Jeff Richardson

Yesterday, I reported that there are now over 100,000 apps on the iPhone.  Suffice it to say that there is a heck of a lot that you can do with an iPhone, making it useful throughout the day.  With this in mind, I found it interesting that Om Malik reported this week on a study of the increasing number of iPhone addicts, with “addict” defined as someone who uses an iPhone “more than 100 times per month, or more than three times each day of the month.”  I haven’t tried to count how many times I pick up my iPhone every day, but considering that sometimes it is three times a minute, I think it is safe to say that I meet that rather lame definition of an iPhone addict.  Stop your snickering; I’m sure that the same is true for many of you.  So, fellow iPhone addicts, here are the iPhone-related stories that caught my attention this week:

• Fortune names Steve Jobs the CEO of the Decade.  This related article provides thoughts on Steve Jobs from Andy Grove (Intel), Andrea Jung (Avon; Apple board member), Larry
  
  Ellison (Oracle; friend of Jobs); Marc Andreessen (started Netscape);
  
  Bob Iger (Disney); Ralph de la Vega (AT&T); Jimmy Iovine
  
  (Interscope Records); and Bill Campbell (Quicken; Apple board member).
• Speaking of the decade, Mark Kellner of the Washington Times says that the iPhone is not just the gift of the year, it is the gift of the decade.
• A while back, I wrote about the history of the “i” in the iPhone.  If you are new to iPhone J.D. and missed that article, I think you will enjoy it.  We now know a little more about the origin of the “i” thanks to an excellent interview by Cult of Mac with Ken Segall who used to work at Apple’s advertising agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day.  He talks about how he coined the term “iMac” even though Jobs hated it at first, and also gives some more background on Jobs that serves as a nice complement to the Fortune articles noted above.
• Every year iLounge produces a great, free iPod + iPhone Buyers Guide.  This year’s edition is available here.
• Erin Geiger Smith recommends on The Business Insider 10 iPhone apps for lawyers, several of which have been reviewed here on iPhone J.D. and which I also like.
• It’s not just lawyers using iPhones.  The Orlando Sentinel writes about doctors using iPhone apps. 
• Similarly, David Pogue of the New York Times writes about medical apps for doctors and patients.  I wonder when someone will start iPhone M.D.?
• Here is a great tip from Dan Moren of Macworld:  a way to lock the Photos app in landscape mode so that you can hand someone your iPhone displaying a picture without the screen rotating as you move the iPhone itself.
• Michael Mace, who previously worked at Apple and Palm, writes on his Mobile Opportunity blog about which mobile phone apps are making money.
• Are you looking to create an iPhone app but don’t know anything about programming?  There are companies that will create simple apps for you using templates, and the price is quite reasonable.  BusinessWeek reports on Do-it Yourself iPhone Apps.  (Thanks to Alan Cohen for the link.)
• Here is yet another reason that I have not used a jailbreak utility to hack my iPhone.  Engadget reports that a Dutch hacker found a way to locate jail-broken iPhones in the Netherlands and display a message demanding money.
• Verizon’s new Droid cellphone, made by Motorola, has been getting
  
  very good reviews and, for some people, appears to be a decent
  
  alternative to the iPhone.  Here are three quick reports on the Droid
  
  versus the iPhone.  First, Greg Kumparak’s review for MobileCrunch
  
  is a great read if you are wondering what in Droid is different from
  
  the iPhone.  Kimparak concludes, after weighing the pros and cons of
  
  each, that it is difficult to say which is better:  “If you want a
  
  phone that just works and does damned near everything you
  
  could want and don’t mind Apple’s closed garden: by all means, get the
  
  iPhone. If you can handle a bit of complexity for the sake of
  
  flexibility and don’t mind having to tinker a bit: by all means, get
  
  the Droid. At this point, I honestly feel that either choice would make
  
  any sane person incredibly happy.”
• Second, David Pogue reviews the Droid for the New York Times,
  
