No post here at iPhone J.D. today, but if you are looking for something good to read, check out this great article by Andy Ihnatko posted at Macworld.com yesterday in which the Chicago Sun-Times tech columnist thinks about how fun it would be if Apple let its engineers go crazy and make something — anything — that is neat (regardless of how functional it is) so long as it costs under $50. I’d probably buy it.
It was a relatively quiet week in iPhone and iPad news. We learned more details on Apple’s plans for allowing subscriptions within apps, people continue to write articles geared at the new Verizon iPhone users, and there were a few good articles this week of particular interest to attorneys using iPhones:
When I first started iPhone J.D., I wasn’t sure how much interest there would be in a specialized website of this sort. Back in 2008, most attorneys used BlackBerries, but even so there wasn’t any website focused on attorneys using BlackBerries, nor were there websites devoted to teachers using Treos, insurance agents using iPods, etc. I remember thinking that it was amazing when I first saw over 200 visitors to the website in a single day.
Over time, readership has increased and this website now sees thousands of visitors a day. As a result, at some point during the day today (most likely right around lunch time), this website will cross over the threshold of 1 million page views.
I try to keep being self-referential to a minimum on this website, but I see a greater significance in a niche site like this one crossing the 1 million page view threshold. Even though iPhone J.D. gets a huge number of non-attorney visitors (everyone is welcome!), I believe that the increase in traffic here reflects a growing number of attorneys using iPhones and iPads … a fact that will hopefully translate into even more development of apps and hardware accessories that are helpful for attorneys and other professionals using the iOS.
To all of you who have visited iPhone J.D. since it debuted in November of 2008, thanks a million!
If you will be in Chicago for ABA TECHSHOW this year, I am hosting one of the Taste of Techshow dinners along with Josh Barrett of Tablet Legal. At the dinner, I’m sure that we will discuss all things iPhone and iPad, share stories, and have a lot of laughs. The dinner will be on April 11, 2011 at 8:15pm at Tutto Italiano, an Italian restaurant.
I am writing about this today to alert you to a change. In past years, you signed up for these dinners during the conference itself. This year, however, you need to sign up beforehand by following the instructions on this webpage. I’m sure that many of the dinners on April 11 and 12 will fill up quickly, so sign up now if you plan to be in Chicago. I hope to see many of you at the dinner, or at least at the conference, in April.
It has been over two years since I wrote about using the iPhone as a boarding pass, but I never had the opportunity to try it myself until yesterday. I had a Delta flight, and when checking in online, I saw that I was offered the option to obtain an eBoarding Pass in addition (or instead of) a printed boarding pass. I played it safe and chose both options.
Here is what Delta says on its website about using an eBoarding Pass:
What is an eBoarding Pass?
Now, when you’re departing from certain airports, you can go completely paperless by having an eBoarding Pass sent directly to your Web-enabled mobile device. It’s the fastest, most convenient way to check in.
Here’s how it works:
• While you’re checking in online, choose the eBoarding Pass option—instead of the normal paper boarding pass.
• When you’ve completed the check-in process, instead of printing your boarding pass, your eBoarding Pass, flight information and barcode will be sent directly to your mobile device.
• Once you’re at the airport, if you’re checking bags, you can save time by using Curbside Check-in or one of our Baggage Drops.
• When you reach security, an agent will check your ID and scan the eBoarding Pass on your mobile device.
• Then you can head straight to your departure gate and show your eBoarding Pass to the gate agent when it’s time to board.
The list of airports at which you can use an eBoarding Pass is contained on this page on the Delta website. It includes my hometown of New Orleans and airports in other cites like Boston, Chicago, Miami, New York (LGA) and Seattle but doesn’t yet include major airports such as San Francisco (SFO), the other big New York-area airports (JFK and EWR) and Dallas (DFW).
