated financial industries), law firm business development guru Larry Bodine, and legal technology maven Dennis Kennedy.  The videos are edited video Skype or iChat conversations to which Mintz adds lots of pop-up graphics to make the videos more interesting and informative.  They are nicely done.

A few weeks ago, Mintz interviewed me on various iPhone and related topics for Connected Pulse, and as a result I am now featured in the latest Connected Pulse video.  If you want to see and hear me speak about the iPhone instead of just reading my words in black and white on this blog, I’ve embedded the video here:

As I mentioned at the end of this video, I hope that many of you make plans to attend the ABA TECHSHOW next month where Reid Trautz and I will discuss 60 iPhone Apps in 60 Minutes on Thursday, March 25th and Ben Stevens and I will discuss iPhone Tips for Lawyers on Saturday morning, March 27th.  It will be a great opportunity for all of us to share our experiences on using the iPhone.