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I’ve owned an iPad for a few weeks now, and even though it runs the same iOS as the iPhone and it is probably fair to call it an iPhone (or more precisely, an iPod touch) with a larger screen, I find myself doing completely different things with my iPhone and iPad.  On my iPhone, I keep up with e-mail and attachments, I listen to music and podcasts, I read Twitter or play a casual game when I have a spare moment, and I always keep it with me in a pocket.  On my iPad, I’m not the biggest fan of the Mail client (I hate that when you close one message, it automatically opens and marks as read another message, even if I’m not ready to deal with that message yet) and I don’t have any of my music or podcasts loaded (that is what my iPhone is for).  My iPad isn’t with me all the time, but when I want to spend significant time reading something like a case, a website, a book, etc., I always prefer the iPad over the iPhone.

Indeed, as a litigator who spends a lot of time preparing motions and appellate briefs, I have to read cases all of the time.  While I can certainly read cases on my computer, I prefer to step back from the computer and sit back in my chair to concentrate on a case.  In the past, that meant printing out a case to read and highlight it, which resulted in an accumulation of paper.  But for the last few weeks, I’ve been downloading cases from Westlaw or Lexis as PDF files and then reading the cases on my iPad with GoodReader.  I’ll post a review at some point in the future with my full thoughts on GoodReader, but for now I will just say that it is a great PDF reader that also allows you to highlight PDF files — plus I’ll note that right now, it is on sale for just a buck.

You can certainly highlight in GoodReader with your finger, but after so many years of holding a yellow highlighter in my hand, it seems so much more natural to highlight text in GoodReader with a stylus.  And of course, this is another difference between the iPhone and the iPad.  When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at Macworld 2007, he made a point to say that unlike other mobile devices of the day, the iPhone would NOT require a stylus because Apple wanted to make a “leapfrog product” that would “reinvent the phone.”  Jobs explained:

Now, how are we gonna communicate with this?  We don’t wanna carry around a mouse, right? So what are we gonna do? Oh, a stylus, right? We’re gonna use a stylus? No. No. Who wants a stylus? You have to get them and put them away, you loose them — yuck! Nobody wants a stylus. So let’s not use a stylus. We’re gonna use the best pointing device in the world. We’re gonna use the pointing device that we’re all born with. We’re born with ten of them. We’re gonna use our fingers. We’re gonna touch this with our fingers. And 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. And you can do multi-finger gestures on it. And boy, have we patented it!

I think that Jobs was right on target with regards to using a stylus with a smartphone like the iPhone.  I used a Palm Treo 650 for many years that required a stylus, and I don’t miss the stylus at all on my iPhone.  Touch interface with your finger is the way to go on a smartphone.  But on the iPad, the screen is so large, like a legal pad, it just seems to make sense to use something the size of a pen — especially when doing tasks that are traditionally done with a pen, like highlighting cases or writing handwritten notes on a page (which I’ve been doing with Note Taker HD and Penultimate, two other apps I will review in the future after I’ve spent more time with them).

Excuse that very long introduction to this review, but that is what led me to search for a good stylus for my iPad.  The only stylus I remember hearing about in the past was the Pogo Sketch stylus from Ten One Design, which has gotten very good reviews.  However, a colleague in my office recommended that I check out the BoxWave Capacitive iPad Stylus.  These two styli (styluses?) are inexpensive, so I bought them both to check them out.  Picking the best stylus — like picking the best pen — is a personal decision, but for me the clear winner is the BoxWave product.

 

Advantages of both

Both products are useful for the same reason.  They feel much like a pen in your hand.  The BoxWave is about 4.25 inches long, and the Pogo Sketch is about a half an inch longer.  Either length felt long enough for me.  When you are taking notes on an iPad or drawing, using your finger can seem silly.  You feel like you are a kid finger-painting — and the handwriting often looks like it was the work of a young child.  A stylus feels better and works much better.  Even when you are just flicking through screens, sometimes it feels nicer to do that with a stylus.

With a stylus, you don’t leave streaks and smudges on your iPad screen like you do when you touch it with a finger.  You can also be more precise in touching a specific part of a screen with a stylus than with a finger, and you can see more of the screen with a stylus because your hand isn’t blocking part of the screen as much.