When I selected the option for an eBoarding Pass, I received an e-mail with a link to a webpage. When I clicked the link, I was brought to a page containing a QR Code to show to the appropriate agents. I don’t know if this contains personal information, so I added some black bar redactions to these images:
It worked great. When I got to the security check-in, I saw a device on the front of the podium where the TSA agent was standing. He told me to scan the code on my iPhone, and I saw my name appear on a small display on his side of the podium, which he compared to my driver’s license. When it was time to board the plane, the gate agent simply directed me to scan the front of my iPhone on the same machine she was using to scan paper boarding passes. Nobody acted as if I was doing anything unusual, even though it was a new experience for me.
Many years ago, I managed to lose “real” paper tickets before an international flight. The only solution was for me to buy another set of tickets for me and my wife, and then the airline said that once nobody showed up using my original tickets, I would receive a refund on my credit card. The refund did eventually show up, but I was a little nervous about it until that refund appeared on my statement. Nowadays, for most flights, we are long past the age of “real” paper tickets that you need to worry about losing; we all just use electronic tickets that can be reprinted at any time on a computer or at the airport. Even so, it is nice to have the option to use an eBoarding Pass without dealing with any paper at all. It worked so well for me yesterday that I will always use this option again in the future when I can.
Tons of Verizon customers who have been waiting a long time are now getting their first iPhone. I know that many of these folks are attorneys based on what friends are telling me and the e-mails that I have been receiving. Indeed, if you practice law in the states of North or South Dakota, Montana or Wyoming, the New York Times recently noted that you have been unable to use an iPhone until now because of the lack of AT&T in those states. If you are just now finding this website because you yourself are a new “iPhone J.D.” here is some information for getting the most out of your new iPhone.
iPhone Tips and Shortcuts
There are a lot of shortcuts that will help you use your iPhone more efficiently. Some of them are shortcuts that you might know from a prior smartphone, such as tapping the spacebar twice to add a period for the end of a sentence and capitalizing the next word that you type. There are shortcuts for typing a comma with only one stroke (press and hold the 123 button and then without lifting your finger, slide your finger over to the comma and then release), for quickly scrolling back up to the top of the screen (tap once on the status bar at the top of the screen, where the time is displayed), and for zooming in and out with even more precision (hold one finger down on the page and then just move the other finger back and forth to zoom in and out). You can find those three shortcuts and a lot more in the following posts:
Best Apps for Attorneys
One of the best parts of the iPhone is that you can add third-party apps to do all sorts of useful things. With over 350,000 apps in the App Store, it can be difficult to know where to start — especially since new apps come out every day. In March of 2010 at the ABA TECHSHOW, Reid Trautz and I picked 60 great apps that every lawyer should consider installing on his or her iPhone. Click here to see that list. Even though it is a year old, virtually every app on that list is still useful today (and indeed, many of those apps have been updated with new features that make them even more valuable). Josh Barrett of Tablet Legal is joining me and Reid in two months to present the 2011 version of that presentation. We just finished our rough draft of the list of apps, and it is going to be another great list. If you cannot join us in Chicago for this year’s TECHSHOW, I’ll post the list here afterwards. By the way, here is a similar list from ABA TECHSHOW 2009, but that list is starting to show its age.
But before you go ahead and download 60 apps recommended in 2010, and another 60 apps downloaded in 2009, let me highlight a few apps that I suggest you download right away:
I’m only scratching the surface here, and before long you will also be using your iPhone as a legal dictionary, a GPS unit, and a substitute for that string around your finger, but that list will get you started.
What was that again?
If you come across someone using an iPhone-related word that doesn’t make any sense to you, the website TiPb has come up with a useful dictionary of iPhone-related terms. Additionally, it might be helpful to come here to iPhone J.D., go to the search box at the top right of every page, and enter the word to see what I have said about it in the past.
