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I’ve reviewed quite a few external speakers for the iPhone, but I’ve never seen or heard anything like the Damson Twist.  The iPhone’s tiny built-in speaker has very little bass, and a typical criticism of portable Bluetooth speakers is that they sound good but still don’t have a lot of bass.  That complaint cannot be made against the Damson Twist.  This speaker is very small and portable (only about three inches high) but uses an interesting technology to deliver serious bass.  Damson sent me a free unit to review and I’ve been testing it for the last few weeks.

The Twist works by pushing sound across the surface on which the Twist is sitting.  If you pick up a Twist and hold it in your hand without the bottom touching anything, you can barely hear the sound at all.  But when you place the Twist on a flat surface, the surface becomes a part of the speaker and the sound travels throughout the surface to deliver sound with deep bass.  Damson says that it uses something called resonance technology rather than the traditional cone approach to amplification.  Here is a short video demonstration of me picking up and putting down the Twist on top of my piano:

Damson says that the Twist works with virtually any surface including wood, plastic, metal and glass, but in my tests it works best on a large, flat wood surface such as a wood desk.  Note that in my tests it didn’t seem to matter if the desk was messy or had lots of other objects on it. 

If you have previously paired the Twist with your iPhone, using it is very simple.  Twist the Twist in the center to switch it from “Off” to “BT” and it automatically connects to your iPhone and tells your iPhone to play (whatever you were last listening to).  So you simply twist the Twist, place it on a surface, and then your music (or podcast or audiobook or whatever) starts to play.  There are no volume controls on the Twist; you just use the volume controls on your iPhone.

Note that if you want to use the Twist with a device that does not have Bluetooth, you can twist it the opposite direction, from “Off” to “On,” and then just plug in a standard 3.5 mm cord that is connected to your iPod or other device. 

You can get the Twist in black, blue, red or silver.  As you can see, Damson sent me a blue one.  Here is a picture from Damson showing a red one.  This picture also gives you a view of the small base underneath the Twist.

I’m no audiophile, but I have mixed feelings about the sound.  It is not as loud as other (and admittedly larger) Bluetooth speakers that I have tested such as the SuperTooth DISCO 2 although it does seem about as loud as the similarly-sized (and non-Bluetooth) Scosche BoomCAN that I reviewed back in 2011.  Thus, the Twist is fine for providing sound to an indoor room, but I didn’t find it to be loud enough to be satisfactory to use outside.

And aside from sheer volume, to my ears, the quality of the sound is too bass-heavy when I’m listening to music.  But of course, that is the point.  The Twist is designed for people who want to hear a lot of bass, and while I don’t count myself in that camp, perhaps you do.  I should add that the Twist is for people who want to “feel” a lot of bass because if you are working on a table with a Twist playing music, you can literally feel the music playing through the table.  It is an odd feeling.  I liked the Twist much better when I was listening to podcasts or audiobooks; the extra bass gives voices a fuller sound that is a huge improvement over the iPhone’s built-in speaker.

Importantly, however, how the Twist sounds will depend heavily on the surface on which it is placed.  In fact, testing the Twist almost felt like a game.  What does it sound like on this surface?  How about this one?  What about over here?  In fact, if you want to use the Twist and you don’t have a suitable surface, the carrying case that comes with the Twist is designed to serve as an emergency flat surface.  It does work in a pinch, but the sound quality is inferior to a large wooden surface.

Damson says that the Twist will last for up to 9 hours on a charge.  I didn’t push the speaker to the limits enough to test that, but I certainly got many hours between charges. 

If you want to try to get a free Twist, Damson is currently running a contest on Facebook.  Watch a short video that shows the Twist being used in nine different cities, then guess what those nine cities are, and you might win a prize pack of four Twist speakers.  Click here to enter.  The contest ends July 23, 2013 at midnight Eastern time.

At a list price of $69 (and you can get it for less on Amazon), the Damson Twist is less expensive than many other portable Bluetooth speakers and is much more portable.  If you want a small Bluetooth speaker that delivers a lot of bass, and if the idea of using a flat surface as a part of the speaker appeals to you, you’ll find the Twist to be both useful and fun. 

Click here to get the Damson Twist on Amazon (about $64.00).

