Jeff Richardson

I’ve never done a formal review of the Facebook iPhone app on iPhone J.D. even though it is one of the most useful apps on the iPhone and a handy way for attorneys to keep in touch with friends from high school, college, law school and elsewhere.  You never know, one of them may be your next client or co-counsel, plus there are other reasons that lawyers should consider using Facebook.  (Although in Florida and perhaps elsewhere, think twice before you send a friend request to a judge.)

In this past, I’ve resisted publishing a review of the Facebook app because, frankly, I suspect that every iPhone owner who uses Facebook already has and uses the free app.  If you don’t, you are really missing out.  In many ways, I like the iPhone interface even better than the desktop web browser interface because it is clean and focused.  Plus, you get none of those annoying ads on the side.

The main screen on the app gives you nine buttons so you can easily view your Wall or your News Feed, and on a second screen you can store shortcuts to your favorite Facebook friends.

I am writing about this app today to mention the new version 3.1 that came out yesterday.  The update adds two new features.  First, the app now supports push notifications.  In the main iPhone Settings app you can control the items for which you will receive push notifications.  For now, I have all seven options turned on, but as the novelty wears off I will probably start to selectively turn some off.  For example, with Messages notifications turned on, if someone sends you a Message (a direct e-mail) on Facebook, you will receive a pop-up notification on the iPhone.  (The Facebook push notifications do not make a sound, vibrate the phone, or add any icon badge updates, even if you have those features enabled for push notifications.)  In my experience, this service worked very quickly, typically providing a notification on the iPhone within a second or two of a message being sent.

If you are not someone who spends a lot of time on Facebook, enabling push notifications is a good way to make sure that you know when something relevant to you is happening on Facebook.  And even if you are a frequent Facebook user, now you can be even more timely.

The second nice improvement in the 3.1 update is that the Facebook app can now sync with your contacts.  For now, this feature only does two things.  If you enable contact syncing, Facebook will look at the names and phone numbers of people in your Contacts on your iPhone.  If it finds an exact match with one of your Facebook friends, then the app will add two things to the entry in your Contacts.  First, it will add the person’s Facebook picture to your Contacts entry.  You can tell the app not to replace a photo in your Contacts if you
already have one, and that way it just fills in missing photos.  (A few people have reported on the Internet that this didn’t work for them, but for me it did a fine job of respecting entries for which I already assigned a picture.) [UPDATE: As Jared points out in the Comments, Facebook quickly released a 3.1.1 update to address syncing bugs.]

Second, it will add a home page entry to the Contact in the format of fb://profile/1234567890.   If you tap on that in the Contacts app on your iPhone, it will launch the Facebook app and show you that person’s profile.  I have seen people post on the Internet, but have not been able to confirm myself, that if a phone number matches then the sync will occur even if the names are not exact matches.  Otherwise, the name has to match exactly, so if one of your friends uses a nickname on Facebook, or if you use a nickname in your Contacts, the sync for that friend won’t work.

Facebook doesn’t add your iPhone Contacts to Facebook, doesn’t add your Facebook contacts to Contacts, or anything like that.  I like this conservative approach, although perhaps in the future they will add more syncing options.  For example, some people provide a phone number on their Facebook profile page, and it would be useful to have the app automatically download that into your Contacts entry for the person if you don’t already have it.  But even for now, it is nice to have more profile pictures added to my Contacts automatically without having to use a third party program to accomplish this task.  When a friend calls me on my iPhone, I like having a picture come up, which my mind processes even faster than looking at a name.

The person at Facebook who developed the originally iPhone app left the project in late 2009, so it is nice to see that Facebook is still developing its app and adding new features.  I’m already looking forward to the next update.

Click here to get Facebook (free): 

Yesterday was Twelfth Night,* the last of the “12 Days of Christmas,” which means that today is the official start of the Mardi Gras season.  Arthur Hardy, the foremost authority on Mardi Gras in New Orleans, has published Arthur Hardy’s Mardi Gras Guide for over three decades.  Every year it is the Bible for all things Mardi Gras, a magazine with over 150 pages containing everything from Mardi Gras history, facts and figures to specific information on individual carnival krewes, including parade details, schedules and maps.  You can purchase a copy of the Mardi Gras Guide for $4.99 at virtually every bookstore, grocery store and convenience store in the Greater New Orleans area, and every year I’m sure that there are copies in a significant percentage of the homes down here.

