Jeff Richardson

I know that many attorneys are interested in tracking their billable hours on their iPhones.  I understand this; your iPhone is with you virtually all of the time, so why not use it to keep track of what you are doing while you are doing it.  But for me, it just seems easier to wait until I am back in the office to enter my time directly into my law firm’s time entry system using my PC.  (My firm uses Elite.)  For that reason, I haven’t had the opportunity to take a close and real-world look at the numerous applications that exist for tracking your time. 

Nevertheless, I have kept tabs on these apps, mostly out of curiosity, and I thought that it might be helpful to post what I know about what is out there.  Little did I know when I started this post how many apps exist to track your time.  I found 17 on the iTunes store, and that was after excluding a few that seemed inappropriate or unfinished. [UPDATE on 2/5/09:  I found another one, Eternity Time Log, which you can read about here.] [UPDATE on 2/6/09:  There are also online options that work with the iPhone.] [UPDATE 4/15/09:  I have added a review of Time Master, another excellent time tracking app.]

The core features are similar across the apps.  The good ones offer you a choice to either use a timer to keep track of your time or to manually enter time if you are doing it at the end of the day.  The better ones let you edit time that was entered by the timer.  Most apps let you e-mail your time entries to yourself (or your secretary) to be added to a full time entry program.  Many apps have extra features which range from interesting to useless depending upon your needs — for example, a few let you prepare invoices on your iPhone.  All but one are under $10; the cheapest is $0.99 and the most expensive is $59.99.

My guess is that the first three apps listed below would be the most useful for many attorneys, but it really depends upon how simple or complicated you want the program to be.  I encourage any of you who have used one or more of these programs to post a comment to share your opinions with others.  Note that what I am providing today is just a survey of the available apps, not a review of any particular apps.  I only tried some of these, so most of my comments are based upon the description in iTunes and on the developer’s website and the comments on iTunes. 

The apps I am listing today are (in no particular order; this is not a ranking):

1. Billbull by Exparte Staffing
2. iTimeSheet by JF Grang softwares
3. Easy TimeSheet by Augustine Software
4. PocketPunchclock by EpIPhone Coders’ Guild
5. PunchClock by return7
6. My Time by Owen Shaw
7. Billable Hours by Jake MacMullin
8. Timewerks by Sorth LLC
9. TDF Time by Technical Data Freeway, Inc.
10. Jobs by Bjango
11. LionClock by Smart Software Development
12. ClockedIn by kyoobed, inc.
13. Time Tracker by SDK Innovation Ltd.
14. Time Tracker by Jens Eickmeyer
15. Time Keeper by iHarwood.com
16. Bill4Time Mobile by Broadway Billing Systems
17. 24hTrack by Roland Fieger

• Billbull by Exparte Staffing.  Exparte Staffing is a legal staffing agency in New York.  Alon Karpman, the Managing Director (and an attorney) wrote me a few weeks ago to tell me about this app and I have played with it a little.  To enter time you choose a client, then you can choose a matter, task and/or note, then you click a START button to start counting time, or alternatively you can just manually enter the time you spent.  To choose a client, the client must first be listed in the Contacts on your iPhone.  You can review lists of how much time you spent on different clients, matters, etc. and the app lets you send an e-mail with that data so that you or your secretary can enter it into your time management system.  There are only a few reviews on iTunes, but they are mostly positive, except that some people don’t like that a client has to be a preexisting entry in your Contacts.  Billbull is the only app I am listing today that appears to be specifically designed for attorneys, but I don’t know how much difference that really makes.  I had a few minor issues with the app.  For example, if you are reviewing your hours and then add another time entry for the day, you will be returned to the list but the time you just added doesn’t appear until you switch to another view and then switch back.  I also had some minor issues selecting clients.  But let me emphasize that I did not use this for my real world time tracking and my use was limited, so these may have just been one-time quirks.  Billbull costs $3.99 and you can download it here: 

  