I’m told that on a cold winter day when you are wearing gloves, you need a stylus to touch an iPhone or iPad screen.  (I live in New Orleans, so I don’t really understand these strange words you are using: winter? gloves?)  I’m also told that if you are a female with long nails, having a stylus can be very helpful.  So I suppose that if you are a frigid woman … um, I probably shouldn’t go there.

Both of these products have a clip on the side, making it easy to carry the stylus around.  I often put the stylus in a shirt pocket, just like a pen, plus you can clip it to many iPad cases.

Thanks for the tip

The key to a good stylus is a good tip, and this is one of the reasons that I prefer the BoxWave.  The Pogo Sketch tip is soft with somewhat of a spongy feel.  When I am writing on my iPad screen, it seems to have more resistance and thus causes more fatigue when using it for a long time.  The BoxWave stylus has a soft rubber dome tip that glides along the face of the iPad much more smoothly.  I also find that I need to apply more pressure when using the Pogo Sketch than the BoxWave, which also increases hand fatigue over time.  In the following picture, the BoxWave (black) is on the left, and the Pogo Sketch (silver) is on the right (click picture to zoom in):

 

How does it feel

Another important feature for a stylus is how does it feel in your hand.  I will admit that this is also very subjective, but I think that this is another major advantage of the BoxWave.  Both of these products weigh next to nothing, but the Pogo Sketch is thinner and lighter than the BoxWave, and as a result has a cheap feel to it.  In my opinion, the Pogo Sketch is just too thin and light.  The BoxWave feels sturdier and the size feels more right in my hand.

A little off the top

Both products have a hole at the top that allow you to attach something very small like a string or a very thin key chain.  The BoxWave actually comes with a thin key chain type circle attached to the top with a plastic device that can fit in your headphone port on the iPad or iPhone.  The idea is that this is a way to connect the stylus to your iPad so that you don’t lose it.  But then as you are walking around with the iPad, the stylus swings back and forth.  I very quickly removed the string, which is simple to do, and have never once had the desire to replace it.

If you think that you might want to attach the stylus to your headphone jack, I suppose this is an advantage of the BoxWave.  But since it just got in the way for me, I don’t see this as an advantage of either product.

Colors

Both products come in a variety of colors.  You can get the BoxWave in Jet Black (what I got), Metalic Silver, Crimson Red or Lunar Blue.  You can get the Pogo Sketch in Silver (what I got), Hot Pink, Cactus or Burnt Orange.

 

The price is right

One nice thing about both products is that they are inexpensive.  The Pogo Sketch retails for $14.95 but is currently only $7.85 at Amazon.  The BoxWave retails for $24.95 but is currently only $15.00 at Amazon.  If you are unsure of which one to get, you don’t have to be Daddy Warbucks to do what I did and just buy them both.  In fact, I like the BoxWave so much that bought another one to keep at home.  That way, I don’t have to worry about carrying the stylus back and forth to work every day, and don’t have to kick myself when I want to use the stylus at home but left it on my desk at work.

Conclusion

If you use an iPad, even if it never occurred to you that you might use a stylus, I encourage you to try one.  I don’t use it all the time of course — the iPad works great with fingers for most tasks — but when I am drawing, highlighting, or just want to be more precise, having a stylus is really great.  For many tasks, it feels much more natural to use a pen-like object to interact with the large iPad screen.

For what it is worth, when my kids use my iPad with a drawing program like Adobe Ideas, they also like to use a stylus.

Unless you wear gloves a lot, I doubt you need a stylus for your iPhone, but I will admit that now that I have a stylus, I have used it on occasion with my iPhone just to try something different.

I prefer the BoxWave Capacitive iPad Stylus over the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch stylus because of the tip, the shape and the weight, and I suspect that most of you would too, but the Pogo Sketch is still a nice product and is even cheaper.  Either product makes a very nice, and very inexpensive, addition to an iPad, especially if you are using your iPad to highlight text, take handwritten notes or draw.