The smart folks at Calliope Digital have worked with Hardy to bring the Mardi Gras Guide to the iPhone.  (Calliope Digital is also responsible for the WhoDatApp, a very popular app for Saints fans.)  The result is a useful app that both New Orleans natives and visitors will want to have on their iPhone to help guide them through the Mardi Gras season.

The most useful part of the magazine Mardi Gras Guide is the parade information and schedules, so it seems natural that this information is prominent in the app.  The schedule appears when the app launches and can also be reached from the first button at the bottom of the app.  For each of the 52 parades, you get all of the critical information including date, time, this year’s theme, the krewe history, this year’s royalty, information on the floats, a map with the parade route, and Arthur Hardy’s unique commentary on that particular parade.  So when you are standing on the parade route and you want to know what time the parade starts, how many floats it will have and whether there are any new and unique throws this year, that information is at your fingertips in the app.

The app also includes a large amount of general Mardi Gras information from Arthur Hardy that will be especially helpful to visitors to New Orleans including the history of Mardi Gras, frequently asked questions, and information on what is new in 2010.

Unfortunately, even though the app costs the same as the magazine version of the guide, it doesn’t include all of the information from the magazine.  For example, the feature articles are missing.  But the app has a few advantages over the magazine version.  First, as long as your iPhone is with you, the guide is always with you, even when you are at the parade route and don’t have the magazine at hand.  Second, unlike the magazine, the app can be updated.  I would imagine that the app will update as parade information or schedules change, and the developers have told me about some great additional features that are coming soon.  (They asked me not to spill the beans.)  By the time that parades start rolling, I see myself using this app quite a bit.

If you live in New Orleans, or if you plan to visit for Mardi Gras this year (the focus of which is Friday, February 12 through Tuesday, February 16, 2010), you will enjoy having this app on your iPhone.  And by the way, since most readers of iPhone J.D. are not here in New Orleans, I encourage all of you to make plans soon to visit the Big Easy.  Whether it be for Mardi Gras, for Jazz Fest from April 23 to May 2, 2010 (which I love even more than Mardi Gras) or any other time of the year, it is easy to fall in love with the food, music, architecture, history and culture that makes the Crescent City so unique.

Click here to get Mardi Gras Guide by Arthur Hardy ($4.99): 

* Note:  Different traditions count the 12 Days of Christmas differently.  Some count the 25th as the first day, some count the 26th as the first day.  But everyone agrees that January 6th is King’s Day / the start of Epiphany / the start of Carnival season.

Jason Turchin is a Florida plaintiffs’ personal injury attorney.  Like many attorneys who represent victims, it is important that he find ways to publicize himself to potential clients, whether it be through television ads or search-optimized websites.  He recently started a new way of making his services known:  a free iPhone app called My Attorney App.

I suppose the most compelling reason for a potential client to download the app is that it includes Accident Checklists.  The app includes helpful tips for people who are victims of various unfortunate circumstances such as a car accident, slip and fall and even dog bite.  By having the app on their iPhone, a victim can immediately review a handy checklist of things to do, such as “call the police” and “do not give any statements to the insurance company or sign any release without having your lawyer review the case first.”

Of course, the main reason for an app like this is to get a victim to call the attorney.  Upon starting the app, you see a splash screen with Turchin’s name, and it appears proimantly throughout the app.  There are also buttons at the bottom of every screen to contact Turchin, and from the main screen you can follow Turchin on Facebook or Twitter and get more information about his past successful representations.

Turchin is not the only one with a promotional iPhone app.  I also ran across an app called LawFirm, published by Spar & Bernstein, a New York law firm that specializes in immigration law but also has a full service practice.  From the main screen of the app, you are presented with four practice areas.

Upon choosing an area, you have to wait as a list of items loads from the Internet.  For three of the items (criminal defense, divorce and personal injury) you are given a list of issues / crimes and related information and tips from the law firm.  For the immigration law item, you see a list of up to date news items from an unidentified source.  Only the first few paragraphs of each news item are loaded into the app, and the end of the news item frequently cuts off in mid sentence.  The app also provides links to the law firm’s Twitter updates and quick access to a large number of video and audio podcasts called Immigration Link from attorney Brad Bernstein.

