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A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from St. Louis University law professor Nicolas Terry asking if I had tried out an app called Prizmo.  I had not heard of it, so I contacted the Belgian developer, Creaceed, and the company sent me a free review copy.  I’ve now had a chance to try it, and I’m very impressed.  The app allows you to take a picture of a document with your iPhone, then the app uses an OCR (optical character recognition) process to read all of the words in the scan and give you the plain text, then the app lets you do all sorts of useful things with the text that it has read.  This is an app that a lot of lawyers are going to want to have on their iPhones.

To scan a document, start the app and tap the Text button.  For example, I opened up my Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure book and found the article pertaining to dismissal or settlement of a class action and snapped a picture with the app.  (Or if you have already taken a picture, you can access any image in your Photos library.)  The app then gives you lots of options to prepare the image for OCR.  You can crop to select the relevant portion of the image, rotate the image, adjust the perspective, or tap on a portion of the image that should be white to enhance the contrast between black and white.

   
 

When your image is prepared, tap the Next button and the app will scan the text, accompanied by an amusing graphic of a scanner going down the document as if it is reading it during the OCR process.  The app then shows you the text, which you can edit.  OCR is never perfect on any computer, let alone on an iPhone, but with decent quality scans I found that this app did a very good job.

  

After you are finished with your edits, the app shows you the text and gives you a bunch of options for what you can do next.

   
 

The first option is to have the app read the text out loud.  The app doesn’t come with built in voices, but instead lets you buy up to 35 different male and female voices for many different languages for $2.99 each.  The quality of the voices is quite good, and after you have installed one, the app can perform a text-to-speech to read you your document.  Another option is to copy the document, which you can do either by selecting some of the text and using the normal iPhone copy function, or if you want to copy all of the text to the clipboard just tap the copy button.  You can also tap the mail button to send either the image that you scanned or the text from the image to an e-mail message.  You can also send the app to a file depository on the Internet (DropBox or CloudApp).  You can also save the original or the processed image to the Photos app on the iPhone.  And finally, you can tap the Translate button to have the app use Google Translation services to translate the text into one of ten different languages.  For example, here is what Article 594 of the Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure looks like in French.

 

Notwithstanding Louisiana’s civil law traditions and connection to the French Civil Code, that probably isn’t very useful.  But perhaps if you were in a foreign country in a restaurant that had Wi-Fi, it would be helpful to scan a menu in French or German or Spanish and then translate it into English.  (The internet connection is necessary so that the app can have Google Translation Services translate the text; the OCR process occurs on the app itself without the need for any internet connection.)

If all this app did was OCR documents and let you do lots of different things with the resulting text, that would be useful enough, but that is just the beginning.  I’ve only described the steps that happen after you tap the first button on the main screen of the app, and there are many other options.

 

The Business Card option allows you to scan a business card, and then the app turns the text into entries of a Contact.  The app takes a guess at what to do with names and numbers, but in many cases you will have to go in and adjust the field or, in some cases, adjust the text if the OCR process or the app made mistakes.  For example, when I scanned my business card, the app put “New Orleans, LA” all in the City field instead of putting “LA” in the state field.

  

When you are finished with the fields, the app gives you buttons to do various things such as add the person to your Contacts on the iPhone or e-mail a vCard.  It takes some time to get all of the text assigned to the correct fields, but I have to admit that this is probably faster than typing in all of the data from a business card on your own.

I did not try out the Bill feature, but I understand that it lets you scan a bill, OCR and interpret it (detecting labels, prices and tax), split up the bill among different people (assigning the different food items to the different people at your table) and figure out the tip.  I doubt I would ever use this feature in real life, but if you are eating with a group of people who want to be exact and have Joe pay more because he had two egg rolls whereas Bob only had one, then this is the button on the app for you.  I also did not try out the Whiteboard feature, which lets you take a picture of a whiteboard and work with the information.

The Reader function works if you have purchased a voice for the app.  You can paste any text into the app (or by default it uses the text from your last scan) and then have the app read to you.  For international travelers, it might be useful if the app let you paste a block of English text, then translate it to a foreign language, and then read that out loud using a foreign language voice.  For now, you can access the Google Translate website and translate your text there, and then paste the translated text into this app and have the app read it out loud if you need this function (assuming that you have purchased a foreign language voice).

Finally, the Documents part of the app allows you to access previous scans and work with them again.  By default the app shows you a portion of the scanned document, but tap once on any image to instead see the beginning of the OCR text.