  and his review is also mostly a comparison to the iPhone.  Pogue’s
  
  conclusion:  “Droid wins on phone network [Verizon], customizability,
  
  GPS navigation, speaker,
  
  physical keyboard, removable battery and openness (free operating
  
  system, mostly uncensored app store). The iPhone wins on simplicity,
  
  refinement, thinness, design, Web browsing, music/video synching with
  
  your computer, accessory ecosystem and quality/quantity of the app
  
  store.”
• Third, Andy Ihnatko analyzes the “iDon’t” ad for the Droid and explains why it is mostly wrong.  Ihnatko also posted a helpful set of pictures on Flickr
  
  that compares the iPhone 3GS’s 3 megapixel camera versus the Droid’s 5
  
  megapixel camera that even includes a flash.  On specs alone, the Droid
  
  should win, but as these photos show, because you can touch the screen
  
  to adjust the exposure on the iPhone, the iPhone pictures often come
  
  out better.  Finally, Ihnatko’s full review of the Droid is here.
  
• For those of you who know what it means to miss New Orleans music, you can now listen to New Orleans music for free with the new WWOZ app.  WWOZ is the community radio station in New Orleans run by the folks who bring us the amazing New Orleans Jazz Fest every year.  You can listen the the music in the app itself, or there is a button that launches a background stream via Safari so that you can listen to the music in the background while you use other apps on your iPhone.  (Thanks to Ray Ward for the link.)
• Speaking of music, are you going to the Opera?  There’s an app for that.  The Opera app from Italian developers Intermundia will give you lots of details on 24 famous operas, including the script in both Italian and English so that you can understand what is being said.  The text is white and gray on a black background so that you can use it in the Opera house.  I think you’d also need to turn down the brightness to not annoy the other patrons, but I suppose that could work.
• And finally, Boing Boing reports on German researchers who created a Dodge minivan that can be remotely operated by an iPhone app.  (Thanks to Ernie Svenson for the link.)  The app has buttons to accelerate and brake, and rotating the iPhone turns the steering wheel.  The app includes a live view from the car so that the iPhone user can see where he is driving.  As usual, a video is worth more than 1,000 words, so let’s roll the tape:

Yesterday, Apple announced that there are now over 100,000 apps in the app store
and “well over” two billion iPhone apps have been downloaded, an increase from September 28, 2009 when Apple announced 85,000 apps available and “more than” two billion apps downloaded.  A little history to put this in perspective:

• 7/10/08:  App Store opens
• 7/14/08:  10 million apps sold; 800 apps available  (Apple PR)
• 9/9/08:  100 million apps sold; 3,000 apps available. (Apple PR)
• 10/22/08:  200 million apps sold; 5,550 apps available  (Macworld)
• 12/5/08:  300 million apps sold; 10,000 apps available  (iPhone J.D.)
• 1/16/09:  500 million apps sold; 15,000 apps available  (iPhone J.D.)
• 3/17/09:  800 million apps sold; 25,000 apps available  (Macworld)
• 4/24/09:  1 billion apps sold; 35,000 apps available  (Apple PR)
• 7/14/09:  1.5 billion apps sold; 65,000 apps available  (Apple PR)
• 9/28/09:  “more than” 2 billion apps sold; 85,000 apps available  (Apple PR)
• 11/4/09:  “well over” 2 billion apps sold; 100,000 apps available (Apple PR)

And because a picture is worth a thousand words:

What apps do you use the most?  Here are some of the apps that I have been using lately, along with a brief description for the ones that I have not reviewed on iPhone J.D.

• Twitterific — Twitter client
• Quickoffice
• Documents to Go
• NotifyMe
• NetNewsWire — Google Reader RSS client
• Wikipanion
• Facebook — Facebook client
• DirecTV — DirecTV client that lets you program the DVR when away from home
• FlyCast — streams radio stations; I have been using it lately to keep up with Saints-related radio from WWL  (Go Saints!  Who Dat!)
• Bento
• DaysFrom
• FRCP
• La. Civil Code
• La. Civ. Pro.
• Speedtest — test your WiFi or 3G speed
• TWiT.am — live stream from Leo Laporte’s TWIT
• Mac OS Ken — stream episodes of the Mac OS Ken podcast, useful to listen to the newest one on the way to work even if I haven’t synced my iPhone yet
• WifiTrak — find open WiFi hotspots
• Grocery IQ — grocery list
• iPhunny — latest jokes from late night TV monologues
• Remote — remote control for Apple TV
• Rock Band — game where you play along with the music
• 2 Across – crossword game
• Bejeweled 2 — the classic game
• AWSolitaire — numerous solitaire games, but the only one I play is Klondike
• Peggle — I don’t play this one as much after getting to the end, but still fun
• Sokoku — I play the version from Electronic Arts
• Ramp Champ — my son plays this one more than I do, but I like it too
• Wurdle — word game