I don’t know whether Turchin developed his app himself or hired an outside consultant.  The publisher of the Spar & Bernstein app is Cariplex Studios, a web design company which I presume developed that app.  I know that there are many companies out there who will develop an iPhone app for under $1,000.  I haven’t tried these services myself so I cannot vouch for them, but within just the last few days I have seen references to Mobile Roadie, a company that started by developing apps for bands but now will develop personal apps for anyone for about $500 start up and then about $30 a month, and AppMakr, which will also create an app for around $500, or even for as little as $200 if you choose for AppMakr to be the publisher (although since the purpose of a law firm app is self-promotion, I imagine that many law firms would want for the law firm to be the publisher).  Obviously the costs will increase as you add more of a personal touch, but the point is that developing an iPhone app could easily fall within the marketing budget of most any law firm.

I wish Jason Turchin and Spar & Bernstein the best of luck with their iPhone apps.  I’m sure that before long there will be many more law firm apps in the App Store.

Click here to get My Attorney App (free): 

Click here to get LawFirm (free): 

In March of 2009, Apple previewed iPhone Software 3.0.  Many of the features would be immediately useful, such as copy and paste, but other parts of the 3.0 software were there simply to lay the groundwork for developers to bring the iPhone to a whole new level.  We saw some real innovations in 2009, such as Dragon Dictation’s voice recognition, amazing photo apps and a number of apps to send and receive video from the iPhone, but those were all on the software side.  What about hardware?  When iPhone Software 3.0 was announced, I was particularly excited to see what new hardware would be available.  As I wrote back on March 18, 2009:

iPhone app interaction with accessories.  This is another neat one that I am sure has ramifications that I
haven’t even begun to imagine.  The iPhone will be able to talk to and
control accessories, either wirelessly (using Bluetooth) or by
connecting the accessory to the port on the bottom of the iPhone. 
Apple gave an example of connecting the iPhone to a speaker and using
the iPhone to control levels on the speaker.  A medical company showed
off a glucose monitor that can communicate with the iPhone wirelessly
so that a diabetic can log and monitor blood sugar using the iPhone.  I
can see the iPhone communicating with document scanners, bar code
readers, printers, etc.  And it would be nice to be able to connect the
iPhone to a small external keyboard to type longer e-mails, messages,
etc.  (Apple was specifically asked yesterday if this would work, and
simply answered that they had nothing to announce.  But I presume this
will be possible.)  Like many of the other improvements announced
today, I’m sure we can’t even begin to predict what imaginative
developers will do with this feature.

I presumed that Apple was describing this feature in March so that developers would have time to get their hardware ready for introduction soon after 3.0 was released on June 17, 2009.  I looked forward to a huge number of interesting third party devices that could be added to the iPhone.

But it didn’t happen.  Even today, most of the external hardware for the iPhone consists of speakers and headphones, batteries, and cases.  Where are all of the cool add-ons for the iPhone?

On January 1, 2010, Jenna Wortham of the New York Times predicted Five Tech Themes for 2010.  Her first prediction of what might be big in 2010 is hardware attachments for the iPhone:

The third wave of mobile applications: Mobile app
stores continue to evolve from kitschy collections of games and novelty
programs into robust catalogs of applications that push the limits of
what a cellphone can do. So where can we expect to see the next big
innovation? External attachments. So far, Square, a device that plugs
into the audio jack of a mobile phone, turning it into a credit card
machine, has made the splashiest entrance
into the market, but that is just the beginning. Example: a glucose
monitor that could directly port blood sugar readings and other health
information into a program for analysis.

The glucose monitor that she mentions is, of course, the same device that Lifescan previewed a live demo of back in March of 2009 when Apple announced iPhone Software 3.0.  Almost eight months later, we are still waiting for this device to appear. 

The other device that she mentions, Square, was announced last month but is still in limited testing.  A similar device from Mophie that will also allow you to scan credit cards with an iPhone is scheduled to be debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in a few days.

I’m glad to see Square and Mophie testing their products, and hopefully they will be available soon.  Nevertheless, I am surprised that we saw so little innovation in external hardware for the iPhone in 2009.  I hope that Wortham is correct and that now, in 2010, we are about to see a new wave of hardware attachments for the iPhone.