Last week while I was drafting a brief in my office, I heard a tone coming from my iPhone that I had never heard before.  In fact, at first I didn’t think that my iPhone was the source of the noise; I thought it was some alarm tone broadcast over the emergency speaker system in my office building.  It turns out that it was a Wireless Emergency Alert for a flash flood in my area.  Here are the details on Wireless Emergency Alerts so that if you hear one on your iPhone you will know what is going on.  I’ll start by explaining what they are, and then I’ll discuss how they are implemented on the iPhone and how you can manage them.

The WARN Act and WEA

Title VI of PL 109-347 (Oct. 13, 2006) is titled the Warning Alert and Response Network Act, sometimes called the WARN Act.  The WARN Act, in 47 U.S.C. § 1201, gives the FCC the authority to adopt standards for cell phone companies to transmit emergency alerts.  Participation by cell phone companies is voluntary — they don’t have to participate — but if they do, the law states that cell phone companies may not impose an additional charge for such alerts.  47 U.S.C. § 1201(b)(2)(C).

Pursuant to the WARN Act, the FCC worked with FEMA to create a program called Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA).  The system was based on the existing Emergency Alert System (EAS), which are the warnings that you get on a television and radio when there is a weather or other emergency. 

Alerts are sent to cell towers providing wireless service to a target geographical area, and then all WEA-capable phones using those cell towers receive the alert.  Thus, you will receive an alert if you are in a targeted area even if you are just visiting that area.

WEA delivers only three types of alerts:

1. Emergency Alerts.  These are alerts issued because of an imminent threat to public safety or life, such as evacuation orders or
shelter in place orders due to severe weather, a terrorist threat or
chemical spill.  For example, the National Weather Service says that it sends WEA alerts for tsunami warnings, tornado and flash flood warnings, hurricane, typhoon, dust storm and extreme wind warnings and blizzard and ice storm warnings.  The way it works is that a pre-authorized national, state or local government agency sends an emergency
alert to FEMA, which then sends
the alert to the participating cell phone companies, each of which then sends the alert to WEA capable phones in the zone of emergency.

2. AMBER Alerts.  AMBER officially stands for America’s Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response, but that is a backronym as the system was really named for Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old girl who was abducted in 1996 while riding her bicycle in Arlington, TX and was subsequently murdered.  The killer was never identified.  The incident, and others like it, led to the AMBER Alert system, a method by which police officers may quickly publicize information when a child age 17 or younger is abducted such as the name and description of the child, a description of the suspected abductor, a description and license plate of the abductor’s vehicle, etc.  According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 158 AMBER Alerts involving 197 children were issued in the U.S. in 2011.  144 of those children were eventually found, and AMBER Alerts played a role in 28 of those cases.  The original AMBER Alert system was opt-in only, and sent a text message based on a cell phone owner’s pre-defined geographical location regardless of where a cell phone was actually located when the alert was issued.  That system was retired on December 31, 2012 to be replaced by the new, improved WEA system.

3. Presidential Alerts.  I am not aware of any official standards for when the President will issue a WEA Presidential Alert.  No president has ever issued a Presidential Alert under WEA or similar prior systems (and hopefully, no president will ever have a need to do so).  The WARN Act provides in 47 U.S.C. § 1201(b)(2)(E) that while cell phone users may opt-out of emergency alerts and AMBER Alerts, a user may not opt-out of Presidential Alerts.

WEA capable devices are designed to reject duplicate alerts, so you should receive each alert only once.  However, subsequent alerts may be issued that contain information similar to a prior alert.  You might not receive an alert at all if you are on the phone.  The AT&T website says that you might not receive an alert if “your device was in an active voice call or data session during the time period that the Wireless Emergency Alert was broadcast.”  And the Verizon website says that “if you are engaged in a voice or data session when alerts are released,
you will not receive the alert.  Alerts may be re-broadcast at specific
intervals in the targeted geographic locations, in order to reach as
many devices as possible. However, after that interval has concluded, or
the alerts have been superseded, the original alert will no longer be
released.”