  
 

There are a few features that I would like to see added to this app.  First, I wish the app could work with PDF files.  Many of the scans that I receive are in PDF format, but this app can only work with JPG images.  I tried to get around this limitation by displaying a PDF on my iPhone screen and then taking a screen shot, and then working with the resulting image that was saved to my Photos library, but the quality wasn’t very good because the text was so small when I displayed an entire document on the iPhone screen, and thus the OCR had too many errors.  Also, I don’t see a way to handle documents that are more than one page long.  The app handles each scan of a page as a separate file.  It would be nice to be able to combine multiple images into one large file.  Additionally, I wish that there was a way to get a document into the app using third party services such as DropBox or CloudApp.  Right now, the app only lets you take a new picture or select a picture from Photos on the iPhone.  In other words, you can save a scanned document to DropBox or CloudApp, but you cannot receive a document from those services.

To be fair, though, I hate to complain too much about missing features because it is stunning how much is packed into this one app.  This developer clearly has put a lot of thought into what you might want to do once you OCR a document.  And the developer knows quite a bit about OCR, having sold a Macintosh version of Prizmo for some time now.  The field of law is becoming more paperless every day, and with an app like this you can move more of your physical documents into a digital form that can be more easily used.  This is a useful app to add to your iPhone toolbox.  (And thanks to Prof. Terry for bringing it to my attention!)

Click here for Prizmo ($9.99): 

Fifty years ago in 1960, Theodor Seuss Geisel — who we all know as Dr. Seuss — accepted a $50 bet from his editor at Random House.  Could he write an entertaining book for children using only 50 different words?  Dr. Seuss won the bet, and the result was the classic story Green Eggs and Ham.  Oceanhouse Media publishes a bunch of iPhone apps based on the work of Dr. Seuss including books, games and camera apps.  Yesterday, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Green Eggs and Ham, Oceanhouse dropped the price of their Dr. Seuss apps for the iPhone and iPad by 50%, for a limited time.

If you have younger children then I suspect that, like my kids, they love Dr. Seuss and they love getting to use an iPhone, so what could be better than Dr. Seuss on the iPhone?  I have two of these apps — the Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham — and I recommend them to anyone who has kids.

 

 

The apps have three different modes.  In the “Read to Me” mode, a narrator reads each page of the book, and you swipe to go to the next page.  In the “Read it Myself” mode, there is no narrator so the app works much like a traditional e-book.  And in the “Auto Play” mode, the child can just sit back and have the story read out loud without needing to swipe to change pages.  In both of the modes with a narrator, each word is highlighted as it is read to help the child learn to read.

In all modes, there are fun sound effects on every page.  Also, a child can tap on any word
to hear it spoken, or a child can tap on any object on the screen to see
hear what it is — “hat” “Sam I Am” “Sign” etc. — and to see that word
briefly appear under the object.

 

The graphics come right from the books and are as vibrant and whimsical as ever.  They look amazing on the iPhone 4 (with full support for the retina display — tap on the above pictures to see them full size), and I hear from people who use these apps on the iPad that they look fantastic on that larger screen.  (The same app will work on both an iPhone and an iPad.)  Also, each app does a great job of panning across the page to zoom in or out as is appropriate for the text.

There are 12 titles in the e-book series:

• Green Eggs and Ham
• The Cat in the Hat
• Dr. Seuss’s ABC
• One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
• Yertle the Turtle
• Hop On Pop
• The Lorax
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
• Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
• Gertrude McFuzz
• The Big Brag
• The Sneetches

Now that these apps are 50% off for a limited time, you can pick one up for only $1.99 (or in some cases, 99¢.)  Note that the prices have been discounted even more in the past; I purchased The Cat in the Hat this past March when it was on sale for one day only for 99¢.  But whether you spend $1 or $2 or even more, the apps are certainly worth it.  You should have seen the look on my son’s face last night after I purchased the Green Eggs and Ham app and I told him that I had a new Dr. Seuss book on the iPhone.

If you have kids, or if you are just young at heart, these apps are a fun purchase.  Oh, the places you’ll go!

Click here to get The Cat in the Hat ($1.99): 

Click here to get Green Eggs and Ham ($1.99): 

Everyone knows that the popularity of the iPhone has put a strain on AT&T’s network over the years.  The #1 reason people give me for not buying an iPhone is that they prefer the Verizon network.  AT&T is well aware of this and has several initiatives underway to improve performance on the iPhone and other cell phon… oh, who are we kidding.  We all know that this is all about the iPhone.

One initiative was to unveil a faster 7.2 Mbps HSDPA 3G network, which both the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 can take advantage of.  You can learn more about HSDPA in this article written last year by Glenn Fleishman.  