I contemplated ending 2009 with a review of the last year of the iPhone, but Dan Moren of Macworld did such a great job that instead I encourage you to read his article.  For lawyers, the increased speed of the iPhone 3GS, the addition of features like copy and paste in iPhone 3.0, and the explosion in the quantity and quality of third party apps have all made 2009 a great year for the iPhone.  I am incredibly excited to see what 2010 will bring.  Other recent news items worth reading:

• Marc Ferranti of IDG News Service lists for PC World the “Top 10 Tech Stories of the Decade.”  Apple appears on the list twice, once for the debut of the iPod and then again for the iPhone.
• Simlarly, Engadget has a list of Ten Gadgets That Defined the Decade, and both the iPod and the iPhone make the list.
• TouchArcade, which specializes in reviewing iPhone games, has come up with its list of the Best iPhone Games of 2009.  If you are more interested in retro games from the good old days, the site also has a list of the Best Retro Ports of 2009, including Dragon’s Lair which I reviewed here.
• Documents to Go with Exchange Attachments has been renamed Documents to Go Premium, is now at version 3.0, and adds (1) the ability to edit and create PowerPoint presentations and (2) support for Gmail attachments in addition to Exchange attachments.  Great additions!  Click here for Documents to Go Premium ($14.99): 

  

• Lawyerist reports on iPhone-optimized websites from online law practice management websites Clio, Time59 and Rocket Matter.
• A lot of current iPhone owners previously used iPods, and as those iPods get older they sometimes no longer function as good as new.  Kirk McElhearn writes for Macworld about uses for old iPods.  For example, I have an old first generation, 5 GB iPod and an old iPod mini.  The batteries in both of the old iPods have essentially died, but the iPods still work if you keep them plugged in.  I have given both iPods a new life by buying inexpensive (under $40) iPod speakers including a dock

  

  from Amazon and setting them up in my kids’ rooms with a mix of children’s songs, including some calming music to help them go to sleep.
• Tyler Tschida reports for App Advice that Christmas Day was a banner day for iPhone (and iPod touch) app sales.
• Apple’s website has a series of iPhone in Business pages that profile companies using the iPhone.  There has long been a profile of the Sonnenschein law firm in the U.S., but I just noticed that Apple added a profile of an Australian law firm, DLA Phillips Fox.  Click here for that page, which includes a video.
• CNBC is planning to show two Apple-related movies.  First, CNBC is airing the great movie Welcome to Macintosh, a movie that I loved and reviewed this past March.  The movie will air on January 4th at 6:30 pm Pacific / 9:30 pm Eastern.
• Second, CNBC will debut Planet of the Apps: A Handheld Revolution, a show that will “look at how apps have changed our lives, meet some of the creators
  
  behind them, and figure out just how big a business they really are.”  That show airs Thursday, January 7 at 10pm Pacific / 1am Eastern. (Thanks to Alan Cohen for that link.)
• One of my law partners bought a new iPhone only to find that the phone
  
  would only work when in speaker mode.  I thought this was a very
  
  strange problem, and fortunately the local Apple Store swapped his
  
  defective iPhone for a new one, but I have since learned that this is a
  
  known, occasional problem with the iPhone.  If it happens to you,
  
  attorney Mike Mintz has some good advice on his Mintz’s Wordz blog of the steps that you can take to try to solve the problem.
• This has absolutely nothing to do with the iPhone, but I loved watching the six minute animated film Pigeon Impossible so much that I couldn’t resist posting about it here.  I cannot believe that this was the first effort by animator/writer/director Lucas Martell (although it did take him five years).  Pixar needs to hire this guy.
• Thanks to everyone who attended the Digital Workflow CLE in New Orleans today.  It was great to meet so many iPhone J.D. readers.  I look forward to meeting more of you at ABA TECHSHOW 2010 in Chicago in late March.
• And finally, today is the last day to vote in the ABA Journal’s Blawg 100 competition.  I suspect that many of you have not voted, but could I entice you to do so if I PAID YOU COLD HARD CASH???  Well, I’m not doing that, but someone else actually is.  The TechnoLawyer Blog may pay you up to $500 if you vote for them.  What a way to get out the vote!  All you need to do is vote for TechnoLawyer in the “technology” category and then send an e-mail listing your full name, city, state, telephone number, and e-mail address to sweepstakes1209@peerviews.com letting them know that you voted for TechnoLawyer.  Get more details here.  Two first prize winners will each receive $500, and five second prize winners
  
  will each receive $100.  I am not sure what the ABA will think of this effort to get out the vote, but TechnoLawyer does publish some great newsletters so they are certainly a deserving winner.  And remember, you can vote for up to ten websites, including multiple websites in the same category (iPhone J.D. is in the technology category, along with TechnoLawyer), so while you are there trying to get some cold hard cash from TechnoLawyer, feel free to share the love and vote for iPhone J.D. as well.  Click here to get started, and good luck!