AT&T just turned on the WEA system for iPhones in June of 2013,
which is why I had not heard one before last week.  AT&T did so by pushing software updates to iPhones starting on June 14, 2013.  To receive the update  you had to be using an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 running iOS 6.1 or later.  (I believe that if you sync your iPhone with iTunes on a computer, you might be able to receive the AT&T update even if your device doesn’t quite meet those specifications.) 
After the update was installed last month, if you were paying attention, you saw an alert that
said:  “Carrier Settings Update:  new settings required for your device
have been installed.”  I understand that Verizon and Sprint enabled WEA
for iPhones in 2012.  I don’t believe that T-Mobile has enabled WEA for iPhones yet.

WEA on the iPhone

If your iPhone supports WEA and the carrier has turned it on for your phone, then the default setting is that you receive all three types of alerts.  When an alert comes in, you will hear a tone and see a message on the screen. 

As noted above, when I first heard the sound last week, it was a tone that I had never heard before from my iPhone so it caught me by surprise.  The following YouTube video shows a WEA alert triggered by a hack on an iPhone and a Samsung Galaxy G3.  I’m fairly certain that this is the same sound that I heard:

The tone only sounds if your ringer/silent switch is in the “up” position.  With the ringer switched off, the phone just vibrates when you get an alert.  This is yet another reason to keep your iPhone in silent mode when you are in court; your judge might not be happy that you disrupted the proceedings because there was a flash flood alert.

The message itself looks like a text message but it actually is not.  A different technology called Cell Broadcast is used to send the alerts, which is important because after a disaster, cell phone service can get highly congested which can result in delays for text messages.  This also means that you can receive alerts even if you have text messaging turned off.  I didn’t take a screen shot of my iPhone last week when I received an emergency alert, but here is one that I found in the MacRumors forum that shows you what a WEA alert looks like:

Even after you dismiss the alert, you can still see it in the Notifications Center.  Here is the alert that I saw last week:

While all three WEA alerts are turned on by default, you can turn off two of them if you want to do so.  Open the Settings app and go to Notifications and then scroll all the way down to the bottom.  You will see switches that let you turn off AMBER Alerts and/or Emergency Alerts.  As noted above, the WARN Act prohibits turning off Presidential Alerts, so there is no option for that.

Although WEA alerts are based on your location, you do not need to have Location Services on the iPhone turned on to receive alerts.  Your iPhone’s GPS radio is irrelevant to the WEA system.  As noted above, alerts are issued based upon your location as determined by cell towers. 

After the flash flood alert went to iPhone users in downtown New Orleans last week, I spoke with many New Orleans attorneys who were annoyed with the alert because it caught them by surprise.  Having said that, I think that the main problem was a lack of prior knowledge; I myself wasn’t fully aware how this system worked until I researched this post.  My guess is that once people understand why these alerts are sent and understand that they have the ability to manage them, most folks will appreciate the value of the WARN Act and the WEA system.

The more I read about the changes in iOS 7, the more excited I am for the release of this major change to the iPhone and iPad interface in just a few months.  For example, Rene Ritchie of iMore wrote a great article explaining why the new interface on the upcoming iOS 7 is truly a radical change.  Moreover, I suspect that there are other cool parts of iOS 7 that haven’t been revealed yet because they will require the next version of the iPhone, which I expect Apple to release around the same time that iOS 7 becomes available.  As we look forward to the future, let’s also take a look back at the news items of note from this past week:

• South Carolina attorneys Jim McLaren and Jonathan Lounsberry wrote two posts (part 1, part 2) on The Mac Lawyer blog run by Ben Stevens about how apps can make you a better litigator.
• The DOJ was successful in the liability phase of its antitrust lawsuit against Apple regarding ebook pricing.  Adam Engst of TidBITS wrote an excellent explanation of the opinion.  Engst links to an a good article by Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Fortune that discusses the arguments that Apple might pursue on appeal.
• ALM recently launched free iOS apps for 14 of its publications including The American Lawyer, Law Technology News, The National Law Journal and the New York Law Journal.  For at least some of these apps (such as Law Technology News), all content is complementary through September 30th.
• The ABA Journal is starting to compile its annual list of the best legal blogs, the Blawg 100.  If you would like to nominate one of your favorite blogs, click here before August 9th.  And if you nominate iPhone J.D., thanks!
• I missed this one a few weeks ago, but last month Massachusetts lawyer Robert Ambrogi discussed LawSauce, an app to help you locate legal research materials around the world.
• California attorney Scott Grossberg has tips for working with time zones on the iPhone and iPad.
• UK solicitor Jon Bloor discusses the confidentiality of data stored on DropBox.
• It’s not just attorneys like Jon Bloor who think about document confidentiality; governments worry about that too.  According to Cyrus Farivar of Ars Technica, Russia is addressing this problem by buying typewriters as a way to avoid digital leaks at the Kremlin.  I don’t see any holes in that plan at all.  It’s not like anyone could simply use an iPhone to take picture of a document and email that around the world.
• Alexander George of The Wirecutter has looked a lots of iPhone 5 cases and he believes that the best one is the SwitchEasy Tones.
• Google will soon release a Google Maps app for the iPad.  David Pogue of the New York Times wrote an early review.
• Kit Eaton of the New York Times identifies some apps that can help you in an emergency.
• Verizon offers 4G LTE in more places than AT&T, but in places that have AT&T 4G LTE the speed is often faster.  Kevin Fitchard of GigaOm explains why.
• Josh Winning of the Fancy Dress Costumes blog interviews Lisa Jensen, the costume designer for the movie about Steve Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher.
• Have you ever thought that your iPhone was vibrating only to look at it and see that it is not?  That happens to me from time to time.  Tom Stafford of the BBC says that it is a common phenomena and explains what is happening.
• And finally, the folks at EverySteveJobsVideo.com created a compilation video of the funniest Steve Jobs moments from 1978 to 2011.  The iOS era begins just before the 6 minute mark when Jobs introduced the iPhone by first showing a mock-up of an iPod with a rotary dial on it.

Five years ago today, on July 10, 2008, Apple launched the App Store.  When the virtual doors were opened, the App Store proudly included 500 apps.  Just a few months later, when iPhone J.D. started, there were 10,000 apps available.  A year later, there were 100,000 apps available.  By the Fall of 2011, there were over 500,000 apps available.  Today, there are over 900,000 apps available, and it won’t be long before there are a million apps in the App Store. 

Apple didn’t invent the idea of buying software for a mobile device — back in the day, I purchased quite a few apps for my Palm Treo 650, including Documents to Go, an app that I still use today on the iPhone — but Apple made it so easy (and comparatively inexpensive) to purchase apps, and gave developers such a great platform for releasing apps, that nobody can deny that Apple’s App Store was a game-changer. 

In fact, Apple thought that the “App Store” was so much its own that when Amazon came out with an “app store” for Android devices, Apple sued Amazon, claiming that the term was its alone.  Yesterday, on the eve of the fifth anniversary, Apple dropped the lawsuit, stating:  “We no longer see a need to pursue our case.  With more than 900,000 apps and
50 billion downloads, customers know where they can purchase their
favorite apps.”

Over the years we have seen a large number of high-quality apps written especially for lawyers.  The first law-related app that I reviewed on iPhone J.D. was a free version of the Constitution produced by Clint Bagwell Consulting that is still available today.  In fact, that app was just updated in March of 2013 to note Mississippi’s official ratification this year of the 13th Amendment (which abolished slavery).  The first app-related lawsuit that I discussed was in early 2009; one fart sound app developer sued another such developer over the use of the phrase “pull my finger” in the app — which sounds silly, but those apps made their developers hundreds of thousands of dollars.  In fact, for some lucky developers, the App Store has been a gold rush; Apple has already paid app developers over $9 billion.

Today, we have many sophisticated law-specific apps such as TranscriptPad, WestlawNext, LexisAdvance, Fastcase, Rulebook, Black’s Law Dictionary, plus a ton of general-purpose apps that lawyers use all the time such as GoodReader, Documents to Go, GoodNotes, 1Password, and many, many others. 

Apple has retired the “There’s an app for that” campaign — a phrase that Apple trademarked in 2010, and that even inspired a Sesame Street video.  Nevertheless, the sentiment remains as true today as ever.  You can find an app for almost any need, and the quantity and quality of apps is a big part of what makes the iPhone and iPad so special. 