• iTimeSheet by JF Grang softwares.  This
looks a great program by a French developer.  Like Billbull you can either use a timer to enter time, or you can enter time manually by telling the app how many hours you spent on a task.  One nice feature that seems to be unique to iTimeSheet is that you can add a picture to use as an icon for a client, which makes it easy to quickly see the different clients you worked for when you scan through a bunch of time entries.  The export function also
looks very nice — a nicely formatted Excel file that
you e-mail to yourself or your secretary.  Even better than just looking at the two pictures below, there is a nice 16 minute video on the developer’s website that shows you what the app does.  I think a lot of lawyers will really like this app.  There is even a free, Lite version of the app.  The
Lite version only allows for one project, but it allows you to get a
feel for how the app works.  iTimeSheet costs $5.99 and you can download it here:    If you want to try the free Lite version, you can download it here: 

  

• Easy TimeSheet by Augustine Software. I have only played around with this one a little bit, but it also looks like a nice app.  For each entry you can have a project name, a code and a comments field (which a lawyer can use to describe what you were doing).  After you record your time, buttons make it easy to adjust the time up or down in case you started or stoped the app’s clock at the wrong time.  You can e-mail a report of your time, although frankly the report looks a little cryptic.  I suppose you get used to it after a while.  Like iTimeSheet, there is a free Lite version that works with just one project so you can get a sense of how the app works.  Easy TimeSheet costs $2.99 and you can download it here:    If you want to try the free Lite version, you can download it here: 

  

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Ustream.tv allows anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to broadcast a live stream.  The streams on the website range from live coverage of concerts and political events to inane broadcasts by random people talking to the camera on their computer.

Ustream will be streaming the Barack Obama inauguration today on this page.  Until last night, that information would be useless for iPhone users, but last night Ustream announced that Apple finally added to iTunes the Ustream app — just in time for the inauguration.  So now, YES WE CAN view the live stream on our iPhones.

The Ustream Viewing Application doesn’t let you send video out to the world from your iPhone.  It is just a viewer app that allows you to watch any live or archived stream on Ustream.com on your iPhone.  You can also view and participate in a live text chat, which appears just below the video.  Note that Ustream sends a lot of data, and thus it requires a WiFi connection.  3G is not sufficient.  You can download the Ustream app for free on iTunes here: 

Here are my quick observations after my (very brief) testing of the app so far.  First, the audio seems to stream very well, but the video often gets choppy.  Second, the app is a little buggy and does crash. You can minimize those crashes by first turning off your iPhone (hold down the button at the top) and restarting your iPhone before using the app.  Third, you can turn your iPhone sideways to get a bigger picture.  Final observation:  how cool is it that you can watch live streaming video on your iPhone?  I noted the other day that Sling will soon allow you to stream your live TV to your iPhone, but that app won’t be out for a few months.  Ustream is the first to bring live video to the iPhone.

Here is what the Ustream app looks like when I was viewing the archive of Obama’s acceptance speech Monday night.  The quality of a still frame of video doesn’t look that great, but when the video is playing it is very watchable.

Thus, if you want to watch Barack Obama being sworn in live
as it happens on this incredibly historic day, but you don’t happen to be near a TV, just download the
Ustream app to your iPhone and stay close to a WiFi connection.

By the way, the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides:  “The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January … and the terms of their successors shall then begin.”  Thus, the swearing in ceremony is at Noon Eastern time today.

It was only only six weeks ago that I was talking about Apple’s announcement that there were 10,000 apps on the iTunes store and iPhone owners had downloaded over 300 million apps.  And now the front page of Apple’s website announces that there are 15,000 apps and over 500 million downloads:

 

The pace at which developers are writing apps and iPhone users are downloading apps continues to be simply astonishing.  Of course, these 15,000 apps are not all gems.  And considering that for several weeks, the top app was a program that makes your iPhone make fart sounds (which for a while was netting its developer $10,000 every day), let’s just say that there is a lot of variety out there. 

