Apple just announced that on Wednesday, January 27, at 10am Pacific, it will unveil “our latest creation.” The picture at the top comes from the invitation sent to select journalists, as shown at Engadget. The rumors are that Apple will announce a new tablet computer, but I am just as interested in rumors that Apple will also preview version 4.0 of the iPhone operating system. We haven’t seen an iPhone update since September of 2009, which is a long stretch for Apple not to update the OS. Many have speculated that Apple has been waiting to release an update to the iPhone OS to version 4.0 until it was also ready to preview a new tablet computer because the iPhone and tablet operating system will share system code.
All of this is speculation for now, but my hope is that we will have some major iPhone news next week.
New apps from Apple, updates to Facebook, comparisons of the iPhone with other smartphones, and new celebrity iPhone apps were all part of the interesting iPhone-related stories that I came across this week.
Yesterday the app was updated to 3.1.2 to address some syncing bugs.
The app is a great way to keep track of your Facebook friends But
sometimes, friends can become unfriendly. Indeed, the New Oxford
American Dictionary selected “unfriend” as the word of the year in 2009. Normally, Facebook doesn’t notify you when a friend leaves you, but App Advice writes
about a $1 iPhone app called Defriended that lets you know when one of
your Facebook friends decides to defriend you. Sounds like a useful
app, unless of course you would rather enjoy the ignorant bliss that
comes with not thinking about when someone defriends you. [UPDATE: It looks like Facebook itself isn’t feeling very friendly about the Defriended app. An article today on App Advice says that Facebook pulled the plug on the Defriended app because the Facebook developer agreement forbids this type of usage.]
The latest version of the Facebook app can provide pictures for
contacts by finding their pictures on Facebook, even if you are not a
Facebook friend with a person. This means that you should think
carefully about your Facebook picture. If your Facebook picture is you
in a bikini, and your boss has your name in his contacts and uses an
iPhone, then your boss might get that bikini picture associated with
your contact entry even if you are not Facebook friends with your
boss. Something to think about, and yet another reason that I try to minimize online use of pictures of me in a bikini.
Yesterday Apple added one more benefit to being a MobileMe subscriber; you get to use the new MobileMe Gallery app. Safari on the iPhone has always done a nice job of formatting MobileMe Gallery webpages, but this app displays pictures and videos that you share on MobileMe even faster. It also lets you easily view friends’ MobileMe pages and lets you configure Safari so that the MobileMe Gallery app launches any time you click a link to a MobileMe gallery. It’s a slick app. The app is free, but you must be a MobileMe subscriber, which normally costs $99 a year but is only $69.48 from Amazon. (By clicking that link, Amazon gives a tiny percentage of each sale to iPhone J.D., which helps cover expenses around here.) Click here to get MobileMe Gallery (free):
An interesting post on the AppAdvice website shows that the iPhone has the most accurate touch screen among popular smart phones.
because it is poorly formatted and doesn’t contain the current law.
There may not be a large number of British family law lawyers reading
iPhone J.D., but her conclusion raises an interesting point:
“Beware of this app – or of any lawyer you see relying on an iPhone app
for legal research!” I frequently use iPhone apps to read the text of
the law and I don’t consider that cause for alarm, but it is worth remembering that a large number of iPhone apps containing legal statutes were released in 2009. As the laws start to change in 2010, you need to make
sure that your app is still up to date. I can see some iPhone
developers losing interest in their apps over time, so make sure that this doesn’t happen to an app that you use.
Attorney Enrico Schaefer writes on his blog The Greatest American Lawyer that he recently switched from a Blackberry to an iPhone and he is amazed how much more productive he is on an iPhone. He writes: “While I made the move because of my superficial
understanding of iPhone apps, I really had no idea how amazing those
apps would be. … For those of you still on the
Blackberry platform, check your service contracts and find out when
they expire. Then, ignore that date, eat whatever penalty you have to
pay by getting out of the contract now and switch anyway. Your ROI may
take a week or two longer, but you will see productivity gains so
quickly, you will soon agree it was the best money you ever spent.”
The always thoughtful MG Siegler writes for TechCrunch about the Nexus One, the new phone from Google that uses the Android operating system. While explaining why he likes the iPhone better, he explains the key advantages of the iPhone. I love this passage: “Android is like a very nice painting done entirely with broad strokes.
The iPhone is more like a masterpiece in which every little detail has
been meticulously defined. Just as people have different tastes in art,
people will have different tastes when it comes to the iPhone versus
the Nexus One. But that doesn’t change the fact that some pieces of
artwork are considered to be masterpieces, while some are considered to
be merely very good.”