Another initiative by AT&T has been to add 3G support at its cell towers for the 850 MHz spectrum.  I am certainly no expert in cell phone spectrum, but here is my understanding of what this means.  850 MHz is the original frequency that was used in the U.S. for cell phone service, originally for analog cell phone service in the 1980s.  The 1900 MHz frequency (also called PCS) was added about 15 years ago and is only digital.  AT&T debuted its GSM network on the 1900 spectrum, and then more recently used 1900 for 3G.  The higher frequency means that the signal does not travel as far, which can result in problems when you are trying to use the phone inside of a building with thick walls.  As analog and other uses of 850 MHz have gone away, AT&T started to support GSM on both 850 and 1900 MHz. 

The iPhone, like most other current generation phones on AT&T, supports both 850 and 1900.  In the past, however, 3G was only available on the 1900 MHz band, and thus an iPhone could only use the 850 MHz band for slower Edge service.  To improve coverage, AT&T has been working for over a year to bring 3G to the 850 MHz spectrum across the country.  This helps users in two ways.  First, by moving some of the 1900 traffic over to the 850 band, there is room for more traffic on 1900 MHz and hopefully fewer dropped calls for everyone on both bands.  Second, as noted, the 850 band can work better inside of buildings.  In New York City — a city famous for both lots of buildings and poor AT&T coverage — AT&T worked hard to add 850 MHz support throughout the country, and the company announced this past June that it had finished upgrading all of the Big Apple.  To be clear, New York is not unique; AT&T supports 3G over 850 MHz in areas across the country.  However, I’m not aware of AT&T previously announcing which cities have 3G over 850 MHz, except for New York where AT&T is now bragging about it quite a bit.

In the following video from AT&T’s Seth the Blogger Guy, Seth explains what the 850 MHz upgrade means in New York, and of course most of what he says will also benefit you in your city when the 3G 850 MHz rollout is complete.  I’d love to hear from New Yorkers on whether they have seen improvements now the that the new band is rolled out.

[UPDATE 9/16/2010:  See also this post from Nilay Patel at Engadget on additional announcements from AT&T on upgrades.]

The focus of iPhone J.D. is the intersection of lawyers and the iPhone, and most of the time that means a focus on how lawyers can make the most of their iPhones.  But one of my favorite stories from this week has to do with another intersection, the legal terms in Apple’s contract with iPhone app developers.  One expects to see complicated legalese in such a contract, and I’m sure that there is a lot of that in there, but John Gruber of Daring Fireball has a fascinating post about changes Apple made yesterday to the contract including new bullet points at the start of the agreement that are certainly not legalese, and frankly are somewhat funny, such as:  “We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don’t need any
more Fart apps.”; “If your App looks like it was cobbled together in a few days, or
you’re trying to get your first practice App into the store to
impress your friends, please brace yourself for rejection. We have
lots of serious developers who don’t want their quality Apps to be
surrounded by amateur hour.”; and “We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe
is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court
Justice once said, ‘I’ll know it when I see it’. And we think that
you will also know it when you cross it.”  Also, Jason Snell of Macworld wrote an interesting editorial on the changes.  Other interesting iPhone news of the past week:

• If you sync your iPhone with your home computer but want to connect it to your work computer and play music on your iPhone through your computer speakers, in the past this was only possible if you enabled the “manual sync mode” option.  Seth Weintraub of 9 to 5 Mac reveals that with iTunes 10, you can do this even without changing a setting.
• Philip Michaels of Macworld writes about RIM’s acquisition of most of DataViz, although unfortunately he mostly raises questions and doesn’t have many more answers than I had when I wrote about this earlier this week.  But maybe there is life in the app after all; yesterday, the company released version 4.0 of Documents to Go Premium with a revamped user interface, support for external keyboards, increased speed, new options for formatting paragraphs, support for the iPhone 4 retina display, and more.  Is the release of 4.0 a sign that the app has a future?  Is this update just the last hurrah?  I can’t wait to find out.
• California Lawyer magazine identifies iPhone apps that are handy for lawyers.  (Link via Dan Friedlander.)
• Bianca Male of Business Insider compiles a good list of 10 helpful iPhone apps for business travelers.  Unfortunately, this one of those annoying posts where you have to click a button to page through each suggestion, so consider yourself warned.
• If you like to run, check out Vlad Savov’s Engadget review of Nike+ GPS, the new app that lets you use your iPhone to track your run, even without using a Nike+ shoe-mounted sensor.
• If you are a Florida lawyer interested in condominium and homeowner association laws, check out this post by Daniel Vasquez of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on iPhone resources including the FLCondo and FLHOA iPhone apps.
• I always love it when iPhone thieves get caught because of the Find my iPhone feature.  Gary Allen of ifoAppleStore.com writes about one such incident in Madison, Wisconsin.
• Chris Ziegler of Engadget writes about a headset that lets you control your iPhone, using your brain.
• If you or a friend is thinking of getting an iPhone but doesn’t want the phone or the AT&T contract, the iPod touch is a great alternative, and Apple’s newest model makes it very similar to the iPhone 4.  John Gruber explains what you don’t get in the iPod touch that you do get in an iPhone 4.  And there are lots of well-written (and favorable) reviews of the new iPod touch that are worth a read such as these from Joshua Topolky of Engadget, Jim Dalrymple of The Loop and Christopher Breen of Macworld.
• John Paczkowski of All Things D writes that more people are being iPads and fewer people are buying PCs.
• Dan Friedlander of LawOnMyPhone reviews the Westlaw Next app for the iPad.
• And finally, I previously mentioned Meninos, a company that sells coasters that look like iPhone apps.  The New York Times Gadgetwise blog writes about another company called, appropriately enough, iPhone Apps Coasters, that sells even larger coasters that are rounded at the edges just like real app icons, not squared off like the Meninos product.  If you love your iPhone and love to drink, then you might want to plop down £20 (about $30) for each set of six.