But I think that the variety is a good thing.  For just about anything that you want your iPhone to do, there is an app out there that does it (or there will be soon).  In fact, BusinessWeek writes that some program developers who had planned to write their programs for many different cell phones are deciding that it makes economic sense to only develop an app for the iPhone.  It reminds me of the decisions made for over a decade by many software companies that it only made sense to write their software for Windows, leaving Mac users out in the cold.  That isn’t as true today as it used to be, and the fact that all new Macs can now easily run Windows makes this less important now.  Nevertheless, this was the reason that my law firm and so many others that used Macs in the 1980s and 1990s switched to using Windows.  Hopefully the huge number of iPhone apps and app downloads will make the iPhone platform that much stronger.

I have previously reviewed the external iPhone batteries sold by Richard|Solo.  They are excellent and come in a $50 version (which I usually prefer because of its small size) and a $70 version that is larger and stores more power (which I find more useful on long trips).

Apparently, those who attended Macworld Expo last week were able to purchase the small version for only $20 and the larger version for only $40.  What a deal!  But there is no need to get jealous — for those of us who did not make the trek to San Francisco, Ted Landau reports at The Mac Observer that you can still get a $20 discount on Richard|Solo external iPhone batteries through the end of the month by ordering from the Richard|Solo website and entering “MacWorld” as the discount code.  Getting the small version for only $30 is a steal.  If you don’t have one yet, you should head over to the Richard|Solo website and pick one up before the end of the month.

UPDATE:  Thanks to Tom Freeland for confirming in the comments below and on his blog that this discount does work, plus there is free shipping.   Also thanks to Kevin Camden for noting in the comments below that this discount can only be used on one battery, so if you want to order both models, you have to pay full price for one of them.

 

The iPhone has been available in the U.S. since mid-2007 — unless, that is, you live in Vermont.  Until now, AT&T has not had coverage in Vermont, making it difficult to use an iPhone there and impossible to buy one in a local store.  Fortunately, AT&T recently acquired Vermont carrier Unicel, and effective today, AT&T — and thus, the iPhone — is in Vermont.  A big iPhone J.D. welcome goes out to all Vermont attorneys!

The iPhone Vermont blog been reporting for a long time now on the wait for the iPhone in the maple syrup state, and this morning they have lots of pictures of the former Unicel stores that are now AT&T stores selling the iPhone.

Many years ago, I spent a few weeks one summer at the University of Vermont in Burlington.  It is a beautiful area of the country.  Plus, it is the home of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.  Heath Bar Crunch — yum!

So now we can ALL use iPhones, right?  Not quite.  Others can confirm this for me, but I believe that AT&T still lacks coverage in North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana.  Are there other states?  Hopefully AT&T will continue to expand its network so that we all have good 3G access wherever we are.

Last week at the CES show in Las Vegas, Palm introduced a brand new smartphone that it plans to start selling at some point in the first half of 2009, the Palm Pre.

Pre (rhymes with tree) is an odd name.  As Dan Frakes of Macworld wrote:  “It’s like calling your product ‘beta’.”  But then again, I thought “Wii” was a strange name when Nintendo announced its game system, and now that sounds normal.  Plus, the stress symbol over the “e” reminds me of the Palm Treo and brings back memories of Palm’s former glory.  (When the Treo 650 was new, I really loved mine.)

Whatever the name, it looks like Palm has come up with some great ideas for a smartphone.  The thing that sets the iPhone apart from other smartphones is its amazing hardware and software design, the result of Apple rethinking what a smartphone should be.  It appears that Palm did the same thing.  Palm has a history of doing this — the original PalmPilot and the Treo were breakthrough devices — but it is somewhat of an ancient history.  It has been a long time since we saw anything truly innovative from Palm.