GigaOM has a neat graphic on the App Store economy. Click here to see it.
which provides information on the 2010 New Orleans Mayoral and City
Council races. The current version of the app will appeal to those
with an interest in New Orleans politics, but it looks like an
interesting app that could be used for any race in any city.
AppAdvice reports that mice-maker Logitech released a free app that lets your iPhone act as a wireless mouse. Many other apps already do this, but AppAdvice notes that this one is both full featured and free. If this type of app is of interest to you, check it out.
And finally, for all of you who love the distinct voice and antics of actor Samuel L. Jackson, you can now get the iPhone app iSamJackson for all of your Samuel L. Jackson needs. There is a funny, free online preview of the app that gives you a sense of what it does, and for $2.99 you’ll have Samuel L. Jackson in your, ahem, pocket, either in a clean version or an explicit version, both of which include a magic eight ball-type feature so that Samuel L. Jackson can help you make your most critical decisions. You can even follow the app on Twitter. This picture is from when I “met” Mr. Jackson at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in New York. I’m the one on the right. Click here for iSamJackson ($2.99) Clean: and Explicit:
I am always interested to learn about attorneys who write apps for the iPhone — especially apps that are designed for other lawyers — and I try to feature those stories on iPhone J.D. when I can. If you know your way around a computer and have always been interested in writing the next great iPhone app, you’ll want to take a look at iTunes U, a collection of over 200,000 free educational materials on iTunes. The prestigious Stanford University has a large collection of programs on iTunes U, including CS 193P, a course on developing iPhone apps taught by both Stanford professors and an Apple employee.
Ars Technica has a short article on the course, noting that there will be ten lectures in the course this semester (the first two of which are already on iTunes), and there is no cost for watching the videos of the classes and downloading the slides via iTunes.
I watched a little of the first class, and it quickly went over my head. I last took a computer science class as a college sophomore in 1988, and suffice it to say that things have advanced a little since then. But the professors seem very energetic and I’m sure it is an amazing class. I sometimes hear about people with very little computer knowledge picking up some books and learning to program an iPhone app, and whether you are a computer programming guru or new to the field, I suspect that this Stanford course can play an important role in teaching yourself to program for the iPhone. You should also read the excellent iPhone development blog Mobile Orchid.
By the way, there is both quantity and quality over on iTunes U and you can quickly lose yourself there browsing through all of the selections. For example, I see that Emory University Law School (I went to college at Emory) offers a five-part “Mini Law School” including “Introduction to Torts” by Dean David Partlett and “Constitutional Law” by Prof. Robert Schaprio.
Click here for iPhone Application Development (Winter 2010) (free):
If you are like me, then you have a lot of entries in the Contacts on your iPhone. Attorneys and other professionals are always meeting people, be they clients, co-counsel, opposing counsel, consultants, witnesses, etc. and over time the number of entries in your Contacts database can really add up. Groups is an iPhone app that gives you sophisticated tools for managing your these contacts.
When the developer, Guided Ways Technologies, sent me a review copy of this $4.99 app, I thought it would be good for one thing: making lists of contacts so that I could easily send an e-mail to a group of people at one time. Groups adds that ability, and does it very well, using drop and drag. Just hold down your finger on a contact for a second and a picture of a card will pop up, which you can drag to any distribution list that you created in the app. Once the group is populated with members, you can easily send an e-mail to all recipients of that group, and the app even lets you selectively turn on or off members of that group before it creates the e-mail. It is a slick implementation that works great.
Little did I know that this one feature, useful though it may be, is just one of the many features of the sophisticated Groups app. First, this app makes it very easy to get at the information that you have associated with each of your contacts. Just tap on a contact and a card pops up that gives you a beautiful interface to all of the information that you have for a particular contact.
Second, the app has a powerful smart group feature. Much like a smart playlist in iTunes, you can create a smart group of contacts that matches certain characteristics. For example, the domain for my law firm is arlaw.com, so I made a smart group that contains all contacts with “arlaw” in their e-mail address. Instantly, I had a group containing all of my contacts who are my co-workers:
The app also comes with some useful built-in smart groups that you can use, modify, or delete. For example, one smart group lists everyone who has a birthday as a part of their contacts data, and next to each name it shows you the person’s current age. One smart group called Company shows you everyone who has data in the Company field of their contact. You could just as easily make your own smart group called No Company which lists everyone who does not have a company in their contact data, which is a quick way to see who in your Contacts list needs to have company info added.