I personally have seen a huge increase in the number of iPhones in law firms and other companies, and apparently Deutsche Bank research analyst Chris Whitmore has seen the same thing.  Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Fortune reports on a research note that Whitmore released to his clients this week in which Whitmore estimates that Apple will have shipped 25 million iPhones by the end of 2009 and that 2 million of those will be to corporate users.  He predicts that this will give Apple a 7% share of the enterprise smartphone market in 2009, up from 2% in 2008.  Whitmore also estimates that around 6,000 of the almost 100,000 apps in the App Store are enterprise related.  Elmer-DeWitt reprints an interesting graph from Whitmore which estimates a large increase in corporate iPhone use next year:

 

The Deutsche Bank report is consistent with other recent reports.  For example, TechNewsWorld recently wrote on reports from Forrester Research and Barclays Capital Research which also predicted a big increase in the use of iPhones in companies.  Forrester even predicts that the iPhone share of the enterprise smartphone market will rise to 35% in the next three years.

The increase in corporate iPhone sales is no accident; Apple is actively pursuing the enterprise market.  Apple has a web page devoted to iPhone in Business, including this page which profiles numerous companies using iPhones ranging from Kraft to Gannett to even Blue Man Group.  (I keep waiting for Apple to add a law firm profile; I hope Apple isn’t waiting for one of us to paint all of our attorneys blue. UPDATE:  I stand corrected; as pointed out in the comments, there is a profile of the Sonnenschein law firm.)  Also, as I have previously noted,
many of the changes in iPhone Software 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS were
included specifically to address common security requirements of
corporate America.  Indeed, as Alan Cohen wrote in an article for AmLaw
that I referenced last month, many corporate IT directors at law firms who previously had hesitations about the iPhone are now supporting iPhone use.

I look forward to all of the new iPhone users at law firms and our clients.  The more the merrier.

Bing is the search engine provided by Microsoft, that company's answer to Google and Yahoo.  Microsoft has updated the website to optomize it for the iPhone, and so far it looks like the company did a nice job.

Go to www.bing.com on your iPhone and you will be redirected to m.bing.com and given a very clean and simple home screen on which you can type your search:

 

You can tell Bing your location (by address, zip code, etc.) and store multiple different locations as defaults, such as work and home.  With this information provided, Bing will run a local search but also provide you with other tabs to easily run your search on the web, videos, images or news.

    

    

When you search the web and click on a link, you will of course see the website, but Bing also offers the option of optimizing the website for the iPhone screen and automatically focusing on the part of the page that you are most likely to want to view.  Bing skews some of the images to make them fit on the screen and the result isn't always pretty, but if you are just interested in reading text, this gets the job done.  You can also click on the page map icon to see a version of the website divided into sections, and you can tap on a section to change the focus of the optimized view of the website.

    

Most of the time, I would rather just view a website normally in Safari and then zoom in on the part that I want.  But for some troublesome websites that don't format well on the iPhone screen, the option to optimize web pages for the phone might be useful.

Google is a great search engine that works great on the iPhone and is built-in to Safari, and I'm sure that I will still use Google most of the time.  But it is nice to see Microsoft taking the time to format Bing for smartphones such as the iPhone.  They did a good job, and I can see myself using Bing on the iPhone from time to time.