Here are a few of the design innovations in the Pre that I find impressive:

• The touchscreen extends below the screen itself, down to the black area at the bottom where the button is located, and this is a place to use gestures.  You can swipe left and right down there without covering the information on the screen.  If you swipe up on the screen, the screen scrolls (just like the iPhone), but if you instead start your swipe in the gesture area, you get an application launcher.  Do the same thing but hold at the end and you get a nice wave animation on which you can select from your favorite apps.
• Palm treats each window of each application as a card.  Multiple cards can all be running at the same time, and with simple gestures you can switch between then or reorder them.  Press the single button at the bottom of the screen to shrink the app you are using to a card.  It is nice to see multitasking — the iPhone allows some Apple apps (like the iPod and Mail) to run at the same
  
  time as another application, but for the most part does not allow multitasking.  But more impressive than multitasking itself is the innovative card metaphor which appears to make a lot of sense for a smartphone.
• 
  
  The device is small with a full screen on its face, but there is also a slide out keyboard for those who want a keyboard to type e-mails.
• You can use the keyboard to search for text across all of your applications — and if the Pre cannot find it there, it offers to search Google, Google Maps or Wikipedia.
• Palm will also sell a unique charger called the Touchstone.  Simply place a Pre on it (magnets keep it attached) and the Touchstone charges the device without having to plug in any cables.  The surface of the Touchstone is at an angle and you can place the Pre in a vertical or horizontal position, which might be nice for watching a movie.

We’ll have to wait for the device to be released to see all that it offers that is different from the iPhone and to find out how well it works in the real world.  For example, it appears that while the Pre allows third-party apps, they are not true apps but instead are just widget-like web pages that can be stored on the Pre.  It reminds me of the first year that the original iPhone was out when there were no true third party apps and Apple instead encouraged people to write web pages specially formatted for the iPhone.  Some of those web apps were useful and I still use several today, but few can compare to a real native iPhone app.  Daniel Dilger has noted similar concerns on his blog, but folks from Palm claim this is different:  “What we’re doing is very different from what Apple did prior to the SDK being available. Wish I could say more now, but I can’t. Stay tuned.”  [FN:  See below]  And like Dilger, I also wonder if the Pre will feel too chunky — it is smaller but twice as thick as the iPhone, although the weight is about the same.  For now, most of us are just guessing about many of the pros and cons of the Pre.  As Leo Laporte pointed out on this week’s edition of TWiT, “we have got to wait until it comes out.  The [Blackberry] Storm, on the face of it, looked like a great phone … and we have been disappointed by ‘iPhone killers’ before.  But I have to say that I’m very impressed.”

Of course, it is obvious that Palm borrowed a ton of ideas from the iPhone.  A lot of us lawyers are wondering — will Apple assert that Palm infringed on Apple patents on ideas such as multi-touch pinch to zoom in and out?  When Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone, he made a point of emphasizing that the iPhone “changes everything” and that the iPhone’s multi-touch gestures are Apple’s intellectual property.  He said:

We have invented a new technology called multi-touch which is phenomenal.  It works like magic.  You don’t need a stylus.  It’s far more accurate than any touch display that’s ever been shipped.  It ignores unintended touches.  It’s super smart.  You can do multi-finger gestures on it.  And boy have we patented it.

It is not completely accurate to say that Apple invented multi-touch.  The idea has been around for a long time, although Apple was the first company to refine it and popularize it for a phone (much like Apple popularized the use of a mouse with a computer back in 1984, but did not invent the mouse).  Nevertheless, many of Apple’s multi-touch gestures are innovative and I believe that the Pre is the first phone to copy the pinch to zoom in and out gesture that is so wonderful on the iPhone.  Apple has taken steps to patent the iPhone’s multi-touch ideas, and it will be interesting to see whether Apple mounts a legal challenge against Palm.  Remember that after Apple introduced visual voicemail on the iPhone, it was sued by a company who claimed to own a patent on the idea, and Apple ultimately decided to settle the case and license the technology.  [UPDATE on 1/27/09:  It appears that Apple was awarded the patent, and Apple COO Tim Cook recently confirmed that Apple will protect this patent.]