And that last point demonstrates one of the most powerful features of this app. By using smart groups, this app allows you to easily explore your contacts to get a sense of what is missing and to see relationships between your contacts. A smart group can show you all of your contacts who live in a city, useful when you are planning a trip. A smart group can show you all of your contacts who don’t have a photo, so you can then go in and add a photo. Just as usefully, it can show you all of the contacts that have a photo. As I noted in my recent review of the latest version of the Facebook app, that app can now go through all of your contacts and add photos for anyone that it finds on Facebook, even if that person is not one of your Facebook friends. When I used this feature the other day, it added dozens of correct pictures to my iPhone contacts. But for a few people, it either got the picture wrong, or it correctly displayed the person’s current Facebook picture but that picture is not something that I want to associate with the person, such as a picture of the person’s pet. By looking at a smart group of every contact with a photo, I could quickly find those photos that I don’t want to keep and quickly remove those photos from my contact information. There is really no way to accomplish this task with the built-in Contacts app.
Indeed, it is much easier to do many tasks like this using the Groups app then using Outlook on my PC. Thus, Groups is an example of an app that is so powerful and easy to use that I actually prefer to accomplish the task on my iPhone rather than use a computer. That is a sign of a great iPhone app.
And Groups has a bunch of other features as well, many of which I am just starting to discover. For example, it has a keypad that you can use to dial as an alternative to the regular iPhone Phone app, but as you start to type a number it starts to show the matches in your Contacts to save you the time of typing the rest of the number. Additionally, it lets you type a name on a keypad using the T9 method, for those of you who enjoyed doing this on a traditional cell phone (press 2 for ABC, press 3 for DEF, etc.) If you want to bring up Adam, you can just type 2 3 2 and as you are typing the app will bring up all of the matches for those letters such as Adam, Beatrice, Becky, etc.
Note that if you do a search on the Internet for reviews of the Groups app, you will see that most of them are from early 2009 when the app was still missing a lot of features, such as the ability to edit contact information. The 1.1 version of the app, which came out September 23, 2009, addressed these shortcomings and added several new features.
[UPDATE 1/18/2010: Philippe Radley notes in a comment that Groups doesn’t work with custom ringtones. I don’t use custom ringtones so I haven’t noticed this, but if you do you might want to take heed of Philippe’s warning. For example, the 148 Apps website says this on this topic: “According to the Guided Ways Technologies website, this problem wasn’t a mistake on their part, simply the SDK currently doesn’t allow it, but I will mention it anyway. Groups doesn’t seem to recognize any ringtones other than the preloaded ones on the iPhone, this isn’t a big deal considering you can just go to the ‘Contacts’ app to change it. But my goal was to completely replace ‘Contacts’ with this app.”]
Groups is an amazingly useful app. The groups and smart groups features not only make it easy to create lists of contacts, they also make it easier for you to understand what is in your contacts and see relationships between your contacts that you otherwise might not see. The design of the app is beautiful, and obviously a lot of thought and care went into this. The app is easily worth $5 for anyone with a large number of contacts on their iPhone.
This site is aimed at lawyers who use iPhones, but you might be amazed how often people find me through this site and tell me that they are ready to make the switch and want to know which iPhone to get. Just yesterday I got one of these requests from Blake LeBlanc, an attorney in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, last week I got it from one of my law partners, the week before that … etc. I’ve answered this question enough that I figured I should post my answer here.
You have three options right now: $99 for the iPhone 3G, $199 for a 16 GB iPhone 3GS and $299 for a 32 GB iPhone 3GS. It isn’t any cheaper to get it at an Apple Store, an AT&T Store, on the Apple website, Walmart, or anyplace else, so just go someplace convenient for you.
I recommend that attorneys avoid the cheapest, $99 model. Here is why. First, the 3G is the 2008 version of the iPhone, so you are getting a much older model. Second, it is slower than the 3GS. Why should you care, especially if any iPhone is going to be a big improvement over what you are using now? Because the increased speed on the 3GS makes the iPhone much more responsive and more enjoyable to use. It makes a difference.
Third, the 3GS has a much better camera than the 3G. “But Jeff,” you insist, “I don’t take pictures with my cell phone.” Well, you don’t take pictures now, but trust me, it is nice to have that option, and the camera is so easy to use on the iPhone that you’ll probably find yourself wanting to use it when you see something interesting and the iPhone is the camera that you have closest to you. Fourth, that nicer camera can also take video. Do you have kids? Do they ever do anything funny? Then you want the video camera.