As we get closer to the end of the year, you are probably concentrating on your CLE hours for 2009, not 2010, but I recommend that you mark your calendar now for next year’s ABA TECHSHOW which will be held March 25 through 27, 2010, in Chicago.  This is the premier conference for lawyers interested in technology, sponsored every year by the Law Practice Management Section of the ABA.  The panels for 2010 are still being finalized, but I understand that there will be tracks (with multiple sessions each) focused on areas including trial skills, mobility, smart phones, e-discovery, solo and small firms, large firms and corporate counsel, Macintosh, marketing and social networking, finance, and advanced IT.  I’m especially thrilled to announce that I will be co-presenting two sessions geared to attorneys using iPhones, a session with Reid Trautz on iPhone apps on Thursday, March 25th that I suspect we will call “60 Apps in 60 Minutes,” and a session with Ben Stevens on using an iPhone in your law practice on Saturday morning, March 27th. 

I encourage all of you to think very seriously about going.  I had never attended TECHSHOW or any other major legal technology conference before I attended the 2008 TECHSHOW, where I spoke on disaster preparation and recovery (a topic near and dear to all of us attorneys in New Orleans) and also on using a Mac at home when your law firm uses PCs.  I also took the time to attend numerous other sessions in 2008, and I learned so much.  TECHSHOW is set up so that there are multiple sessions going on at one time, so for each block of time during the day you can choose the topic that most interests you—and with so many compelling sessions, it is often tough to choose, as you can see here.  TECHSHOW also features the famous “60 Sites in 60 Minutes” session that is always informative and entertaining.  (Click here for some of the previous sites featured in that presentation.)

Besides the content, the other thing that I loved about TECHSHOW was that I met so many great people who I still keep in touch with, including a number of well-known legal bloggers.  (I wasn’t blogging myself back in March of 2008; iPhone J.D. started in November of 2008.) 

I might not have ever attended in the first place had I not been asked to speak, and I had no idea what I had been missing over the years.  So even if you have never attended TECHSHOW or a similar legal technology conference, do yourself a favor and make plans to attend next year.  Any lawyer who has enough interest in technology to read iPhone J.D. will love this conference because of the amazing content and the numerous fun opportunities to meet new people.  And, because there will be two full sessions on the iPhone, plus I’m sure we will plan a dinner and other opportunities to socialize at TECHSHOW with other iPhone users, it will especially fun for all of us who use an iPhone.

I’ll post more details on TECHSHOW as we get closer, but in the meantime I encourage you to keep up with the TECHSHOW Blog, not just because information about the conference will be posted there, but also because conference speakers contribute content so there will be a lot of substantive information in that blog as we get closer to next March.  Indeed, this year some of the best content from previous TECHSHOWs that is still relevant today will be posted to that blog.  For those of you who know Quebec attorney Dominic Jaar, who is currently the CEO of Ledjit and who used to be a commercial litigator at Bell Canada’s legal department, Dominic is in charge of the blog this year and I know he will do a great job.  If you use an RSS reader, add it to your subscriptions.  Additionally, you can follow ABA TECHSHOW on Twitter.

I had to miss the 2009 TECHSHOW because of a schedule conflict, but I am really looking forward to the 2010 conference, especially now that I know that there will be two iPhone sessions.  I hope that all of the attorneys who read iPhone J.D. make plans to join me there.

Does anyone else find it hard to believe that October is basically over?  This year has certainly gone by fast.  But back to the topic at hand, it’s Friday, so here is some of the interesting iPhone-related news from this past week.

• Yesterday I talked about Google potentially bringing improvements to the Maps app on the iPhone.  Yesterday was also the day that Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times wrote an excellent comparison of the current options for turn-by-turn GPS navigation on the iPhone.  His favorite was actually one of the cheapest:  MotionX-GPS Drive, which costs only $2.99 and includes a month of Live Voice Guidance.  After the first month, the voice service costs another $2.99 a month, but apparently you can cancel at any time.  That can add up over a year, but is far less than the $99 you would pay for the TomTom app.  Ihnatko’s review has inspired me to check out MotionX-GPS, and I’ll let you know what I think.  If you want to try it out too, click here to get MotionX-GPS Drive ($2.99): 

  