Click here for the BoxWave Capacitive iPad Stylus on Amazon ($15.00)

Click here for the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Stylus on Amazon ($7.85)

Other products mentioned:

Click here to get GoodReader for iPad ($0.99): 

Click here to get Note Taker HD for iPad ($4.99): 

Click here to get Penultimate for iPad ($3.99): 

Click here to get Adobe Ideas for iPhone or iPad (free): 

One of my favorite features of the latest operating system for the iPhone is new wireless capabilities.  For a while now, you could stream music over Bluetooth, and in my recent review of the Kensington AssistOne I mentioned how nice it is to start up my car and have the music from my iPhone start playing through my car’s speakers.  With iOS 4.2 on the iPhone, it is now easy to stream music and video from an iPhone to external speakers.  Here is how I have been using — and really enjoying — the new AirPlay feature.

Wireless Audio

In my house, I have broadband cable internet in my study.  My cable modem is connected to a Wi-Fi router so that I have Wi-Fi in my house.  The router that I use is the Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station (Simultaneous Dual-Band).  Apple’s wireless routers are a little more expensive than the ones sold by other companies, but in my experience they work very well (especially with other Apple products, and I have all Macs in my home) so it is worth spending a few extra dollars.  Because my study is located at one end of my house, the Wi-Fi signal doesn’t quite reach my entire house.  Thus, I also have two Apple Airport Express devices which extend the Wi-Fi network; one is upstairs in my bedroom, and one is downstairs in my family room.

It just so happens that both of those Airport Express devices are located next to audio devices.  Downstairs in my family room, the outlet where my Airport Express is plugged in also provides power to my Bose SoundDock Portable, a speaker system that is primarily designed to have an iPod (or iPhone) plugged in to the dock connector on the front of the device.  The problem with that configuration is that if my iPhone is sitting in the Bose SoundDock, I can’t use the iPhone.  So if I want to sit in my living room and go through e-mails or browse websites, I cannot also listen to music from my iPhone on the Bose at the same time.  To get around this, I have an old iPod that serves no purpose except to work with the Bose SoundDock so that I can play music from that iPod, but I rarely sync that iPod so it rarely has the latest songs that I have purchased and it never has the latest podcasts that I have downloaded.

All of this has changed with the new AirPlay feature of the iPhone.  The Bose SoundDock has an auxiliary input in the back, so I can just run a cord from the aux port on the Airport Express to the aux port on the Bose, and suddenly my Bose has become a wireless speaker.  I can select whatever music or podcast that I want to hear on the iPhone, press the button that has a rectangle with a triangle at the bottom, select where I want to send the music, and then the music or podcast on my iPhone is streamed to the Bose.

   

This works in my bedroom as well.  I recently purchased an iHome iA5 alarm clock that works with an iPhone, and it sits on my nightstand.  (I’ll post a review after I have had more time to use that product.)  Like the Bose SoundDock, that iHome iA5 has a dock where you place an iPhone so that it is charged and so that the iPhone audio can play through the speaker, but the device also has an aux jack in the back.  I ran a cord from the Airport Express in my bedroom to the back of the iHome iA5, and now I can just press a button to make the audio on my iPhone play through the iHome iA5, even if I am walking around with the iPhone.

While I usually use AirPlay to play something from the iPod app on my iPhone like a song or a podcast, you can also stream audio when you are watching video.  For example, if I am in my family room watching a YouTube video or some other movie on my iPhone or my iPad, I can send the audio to my Bose SoundDock.  That way, I can watch the video on the iPhone or iPad, but have the audio play through the much better sounding speakers on the Bose.  Very cool.

Wireless Video

AirPlay also allows you to stream video from an iPhone to an Apple TV if you have the new Second Generation Apple TV.  I have one, but I’ve been having some issues with it because of my television (which I will discuss in a future post once I work through the problems some more UPDATE 12/6/10 see this post).  But if you have a new Apple TV that is working fine for you, you can use the same AirPlay button to send the video from your iPhone to your TV.

I find it really neat that you can do this, but right now I see limited utility.  Most videos that I am going to want to send from my iPhone to my TV — such as a home movie or a TV show or movie that I purchased on iTunes — already exists on my computer.  An Apple TV can already stream from a computer (as long as it is turned on), so why do I need to stream from my iPhone?  You can also send a YouTube video on your iPhone to an Apple TV, but the Apple TV has the built-in ability to play YouTube videos so again, I don’t see the need.