But whether or not Palm unfairly copied from Apple, Palm also came up with a lot of their own ideas, including the ones that I mentioned above.  I’m sure Apple will be taking a close look at what Palm has done, and perhaps we will see some of these ideas implemented in the future on the iPhone.  The iPhone blog has an interesting post on what Palm took from Apple and what Apple should take from Palm. [UPDATE on 1/15/09:  Engadget also has a great article “What Apple could learn from Palm’s webOS.”]

As a former long-time user of Palm products, I’m glad to see that the company is making a new and exciting device again.  (I wonder how much of the credit goes to the numerous former Apple employees now working at Palm, including the new Chairman of the Board, Jon Rubenstein.)  And as an iPhone user, I’m thrilled to see that the competition is innovating.  Healthy competition should result in better smartphones for all of us.

If you are interested in learning more about the Palm Pre, here are some web pages that are worth checking out:

• Palm has posted the video from the introduction at CES, and this is perhaps the best way to see what the Palm Pre is all about.  The video runs about an hour.
• Engadget has a lot of Palm Pre posts, including this good in-depth look with pictures and first impressions.
• PC World has a good first look.
• CrunchGear has an 11 minute video of the device.
• ArsTechnica has a nice overview and comparison to the iPhone.
• TreoCentral has a good video showing the device and asking questions of Palm and a post with first impressions.
• The New York Times has an interesting article about what this device means for Palm.

Palm has not yet announced a price for the Palm Pre.  It will (at least at first) be exclusive to Sprint.

FOOTNOTE (added 1/27/09):  In my original post I quoted “folks from Palm” and provided a link to a post on Palm employee Andrew Shebanow’s website Shebanation.  (The language I quoted actually appeared in the Comments, something that Andrew said in response to another Comment.)  But apparently Palm asked Andrew to remove his post (and the comments), and I wasn’t the only one to notice it.  So you’ll just have to take my word for it that this is what Andrew said.  Don’t worry, I’m a lawyer; you can trust me.

iPodNN reports that Citrix employees were at last week’s Macworld Expo giving impromptu demos of the upcoming Citrix XenDesktop client for the iPhone.  Citrix itself confirmed this by posting to its own blog several videos of a working prototype of the iPhone app.

First, Citrix posted a video of using the iPhone to launch PowerPoint, type some text, then copy that text and paste into a Word document.  Here is that video.  It is neat to see Microsoft Office applications being used on an iPhone, and a not-so-subtle jab at Apple for not yet having copy-and-paste on the iPhone.

Additionally, Citrix posted several videos of people at Macworld Expo talking about how impressed they are with the version of the Citrix iPhone app in development.  Check out this set of videos and this additional set of videos.   

Citrix says that there is “nothing to announce regarding release date … but we are making good progress.”  (Citrix has previously said that the iPhone app will be released in the first half of this year.)

For many years, smart shoppers have known that December is a dangerous time to buy an Apple product because Apple always announced something new in January at Macworld Expo.  That timing was unfortunate for Christmas purchases; there is nothing worse than getting a brand new computer only to have it replaced by something better a few weeks later.

When Apple announced last month that this would be its last Macworld Expo and that Steve Jobs would not be giving the Keynote address this year, that was a pretty obvious signal that there would not be a major new product announcement at Macworld Expo last week (although the iLife upgrade and new 17″ MacBook Pro were still nice announcements).  Even so, I know that some people looking to buy an iPhone wanted to wait until Macworld Expo was over just to make sure that nothing new was announced.  For example, attorney Stephen Hamilton from Lubbock, Texas recently told me he was waiting for Macworld Expo just in case Apple announced a 32 GB version of the iPhone.