Yesterday around Noon, iOS 4.1 became available to install on your iPhone, and there are a lot of new features for a mere .1 upgrade.  Here is what you can look forward to with the latest version of the iPhone operating system.

HDR Photos.  If you have an iPhone 4, you can ow turn on HDR mode when you are taking a photograph to tell your iPhone to take three pictures in a row with three different exposures and then automatically combine them to create a high dynamic range photograph in which you see more even more details in the photograph.  In the settings for the Camera app, you can elect to keep the original photo without HDR enhancement in addition to the HDR photo.  Taking an HDR photo adds a few additional seconds of processing time, but when you have vastly different lighting situations such as a person or object in the foreground and a bright sky in the background, you can get much better pictures with the HDR mode turned on.  HDR can help you to bring out details in dark areas, such as the bricks and the flowers in the following picture, with minimal sacrifice to the bright areas (HDR photo on the right):

  
 

HDR really shines when you want to focus on an object that is indoor while also being able to see what is out of a window on a sunny day, such as this picture where I tapped on the plant in my office to make it the focus, but with HDR you can also see the Mississippi River Bridge out of the window of my office:

  
 

(You can click on any of those pictures to see them full size.)  For many pictures, HDR will not make a difference.  Indeed, if the lighting is uniform throughout your picture, HDR will often make the picture look worse, taking some of the richness out of the picture.  But when you have a lot of lighting contrast, HDR can make a huge difference in the quality of the photo.

HD video upload over WiFi.  In iOS 4.0, you can take
HD video with an iPhone 4 but need to connect to your computer to get that video off of
your iPhone in full HD quality.  With iOS 4.1, if you have a WiFi
connection, you’ll be able to upload that video so that you can more
easily share HD video with others when you are on the road, away from
your computer.

Fix the Proximity Sensor Bug.  iOS 4 had the annoying
tendency to turn the screen on when the iPhone was next to your face,
meaning that your cheek could touch a button on the phone while you were
talking.  iOS 4.1. is supposed to fix that bug.  In my limited tests last night, it still seemed like the screen was sometimes coming on when I held the iPhone close to my face, so I’m not yet convinced that Apple has completely solved this one, although I have not yet found the screen coming on when the iPhone is so close to my face that my cheek could press a button, which sometimes happened under iOS 4.0.  I’ll be keeping track of this one to see if it is really fixed.

Fix the Bluetooth Bug.  I don’t use Bluetooth with
my iPhone 4 very often so I had not noticed that there was a problem
with Bluetooth, but if you noticed any problems with the Bluetooth
connection dropping, you’ll be happy to learn that these problems
are supposed to be fixed in iOS 4.1.

Enhancements to Bluetooth.  In addition to fewer Bluetooth bugs, there are also more Bluetooth features with full support for the Bluetooth Audio/Video Remote Control Protocol (AVRCP).  In the past, you could only adjust audio controls using a Bluetooth device such as a headset or a car stereo.  Now, you can also skip forward and backward.

Speed up the iPhone 3G.  iOS 4.0 was very slow on an iPhone 3.  iOS 4.1 improves the speed in certain applications on an iPhone 3G.  Adam Dachis of Lifehacker ran these tests and found that there are speed improvements in Safari, Photos, Messages and especially the Maps app.

Game Center.  If you want to play multiplayer games on your iPhone, the new Game Center enhances the experience, allowing you to play against your friends or play against player with similar skills in certain games.