Happy New Year!!!

As the new year approaches, this is the time to make resolutions and contemplate what you want to accomplish in 2010.  Two second year law students at UCLA, Hector Pacheco and Daniel Carter, created the app DreamList to help you keep track of those thoughts for the future.

The app lets you create lists of dreams (things you want to do) and lists of wishes (items that you want to have).

Enter whatever dreams or wishes you have and you can optionally choose a target completion date.  If you are having trouble coming up with things to put on your lists, the app even includes hundreds of preloaded activities, sites and experiences that you might want to strive for.  I actually found that to be one of the most interesting parts of the app as it gave me lots of ideas of things that I want to do at some point in the future.

You can mark a dream or wish as completed, which gives you a nice feeling of accomplishment to see what you have done.  The app also allows you to share your dreams and wishes with your
friends who use the app and see which of your friends have completed their own dreams.  You can also search to see which of your friends have the same dreams or wishes as you.  Or you can search your friends’ wishes list to see what they want, which could give you ideas for birthday presents.  This video from Daniel Carter shows you all of the ins and outs of the app:

This is an interesting idea for an app, and a timely app with the new year approaching.  But what I really love about this app is that it is an example of lawyers — or, in this case, future lawyers — coming up with creative ideas and then turning those ideas into iPhone apps.  Whether such apps are geared to other attorneys or, as here, suitable for the general public, I hope that more and more lawyers make it their resolution to develop iPhone apps next year.

By the way, the origin of this app is a cute story.  Hector and Daniel tell me that they created this app after experiencing the “bloody” on campus interview process.  To take a break from the stress of OCI and focus on something productive, they decided to write an iPhone app.  I recall that my post-OCI activities when I was in law school primarily consisted of walking down the block to consume pints of beer at The Irish Times.  If only I had been as productive as Hector and Daniel.  Good luck to them on their future legal and iPhone endeavors.

Click here for DreamList ($1.99): 

If you are a Lexis subscriber with an iPhone, you can now view cases and get a Shepard’s Summary of the case on your iPhone with the LexisNexis Get Cases & Shepardize app that came out last month.  The app does what it says, but the current 1.0 version suffers from some major limitations that I hope will be remedied in an update.

The first time that you use the app you are prompted for your Lexis username and password.  My understanding is that there is no charge to use the app and that the username requirement is there simply because LexisNexis limits use of the app to current subscribers.  Having said that, I am still trying to get official confirmation of this from LexisNexis, and I will update this paragraph of this post as I get more information.  [UPDATE 12/30/09:  LexisNexis sent me confirmation that there is no charge to use the app.  Great news!]

Once your username and password are stored, the app will not ask you for them again.  To get a case simply enter the citation.

After a few seconds, you will be given the case.  The useful editorial content that Lexis adds to cases is included, such as (when available) Subsequent History, Procedural Posture, Overview, Outcome, Core Terms, Headnotes, Counsel, etc.

You can tap the Shepardize button at the top to see a Shepard’s Summary to get a sense of whether the case is still good law, including the Shepard’s Signal circles — green means good, red means caution.

Unfortunately, there are some major omissions from this version of the app that limit the app’s usefulness.  First, you are going to most likely want to use this app when you are out of your office, on the go.  Perhaps when you are in court and hear opposing counsel mention a case.  But unless you know the case citation, you can’t use the app at all.  It would be so helpful to be able to search by title and jurisdiction, so that when the other party mentions the “Morial v. Smith & Wesson” case, or even just the “Morial” case, you can pull it up.  No such luck, unless the other party also says “785 So. 2d 1” in the same breath.