And so much more…
Once you get up to speed with your new iPhone, you’ll be looking for even more that you can do, hardware attachments, etc. Browse through the index of my past posts to get ideas for even more that you can do with your new iPhone, and I’d love for you to become a regular iPhone J.D. reader. If you are not the sort of person who remembers to keep up with websites, you can click here to have iPhone J.D. delivered to you via e-mail every morning for free. And when you figure out something neat that you can do with your iPhone that helps your law practice, send me an e-mail (see Contact Me at the top left of this page) and I’d love to share what you have learned with others.
Congratulations on being a new iPhone owner!
The Verizon iPhone started to make its way into customers’ hands this week, elected officials are using and abusing iPads, and the Vatican speaks up on an iPhone app, all in this week’s edition of In the News:
The iPad weighs just enough and is just slick enough that if you are walking around carrying it, or just sitting down and reading on it, there is a real danger of it slipping out of your hand. Thus, I am always interested in devices that make the iPad more secure in your hand. I recently reviewed a product called FreeOneHand that adds a nub to the back of your iPad to make it easier to hold, and I consider that product to be a good solution to the problem. Kensington recently sent me a free review unit of a new product called the BlackBelt. This product, which sells for $39.99 from Kensington (or only $32.00 on Amazon), is sort of like an Apple iPhone Bumper for the iPad, and I thought that it might be another good solution to the problem of an iPad slipping out of your hands.
The BlackBelt is simply a thick silicone rubber rectangle that fits around the iPad. Unlike the Apple iPhone Bumper which is reinforced with plastic and thus is fairly sturdy, this is completely flexible. Placing it around an iPad is extremely easy.
There are holes cut on the sides for the iPhone buttons, except that for the power button at the top of the iPad, there is instead just a rubber button that allows you to easily press the iPad button through the rubber.
The Kensington website says that the “Kensington BlackBelt™ protects the edges and cushions your iPad while offering a secure grip for handling in any iPad orientation.” It certainly does provide some cushion to the edge of the iPad, so I suppose if you hit the edge of an iPad with the BlackBelt on it, there would be added protection. But if you drop an iPad, I doubt that this product would provide very much protection with the entire screen and back exposed.
What I really expected was for this product to provide a “secure grip for handling” the iPad. It does to some extent, but not as much as I had hoped. The rubber on the BlackBelt is actually somewhat slippery — less so than a naked iPad, but still slippery enough that it is still fairly easy for an iPad wearing the BlackBelt to slip out of my hand.
I’m usually a big fan of Kensington products. I love the Kensginton AssistOne in my car just as much today as I did when I reviewed it several months ago. And the PowerLift battery / stand that I recently reviewed is a useful gadget. The BlackBelt does make it somewhat more pleasent to hold an iPad in your hands because it is soft and it has some give, so I’m sure that some people will like this product. But because it is more slippery than I had hoped, I wouldn’t feel comfortable relying on this device while I walk around a courtroom holding an iPad, and thus I cannot recommend the BlackBelt.
Click here to get the Kensginton BlackBelt from Amazon ($32.00).
This app is amazing. Okay, now that I have that off my chest, let me explain what I am talking about. The new Google Translate app for the iPhone, released yesterday, allows you to enter text in one language — you can type it, or easier still, just speak the words out loud — and then in about a second the app displays your words in a different language — and with one touch can speak those words out loud. For example, make sure your the app is in English to French mode, press one button in the app, say to your iPhone “where is the train station,” and then a second later your iPhone displays “où est la gare” and you can tap one button to have that spoken in French so that the person in Paris can hear and understand you and point in a direction. You could even press one button to switch the translation from French to English, have the other person speak the answer in French, and then you can see the answer in English. You need to have Internet access for this app to work, but I can imagine being in a foreign country in a Wi-Fi spot and using this app to communicate back and forth with someone even though neither one of us speak the language of the other. And you get all of this for the price of free. Amazing.