• Traveling to a foreign country?  There are lots of apps that allow you to type something in one language and have it translated into another language, but if you don’t want to type, Lex Friedman of Macworld reviews a $2 app called Bableshot.  Take a picture of some text with your iPhone and the app will scan the picture to find all of the text, and then translate that text into English.  I haven’t tried it yet, but this sounds very useful.
• If you prefer to talk instead of taking a picture, your iPhone can still translate for you.  Friedman reviews another app for Macworld called Jibbigo.  With this $25 app, just say something in English to your iPhone, and it translates it into Spanish and then says it over the iPhone speaker.  It’s like having a translator inside of your iPhone.
• Everyone can recall Apple’s memorable “There’s an app for that” and “I’m a Mac / I’m a PC” ads, and it probably comes as no surprise that Apple spent around $500 million on advertising in 2009.  But Philip Elmer-DeWitt writes that it is surprising that Apple spent less than other companies like Microsoft and Dell, even though their ads are less memorable.
• Speaking of ads, Advertising Age writes that when Volkswagen launched one of its cars, the GTI, in 2006 it spent $60 million on television ads.  But to launch the 2010 model, it is spending just $500,000 and putting all of that money into one thing:  an iPhone app.  Volkswagen teamed up with the makers of the $6.99 Real Racing app, an iPhone game that has received good reviews, and produced an app called Real Racing GTI that anyone can download for free.  You get to race around a track in a virtual version of the GTI.  It will be interesting to see if this advertising strategy works for Volkswagen.  The game itself has very nice graphics and is worth checking out since it is free, although given the number of times I have crashed in this game I don’t think I could afford the insurance premiums were I to get a GTI and race it around town at top speed.  Click here to get Real Racing GTI (free): 

  

• Good news:  you can get an iPhone for only $20.  Bad news:  it’s just a movie prop.  MobileCrunch has all the details.
• I don’t take taxis very often, but if you do, you’ll want to check out Terry White’s review of an app called Taxi Magic that lets you call a taxi and even have it charged to your credit card.  Thanks to Ernie Svenson for the link.
• Mashable and AppAdvice report that LawFirms.com came up with an “ad” for a fake iPhone app called iCoyote that purported to help you smuggle illegal aliens across the border but was actually an advertisement for immigration lawyers.  The ad didn’t stay up long as public backlash forced its removal, replaced by this page, but if you click on the Mashble and AppAdvice links you can see the original ad.
• And finally, Jerry Brito’s wife must really love him to have agreed to this iPhone wedding cake.  Click here for a slideshow with several pictures on Brito’s website, and here are a few samples.  (via AppAdvice.)

 

Yesterday, Google showed off the new Google Maps application for phones running the Android 2.0 operating system (such as the new Droid phones that Verizon is starting to advertise), and it is mighty impressive.  It includes free, built-in navigation services, so you can get turn-by-turn directions in Google Maps without having to buy a GPS unit such as the ones sold by Garmin, TomTom, etc.  The application can be controlled by your voice and even incorporates Google’s satellite view and street view.  This Google video describes seven unique features of the Google maps application on Android:

1. Use plain English terms to search instead of an address, so you can simply make your destination a business name or description.
2. Search by voice.  This looks similar to what you can already do on the iPhone with the Google app that allows you to search Google by saying your search terms.
   
3. Live traffic data so you can see where the roads will be slower and even choose an alternate route to avoid traffic.
   
4. Search along route, to find nearby gas stations, restaurants, etc.
   
5. Satellite view.
6. Street view.  Street level photographs show you exactly what your
   
   next turn will look like and the actual street view of your destination.
7. A special car dock mode when the phone is in a car dock.
   

Engadget also has this nice video from a demonstration that the site was given yesterday.  This Macworld report has additional information. 

There appear to be a few downsides.  For example, you need a network connection to get the maps, so if you are on the open road where there is no cell signal (and no Wi-Fi) you are out of luck.  But considering how well the service appears to work when you do have a network connection, and considering the low price of free, it is no surprise that, as reported by the New York Times:  “Shares of both TomTom and Garmin plummeted Wednesday after Google’s announcement.”

Well that’s great for all of our Android 2.o-using brethren, but what about us iPhone users?   Vic Gundotra, the Vice-President of Engineering at Google who is responsible for mobile phone applications, may have said that the technology is coming to the iPhone, it just depends on which report you read.  CNet reporter Tom Krazit says definitively that “Google is working with Apple on bringing it to the iPhone,” and the hold up is simply that Google needs to work closely with Apple because Maps is a built-in iPhone application.  Similarly, Quentin Hardy writes for Forbes that Google is “‘eagerly working’ with Apple to provide the app for the popular iPhone.”