Landscape Camera Tweaks.  The icons are rearranged in the Camera app when you are in landscape mode, making the button placement more consistent with what you see in portrait mode.  Here is how the buttons and zoom slider were placed in landscape mode on an iPhone 4 with iOS 4.0:

 

And here is the button and zoom placement in iOS 4.1:

 

FaceTime Improvements.  In iOS 4.0 you could only use FaceTime
with another iPhone 4 user.  In iOS 4.1, you can now use an e-mail
address to initiate FaceTime, which opens the door to the new fourth generation iPod touch that doesn’t have a phone number.  I still wish that Apple would make
FaceTime work with iChat on a Mac; I’m sure that this feature must be
coming soon.  Additionally, you can now add someone to your Phone
favorites using FaceTime making it even faster to initiate video chats.  And just like the Camera app, the buttons are rearranged in landscape mode in FaceTime.

Rent TV Shows.  You can now rent TV episodes for only 99¢.  You have 30 days to start to watch the episode, and then once you start to watch it, you have 48 hours before the episode disappears.  (You can watch it as often as you want during that 48 hour window.)  For now, this feature only works for ABC and FOX shows; hopefully NBC, CBS and other networks will jump on board soon.  If you would rather own an episode, you still have the option to buy it for $1.99 (SD) or $2.99 (HD).  Note that if you rent a TV show in HD, Apple says that it can only be watched on an iPhone 4; if you rent the SD version then you can watch the episode on an iPhone 3GS or 3G.  Also note that there is an odd restriction involving moving a rented TV show between iTunes on your computer and your iPhone.  If you rent a TV show on your computer, you can tap a “Move” button to transfer it to your iPhone to continue to watch it while you are on the go.  (And at that point, it disappears from iTunes on your computer; it can exist on only one device at a time.)  But if you rent a TV show on your iPhone, you cannot transfer that show back to iTunes to finish watching it on your computer.

Spell Check.  In the Settings app, you now have the option to disable spell check so that you don’t get the red dots under words that the iPhone thinks that you misspelled. 

Parental Restrictions.  In the Parental Restrictions area of Settings, you can now restrict the use of Facetime or Game Center. 

New Carrier Settings.  The About panel in Settings reveals that the iPhone is now using Carrier settings of AT&T 8.0 instead of 7.0 in iOS 4.0.  I have no idea what is new in 8.0, but obviously 8.0 is one better than 7.0.

Auto-Lock.  In iOS 4.0, you only had five choices for when the iPhone would Auto-Lock:  1 minutes, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes or 5 minutes.  In iOS 4.1, there is a sixth option:  Never.  I suppose this is nice for those rare times where you want your iPhone screen to stay on even when you are not using the iPhone (and don’t mind wasting the battery), but this seems to be a security flaw because it allows you to circumvent the iPhone setting that causes a Passcode Lock to be required after a certain amount of time.  For example, even if your employer requires that your iPhone lock after 15 minutes of inactivity, the passcode lock screen only comes up when the screen is in Auto-Lock mode and you wake up the iPhone.  If you have Auto-Lock set to Never, then your screen will never enter Auto-Lock mode, and someone could walk up to your iPhone hours after you last touched it and use your iPhone without entering a passcode (assuming that your iPhone hasn’t died by then after using the battery to keep the screen lit for several hours).

Ping.  Apple’s new social network for music isn’t really a feature for iOS 4.1; it went live last week in iOS 4.0.  Nevertheless, Apple’s website advertises it as a new iOS 4.1 feature, which I suppose is fair considering that it was announced at the same time as iOS 4.1.  I’ve just started to make use of this service, but I like the idea of it and I’ve already discovered a few great songs.

Nike+ Uploads.  If you use Nike+, you can now upload you data directly to the Nike server using the iPhone, without having to sync to your computer first.  And note that even if you don’t have fancy Nike+ shoes or even just the Nike+ sensor attached to another pair of shoes, Nike recently released the Nike+ GPS app that uses the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer and GPS to determine how fast and how far you ran.  Click here to get Nike+ GPS ($1.99): 

Security.  Like every iOS update, this update addresses potential security flaws.  Jeff Gamet of The Mac Observer explains:  “iOS 4.1 also fixes several security issues including a flaw that could
let an attacker redirect FaceTime calls with a maliciously crafted
certificate, and a flaw where maliciously crafted TIFF or GIF images
could be used to crash apps or run arbitrary code. WebKit for iOS
received its fair share of security patches related to maliciously
crafted SVG files, the handling of text nodes and element focus, fonts,
HTTP redirect handling, CSS encounters, JavaScript arrays, and more.”

GMail.  If you use your iPhone to sync with a GMail account, iOS 4.0 added the ability to either delete or archive messages.  In iOS 4.1, if your preference is to archive, then the trash can icon at the bottom is changed to an arrow pointing to a file box, which makes more sense.