Finally, there are other nice touches in the 3GS, none of which on its own is worth the extra $100, but added to the above list they further tip the scale in favor of the 3GS. For example, the 3GS has a nice coating on the screen that makes it resistant to finger prints and makes it easier to wipe of the finger prints when they occur. And you will touch this thing a lot, so that matters. It also has a built-in compass, which makes it easier to use the great built-in Maps app. There are a few other differences, all of which I listed here, but the ones I just listed are the most important.
So now you know you are going to get the 3GS version. Should you get the 16 GB version for $199 or the 32 GB version for $299? For most people, I recommend the 16 GB version. This often leads people to ask me, “Jeff, I hear about these 100,000 apps available for the iPhone. Shouldn’t I get more memory to get more apps?” No. It doesn’t matter. Apps on the iPhone just don’t take up that much space. The advantage of the extra capacity is not the ability to hold more apps, but the ability to hold more media: pictures, songs and video.
And let’s be even more specific — you would have to have an insane number of pictures on your iPhone to need more than 16 GB. So ask yourself, do you currently have an iPod or other MP3 player? If so, how much music do you have on there? If it is over 16 GB, then maybe you would like the larger model. If not, or if you don’t even currently use an iPod or other MP3 player, than the 16 GB should be fine. And finally, do you plan to put a lot of video on your iPhone, such as TV shows or movies to watch while you travel, or even just portable versions of your home movies? Videos do take up a lot of space, so that might be a good reason to get the 32 GB version. I often download TV shows, and sometimes movies, to watch on the plane or at night in a hotel room when I travel. If that sounds like you, then you’ll probably appreciate the 32 GB version. If not, then stick with 16 GB. Even the 16 GB version can hold quite a few songs and videos.
That often leads to this final question: “Should I buy one now, or should I wait for the next model?” My answer: we’re talking about technology here. It changes every minute! You can wait forever and you’ll never find the perfect time to buy technology. But I can offer this advice: new iPhones typically come out, or at least are announced, in June. Take a look:
Original iPhone: Announced 1/9/07, available 6/29/07
iPhone 3G: Announced 6/9/08, available 7/11/08
iPhone 3GS: Announced 6/8/09, available 6/19/09
A year ago, in January of 2009, an important Apple executive (Phil Schiller, Apple’s VP of Worldwide Marketing) mentioned to a leading technology columnist (David Pogue of the New York Times) that “Apple marches to certain product cycles” including “the iPhone cycle (June),” further confirmation that June is the date that Apple targets.
Of course, there is no guarantee that the next version of the iPhone will be announced or released in June of 2010. iPhone Alley reported yesterday that there was a rumor floating around France that the next iPhone will launch in May, not June, if you want to believe that one. If getting a new iPhone is not very urgent for you, maybe you want to wait another five or six months, but then you’ll miss out on all of the advantages of owning an iPhone. That would be a shame! Today, I’d say go ahead and get it. But come May of 2010, then it probably makes sense to wait a few more weeks.
So for most of you looking to get an iPhone right now, go ahead and get the $199 model. If you want to use a lot of music and/or video, get the $299 model. You’ll have to choose a color for the back of the iPhone (black or white), and I offer no advice on that cosmetic decision, except to say that my wife and I both have black, in case you are curious how the Richardson household voted.
Of course, once you get that shiny new iPhone, it won’t be long before you ask the next, inevitable question: “Hey, what apps should I check out?” To which, may answer is — that’s what iPhone J.D. is all about, so become a regular reader! My answer literally changes every week. Right now, I love and recommend Dragon Dictation, Documents to Go, Facebook (if you use Facebook), Twitterific (if you use Twitter), NetNewsWire (if you read RSS feeds from websites), The Weather Channel, LogMeIn Ignition, DirecTV, the Louisiana Civil Code and Code of Civil Procedure, FRCP and FRAP, Grocery iQ, and Scrabble. But next week that list will change. If you want a ton of great suggestions, make plans to attend the ABA TECHSHOW conference in Chicago this March. Reid Trautz are I are planning a session called “60 iPhone Apps in 60 Minutes” on Thursday, March 25th, and Ben Stevens and I are planning a session called “iPhone Tips for Lawyers” on Saturday, March 27th.