To celebrate the fifth anniversary, Apple arranged to make a five of the most popular game apps and five of the most popular non-game apps free this week.  Game developer EA followed suit, so right now you can get the following apps for free:

• Barefoot World Atlas:
• Day One (diary/journal):
• How to Cook Everything (cookbook normally $9.99):
• Over (photo-captioning software):
• Traktor DJ iPhone (normally $19.99):
• Badland (game):
• Infinity Blade II (game):
• Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (game):
• Tiny Wings (game):
• Where’s My Water? (Disney game):
• Dead Space (EA game):
• Mirror’s Edge (EA game):
• The Sims: Medieval (EA game):

It’s amazing to think how far the App Store has come in only five years.  One cannot help but be excited for the future of iOS apps.

I encountered a strange bug on my iPhone that has an even more bizarre solution.  Here are the details in case the same thing happens to you.  I have an Apple TV connected to my television and I wanted to mirror what was on my iPhone to the TV.  Normally, this is very simple to do.  As explained in this Apple support article, on an iPhone 4S or later, you can double-click the Home button (which displays your recently used apps) and then swipe twice from left to right to display the AirPlay icon on the bottom right of your screen.  You then tap that icon, select an Apple TV that is on the same network, and turn on Mirroring.  The procedure is fast and simple, and it makes everything on your iPhone screen also show up on the TV.

At least, it is supposed to be that simple.  When I tried to do so the other night, I didn’t see an AirPlay icon:

After confirming that my Apple TV was working and that my Apple TV and iPhone were on the same local WiFi network, I wasn’t sure to do next.  After a lot of searching the Internet, I finally found this thread on the Support Communities area of Apple’s website that offered a bizarre solution that actually worked for me.

It turns out that you can fix this problem by going to your Settings app and selecting General -> International -> Language.  Then change your language from whatever you are using now (such as English) to another language (I chose French).  Then switch it back to your original language.

That’s it.  Now when you double-click and the Home button and then swipe twice from left to right, you should see the AirPlay icon.  As you can see, it worked for me:

I am running what is now the latest version of the iOS for iPhone, version 6.1.4.  I suspect that Apple will fix this in the future — indeed, iOS 7 handles the buttons for things like AirPlay in a whole new way — but for now, there seems to be some connection between changing your language and mirroring to an Apple TV.

For a while now I’ve seen rumors that Apple is developing a watch or other small personal accessory, something that many have called the iWatch.  I didn’t think much of the rumors until Apple CEO Tim Cook said this past April that Apple is working on “the potential of exciting new product categories.”  Not just a new product in an existing category (such as an updated iPhone or iPad) but a new category altogether.  Then earlier this week there were reports that Apple applied for trademarks on the word “iWatch” in Russia, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, Turkey and Columbia.  Then there was a report this week by Mike Isaac of All Things D that Apple just hired Paul Deneve, who had been the CEO of fashion house Yves Saint Laurent, to work as a Vice President at Apple on “special projects” reporting directly to Tim Cook.  Deneve has a history at Apple (he worked there from 1990 to 1997), although that was before Tim Cook and many others at Apple worked there.  So Apple is working on a new type of product, they are applying for a trademark on “iWatch,” and they are hiring someone who has experience selling fasionable clothes and accessories.  I’m sure there are many other possible explanations for all of this, but you can no longer ignore the interesting possibility that Apple is considering a new iWatch product this year or next year.  And now, the news of note from the past week — which wasn’t much this holiday week:

• Ian Paul of TechHive surveys Wi-Fi availability on domestic flights.  Virgin and AirTran have WiFi on all flights; otherwise, your best bets are likely to be Delta or Southwest.  The last few times that I’ve flown Delta after spending all day in a deposition I’ve noticed that there was an option for 30 minutes of Gogo Internet WiFi for only $3.  That turned out to be a great option for me — enough time to catch up on the important emails that I missed during the day.  Easily worth the three bucks.
• Speaking of Southwest WiFi, Buster Heine reports that you can now watch in-flight TV for free using an iPhone or iPad on Southwest flights.
• Alex Heath of Cult of Mac reports that Microsoft’s OneNote iOS app received a major update.
• And finally, the funny folks at Scoopertino have a “report” that Apple is abandoning the iOS 7 icons that were previewed last month and is now going a different direction:

I write columns for two free TechnoLawyer newsletters that are distributed via email:  SmallLaw and BigLaw.  Although the newsletters have different target audiences, I encourage you to sign up for both of them because no matter what kind of law you practice you will often find useful tips in both newsletters.  For example, while I work for a large law firm, I enjoyed Brett Burney’s June 6, 2013 SmallLaw column on the best iPad apps for scanning documents.  If you don’t subscribe to the BigLaw newsletter, you should definitely click here to do so before July 9th because that issue will contain my interview with Jones Day attorney John Walker.  John is a litigator in the firm’s Atlanta office who represents clients in high-stakes products liability litigation around the country, and he is very savvy with technology.  My BigLaw interview with John will focus on his favorite iPhone and iPad apps.