One of the things that I love about iPhones is that, due to frequent software updates from Apple, the phones get better over time.  iOS 4.1 is a nice update, and as noted, there are more features than I would expect for a mere .1 update.  iPhone 4 owners will especially love this update because of the new features such as HDR photography and HD TV show rentals that work only with Apple’s latest iPhone.

I saw rumors of this a few days ago, but now it appears to be official.  RIM, the company that makes the BlackBerry, has purchased “some of the assets of DataViz and hired the majority of its employees to focus on supporting the BlackBerry platform” as noted in a statement given to CNET. Om Malik of GigaOM reports that RIM paid $50 million for the DataViz assets.

DataViz makes one of three main productivity suites for the iPhone, the Documents to Go app.  Whenever attorneys ask me what apps they should get for their iPhone, this is always one of the first apps that I mention.  I have been using Documents to Go for more years than I can remember, most recently on an iPhone but before that on my Palm Treo 650.  As I have noted in the past, I am a big fan of Documents to Go.  Over the years, DataViz has frequently been the first to add useful features to its product that were lacking in offerings of competitors.  For example, Documents to Go was the first iPhone app to let you access Word documents that are attached to e-mails.  This is now a built-in feature of the iPhone operating system that any app can use, but DataViz made the feature available a year before Apple did.  Similarly, Documents to Go is currently the only app that handles footnotes in documents.  Here is an example of a document with footnotes in Documents to Go.  Just tap on a footnote to see a pop-up window with the text of the footnote:

  
 

The competitors to Documents to Go still cannot handle footnotes correctly.  In the left picture below, here is the document displayed in Quickoffice, which just ignores the footnotes.  On the right is a picture from the Office² app which gives you the text from the two footnotes at the end, but doesn’t tell you where the footnotes occurred in the text:

  
 

It goes without saying that for attorneys, footnotes are very important.  Thus, when I am reviewing a brief on my iPhone, I always prefer to do so using Documents to Go.

The history of Documents to Go, Quickoffice and Office² has been that the apps are frequently updated to add new features missing in the competitors’ apps and to catch up to the competitors’ latest features.  I’m surprised that we have gone this long without Quickoffice or Office² adding real footnote support, but one has to hope that this support is coming soon.  

The hallmark of DataViz has always been compatibility and interoperability.  I remember that back in the 1980s and early 1990s, I was an avid user of the company’s MacLinkPlus software which always did the best job of converting PC documents to and from Mac formats.  The logo of the company even includes the word “Compatibility.”  And yet now that RIM owns most of the company, I fear that this will change.  A few days ago, DataViz announced that it abandoned plans to come out with a version of Documents to Go for the Palm Pre.  And now that most of the DataViz employees are working for RIM, one has to wonder whether Documents to Go has a future on the iPhone.  As the CNET article by Jessica Dolcourt notes, “it’s uncertain if or how quickly RIM will dial down support for the moneymaking Documents To Go on other mobile platforms.” 

On the one hand, I suspect that the product sells well, so there could be a financial incentive to continue to support and improve the iPhone and iPad app.  On the other hand, it is not in RIM’s interest to make the iPhone and iPad better tools for professionals such as attorneys who deal with a lot of documents.  RIM would much rather keep all of the attorneys using BlackBerry devices.

Documents to Go is not the only game in town, and even without that app we’ll be able to use Quickoffice or Office² but I do fear that without DataViz pushing the envelope and adding new capabilities to the iPhone, the other developers will have less incentive to innovate and we’ll miss out on improvements to this category of iPhone apps.  Considering that RIM did not purchase the entire company, maybe the
portion of DataViz that remains will continue to push iPhone products.  But whether the development continues at what is left of DataViz or moves to RIM, my fingers are crossed that, somehow, Documents to Go for the iPhone survives.

[UPDATE 9/10/10:  On September 9, 2010, DataViz released version 4.0 of Documents to Go Premium
with a revamped user interface, support for external keyboards,
increased speed, new options for formatting paragraphs, support for the
iPhone 4 retina display, and more.  Is the release of 4.0 a sign that
the app has a future?  Is this update just the last hurrah?  I can’t
wait to find out.]

[UPDATE 9/13/10:  Today, DataViz updated its Facebook page to respond to speculation about the future of Documents to Go on platforms other than the BlackBerry.  The statement reads:  “Despite the rumors, DataViz is alive and kicking and remains very much committed to many of the smartphone platforms we previously supported. While we did extend our business relationship with RIM, which included the sale of some of our assets, the details of this (and any other) partnership will remain private. Watch for some exciting releases in the near future!”  With this statement, and the release of Documents to Go Premium 4.0, hopefully we can look forward to many more years of this app on the iPhone!]