Right now, the main value that I see involves sharing video with others.  If a friend with an iPhone or iPad comes to my house, and he has a video that he wants to show me, with AirPlay he can now show it on my Apple TV even though I don’t have a copy of the video on my computer. 

In the future, when Apple allows third parties to add AirPlay capabilities to their apps, I see AirPlay becoming much more useful.  I can envision an app that generates pictures or videos on the iPhone and then streams the pictures or video to your Apple TV.  This is media that would not already exist on your computer, so there is a need to stream directly from the iPhone.  There are rumors that Steve Jobs has said that this function is coming in 2011.

So in sum, I already love using AirPlay to stream audio.  It works like magic; just press that one button and the sound from my tiny iPhone speaker instead starts playing through a larger, nicer speaker across the room.  Right now, streaming video has limited utility for me, but I can see this feature becoming much more useful in 2011.  AirPlay is definitely one of my favorite new features in iOS 4.2.

The ABA Journal maintains the definitive directory of law-related blogs — “blawgs” — with over 3,000 entries.  At the end of every year, the editors of the ABA Journal pick their 100 favorite blogs in 12 categories and include them in the ABA Journal Blawg 100, which is the cover story for the December issue of the ABA Journal.   Readers are then invited to vote for up to 12 of their favorites, and the winners in each category are announced in January.  The contest is fun, but the real value of the list is that it helps lawyers become aware of 100 great websites.  Every year when I go through the list, I discover lots of well-done websites that are new to me.  (For example, I learned about First One @ One First, which looks like an interesting blog related to the U.S. Supreme Court.)

This year, I am thrilled to see that in the “Legal Tech” category, there are two iOS-related sites listed: iPhone J.D. (yeah!) and Josh Barrett’s Tablet Legal.  I’m a big fan of Tablet Legal, and a few weeks ago when I got an iPad, I went back to the first Tablet Legal post and read through every post again to get up to speed on how I can use my iPad in my law practice.  I don’t know how many blogs out there focus on lawyers using smartphones that run the Blackberry, Android, Palm, Windows Mobile, or other operating systems, but the fact that no such sites were among the nine listed in the Legal Tech category says a lot to me about the enthusiasm that many lawyers have for their iPhones.

I encourage you to take a look at all 12 categories of sites on the list to learn about some great sites.  While you are there, if you already have an ABAJournal.com account, you are probably already logged in and can just start voting.  Otherwise, simply register (which is quick) and then the website will let you vote.  Obviously, I would be honored if you would vote for iPhone J.D.  You can vote for up to 12 sites (and you can vote for multiple sites in the same category, so feel free to vote for both iPhone J.D. and Tablet Legal).  A few of my favorites on the list:  SCOTUSblog, Above the Law, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, The AmLaw Daily, Drug and Device Law, Jonathan Turley, Taxgirl and the always funny Lowering the Bar.  You can also see the list and vote by clicking this very subtle (ahem) picture helpfully provided to me by the ABA Journal:

Thank you to the editors of the ABA Journal for naming iPhone J.D. to the list for the second year in a row, and thank you to all of you who take the time to vote.  I know that all of us who publish blogs appreciate the recognition.

It’s Cyber Monday and there are lots of deals on the Internet today.  Here is what I have found so far that might be of interest to iPhone J.D. readers.  I’ll update this post during the day on Monday if I run across anything else noteworthy.

Update #1:  The online Apple Store has modest discounts today on various third party items, plus is offering free engraving and free gift wrapping today on many Apple products.

• The iPhone and iPad app The Night Before Christmas starring Meryl Streep is free today.  The app features (1) a video of The Night Before Christmas narrated by Streep, (2) an e-book that you can read to your kids and (3) a feature that lets you record a voice for each page of the e-book, so you can record you reading the story, or your kid reading the story.  My kids and I started to check out the app last night and it looks pretty good on an iPad, especially considering that it is free if you get it today.  Click here to get The Night Before Christmas (free today) for iPhone

  

  and for iPad

  

• Star Walk is an interesting iPhone and iPad app that helps you learn about the stars and more in the sky.  You can hold up your iPhone or iPad and get the names of the stars that you are looking at as you move your device.  Normally it is $2.99 for iPhone / $4.99 for iPad, but today it is $0.99 for either device.  Click here to get Star Walk for iPhone