One week ago, I asked “Where are the iPhone hardware attachments” because I thought we’d see a lot of them in 2009, but we didn’t. What a difference a week makes, especially when that week contains the huge Consumer Electronics Show (CES) which took place in Las Vegas over the last few days. Quite a few vendors announced hardware attachments for the iPhone, and many of them were not the typical attachments such as cases and speakers. Maybe this is the start of something new and 2010 really will bring us a large number of new and interesting hardware attachments for the iPhone. Here are some of them that caught my eye.
External keyboards. Even though the iPhone has Bluetooth, it has never supported Bluetooth keyboards. The engineers at Ion Audio (a company previously known for audio products like turntables, drum kits and the like) announced a typewriter and piano keyboard that both work with the iPhone. The iTYPE is a $112 full size keyboard, but unfortunately it only works with a dedicated app. [UPDATE 1/13/10: Here is a video from The iPhone Blog of someone using the device at CES, and the company representative says that the device will be out in the fall and will cost just under $70.] You type into that one app, then you can copy your text and paste into anther app such as an e-mail, a text message or a word processing document. Engadget has some good photos of the product. It is an interesting idea, but I would probably prefer a smaller, folding keyboard that takes up less space for travel, much like the portable folding keyboard which I used many years ago with my old Palm III. The iDISCOVER KEYBOARD is a 25 key piano keyboard from the same company with a similar design.
Extra storage. Engadget reports on the AirStash, a small device that will accept an SD card and then share the contents over Wi-Fi so that you can access files on your iPhone. You can accomplish the same thing by putting files on an Internet server (such iDisk if you subscribe to Apple’s MobileMe) and then accessing those files using an app that connects (for example, Quickoffice can connect to your iDisk), but by using AirStash you avoid any security concerns you may have about storing files on the Internet, plus you can access the files even if you don’t have Internet access.
Universal remote. If you want to use your iPhone to control your TV and related components, L5 Technology announced a small device that plugs into the dock connector on your iPhone to send or receive the IR signals. You can customize the buttons (up to 100,000) and replace up to 1,000 remotes. It will cost around $50.
Credit card processing. I mentioned last week that two systems have been announced to process credit card payments on the iPhone. One such device is called Square, and it comes from Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter. The New York Times has an interview with Mr. Dorsey. Mophie announced a similar product called Marketplace.
Improve your sleep.WakeMate is wristband that you wear while you are sleeping. It wirelessly talks to the WakeMate app on your iPhone to monitor your sleep patterns. Tell WakeMate the 20 minute window during which you want to get up, and the app plays an alarm at the optimal moment during that 20 minute window based on your sleep cycle. The app can also analyze your sleeping patterns and give you advice on how to get better sleep. The device will cost $50. [UPDATE: Here is more info on the product from Macworld.]
Watch TV. Mophie teamed up with FLO TV to develop the Juice Pack TV for the iPhone 3GS. Like other Mophie Juice Packs, this is an iPhone case that contains a battery to extend your iPhone’s life. But this version also contains a receiver for FLO TV, a network available in most major cities that streams live television from popular networks. For example, you can watch a live game on ESPN.
Watch more TV. iPhone Alley reports on an interesting, upcoming product called Monsoon Volcano. The device contains a digital receiver to get live over the air television, which it can then stream to an iPhone. You can watch the video on your iPhone anywhere, so it does place shifting like a Slingbox. You can be in Chicago and watch the game being broadcast on TV in your home in New York. The device can also record video for later viewing, so it works like a DVR, and you can remotely control the DVR to record or play back recordings. It also allows you to play internet video. The cost will be $200 to $300 depending upon the storage.
Baby monitor. Dexim announced a $40 baby monitor that will stream video over Wi-Fi to your iPhone. It contains a built-in rechargeable battery that lasts for up to four hours.
Improve your grip for games. Tunewear announced a $20 device called Game Handle. It doesn’t actually connect to the iPhone’s electronics, but instead it is just a case that is in the shape of a game controller designed to provide a better grip when you are playing iPhone games in landscape view. The Helix Gaming Grip is a similar device for the same price.
Speak into the mic. Microphone manufacturer Blue came out with a new version of its Mikey iPhone mic, a $100 retro-looking microphone that lets you record audio on your iPhone in high quality.
A car. Admittedly a car is a rather expensive hardware accessory for an iPhone, but the upcoming Chevy Volt electric car will be able to talk to an On Star app on the iPhone. You can get info on how much charge your car has left, you can lock or unlock the car, remotely start the car (warm it up on a cool day or vice versa), etc. The iPhone Blog has a video from CES showing off the features.