While talking to John, I learned that as a result of all of the travel that he does around the country, he has gotten very good at “travel hacking” — reaping maximum benefit from airline and hotel loyalty programs.  In an average year, John earns close to one million miles/points on top of those that he earns from regular travel.  That gives John and his family the opportunity to travel, even internationally, for free.  John told me about a number of iPhone and iPad apps that he uses and recommends for travel hacking, many of which were new to me.  Here are John’s recommendations:

• OnTheFly:  A front
  
  end to a great flight searching website (matrix.itasoftware.com),
  
  recently taken over by Google.  It’s my favorite resource for flexibly
  
  searching all airlines (except Southwest) at once.  Click here for OnTheFly (free): 
• GateGuru:  I use
  
  this app for finding airline lounges in the U.S. and especially abroad.
  
   Especially helpful for “mileage runs,” when you need to find a lounge with a shower.  [Jeff adds:  Here is a link to my review from 2010.  The app now has a new interface, but I still use it almost every time I have a layover to figure out the best place to eat and to locate shops and services.]  Click here for GateGuru (free): 
• AwardWallet:
  
   Mobile front end to the website of the same name that helps track frequent flier
  
  (and frequent guest) miles/points across different programs, including
  
  expiration dates.  Click here for AwardWallet (free): 
  
• TripAdvisor:
  
   Front end to website; reviews of hotels and other attractions.  Click here for link to mobile web app.
  
• ExpertFlyer:  Web
  
  link to mobile version of subscription site that lets me check seat
  
  availability, upgrade availability, likelihood of being “bumped” from a flight, award
  
  availability, etc. across several airlines.  In many cases I can see what
  
  the agents can see.  Click here for the mobile website.  Click here for the full website for more details and to sign up.
• KayakPro:  I use
  
  it to search hotels primarily.  Click here for KayakPro ($0.99): 
• Southwest Airlines:  App to
  
  search, buy, check in, etc. for Southwest flights.  I don’t fly them often,
  
  but using a travel “hack” last year, I obtained a ton of points and a
  
  “companion pass” that lets my wife fly free on Southwest on any itinerary (paid
  
  or award) that I book in 2012-2013.  Click here for Southwest Airlines (free): 
  
• FlightBoard:  The app gives abundant gate information similar to
  
  what you might see at an airport.  Especially good for (1) checking on the
  
  status of a flight arriving to one’s departure gate; and (2) finding
  
  out what destinations are available from a particular airport.  Click here for FlightBoard ($3.99): 
• STAYConnect Mobile by LodgeNet:  Good to
  
  use as a remote control for hotel TVs in many hotel chains (better than the
  
  nasty one hotels make available, which is rarely cleaned and sometimes
  
  sticky).  Click here for STAYConnect Mobile (free): 
• Priority Pass:
  
   Mobile app that accompanies my Priority Pass lounge membership (free with
  
  American Express platinum card) for lounge access in airports/terminals
  
  where don’t have it with Delta.  A lifesaver, especially for international
  
  travel.  Click here for Priority Pass (free): 
  
• SkyScanner:
  
   Another tool for searching flights.  Click here for SkyScanner (free): 
• Hyatt Hotels:  Useful for
  
  finding Hyatt hotels and searching availability.  I use this more following my
  
  recent “mattress run” for Diamond status with Hyatt.  Click here for Hyatt Hotels (free): 
  
• SPG:  Useful for
  
  finding Starwood hotels and searching availability.  I use this more following my
  
  recent “mattress run” for Platinum status with Starwood.  Click here for SPG (free): 
• Yelp:  Similar to
  
  TripAdvisor, but I also use for restaurants.  Click here for Yelp (free): 

By the way, when you read the BigLaw article, you’ll see that John names some of his favorite music apps, and he told me that he streams music from his iPhone to his stereo so that he and his four daughters can have a weekly dance party.  Here is a cute picture of John’s family.