  

  and for iPad

  

• The TomTom U.S. & Canada GPS app is normally $99.99, but today it is $39.99.  Click here:

  

• The CoPilot Live North America app is normally $34.99, but today it is $9.99.  Click here: 

  

• Buy an iPod touch from BestBuy and you get a free Insignia GPS.  I’m not sure what the two items have to do with each other — it’s not like the GPS unit plugs into the iPod — but if you are in the market for both, this might be a good deal for you.
• Buy an iPod touch from Walmart and get a free accessory kit with items like a car charger, a USB cable and an audio splitter.
• Amazon has an iHome iP38 Portable Stereo Alarm Clock for iPod and iPhone for $49.99 (MSRP $119.00).
• Amazon has a Bose SoundDock Series II digital music system for iPod for $269.00 (MSRP $299.00)
• Amazon has a Cyber Acoustics Portable Digital Docking Speaker System for iPod for $19.99 (MSRP $49.99).
• Amazon has the OtterBox Defender Case for iPhone 4 for $25.96 (MSRP $49.99).
• Amazon has the Ten One Design Pogo Sketch stylus for $7.99 (MSRP $14.95).
• Amazon has the Speck Products PixelSkin Case for iPhone 4 for $5.80 (MSRP $25.95).
• Amazon has the Kensington Windshield Car Mount with Sound Amplified Cradle for $24.99 (MSRP $39.99).
• Amazon has the Griffin AirCurve Acoustic Amplifier for iPhone for $10.90 (MSRP $19.99).
• Amazon has the Arkon Bicycle Mount for iPhone for $10.37 (MSRP $19.95).

It may be a short week here in the U.S. due to Thanksgiving, but it was certainly an eventful one for iOS devices, with updates to the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and the second generation Apple TV.  Here are a few of the news items that caught my attention.  I hope that you and your families have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

• Macworld identifies 10 great features in iOS 4.2 and 10 missing features that Macworld editors hope to see in a future update.
• Lex Friedman of Macworld notes the many security fixes in iOS 4.2.  I see that one security flaw that I noted a few weeks ago seems to be fixed now.
• Electronista reports that the iPad leads Oprah’s annual list of her favorite things.
• Alexander Vaughn of AppAdvice reports that Apple has begun replacing the tiny Phillips screws at the bottom of the iPhone 4 with Torx screws to reduce the temptation to open the iPhone yourself.
• Now that you can stream Netflix to an iPhone, iPad or Apple TV, you may wonder whether you really need the physical DVDs any more.  Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has noted in the past that there is a reason that the company is called Netflix, and not DVDFlix.  Living up to its name, Electronista reports that you can now purchase a streaming-only Netflix account for $8 a month.  At the same time, the company bumped the prices of its other plans.
• Patrick DiDomenico of iPad4Legal noticed in an article by David Lat of Above the Law a reference that Justice Scalia uses an iPad to read briefs.
• And finally, M.I.C. Gadget, a blog about items Made In China, got its hands on an interesting Steve Jobs figure holding an iPhone from a Chinese retailer.  It advertised the figure for sale on its blog, until Apple sent a cease-and-desist letter.  Still, it looks like it was a fun idea.  I love that you could add baloons with sayings.  Here is one picture, and you can see many more on this post on the M.I.C. Gadget website:

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday just days away, I know that a lot of people are thinking about shopping for holiday presents.  Your iPhone and iPad can help you prepare for your holiday shopping.  New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson passed along to me this great article by Steve Olechowski of Google.  Olechowski talks about the Target and Best Buy apps, but far more interesting is his discussion of how apps like this have replaced the desire to read Sunday Circulars, the ads from the Sunday paper.  I remember that when I was young, I would often read circulars from consumer electronics retailers from the Sunday newspaper to learn what was new related to computers.  As Olechowski points out, sites like Engadget now fill that need, but these shopping apps can be satisfying for the same reason.