There are some interesting products here, and hopefully this is just the tip of the iceberg and we will see a lot more throughout 2010.
Apple announced earlier this week that more than three billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store. “Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months — this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” the press release attributes to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.” Apple last announced these types of figures on November 4, 2009, when it said that “well over” 2 billion apps had been sold sold and that over 100,000 apps were available for sale in the App Store; it was September 28, 2009 when Apple first announced that it crossed the 2 billion app mark. iLounge does some math and notes that because it took under 100 days to have another billion apps downloaded, that means that apps are being downloaded at a rate of around 10 million per day. Wow! Dan Moren of Macworld suggests one reason for the recent surge in app downloads: the holiday season. A lot of people received an iPhone or iPod touch in December, and a lot of those folks downloaded a bunch of apps. For the first time ever in a press release on App Store sales, Apple did not announce the number of apps in the App Store, presumably because they are waiting to cross some major threshold such as 150,000 apps before releasing an updated number. Other interesting news from the past week:
Following up on my post from earlier this week on law firms developing iPhone apps, I recently learned that Arnold & Porter has an iPhone app. It isn’t an app related to the firm as a whole, but instead is just a mobile version of their Consumer Advertising Law Blog. I’m not a big fan of apps dedicated to a single blog — why not just use a single news reader app on your iPhone to aggregate all of the blogs that you read? I use NetNewsWire for the purpose — but on the other hand, it is an example of a law firm offering an iPhone app that is truly useful to potential clients instead of just a big advertisement for a law firm. Click here for Consumer Advertising Law Blog (free):
In the 1940s, Seagram’s ran a line of advertisements about “Men Who Plan Beyond Tomorrow,” featuring predictions of the technological advancements of the future. These ads are fascinating today since many of the predictions came true, although not quite as was originally predicted. Harry McCracken has a great set of slides from these ads on his Technologizer site.
Attorney Finis Price of TechnoEsq.com discusses BeenVerified, a service accessible from an iPhone that can provide background checks on people.
The latest serious competitor to the iPhone is the Nexus One from Google. David Pogue of the New York Times has a good analysis of the Nexus One and how it compares to the iPhone. Gizmodo has a nice chart comparing some aspects the iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre, Motorola Droid and the Nexus One, although as the author admits at the end the iPhone’s interface makes it great and you can’t really sum that up in a chart. (Gizmodo link thanks to FutureLawyer.) Note that Palm just announced a new version of the Pre, the Pre Plus, which will have 16 GB (like the iPhone 3GS) and which, unlike the iPhone, will run on Verizon.
Trying to figure out who is stealing the pens from your office? Macworld discusses Security Cam, a $1 app that takes iPhone photos at a predetermined frequency, or whenever noise is detected, or both. Just aim your iPhone to the right spot and leave it running to help you catch the thief. Unless, of course, the thief just steals the iPhone instead of the pens.
Apple recently purchased Quattro, a company that sells ads on mobile phones. The New York Times has more details.
Also in the New York Times, Roy Furchgott writes about his 14 favorite apps of 2009. Only two of those (Dragon Dictation and DirecTV) would make my list, but I love to hear which apps others find the most compelling.
And finally, when I saw this earlier this week I knew that I would just have to make it the end of my Friday post. And I wasn’t the only one to have the thought; several of you wrote to make the same suggestion. A company called Parrot is making a product called AR.Drone, which is a small quadricopter (a helicopter with four rotors) that you can control with your iPhone. An ad-hoc Wi-Fi connection lets your iPhone fly the aircraft, so you want to keep the unit no more than 50 meters from your iPhone, although if it loses a connection it will automatically land itself. Engadget explains that it uses two cameras to help it fly “(one forward facing, one facing down running
at 60 fps that allows stability in light wind)” and also has
“two ultrasonic transmitters for vertical stability, a three-axis
accelerometer, and a two-axis gyroscope paired with a single-axis yaw
precision gyroscope for good measure.” Words can’t really describe it sufficiently; just watch the video. It comes out later in 2010. No price announced yet, but I presume that it will cost more than an iPhone.
I’ve never done a formal review of the Facebook iPhone app on iPhone J.D. even though it is one of the most useful apps on the iPhone and a handy way for attorneys to keep in touch with friends from high school, college, law school and elsewhere. You never know, one of them may be your next client or co-counsel, plus there are other reasons that lawyers should consider using Facebook. (Although in Florida and perhaps elsewhere, think twice before you send a friend request to a judge.)