Here is a little more detail on how the app works. When you launch the app you will see two languages displayed at the top (if you have used the app before, they are the last two languages that you used). The “from” language is on the left, the “go” language is on the right. You can quickly swap those by tapping the arrows between the listed languages. Just below that, there is a text box. You can either tap in the box and type some words, or you can tap the microphone button just to the right of the box and speak. If you choose to speak to the app, the app notices when you stop speaking for a second and then starts to process your words. The app will only let you talk for about five seconds or so, long enough to say a short to medium length sentence.
After only a second or so, the app will then display the translated text in the language that you selected. For 24 languages — Arabic, Chinese (both simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish — the app will display a speaker icon to the right of the words. Tap that icon to have the app speak the phrase in a very authentic-sounding voice. Google says that the voices are speech synthesized, but they sound quite authentic to my ear. Note that the text-to-speech translation is limited to 100 characters, another reason that this app works best for shorter sentences. For an additional 34 languages — such as Azerbaijani, Hebrew, Irish, Swahili, Thai and Vietnamese — the app will display the text but does not offer to speak the text.
For many languages that do not use the Roman (Latin) alphabet used in America, Europe and elsewhere, just below the translated text the app will display a romanized version of the text, the idea being that if you try to pronounce those letters, you will roughly pronounce the words. For example, in the Russian example picture above, the first word displayed is “Простите.” If you are not familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russia, you won’t know how to say that, but romanization gives you a hint, telling you for example that a “П” in Russian sounds like a “P” in English, a “р” in Russian sounds like an “r” in English, etc.
Be aware that the translation is quite literal and thus even a “perfect” translation might not get the result that you want. For example, in the above pictures, you can see that the text that I said in English was “where is the bathroom.” But note that in many other countries such as France and Russia, the “bathroom” is the place that you take a bath, whereas the “toilet” is the place that you take care of other important bodily functions. So to get a more precise translation, you would need to know to ask “where is the toilet” like this:
Another very useful feature is a full screen mode that lets you enlarge the translated text. Tap the box with the four arrows in it and the app will show, in large type and in landscape mode, the translated text. If you are in a noisy area, the other person may not be able to hear your iPhone very well, but someone can easily see the words on an iPhone in this mode.
There are a few more features in the app. You can tap the star next to a translation to add it to a list of saved translations. One good reason to save a translation that you can use it someplace even if you don’t have a network connection. Thus, in your hotel using Wi-Fi, you can say some phrases that you plan to use and get translations, and then when you are out and about in a foreign country and not using a data plan, you can still use the translations you prepared ahead of time. If you tapped the speaker icon when you had that Internet connection, the audio file is saved in the app and can be used later when you do not have a data connection. Even if you don’t add a star to a translation, tapping the Home button at the bottom left will always show you a list of your most recent translations. (In the Settings, you can clear that history if you want.)
This app is incredible right now, but I cannot wait to see what comes next. For example, although this app is new to the iPhone, a similar app has been available for Google’s Android operating system for over a year. The Android version of the app currently has in beta a feature called conversation mode. Google describes it as follows:
In conversation mode, simply press the microphone for your language and start speaking. Google Translate will translate your speech and read the translation out loud. Your conversation partner can then respond in their language, and you’ll hear the translation spoken back to you. Because this technology is still in alpha, factors like regional accents, background noise or rapid speech may make it difficult to understand what you’re saying. Even with these caveats, we’re excited about the future promise of this technology to be able to help people connect across languages.
This conversation mode currently only works for English and Spanish, but it gives a sneak peak of what could be coming soon to the iPhone app.
Note that this is currently just an iPhone app. It runs on an iPad, but is not optimized for the iPad’s screen. Having said that, I can still see an advantage of using this app on an iPad (in 2x mode) because of its large screen. Speak a sentence, tap the full screen button, and then you can hold up your iPad like a huge sign making it easy for the non-English speaker to see the translation even from far away.