Apple released version 10 of iTunes last week, and there are quite a few changes.  Ping is the marquee new feature, and while I haven’t used it much, I like the idea of new ways to discover great music.  Some people are upset about some of the changes in iTunes 10, such as the removal of the ability to create a ringtone out of music that you own (which I personally don’t care about) and the new vertical red/yellow/green buttons at the top left corner (which I agree looks odd).  I’ve even seen people complaining about the new icon.

But one thing that seems to be a definite change for the better is improved iPhone syncing.  Syncing an iPhone to iTunes has been a painful experience in some of the prior versions of iTunes.  The process sometimes took a long time and you had no sense of how long it would take to finish.  In iTunes 10, Apple now displays information that tells you where you are in the five step process of syncing including backing up, installing apps, syncing music and podcasts, syncing photographs, etc. 

 

 

I’m very happy to see this new feature.  Just having additional information about the process makes the syncing process seem to go much faster.

Moreover, it may be the the process actually is faster.  The time that it takes to sync always varies based on the amount of information that you have to transfer, but I’ve seen reports online of people finding their syncs to be much faster in iTunes 10.  I cannot say that I’ve noticed one way or the other myself, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that in each new version of iTunes, Apple looks for way to speed up the syncing process.  Apple’s own website identifies as one of the new features of iTunes 10"Improved syncing.  Feed your devices, faster.” although it appears that Apple is referring more to the ability to manage the syncing process as opposed to the time it takes to actually perform a sync.

Any week that Apple hosts an event with a presentation by Steve Jobs related to the iPhone, the Apple announcements dominate the news of the week.  But there were a few other news items that I ran across this week that might be of interest to you.

• Liane Cassovey of PC World reviews the Netflix app for the iPhone and likes it.  I’ve kicked the tires on the app a little bit too, and I really like what I see so far.
• Patrick DiDomenico of iPad4Legal writes about the presence of iPads at the recent ILTA conference.  I’ve been to several meetings attended by a lot of attorneys over the last few weeks, and I am amazed at how many more iPhones and iPads I am seeing recently.  Apple just may have some hits on its hands.
• Scott Canon of the Kansas City Star says that the smartphone that you use says a lot about who you are.
• Jeffery Battersby of Macworld reviews Office2, one of the three big word processors for the iPhone (along with Quickoffice and Documents to Go).
• Many years ago, I really enjoyed playing Riven on my computer.  That sequel to Myst had beautiful graphics and created a truly immersive world.  If you also have fond memories of the game, you should check out this report from Casey Tschida of AppAdvice with screen shots of the upcoming version of the game for the iPhone.
• When I recently reviewed iVacuate, I noted that one missing feature from the app was good tools for tracking a hurricane.  Jeff Merron of Macworld recently reviewed several apps for the iPhone and iPad that can be used to track hurricanes.
• Neil Hughes of AppleInsider has additional details on the HDR features coming next week in iOS 4.1 and some comparison pictures to show you how it works.
• And finally, The Daily Nail shows off the perfect painted nail design for the ladies who love their iPhones.

 

The focus of the Apple September announcement is always the iPod, but yesterday there was a ton of iPhone news announced by Steve Jobs.  Here are the iPhone-related news items and my thoughts on each.

The numbers.  Steve Jobs started by noting that Apple has sold over 120 million iOS devices, including the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.  Apple now activates 230,000 new iOS devices every single day.  There are over 250,000 apps in the App Store, and there have been over 6.5 billion downloads from the App Store.  200 apps are downloaded every second.  Wow.

HDR Photos.  The new iOS 4, due out next week, will give you an option for the iPhone camera to take high dynamic range photographs, allowing the iPhone to take even better pictures that don’t wash out the background.  I have some iPhone apps that do the same thing and dramatically increase the quality of pictures, but with this ability built-in to the iPhone I’m sure that it will work even better.  The iPhone 4 already has the best smartphone camera, and with HDR it will be better than many “real” cameras.  Here is an example from the Apple website of what HDR can do for an iPhone photo:

HD video upload over WiFi.  In iOS 4.0, you can take HD video but need to connect to your computer to get that video off of your iPhone in full HD quality.  With iOS 4.1, if you have a WiFi connection, you’ll be able to upload that video so that you can more easily share HD video with others when you are on the road, away from your computer.

Fix the proxmity sensor bug.  iOS 4 had the annoying tendency to turn the screen on when the iPhone was next to your face, meaning that your cheek could touch a button on the phone while you were talking.  iOS 4.1. is supposed to fix that bug.  Thank goodness.

Fix the Bluetooth bug.  I don’t use Bluetooth with my iPhone 4 very often so I had not noticed that there was a problem with Blluetooth, but if you noticed any problems with the Bluetooth connection dropping, you’ll be happy to learn that these problems supposed to be fixed in iOS 4.1.