David Martin of Cult of Mac wrote a fairly comprehensive article on shopping apps for Black Friday and Cyber Monday:  Amazon, Best Buy, eBay, Target, Toys “R” Us and Walmart.  Yardena Arar of Macworld also writes about some Black Friday apps and websites.  And Mike Schramm of TUAW reviews mGifts, an app that helps you keep track of the gifts you plan to purchase.

This is also a good time to note that Apple always has Black Friday sales at the Apple Store (including the online store) and this is traditionally the only time of the year when Apple reduces the prices on its current products.  (Otherwise, the only sales you see from Apple are on previous generation products.)  Apple just posted a teaser page for its Black Friday sale, which you can see here.  If you are in the market to buy an Apple product for yourself or someone else in the near future, the price offered by Apple this Friday is likely to be the best price that you will see for the rest of the year.

Happy shopping!

The latest version of the iOS operating system for both the iPhone and iPad will be available this morning.  I’ll post my thoughts after I have had a chance to try it out.  It is a big update for the iPad, bringing folders, the ability to run apps in the background and major improvements to the Mail app.  For both platforms, it adds features such as AirPlay (the ability to send video or audio from your iPhone or iPad to an AppleTV) and AirPrint (the ability to print, although right now it only works with a very small number of printers).  And as Jason Snell of Macworld reports, the Find my iPhone feature that used to be one of the biggest advantages of paying for the $99 MobileMe service is now free if you have an iPad, an iPhone 4 or the latest version of the iPod touch.

Here are some early reviews:

• Joshua Topolsky of Engadget.
• Jason Snell of Macworld
• Nick Bilton of the New York Times

I am always on the lookout for statistics on the adoption of iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad in law firms.  We got one number this week from Good Technolgy, Inc.  Good has been making enterprise software for mobile devices for a long time.  Back in 2002, they even sold their own hardware device, the G100, which I used at my law firm for a while.  Then Good gave up the hardware business and focused on making software for mobile phones like the Palm Treo, and now Good sells software for many mobile devices (including the iPhone) that provide a secure connection to enterprise servers.  This week, Good released the result of a survey of its 4,000 enterprise customers which tried to determine what kind of companies are adopting the iPad.  John Herrema, senior vice president of corporate strategy at Good Technology, said:  “We found that the financial services sector dominated, accounting for 36 percent of Good’s iPad activations to date. The technology sector came in second at 11 percent, followed closely by healthcare at 10 percent. We believe these industries are embracing the iPad because its unique design makes it easier to perform time-sensitive, mission-critical tasks.”  Fourth place was the legal market at 8.8%.  You cannot read too much into this survey without knowing other information, such as how many of Good’s 4,000 customers are law firms, but still this report provides some evidence of increasing acceptance of iOS devices in law firms.  There is lots of other iOS news of note from the past week, so let’s get to it:

• For those of you who (like me) are waiting for iOS 4.2 to appear, Serenty Caldwell of Macworld reports that Apple has been fixing some final, last minute bugs and that yesterday afternoon, Apple provided developers with a third proposed final version of 4.2.  I’m sure that we are very close.  Maybe before Thanksgiving? 
• The cheapest version of the iPad retails for $499, but Joseph Flatley of Engadget reports that TJ Maxx stores are selling it for $399 in a pre-Black Friday sale.  I’m not sure how they can afford to do this — I seriously doubt that Apple gave TJ Maxx a discount price — unless they are selling below cost to get people in the stores. 
• Also, Joe White of AppAdvice reports that Sam’s Club is selling iPads starting at $488.
• John Biggs of MobileCrunch reviews two iPhone scanning apps, SayWhat and Scanner Pro.
• Attorney Reid Trautz has created his 6th Annual Holiday Gift Guide for Lawyers (2010 Edition).  Every year, the list is a great read.  This year, the iPad tops the list.
• Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles!
• Brian Tufo of TiPb reports that you can now edit a Google Docs document on an iPhone.
• I recently reviewed Calvetica, an alternative calendar for the iPhone that I really like.  San Jose, CA attorney Greg Charles recently wrote to tell me about another calendar program for the iPad that he really likes called Pocket Informant.  Charles writes:  “It integrates tasks using Toodledo and supports Exchange calendars.   Small firms can use the Google Exchange function to achieve the same result.  It also can use the native iPhone calendar as its database and that eliminates a lot of double syncing.”  This looks like a really interesting and powerful app.
• David Pogue of the New York Times writes about the Google Voice app, which Apple finally approved after a VERY long review period.
• David Pogue also provided a list of his favorite iPhone apps.
• Correy Stephehenson of Lawyers USA reports on a proposed Florida ethics opinion discussing a lawyer’s duty to protect confidential data on devices like the iPhone.
• CivilMap is an interesting iPhone app for process servers.  The app records the GPS location of the service, can record audio when service is made, and allows attorneys to track service in real time.  If you are an attorney who uses a lot of process servers, you might want to insist that they use this app.
• Dan Friedlander writes for TechnoLawyer about how to create a smartphone app that promotes your law firm.
• Do you have a need to manage a large number of incoming requests at your law firm such as requests for documents or potential clients?  If so, Richard Felix is a software developer in Louisiana who created a program called Dispatch, and the software has an iPhone app with push notifications for new requests and replies quickly.  Felix tells me that lots of lawyers are using the software, including the iPhone features.
• According to Elie Mystal of Above the Law, law firm Proskauer Rose is offering a free iPad to every associate.
• Pulse News Reader is a neat, graphical reader of RSS feeds for the iPhone and iPad, and Richard Gaywood of TUAW reports that starting this week, it is free.
• Did you know that companies can create iPhone apps just for their employees and distribute them outside of the App Store?  Tom Kaneshige of CIO.com reports on the program and some of its shortcomings.
• What would happen if you crossed a technology blog with The Onion?  The result would look something like this, the very funny Satiritron.  One recent story:  “Apple Annonces Addition of Single Defunct Band to iTunes.”
• Here’s a story that I wish was a joke.  Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times reports that a Chinese woman was arrested, on her wedding day, and sentenced to a year in a labor camp because she forwarded a satirical tweet written by her finance.  Unbelievable.  If you want to read the tweet that sent her to jail (and you can read Chinese) it is here.  The Times translates the tweet as follows:  “The original message sarcastically goaded protesters to go beyond the smashing of Japanese products and express their fury at the heavily policed expo site.  Ms. Cheng added the words: ‘Charge, angry youth.'”  By the way, Twitter is officially banned in China, although obviously tech savvy Chinese can figure out ways around that.
• And finally, here’s something sort of neat.  Artist Jitsuro Mase created a 3D device for the iPhone that he showed off at an Australian exposition.  iSmashPhone provides some background, but I think that the video speaks for itself:

Since 2006, Avvo has provided an online database of attorneys, making it easier for clients and others to locate attorneys.  Avvo (which the company says is short for “avvocato,” the Italian word for lawyer) seeks to include profiles of every lawyer in the United States.  Avvo approached me about being an iPhone J.D. sponsor because they are trying to spread the word and get more attorneys to update their online profiles.  Avvo often does a good job of figuring out the basic information on attorneys, but by updating your profile, you can add information like a picture, your practice areas, your education, associations, reported cases, etc.  If you want to see an example of an Avvo profile (besdies your own), here is what mine looks like.  Avvo also purports to rate attorneys, although frankly that’s not something that I pay any attention to.

You never know how a potential client — or just an old friend — is going to track you down, so why not make it easy for them?  It doesn’t cost you anything to update your profile, and it just takes a few minutes to do so  Plus by clicking here to update your profile (or on the banner on the left) you can support iPhone J.D. 

Two years ago today, I took a picture of my iPhone sitting on a legal pad (you can see the 17 on the Calendar icon in the image at the top of this website) and started iPhone J.D. with the post “Why I use an iPhone.”  In the over 500 posts since then, I have reviewed over 200 apps and hardware devices, posted countless tips and tricks on using the iPhone, and given you my thoughts on everything that I think that an attorney (or other professional) using an iPhone would need to know. 

The sophomore year of iPhone J.D. was a great one.  I spent a lot of time talking about the iPhone 4 and iOS 4, fabulous new products with tons of useful new features.  Plus, there were so many interesting third party apps to discuss.  While Apple still keeps track of the total number of available apps and publicizes that number from time to time, it is probably easier today to just mimic the Apple advertising line and assume that there is an app for that.  And I’ve shared lots of advice from iPhone J.D. readers as the number of attorneys using iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices seems to be increasing in leaps and bounds.  (No, I haven’t seen any reliable figures quantifying this, but anecdotally I’m seeing attorneys everywhere using iPhones — and I suspect that you are seeing the same thing.)