It has been possible to use the Google Translate website with the iPhone for a while now, and the website was even nicely formatted for the iPhone screen, but the “web app” version of Google translate couldn’t hear what you said nor could it speak translations out loud, plus it lacked the other features like full screen mode. This new Google Translate app brings translation on the iPhone to a new level. If you think that you ever might encounter someone who does not speak English, I urge you to get this app immediately.
Click here to get Google Translate (free):
Two years ago I reviewed an app from Law ToGo that contains the Internal Revenue Code. The developer has now released new apps for the iPhone and iPad (different apps) that contain the latest text of both the Internal Revenue Code and the Treasury Regulations in a single app. I don’t practice tax law, but the developer was kind enough to send me two free copies for review, so I gave one of the copies to my colleague David Wolf who practices public finance law and uses the Tax Code and Regs all the time. Wolf and I agree that these look like useful apps for any attorney for whom tax law is a part of his or her practice.
When you launch the app, the you are instantly given the choice to use either the Code or the Regs. Once you select a body of law, you are then brought to the search screen where you can enter a number of a specific prevision.
Use the wheels to enter a specific number and press the Search button to jump to that section. For example, Wolf frequently helps clients draft various types of debt instruments such as bonds, so he often uses Section 149:
If you don’t know the specific number, you can also do a full text search. For example, I did a full text search for “volunteer fire department” and saw the two key sections. Tap on a provision to see the full text with your terms highlighted. Searches of the Code are pretty quick. Wolf tells me that some of his searches in the Treasury Regulations took 20 seconds. (The app warns you that the process might take a while and give you a progress indicator so that you can estimate how much time you have left for the search to complete.)
In the screens that I have shown above, you see menu bars at the top and bottom. Using the buttons at the bottom, you can tap the left or right arrow to browse through the sections, you can tap the four arrows pointing out to increase the font size (or get the opposite result by tapping the button with four arrows pointing in), you can press the plus sign to add a section to a list o bookmarks, and the envelope lets you e-mail the text of a section. However, if you don’t press any buttons for a few seconds, the menu bars disappear so that you can see more of the statute at one time:
If you just want to browse through headings, you can tap the Code button to see the outline of the Code.
If you use an iPad, there is also an iPad version of this app. Unfortunately, there is not a single universal app; you need to buy another app for the iPad. It works the same way as the iPhone app, you just have more space to see more of the text at one time. By the way, the iPhone and iPad apps can both be used in either portrait or landscape mode.
Unlike some other apps that contain legal statutes, these apps lack hyperlinks. Those would make the app more useful, but Wolf told me that this might be difficult for an app like this because a typical cross-reference in this area law might be “as described in paragraph (b)(3)(ii) of this section” rather than “as described in Section 149(e).”
Note that there are a few other apps in the App Store which contain the tax code, but I cannot tell how up to date they are (and people have posted reviews on many of them complaining that they have not been updated). The developer of this app says in the app description that this app will be updated throughout 2011, noting:
This upgrade will provide you with all of the 2011 updates as they become available to us. We expect there will be three updates to the Internal Revenue Code and one update to the Treasury Regulations in 2011. The initial version will start with the February 2, 2010 version of the IRC and April 2009 version of the Treasury Regulations.
Should you get this app? Wolf told me that when is sitting at his desk, he is still more likely to use the paper books just because that is what he is used to doing, but when away from his desk it is very useful to have this extensive body of law readily available on an iPhone that is always with him without having to lug around the books. You can find this same law on the Internet for free, but it is much more convenient to use an app like this that has everything in one place, formatted for the iPhone or iPad screen and easy to search and bookmark, and ready to use even if you don’t have an internet connection. At $25 and $35, these are some of the more expensive apps that you might purchase, but if the tax code is a part of your practice, I suspect that it would be very useful to have one or both of these apps on your iPhone and/or iPad.
Click here to get Internal Revenue Code & Treasury Regulations 2011 for iPhone ($24.99):
Click here to get Internal Revenue Code & Treasury Regulations 2011 for iPad ($34.99):