A report from Reuters, however, gives a less certain spin on what Gundotra said:

Google Engineering Vice President Vic Gundotra said the
company hoped to eventually make versions of the navigation
product for non-Android smartphones, but noted that the
software has “stringent” hardware requirements.

He would not comment on whether Apple’s iPhone, which
offers Google mapping software as part of its standard menu of
built-in applications, would offer the new navigation features.
He said, in response to a question, that the latest version of
the iPhone, the iPhone 3GS, has the horsepower to support the
navigation product.

Hopefully Google is just honoring Apple’s confidentiality requirements and is indeed saying, just without really saying, that Google is working with Apple to bring this to the iPhone.

Apple may have even more in store for the Maps app.  As I reported a few weeks ago, it was recently discovered that Apple purchased a company called Placebase this past July which was a competitor to Google Maps.  Placebase specialized in adding layers with helpful information to maps, and if Apple is bringing some of those same ideas to the iPhone, then perhaps we’ll soon see have a version of Maps that is even more impressive than what Google is showing off for Android.

I try to stay away from rumors on iPhone J.D., but because this technology is so exciting and because Gundotra’s comment provides some degree of confirmation (depending upon which story you read) I thought that this story was worthy of mention here.  Whether the improvements come from Google or Placebase or both, I am very excited to see the next version of the Maps app on the iPhone.

Just yesterday, I got the call that I have gotten countless times before.  This time it was a law partner of mine, other times it has been a friend or a relative, but the question is always along these lines:  “Jeff, I just got an iPhone.  What should I do next?”  Thanks to the folks at No Starch Press who sent me a review copy of one of their new books, I now have a great answer:  read the book My New iPhone by Wallace Wang.

I wasn’t familiar with Wallace Wang before I read this book.  Not only does he write computer books, but he is also a stand up comedian who has performed in Las Vegas and appeared on A&E’s Evening at the Improv.  His comedy doesn’t carry over into this book, however; the writing style is clear and helpful, without, for example, the zaniness that you find in books written by Andy Ihnatko.

The approach to this book is really quite brilliant.  The book is organized almost like a cookbook, but instead of recipes, in here you find 52 projects organized in to 10 parts.  Each project is set up the same way:  an introduction, the project goal, a list of what you will be using such as a list of apps or sometimes a program on the computer, step-by-step instructions with tons of pictures from the iPhone, and then finally some additional ideas for taking the skills learned to the next level and a sidebar that shows a related project, third party app or idea.  Much like a cookbook, you can really read the book in any order that you want, so you can start with the projects that interest you the most and then make your way through the book.  By the time you are finished, you will go from being an iPhone novice to an iPhone power user.

Note that while the book is up to date as of iPhone Software 3.0, it doesn’t discuss the unique features of the iPhone 3GS.  That doesn’t detract much from the projects, but just keep in mind that this book doesn’t include advice for taking videos or using the compass.

I won’t list all 52 projects, but here are some examples:

#5 Searching Your iPhone

#18 Creating Ringtones

#21 Customizing Your iPod Settings

#25 Listening to Audiobooks and Podcasts

#29 Personalizing the Safari Browser

#37 Storing Contact Information

#44 Watching the Stock Market

#47 Making an iPhone Kid Friendly

#50 Traveling with Your iPhone

If you want to get a feel for a sample project, click here to go to the publisher’s website (No Starch Press) where you can download a free copy of Project #22 Turning Your iPhone into a Radio.  That will give you a good sense of what the book as a whole is like.

In the past, I have always recommended that beginning iPhone users looking for a book to read check out David Pogue’s iPhone:  The Missing Manual book.  As great as Pogue’s book is, Wang’s book offers a nice alternative.  If you want a soup-to-nuts manual, you’ll love the Pogue book, but if you want to just tackle one project at a time, going in your own order and at your own pace like you would do with a cookbook, you’ll love Wang’s book.