Thanks, John, for the great tips on travel hacking with an iPhone or iPad, and also for taking the time to talk with me for the upcoming BigLaw article.

—–

This article won the BigLaw

Pick of the Week. BigLaw is a free weekly email newsletter that provides helpful

information for midsize and large law firms and the corporate counsel

who hire them.

Thank
you to Thomson Reuters for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month.  The company is doing so for two of its technologies.  First, WestlawNext is once again a sponsor.  WestlawNext for iPad is one of the useful law-related apps out there, so if you haven’t tried it yet, click here to check it out.

Second, Thomson Reuters wants iPhone J.D. readers to know about its hosted practice technology solutions which provide a
secure, private cloud with scalable on-demand storage.  You can now use online versions of Case Logistix for e-discovery and Case Notebook for case analysis solutions.  Because the storage is online, you don’t have to purchase or maintain storage hardware.  And that online storage is reliable — the same security, backup and support as WestlawNext.  Plus, you don’t need to worry about software updates because the software online is always up-to-date.

This was a week of blockbuster opinions from the U.S. Supreme Court on a whole host of issues, most significantly same-sex marriage.  Apple released a statement to AllThingsD about the rulings in U.S. v. Windsor (PDF link to opinion) and Hollingsworth v. Perry (PDF link to opinion):  “Apple
strongly supports marriage equality and we consider it a civil
rights issue. We applaud the Supreme Court for its decisions today.”  I
read those opinions on my iPad while I was flying to a deposition this
week, and both the majority and dissenting opinions are worth reading.  It is fascinating to watch history being made.

• Martha Neil of ABA Journal reports that an Ohio judge ruled that a will written on a tablet is valid; it need not be on paper to be a written document that was signed and witnessed.  The tablet in question was a Samsung Galaxy; no ruling on how much more valid the will would have been if written on an iPad.
• Heather Murphy of the New York Times reports an interesting fact that came out of the Edward Snowden incident:  if you want to block signals getting to a cell phone to block any possible eavesdropping, put the cellphone in a refrigerator (it doesn’t even matter if it is cold) or a stainless steel martini shaker.  Apparently, those objects act like Faraday cages and block signals.
• Speaking of iPhone privacy, Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, discusses the privacy of messages that you send and receive using Apple’s iMessage service.
• Chris Parsons of iMore reports that BlackBerry Enterprise Server can now be used to manage iPhones.
• It is hard to imagine a company purchasing every single ad in an edition of the New York Times, but Showtime is doing that on Sunday — on the iPad.  Lauren Indvik of Mashable reports that every ad in the New York Times app on Sunday will be for a new Showtime series called Ray Donovan.
• And finally, here is a way to incorporate your love of the iPad with your love of wine and cheese.  HomeWetBar.com is selling the APPealing Glass Cutting Board for only $29.95.  It is made from tempered glass and comes with a stainless steel cheese knife.  (via Gizmodo)

Connected Data, maker of the Transporter, was kind enough to sponsor a contest for two lucky iPhone J.D. readers to win a free Transporter.  Connected Data used random numbers generated by Random.org to select two winners, and they are:

J. Britt Phillips of Sutter O’Connell.  Britt is the managing shareholder for the firm’s Nashville office.   His core practice is a diverse mixture of products liability, medical malpractice, construction, contract and intellectual property matters.  Last year, Britt obtained a multi-million dollar jury verdict in a trademark infringement case on behalf of a worldwide-recognized fashion products manufacturer.

Jack Sturgill, Jr.  Jack is a solo practioner in Towson, Maryland (located just north of Balitmore) with over 35 years of experience in civil litigation.  His practice areas include real estate, eminent domain/condemnation, business/corporate including corporate governance and transactions, and estate planning and administration.  Jack is also an adjunct professor at Stevenson University.

Congratulations to Britt and Jack for being the winners.  I hope that you enjoy using your Transporters in your law practice.  Be sure to download the free Transporter app for iPhone and iPad!