In this past, I’ve resisted publishing a review of the Facebook app because, frankly, I suspect that every iPhone owner who uses Facebook already has and uses the free app. If you don’t, you are really missing out. In many ways, I like the iPhone interface even better than the desktop web browser interface because it is clean and focused. Plus, you get none of those annoying ads on the side.
The main screen on the app gives you nine buttons so you can easily view your Wall or your News Feed, and on a second screen you can store shortcuts to your favorite Facebook friends.
I am writing about this app today to mention the new version 3.1 that came out yesterday. The update adds two new features. First, the app now supports push notifications. In the main iPhone Settings app you can control the items for which you will receive push notifications. For now, I have all seven options turned on, but as the novelty wears off I will probably start to selectively turn some off. For example, with Messages notifications turned on, if someone sends you a Message (a direct e-mail) on Facebook, you will receive a pop-up notification on the iPhone. (The Facebook push notifications do not make a sound, vibrate the phone, or add any icon badge updates, even if you have those features enabled for push notifications.) In my experience, this service worked very quickly, typically providing a notification on the iPhone within a second or two of a message being sent.
If you are not someone who spends a lot of time on Facebook, enabling push notifications is a good way to make sure that you know when something relevant to you is happening on Facebook. And even if you are a frequent Facebook user, now you can be even more timely.
The second nice improvement in the 3.1 update is that the Facebook app can now sync with your contacts. For now, this feature only does two things. If you enable contact syncing, Facebook will look at the names and phone numbers of people in your Contacts on your iPhone. If it finds an exact match with one of your Facebook friends, then the app will add two things to the entry in your Contacts. First, it will add the person’s Facebook picture to your Contacts entry. You can tell the app not to replace a photo in your Contacts if you
already have one, and that way it just fills in missing photos. (A few people have reported on the Internet that this didn’t work for them, but for me it did a fine job of respecting entries for which I already assigned a picture.) [UPDATE: As Jared points out in the Comments, Facebook quickly released a 3.1.1 update to address syncing bugs.]
Second, it will add a home page entry to the Contact in the format of fb://profile/1234567890. If you tap on that in the Contacts app on your iPhone, it will launch the Facebook app and show you that person’s profile. I have seen people post on the Internet, but have not been able to confirm myself, that if a phone number matches then the sync will occur even if the names are not exact matches. Otherwise, the name has to match exactly, so if one of your friends uses a nickname on Facebook, or if you use a nickname in your Contacts, the sync for that friend won’t work.
Facebook doesn’t add your iPhone Contacts to Facebook, doesn’t add your Facebook contacts to Contacts, or anything like that. I like this conservative approach, although perhaps in the future they will add more syncing options. For example, some people provide a phone number on their Facebook profile page, and it would be useful to have the app automatically download that into your Contacts entry for the person if you don’t already have it. But even for now, it is nice to have more profile pictures added to my Contacts automatically without having to use a third party program to accomplish this task. When a friend calls me on my iPhone, I like having a picture come up, which my mind processes even faster than looking at a name.
The person at Facebook who developed the originally iPhone app left the project in late 2009, so it is nice to see that Facebook is still developing its app and adding new features. I’m already looking forward to the next update.
Yesterday was Twelfth Night,* the last of the “12 Days of Christmas,” which means that today is the official start of the MardiGrasseason. Arthur Hardy, the foremost authority on Mardi Gras in New Orleans, has published Arthur Hardy’s Mardi Gras Guide for over three decades. Every year it is the Bible for all things Mardi Gras, a magazine with over 150 pages containing everything from Mardi Gras history, facts and figures to specific information on individual carnival krewes, including parade details, schedules and maps. You can purchase a copy of the Mardi Gras Guide for $4.99 at virtually every bookstore, grocery store and convenience store in the Greater New Orleans area, and every year I’m sure that there are copies in a significant percentage of the homes down here.
The smart folks at Calliope Digital have worked with Hardy to bring the Mardi Gras Guide to the iPhone. (Calliope Digital is also responsible for the WhoDatApp, a very popular app for Saints fans.) The result is a useful app that both New Orleans natives and visitors will want to have on their iPhone to help guide them through the Mardi Gras season.
The most useful part of the magazine Mardi Gras Guide is the parade information and schedules, so it seems natural that this information is prominent in the app. The schedule appears when the app launches and can also be reached from the first button at the bottom of the app. For each of the 52 parades, you get all of the critical information including date, time, this year’s theme, the krewe history, this year’s royalty, information on the floats, a map with the parade route, and Arthur Hardy’s unique commentary on that particular parade. So when you are standing on the parade route and you want to know what time the parade starts, how many floats it will have and whether there are any new and unique throws this year, that information is at your fingertips in the app.