Second, when you are viewing a case, there are no hyperlinks.  Thus, if the case you are reviewing cites another case, you cannot just click to see how the case is being cited.  You can use the standard iPhone copy function to copy the cite and then do a new search and paste that cite, but that is a real pain and I see no justification for this cumbersome workaround.  Moreover, there is no back button so you cannot then jump back to the original case after you have viewed a second case.

Third, the app does not let you view statutes, just cases.  I don’t understand this limitation; obviously Lexis has statutes in its database as well.

Fourth, the Shepard’s feature is far too limited.  This has the potential to be the killer aspect of the app — Shepardize a case while you are in court, and instantly telling the judge that your opponent is citing bad law.  But no, not really.  As you can see from the pictures posted above, all that you get is a Shepard’s Summary.  So, for example, when I ran a report on a case I recently argued and won before the U.S. Fifth Circuit, Audler v. CBC Innovis, Inc., 519 F.3d 239 (5th Cir. 2008), I am told that the case was superseded (and thus has a red warning signal) and was also distinguished.  This could be critical information … but I can’t really make much use of it, because the app doesn’t list any of the cases themselves.  I just get this summary.  So I know that the case was cited 80 times, was supposedly superseded, and was supposedly distinguished, but I cannot see a list of those cases or read the cases themselves to determine if the Audler case is still good law and was just superseded or distinguished on a point that doesn’t matter.  I don’t consider this to be a userful Shepardizing exercise.  It is just a big tease, and a confusing one at that considering that once I Shepardized the Audler case on Lexis.com, I discovered that (1) the “superseded” cite is just an unreported case distinguishing Audler’s applicability under a different statute in another state, which I would never even call “superseding” law anyway (Inclusive Cmtys. Project, Inc. v. Tex. Dep’t of Hous. & Cmty. Affairs, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 101240 (N.D. Tex. 12/11/08)) and (2) the “distinguished” case is simply one holding that the result is different under Mississippi law (Paul v. Landsafe Flood Determination, Inc., 550 F.3d 511 (5th Cir. 2008)), which has no effect on the Audler case still being a correct interpretation of Louisiana law.

Fifth, the app can really use some user interface improvements, although I readily admit that these are just my personal preferences and are minor points.  It would be helpful to resize the font size.  You can pinch to zoom, but then you have to scroll back and forth to read which can give you a headache after a while.  I also wish that there was some pop-up window to populate the source such as So. 2d, F.2d, etc. when you are entering a cite.  Switching back and forth between the number keyboard and the letter keyboard to manually enter every letter and number of a cite wastes time when the app could just let you enter the two numbers, perhaps pre-populating your last used source and letting you easily tap to select a different one.  It would also be helpful to have a history button so that you can pull up a case you recently viewed, which would also alleviate the omission of a back button as I noted above.  Having said that, they should also add a back button.

To be clear, I am offering only constructive criticism of this 1.0 version of the app.  All of these omissions can be easily addressed in a future update, at which time this app could become insanely useful.  In its current state, however, I prefer to just use the free Google Scholar website on your iPhone, which I reviewed last month.  You can find a specific case on Google Scholar using either a citation or a case name.  For example, I can find that Audler case by citation, but can also find it if I just run a search for “Audler CBC.”  Indeed, I could even just do a search for “Audler” and in this example, the right case would be the second search result.  While Google Scholar omits the editorial content that Lexis gives you such as a case summary, it does let you click on a hyperlink for any cited case to view that case, and then you can hit your Safari back button to go back to the original case.  With Google Scholar, you can even tap the “How Cited” tab to get a list of citing cases.  Google Scholar doesn’t tell you whether these cases distinguish, overrule or just follow the original case, but you can see excerpts that might tell you what you need to know.  For example, as you can see in this picture, Google Scholar doesn’t list the unreported case that Lexis (incorrectly) claimed was a superseding case, but does list the Paul case and I can guess from the brief excerpt’s use of the word “In that case” that Paul is likely a case distinguishing Audler.

Additionally, Google Scholar even lets you search for caselaw by searching for words and phrases, something you can’t do on the Lexis app, although to be fair the Lexis app doesn’t intend to be a research tool, and the title itself tells you that this app is just a way to get a case and Shepardize it.  Finally, Google Scholar is incredibly fast, even on an iPhone.  The Lexis app takes several seconds to load a case, which can get annoying.  I know that Google has some really fast computer servers sending the data to my iPhone, but you would think that Lexis does too.