Most popular posts.  In case you are curious, here are the three most popular posts from the second year of iPhone J.D.:

1. iPhone tip: create and Apple folder and the follow-up post on creating a folder with a color Emoji icon. Over 40,000 different people read that first post and many read the follow up.  Folders are one of the best features of iOS 4 on the iPhone, and I’m glad that any day now we will have this function on the iPad. 

2. Blue Marble. In terms of page views, this is the second most popular post from the past year, but it is my personal favorite post from the second year of iPhone J.D.  Perhaps in part it is because space exploration excites me as much today as it did when I was a child, but mostly it is because I cannot think about that beautiful picture of the Earth without feeling a sense of awe and gaining a new perspective on life and our place in the universe.  It is not often that a simple technology blog like this can provoke such profound thoughts.

3. Review: Dragon Dictation — iPhone voice transcription by Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  The free Dragon Dictation app for the iPhone is so useful it is magical.  Whenever a new iPhone owner asks me to show off some useful apps, I always see their eyes light up when they see how easy this one is to use.  Everyone with an iPhone should have this app, and since so many people read that post, hopefully a lot of people do.

Remember that if you want to catch up on the past, all significant posts are indexed at the iPhone J.D. Index link on the top right of every page of this website.  If you are new to the iPhone, I encourage you to see what you may have missed.  Some of those old posts are just as valuable today as they were way back when, such as the many tips and shortcuts posts.

Visitors to iPhone J.D.  As I did this time last year, this seems like a good time to stop talking about me and turn the attention to you.  I can do that thanks to the tools provided by Google Analytics.  More than 250,000 different people have visited this website over the past year and there have been well over half a million page views. 

What do I know about you?  Half of the visitors were using Windows, just over 30% were using a Mac, about 15% were using an iPhone, and almost 3% were using an iPad.  One visitor used OS/2, an operating system that I didn’t think anyone had used since the 1990s (and it’s not like a lot of people were using it back then, either) and I find it funny that someone would use an operating system that old to read about the latest and greatest smartphone.  As for the browsers, about a third used Safari (which includes all of the iPhone users of course), Firefox and Internet Explorer were at 25% each, and about 10% of visitors used Chrome.

As you may know, I live in New Orleans.  If you’ve visited New Orleans before, you may have heard the popular local phrase “Where Y’at?”  The phrase means “what’s up” and isn’t really a request for your physical location, but I can’t say much about what has been going on for visitors to iPhone J.D., so instead let’s look at where you are at.  Almost 75% of you are in the U.S., but there have been visitors from 201 different countries.   Almost 5% of you are in the U.K., and the next most popular countries are Canada, Australia, Sweden and Germany.  There was only one visitor this past year from Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, but with a population of only 1,403, that’s almost .1% of the total populace, which I suppose is something.

In terms of cities, the Big Apple continues its reign at the top:

1. New York
2. London
3. San Francisco
4. Washington, D.C.
5. Los Angeles
6. Chicago
7. Atlanta
8. Houston
9. Dallas
10. New Orleans

I appreciate all of my friends here in the Big Easy doing what they can to keep New Orleans on the top ten list, but considering that last year New Orleans was #4, I wonder if the city will even make the list next year.

Feedback.  The best part of publishing iPhone J.D. is hearing from readers.  I love hearing about how other attorneys use their iPhones, and I try to share that knowledge here when I can. If you ever find that you have a few spare minutes, please send me a note letting me know what you love about your iPhone and how you are using it.  And of course if you have any comments or suggestions for this site, I’d love to hear that as well.  You can always e-mail me at jeff@iphonejd.com, and if you would rather tweet than e-mail, you can contact me at @jeffrichardson.  Additionally, although my focus here will always be the iPhone, I’m a new iPad owner as well so I suspect that I will be writing about iPad apps in the next year from time to time.  If you have anything iPad-related to share with me, I’d love to hear that as well.

Thanks for a second great year, and I know that the third will be the best one yet!