The retail price of the book is $29.95, but if you click here you can get it on Amazon for only $19.77, and a tiny percentage of each sale helps to defray the cost of running iPhone J.D.  If you or someone you know is new to the iPhone, this book is a great resource.

Are you getting ready for Halloween and trying to decide what your costume will be this year?  Reko Rivera and John Savio of Tampa, Florida are ready with their costumes, and they are each dressing up as an iPhone 3GS, or as they call it, GuyPhones.  Each costume consists of a 42″ flat screen television, three batteries including a car battery that has to be held between their legs, a jailbroken iPhone with a live output of an iPhone screen to the television, and a lot of fancy artwork on a plastic shell to create the front and back of the iPhone.  The result is a costume that weighs 85 pounds but is essentially a working iPhone 3GS that can run for 4.5 hours before needing to be recharged.  The costumes cost around $2,000, but the pair hopes to make that money back by participating in some costume contests.

Here are some of the pictures that Savio posted to a MacRumors forum (click on the post to see even more pictures) and a video that the pair posted to YouTube.  Thanks to TUAW for the post that brought this to my attention.

 

    

    

For over 100 years, the pharmaceutical company Merck has published The Merck Manuals, a series of books providing information on the diagnosis and treatment of disease.  There are editions for both medical professionals and consumers.  Doctors often pay $65 to purchase the hard cover book, now in its 18th Edition.   A version of this book geared at consumers sells for $40.  Additionally, Merck provides a free online version of many of its books.  You can see all of the books and links to the online versions here.

Two of the more popular texts are the (professional) Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy and the (consumer) Merck Manual—Home Edition.  While you can access free versions of these texts online, Merck is now selling versions for the iPhone developed by Agile Partners that are formatted for the iPhone screen and don’t require an Internet connection.  The professional version is $29.99 and the home version is $9.99.  Agile Partners gave me free copies of both to evaluate, and they are very nice apps.

In the professional version, you can browse through entries by section, explore an index of terms, or find an entry by browsing a list of symptoms.  You can also do a full text search for a word, view a history of the entries you recently viewed, view a list of entries that you have marked as your favorites or even jump to a random entry.

Each entry has a wealth of information about a disease or condition.  The entries are as long as a substantive Wikipedia entry, but unlike Wikipedia where anyone can add information, the Merck Manual entries are written by over 300 medical experts so the information is trustworthy.  There are three buttons at the bottom of each entry, one which brings you back to the home, one which brings up options and star which adds an entry to your list of Favorites.  There are currently two options.  You can change the font size to large, or you can e-mail an entry.  When you e-mail, the app doesn’t send the text, but instead sends a link to the same entry in free online version of the Merck Manual.

The home version of the Merck Manual is written for consumers.  There is less content, and it is geared towards what you would need to know in the home.  For example, instead of a section called “Find by Symptom,” the similar section in the home version is called “Emergencies & Injuries.”

The Emergencies & Injuries section contains a list of common ailments:

There are a few areas in both apps where I could see improvement.  I wish you could tap at the top of the screen to scroll the top of an entry, as you can in most other iPhone apps, because many of the entries are quite long.  There are also a few pages that are not formatted for the iPhone screen and which require scrolling left and right to read them.  I understand why it was done this way for large tables, but there are a few other pages that could have been better formatted.  But these are just minor nits; for the most part that apps work very well.

Perhaps the largest downside to these apps is the price, considering that you can get the online versions with essentially the same content for free.  The apps are better formatted for the iPhone screen and a lot easier to use, but the web pages do a decent job of displaying on the iPhone, assuming that you have a network connection.

I suspect that many lawyers have, like me, found the need to look up medical terms, such as during a break in a deposition.  And many of us will at some point find ourselves looking for the remedy for a bee sting, snake bite, etc.  You can always just fire up Safari and do a Google search on your iPhone and, with enough digging, you’ll probably find the information that you need.  But the Merck Manual apps are excellent sources of medical information and it is very useful to have all of this information at your fingertips on the iPhone for quick and easy access.

Click here for The Merck Manual – Professional Edition ($29.99): 

Click here for The Merck Manual – Home Edition ($9.99):