I’m glad to see this app.  Westlaw doesn’t offer anything similar.  Some people might find the current version useful in some situations.  For example, George Mason University third year law student Adam Aft told me that he “could see the value of pulling up a case [in class] to glance at the case summary, especially if there is no other lifeline while drowning in a sea of socratic dialogue.”  But Adam agrees with me that the shortcomings of this app are frustrating.  If Lexis adds some or all of these missing features, they will have a real winner on their hands.  But in the current 1.0 version, this is not an app that I will often use or recommend over the free Google Scholar.

Click here to get LexisNexis Get Cases & Shepardize (free): 

The free Clink-Clink app from Waterford presents you with a virtual glass of champagne or wine so that you can clink glasses with another iPhone user also running the app.  Is it gimicky?  Does it get old soon?  Is it just a promotion for Waterford Crystal?  Yes to all three questions, but the app is free, and it might be something cute for you to play with this week as you are waiting for the ball to drop on New Year’s Eve.

Choose a Waterford glass (you have five choices) and the glass appears on the screen, filled with champagne or wine.  As you move the glass back and forth, the virtual liquid moves as if it were real.

The app has three modes.  If you and a friend are both using the app, choose the “Toast a Friend” option and you will hear the sound of glasses clinking as the iPhone’s motion accelerator senses movement, followed by the app presenting you with a toast.  In the Settings, you can choose one or more toast categories such as New Year, International Cheers, Wedding and Birthday.

You can also choose the “Make a Friend” option to share your own Contacts card, or your Facebook information, with the person with whom you are sharing a toast.  (If you choose the Facebook option, the app will post your toast to your Facebook wall.)  You both have to also specifically enable Contacts and/or Facebook sharing in your Preferences for this to work.

Finally, if you are alone, you can choose the “Just Play” option to just toast yourself.  I suppose virtual toasting is better than drinking alone.

After you have used the app a few times, you will be given the option to provide your e-mail address to Waterford.  And when enough people use the program, all users will get some sort of coupon from Waterford.  This is a promotional app, after all.  According to the Creativity advertising website, ad agency Gotham created this app for Waterford.

This is a cute little app that might provide you with a few minutes of amusement, and with the contact sharing component could even help you land a new client or make a new friend.

Click here for Waterford Clink-Clink (free): 

A friend at my law firm received a Christmas card from the Compensation and Benefits Strategies division of J.P. Morgan with a fun iPhone theme.  Kudos to them for coming up with a memorable card, at least for iPhone enthusiasts:

It’s a short week due to Christmas, but there was still some iPhone news of interest.  Here are some of the highlights:

• MacRumors reports that, according to Nielsen, the iPhone 3G is the mobile phone model with the largest percentage of users (4%).
• Dan Frakes of Macworld has an excellent list of gifts for the iPhone lover.
• Gizmodo tests 3G data on all of the U.S. networks in 12 cities and concludes that AT&T’s 3G network is the fastest.
• Are you flying for the holidays?  Do you want to get free Wi-Fi on your flight?  Lifehacker has the codes you need.  (Link via Niki Black.)
• The Financial Times has an interesting article on the iPhone App Store, noting that it was far more successful than Apple ever expected.
• The Harvard Business Review names the Top 50 CEOs.  Steve Jobs is #1.
• Dan Moren of Macworld has tips on talking to your iPhone using the Voice Control feature of the iPhone 3GS.
• The Washington Post carries a Reuters story about how Tapulous, the developer of the iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge, is bringing in almost $1 million a month.
• And finally, are you ready for the announcement of the next model of the
  
  iPhone?  Apple traditionally introduces new models in June, and
  
  AppleInsider speculates that in 2010 it will be on June 28th.  This
  
  is because the Moscone Center in San Francisco is booked for a
  
  anonymous “corporate event” June 28 to July 2, 2010, which AppleInsider
  
  believes will be the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), a
  
  natural venue to introduce the 2010 model of the iPhone.  The original
  
  iPhone was released on June 29, 2007, the iPhone 3G was announced at
  
  WWDC on June 9, 2008, and the iPhone 3GS was announced at WWDC on June 8, 2009.

Merry Christmas!