Speed up the iPhone 3G.  If you use iOS 4.0 on an iPhone 3G, you know that it is V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W.  iOS 4.1 is supposed to speed it up.

Rent TV shows for 99¢.  You can already rent movies on your iPhone, but with iOS 4.1 you can rent TV shows for only 99¢.  That is cheap enough that you won’t feel guilty renting an episode (or two, or three) of the show that you missed last night to watch on a plane when you are traveling home from business.  In the past you had to buy TV shows, and with very rare exception I only want to watch a TV show once.  A cheap rental makes a lot more sense.

Game Center.  If you like the idea of playing multi-player games on your iPhone, Game Center in iOS 4.1 will let you connect with friends and share a game.  I’m not sure that I will ever use this feature, but I’m sure many people will like it.

Ping.  Yesterday, Steve Jobs showed off a new social network for music that lives in iTunes called Ping.  You can choose to let your friends see the music that you are buying on iTunes, your friends can allow you to see their purchases, artists can let you follow them, etc.  It looks like Facebook with a music angle.  While mostly a feature of iTunes 10, Ping will also be incorproated into the iTunes app on the iPhone.

Printing from the iPhone and iPad.  In November, iOS 4.2 will be available for both the iPhone and iPad, and one of its features will be the ability to print documents from an iOS device.  I suspect that this will be more useful for iPad owners than for iPhone owners, but it will be nice to see this addition.

AirPlay.  Apple also announced a new $99 AppleTV today (due in four weeks).  With iOS 4.2 on your iPhone or iPad, any video that you are watching on your iOS device can be viewed on your large screen TV connected to an AppleTV with just one button.  That way, if you haven’t finished watching the TV shows you rented on that plane ride home, you can finish watching on your TV once you get home.  Nilay Patel of Engadget notes that Apple will let third-parties use this technology.  “That means you’ll be able to stream music from iTunes, your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad to speaker docks, receivers and stereos from companies like Denon, Marantz, Bowers & Wilkins, JBL and iHome, complete with song, album, and artist info and album art.”  Sounds great.

New iPod touch.  I know tons of people who want an iPhone without the phone (and the monthly AT&T contract) and thus they use an iPod touch.  The new version of the iPod touch incorporates most of the great new features added to the iPhone 4 such as the retina display, the fast Apple A4 chip, the gyroscope, FaceTime with a front-facing camera, and a camera on the back that can take HD video (although the picture quality is lower than the iPhone 4).  Suffice it to say that if you like the iPhone 4 but don’t want the phone, you’ll love the new iPod touch.

New iPod nano.  I understand that the new iPod nano doesn’t use the iOS, but with the multitouch interface and the icons lifted from the iPhone, the new nano definitely copies from the iPhone.

New AppleTV. My focus here is on iPhone news, but the new AppleTV has a relationsihp to the iPhone because of the AirPlay feature I noted above.  Additionally, I understand that the new AppleTV actually runs a version of iOS, although you cannot tell that just by looking at it.  That makes some sense becuase the the AppleTV has always been essentially an iPod for your TV.  If the best selling iPod (the iPod touch) runs the iOS, then why not put it on the AppleTV.  Will we ever see third-party apps on the AppleTV?  Only time will tell.

These were interesting announcements for iPhone owners.  You can download the new iTunes 10 now, and look out for iOS 4.1 next week.

Today at at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern will be Apple’s annual September iPod event.  There used to be a time, long ago, when Apple provided live video streams of Apple events.*  But then Apple stopped doing so, which resulted in many websites becoming experts at live blogging Apple events.

This year, we will have the best of both worlds.  Apple PR announced yesterday that there will be a live video stream of the event on Apple’s website.  Note that Apple says that you need to use Apple hardware (such as a Mac or an iPhone) to view the livestream; we’ll find out tomorrow whether the stream can be viewed with non-Apple hardware and software.  But if you prefer to read instead of watch and listen, here are links for live blogging by the experts at Engadget, Macworld and GDGT.  Be sure to tune in to iPhone J.D. on Thursday for my thoughts on the announcements.

Or, if you can’t wait and you just have to know right now what will be announced, John Moltz of Crazy Apple Rumors Site spills all the beans on the new products.

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* How long has it been since Apple streamed an event like this?  There was a period of time in the range of 2000 to 2002 when Apple did it frequently, and I found this Apple press release in which Apple bragged that 50,000 people watched a webcast of the July 17, 2002 Macworld New York keynote by Steve Jobs.  That may have been the last time that Apple did a live webcast of a Steve Jobs presentation.  I remember that those live streams would often stutter and lead to much aggravation.  I presume that Apple is providing a live stream today only after taking steps to make sure that the quality is good.  We’ll see.