The app also includes a large amount of general Mardi Gras information from Arthur Hardy that will be especially helpful to visitors to New Orleans including the history of Mardi Gras, frequently asked questions, and information on what is new in 2010.
Unfortunately, even though the app costs the same as the magazine version of the guide, it doesn’t include all of the information from the magazine. For example, the feature articles are missing. But the app has a few advantages over the magazine version. First, as long as your iPhone is with you, the guide is always with you, even when you are at the parade route and don’t have the magazine at hand. Second, unlike the magazine, the app can be updated. I would imagine that the app will update as parade information or schedules change, and the developers have told me about some great additional features that are coming soon. (They asked me not to spill the beans.) By the time that parades start rolling, I see myself using this app quite a bit.
If you live in New Orleans, or if you plan to visit for Mardi Gras this year (the focus of which is Friday, February 12 through Tuesday, February 16, 2010), you will enjoy having this app on your iPhone. And by the way, since most readers of iPhone J.D. are not here in New Orleans, I encourage all of you to make plans soon to visit the Big Easy. Whether it be for Mardi Gras, for Jazz Fest from April 23 to May 2, 2010 (which I love even more than Mardi Gras) or any other time of the year, it is easy to fall in love with the food, music, architecture, history and culture that makes the Crescent City so unique.
Click here to get Mardi Gras Guide by Arthur Hardy ($4.99):
* Note: Different traditions count the 12 Days of Christmas differently. Some count the 25th as the first day, some count the 26th as the first day. But everyone agrees that January 6th is King’s Day / the start of Epiphany / the start of Carnival season.
Jason Turchin is a Florida plaintiffs’ personal injury attorney. Like many attorneys who represent victims, it is important that he find ways to publicize himself to potential clients, whether it be through television ads or search-optimized websites. He recently started a new way of making his services known: a free iPhone app called My Attorney App.
I suppose the most compelling reason for a potential client to download the app is that it includes Accident Checklists. The app includes helpful tips for people who are victims of various unfortunate circumstances such as a car accident, slip and fall and even dog bite. By having the app on their iPhone, a victim can immediately review a handy checklist of things to do, such as “call the police” and “do not give any statements to the insurance company or sign any release without having your lawyer review the case first.”
Of course, the main reason for an app like this is to get a victim to call the attorney. Upon starting the app, you see a splash screen with Turchin’s name, and it appears proimantly throughout the app. There are also buttons at the bottom of every screen to contact Turchin, and from the main screen you can follow Turchin on Facebook or Twitter and get more information about his past successful representations.
Turchin is not the only one with a promotional iPhone app. I also ran across an app called LawFirm, published by Spar & Bernstein, a New York law firm that specializes in immigration law but also has a full service practice. From the main screen of the app, you are presented with four practice areas.
Upon choosing an area, you have to wait as a list of items loads from the Internet. For three of the items (criminal defense, divorce and personal injury) you are given a list of issues / crimes and related information and tips from the law firm. For the immigration law item, you see a list of up to date news items from an unidentified source. Only the first few paragraphs of each news item are loaded into the app, and the end of the news item frequently cuts off in mid sentence. The app also provides links to the law firm’s Twitter updates and quick access to a large number of video and audio podcasts called Immigration Link from attorney Brad Bernstein.
I don’t know whether Turchin developed his app himself or hired an outside consultant. The publisher of the Spar & Bernstein app is Cariplex Studios, a web design company which I presume developed that app. I know that there are many companies out there who will develop an iPhone app for under $1,000. I haven’t tried these services myself so I cannot vouch for them, but within just the last few days I have seen references to Mobile Roadie, a company that started by developing apps for bands but now will develop personal apps for anyone for about $500 start up and then about $30 a month, and AppMakr, which will also create an app for around $500, or even for as little as $200 if you choose for AppMakr to be the publisher (although since the purpose of a law firm app is self-promotion, I imagine that many law firms would want for the law firm to be the publisher). Obviously the costs will increase as you add more of a personal touch, but the point is that developing an iPhone app could easily fall within the marketing budget of most any law firm.
I wish Jason Turchin and Spar & Bernstein the best of luck with their iPhone apps. I’m sure that before long there will be many more law firm apps in the App Store.