If you, like Stephen, have been waiting to buy an iPhone 3G, is this a safe time to buy?  While it is always impossible to predict what Apple will do in the future, history leads me to suspect that a major new model will not be released until this Summer, although there could still be a minor bump in the iPhone 3G before then.  The original iPhone was released in the U.S. on June 29, 2007.  Almost exactly a year later, the iPhone 3G was released on July 11, 2008.  Phil Schiller, the Apple executive who gave the keynote address at Macworld Expo this year instead of Steve Jobs, dropped a hint to New York Times columnist David Pogue that another iPhone will not come out until June of 2009.  Here is what Pogue wrote:

I spoke with Phil Schiller after his talk. I asked him if he could
be any more specific about why Apple pulled out of the Macworld Expo—to
the heartbreak of the Mac faithful who have loved making the pilgrimage
to this event for 25 years.  He said what the Apple press release said—that Apple stores
introduce more people to Apple’s products in a week than 100 Macworld
Expos. Trade shows just aren’t worth the effort and the money.  But he also pointed out that having to come up with another dazzling
show every January—a huge production, starring knock-’em-dead new
products every year—was unsustainable. He noted that Apple marches to
certain annual product cycles: the holiday season (Novemberish), the
educational buying season (late summer), the iPod product cycle
(October), the iLife development cycle (usually March), the iPhone
cycle (June). January doesn’t fit ANY of them.

It is a little unclear whether it was Schiller or Pogue who said that June is the iPhone cycle, but if it was Schiller, this is further evidence that we won’t see a major new model before this Summer.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we will have to wait that long to get a minor upgrade.  Recall that the original iPhone came out in 4 GB and 8 GB versions for $499 or $599 in June of 2007, but then in September of 2007, Apple discontinued the 4 GB model and dropped the 8 GB model price to $399.  And then in February of 2008, a $499 16 GB model was released.  Given that there was a minor bump in February of 2008 followed by the new iPhone 3G in July of 2008, we could certainly see a minor bump next month, such as a 32 GB version of the iPhone 3G, followed by a new version of the iPhone in June or July of 2009.

If you are waiting to buy an iPhone, hopefully this will give you a little more insight.  For what it is worth, my wife got an iPhone just last month and I had no hesitation getting it then.

Sling Media makes products that allow you to watch your home TV or DVR in another location by streaming the audio and video over the Internet.  Connect a Slingbox (different models range from $180 to $300) to your home entertainment system (Cable, Tivo, DVR, etc.) and then you can watch live or recorded TV using a laptop anyplace else in the world as long as you have an Internet connection.  You can sit in your hotel room in the West Coast and watch your local news or sports being shown on your TV on the East Coast.

Sling Media has developed software to allow you to also watch your TV on a mobile device.  They have software for Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm OS and Symbian smartphones, and at Macworld Expo they showed off the upcoming SlingPlayer Mobile app for the iPhone.  The app appears to be well suited for the iPhone’s large screen.  The app will let you watch anything that you could watch at home on your TV on your iPhone, including the ability to change the channel or watch something recorded on your Tivo/DVR.

Want to see more?  The folks at The iPhone Blog have a seven minute video demonstration of the SlingPlayer Mobile app running on an iPhone, CNET has a shorter but very good video, and Apple iPhone Apps.com has a video interview with Sling’s Director of Public Relations along with a nice demo.  The app should be available in a few months, and while no price is set yet, Sling charges $30 for similar programs on other mobile devices.

If you use Cisco WebEx to host or participate in online meetings, Cisco announced at Macworld Expo its new WebEx Meeting Center app that will allow you to attend a WebEx meeting on your iPhone.  You can view the WebEx conference slides or the shared screen using the iPhone app at the same time that you participate in the audio portion of the meeting using the iPhone’s phone.  The app also allows you to see who else is in the meeting, chat with other participants and get details on the meeting in progress.  The conference host needs to be using the latest version of the WebEx software for this to work, but there is no addiitonal charge associated with a person participating by iPhone.

You join a meeting from an iPhone either by clicking on a link in an
e-mailed invitation or by choosing a meeting listed within the app. 
WebEx will then call your iPhone.  You can find out more details in this article on eWeek.com and this article in PC World.  And Cisco itself has a nice, short video on its website that shows off the features as well as a list of FAQs and this press release.

[UPDATE on 3/12/09:  Here is a nice review of WebEx on the iPhone by iPhoneCT]

Click this link to download the free WebEx app using iTunes: