During this time of giving and holiday cheer, I know that a lot of you have been thinking about what you can give to iPhone J.D. this year. Well, maybe some of you have been thinking that. OK, maybe just one. (Hi, Mom!) But if you do enjoy reading iPhone J.D. and you are interested in supporting the site, there are two easy things you can do that won’t cost you anything.
First, if you make any purchases from Amazon, just click right here before making that purchase and Amazon will provide a tiny percentage of whatever you buy to iPhone J.D. It doesn’t cost you anything extra.
Second, even if your holiday shopping is done and you have nothing to purchase from Amazon, it would be so nice if you take the time to vote in the ABA Journal’s Blawg 100. This year, the ABA makes you register before you can vote, and I know that is a deterrent. But registration really is painless and only takes about a minute, and once you register you can vote for up to ten favorite blawgs among the 100 nominees. I’d like to show the ABA Journal editors that they did the right thing by selecting this site because there is a lot of iPhone interest out there. To vote, you can click on the link at the top right of this page, or just click on the following large, obnoxious banner helpfully provided by the ABA Journal to go directly to the “Tech” category. Once you are there, click the links at the top for the other categories:
By the way, you really should check out some of the other nominated sites. There are some great ones.
For all of you who decide to support iPhone J.D. through either of the above, not to mention though your continued readership and enthusiasm, thanks so much. It means a lot.
As the end of the year nears and the holidays catch your attention, don’t forget to get your CLE hours for the year. West offers over 2,000 audio CLE programs in its West LegalEdcenter, and now you can take those courses on your iPhone with the new West CLE Mobile app.
To get started, download the free West CLE Mobile app to your iPhone, and then create a West LegalEdcenter account, if you don’t already have one.
The app allows you to download one free CLE, a one hour program called Ethics in Client Development. You can also go to the LegalEdcenter and search for or browse the 2,000+ programs offered by West. The programs that you can use with the iPhone app — which in my unscientific review appeared to be most of them — say “Mobile Compatible” next to them. (I wish that West would let you browse, search for and purchase CLE
programs from within the app itself instead of having to use a web
browser, and hopefully this is something that can be added in a future
version.)
The prices vary, but most of the one hour courses appear to cost $135.00. Once you have purchased a program, it will show up as being available for download on your iPhone. Downloading a program, which includes the audio and the materials, takes just a minute or two. Once you have a program downloaded to your iPhone, you can play the program at any time before it expires.
Once you choose to start playing a program, the audio will play over your iPhone speaker, or use your headphones for a little more privacy. A progress bars shows you how much you have to go, and if you miss something there is a button that lets you rewind 30 seconds. You can also use the slider at the bottom to jump to a particular spot in the program, but you cannot advance past your last verified position. Verified position? What that means is that at various points during the program, you will hear a bell ring. When that happens, you need to tap the Now Playing button at the bottom of the screen and then tap the Verify button to demonstrate that you are still awake and listening to the CLE.
By tapping on the Program Materials button in the middle of the screen, you can see all of the materials for the CLE, including documents and PowerPoint slides. I found it very easy to manually scroll through the slides while the speaker was speaking. You can rotate the screen if you would rather view the slides or documents in landscape mode.
One nice feature is that you can stop the program at any time and then resume it later. This makes it easy to fit in the CLE during whatever time you have available.
When you are finished with your program, the app allows you to rate the program and then you press one button to Submit for Credit. West then e-mails you a link to obtain a Certificate of Completion, which you can provide to your bar to recognize your CLE credit.
Here is a video from West showing off the features of the West CLE Mobile app. Feel free to silence the audio as you watch this; it consists of nothing more than stock background music:
Thanks to the West CLE Mobile app, you can now slip your iPhone in your pocket, put on some headphones, and get CLE credit while you are doing other things in your house, pausing from time to time to look at the new slides. I encourage all attorneys to check out this app because the app itself is free and it includes a free download of the Ethics in Client Development program, so even if you never use the app again, you have the opportunity to easily get a free CLE hour. But after using this app once for free, I’m sure that I will be paying for content in the future because West CLE Mobile on the iPhone is such a convenient way to get CLE credit.
Have you ever received a PDF file containing a form that you had to fill out or a document that you had to sign or mark up? Typically you would print out the PDF, use a pen to make your additions or changes, and then either fax the document back or scan and email the document back to the person who sent it to you. Zosh is a useful iPhone app from a company in Austin, Texas that lets you do all of this on your iPhone, eliminating the need to find a computer, printer, scanner or fax machine to accomplish these tasks.
When you first start the app, you are asked to create a (free) account with Zosh, which simply requires you to provide an e-mail address and a password. Once you have an account, Zosh knows who you are based on your e-mail address. The app also creates an entry called “Zosh” in your Contacts that has the e-mail address of mydocs@zosh.com.
When you receive a PDF file that you need to fill out or sign, just forward the e-mail that has the PDF file to “Zosh” and in about a minute the document will appear on the main screen of the Zosh app. Tap the document in Zosh and you will see the PDF on your screen.
When you are ready to insert either text or a signature, tap the Insert button at the top right, or just tap and hold on a spot in the document. Inserting text is very simple, just type the text that you want inserted. There is a shortcuts button that lets you easily enter text that you have used in the past.
The text will then appear on the form, and you can re-size the text and move it around so that it appears on the correct line. You can even rotate the text, if necessary.
The app also lets you quickly insert a date in a short (12/15/09) medium (Dec. 15, 2009) or long (December 15, 2009) format. Finally, you can easily insert a signature. With the iPhone screen being so small, you might wonder how you can sign more than a letter or two using your finger before you hit the edge of the screen. The app actually has an ingenious way of handling this; the screen automatically scrolls (at a speed you can adjust in settings) so that the “paper” moves under you as you are signing. The makes it very easy to sign a name just using the tip of your finger. When you are done, the signature is added to the document, and you can make it larger or smaller, move it to the right place and rotate it if necessary.
The signature feature of Zosh is really nice. Unless you are an artist with a tablet connected to your computer, you may actually find it easier to sign a PDF on your iPhone with your finger using Zosh than it is to create a signature using your mouse and a drawing tool on your computer.
The Settings allow you to make your inserts blue, black, gray or red. You can also change the default font of text with over 50 different choices, many of which are variants. (For example, you can choose Times New Roman normal, bold, italic or bold & italic.)
When you are finished completing the form or adding a signature, hit the Transmit button at the bottom. You can choose to send the revised document to you, or you can choose to e-mail to others which brings up a standard e-mail form for you to complete from within the app.
The recipient will receive a PDF file with all of the information that you added on the PDF document.
Here is a video from the developer of Zosh that shows the app in action:
I would like to see some more features in an update. For example, it would be nice to be able to change the color and font of text after you enter it. It would also be nice to have an undo button, although this omission is minor because if you don’t like the way that you placed, sized or rotated something it is pretty easy to just change it again. It would also be nice to have some sort of “save as” function or “copy” function for documents so that you can keep a commonly used form in the Zosh app and just copy it each time you want to add new inserts, a new signature, etc.
But even in this 1.0 version, the Zosh app works great. It never even occurred to me before that I
could use the iPhone to add text or a signature to a PDF file. If you ever have the need to fill out or sign a PDF form while you are out of the office, this app is perfect. And the $2.99 price is a bargain considering that the alternative may involve figuring out a way to print out, sign, and fax a document, such as finding a local Kinko’s and paying whatever they charge to fax documents.
Also, while Zosh is advertised just as a way to complete a form or sign a document, you can also use this app is to add annotations to a PDF file, perhaps adding some large red text to suggest some changes on a document or using the signature feature to draw a circle or an arrow to add emphasis to a particular part of a PDF file. This is so much easier and faster than trying to explain in an e-mail or even on the phone what needs to be changed in a document. (Go to the fourth page of the document, now find the second paragraph, now go to the fifth word… Yikes!)
If you are a lawyer or anyone who works with PDF documents while you are out of your office, this reasonably priced app is one that you will definitely want to add to your arsenal of iPhone tools.
If you are between 35 and 45 years old and played video games when you were a kid, then you will probably hear actor Michael Rye‘s voice in your head as you read these words: “Dragon’s Lair: The fantasy adventure where you become a valiant knight, on a quest to rescue the fair princess from the clutches of an evil dragon. You control the actions of a daring adventurer finding his way through the castle of a dark wizard, who has enchanted it with treacherous monsters and obstacles. In the mysterious caverns below the castle, your odyssey continues against the awesome forces that oppose your efforts to reach the Dragon’s Lair. Lead on, adventurer. Your quest awaits!”
Dragon’s Lair was a breakthrough video game when it came out in 1983, and not just because it was the first game that I remember that cost 50¢. The game was unique because it did not rely on the modest computer graphics of the early 1980s but instead used a laserdisc with a real cartoon beautifully drawn by former Disney animator Don Bluth. Last week, the game came out for the iPhone, and given all of my fond memories of playing it as a teenager, I couldn’t resist buying it. I normally don’t review games on iPhone J.D., but I decided to mention this one for those of you out there who, like me, spent quite a few quarters enjoying this game during your youth.
In fact, my iTunes App Store receipt is sort of funny from last week because it is all dragons, all the time:
The game play is simple. There are on-screen buttons for your sword (on the left) and a four-way directional pad (on the right). At frequent points during the animation, the button that you need to press flashes momentarily, and you need to press it at the right time to go forward in the game.
Make a mistake — and trust me, you will make plenty — and you will lose a life and see this familiar screen:
Fortunately, the default setting in the game is to give you infinite lives. Boy, what I would have given to have that back when I was a teenager! You can change that if you want to torture yourself and make the game more challenging. The game also saves your place so you can quit the app and pick up where you left off. Make all the right moves, and you can rescue Princess Daphne from the clutches of the evil dragon.
It occurred to me when I reached the end of the game this past weekend that I first started trying to finish Dragon’s Lair in the summer of 1983. 26 years later, thanks to the iPhone and the infinite lives feature, I was finally able to finish. Nice to know that I can check that one off of my bucket list.
The game has two different playing modes, one which resembles the original arcade version and a “home mode” that actually makes more sense because you go through scenes in sequence. (In the original arcade game, when you died, you did not replay the scene but instead were sent to a different scene. This made the game more challenging but less linear.) One nice feature is a Watch Game mode in which you can just watch the game being played perfectly. This mode reminds me of being a kid watching someone better play the game, and this mode allows you to appreciate the wonderful animation and the funny grunts and asides of Dirk the Daring even more than is possible when you are playing the game and concentrating on what button to press next. And by the way, the animation looks beautiful on the iPhone. It is a very nice transfer.
After you finish the game, you can of course play it again as much as you want, but frankly it has somewhat limited replay value. Nevertheless, if you share my nostalgia for the original game of the early 1980s, you’ll consider this one worth the twenty quarters. Ahem, I mean worth the $4.99 price tag. I had a lot of fun with this one.
UPDATED LINK THAT WORKS AS OF 5/27/2019:
Click here to get Dragon’s Lair 30th Anniversary ($4.99):
A lot of exciting iPhone apps have been accepted into the App Store lately. Earlier this week I talked about Dragon Dictation, which is really a remarkable app. If you read my review when it first came out, go back and look at it again to see some important updates to my review, including a link to a great website containing dictation tips. Also accepted into the App Store (after a very long wait) was the Ustream Broadcaster app which lets you stream live video from your iPhone to a website, as noted in this Macworld review. I decided to wait to review Ustream because a similar app, Qik, is also likely to be approved by Apple now that Apple has approved Ustream, and I might do a comparison review when both apps are out. The acceptance of Ustream, Knocking Live (which I reviewed last week) and Qik will represent a major shift by Apple in letting iPhone apps take advantage of the iPhone video camera. This is great news for iPhone users. And now, on to the news of the week:
Are you a Louisiana lawyer looking to get the rest of your CLE hours for 2009? Then join us in New Orleans on December 30th for the seminar Digital Workflow for Attorneys. Ernie “the Attorney” Svenson and Prof. Dane Ciolino will teach you everything you need to know about becoming a better digital attorney, from how to become paperless to how to effectively conduct electronic discovery. The six hour course will include an hour of ethics and and hour of professionalism so that you can satisfy those requirements, plus I will teach a session on Mobile Lawyering Tips with the iPhone. I hope to see you there, and you can get more information here.
Looking ahead to satisfying your CLE hours in 2010, I’ve mentioned before how excited I am to present two sessions on using the iPhone in the practice of law at the ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago on March 25 to 27. The ABA has now released the full schedule for the program, and as you can see, every hour of the day you have a lot of sessions to choose from. At several points, I’m really torn on which session to attend myself! We’ll have a lot of fun in Chicago, and I hope to see you there.
Time Magazine did not choose the iPhone 3GS for the gadget of the year this year (the Droid got that honor), but it probably is time to give another gadget a chance at the top spot. (The iPhone was #4 this year.) Nevertheless, proving the iPhone’s dominance, Time did not provide a top ten list of Android apps for 2009, but they did pick their ten favorite iPhone apps. Also, the famous New Yorker cover that was created on an iPhone by Jorge Columbo was named the #2 Magazine Cover of the Year. (And that isn’t the only iPhone-related cover of the year; check out #6, also from the New Yorker.)
The Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Utah reports on a Christmas iPhone app developed by attorney Alissa Owen, now a stay-at-home mom. The $1.99 app is called Santa’s Message and it allows you to record messages for your kids, and then the app “translates your voice into Santa’s deep, rich baritone, ready for delivery, with a picture of Old St. Nick on the phone screen.”
AppleInsider reports that Apple removed over 1,000 apps from the App Store after learning that the developer hired people to write favorable reviews. Macworld also has a good report.
Oklahoma bankruptcy lawyer Dan Nunley recommends that all iPhone-using bankruptcy attorneys purchase two app published by Cliff Maier. While bankruptcy is not my area of practice, I agree that Cliff has some great, useful iPhone apps.
The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) on Apple’s recent purchase of La La, a service that allows you to stream music over the web. The article speculates on what Apple may do with the service. I suspect that a key reason for the purchase was to bring the smart people at La La into Apple, but I can also see a future where you don’t need to sync your music via iTunes to play it on your iPhone; you could just use the Internet to stream music that you already own. I could also see Apple starting a subscription music service, even though Steve Jobs has said in the past that customers would rather own music than rent it. It will be very interesting to see what comes of this next year.
If you visit the App Store on iTunes, you can’t miss the iTunes Rewind 2009 which features the best in music, TV, movies and iPhone apps. As the App Store notes: “In early 2008, we were happy just to get email on our phone. Now, we’re playing multiplayer championship racing with Real Racing, editing films with RealDirector, manipulating photos with Colorsplash, or getting completely lost in the touch screen wonder that is Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor. The constant developments in technology, the sheer number of apps available, and the fun of exploring — these are all part of why apps were such an important part of our lives in 2009 and we can’t wait to see where the App Store is going in the future.” Well said, Mr. App Store Text Writer. Check out the App Store to see the Best of 2009 iPhone Apps.
Yesterday, I wrote about iPhone security, an issue being raised by several security consultants. I recently heard from another security consultant who makes a very good point. As noted in this article (PDF link) from tech expert Cathy Brode of 3BView, lawyers should be aware that if they forward a Word document while using an iPhone, metadata remains within the document. Many lawyers have software on their computers which can be used to strip metadata before sending a document to opposing counsel. Don’t forget that this software isn’t on your iPhone, so think about this before forwarding an e-mail with a file attached on your iPhone to others outside of your firm.
If you are a lobbyist, a governmental relations attorney, or just a congressional news junkie, you’ll want to check out the new C-SPAN Radio app. Art of the iPhone provides a quick overview of the app.
I haven’t tried it myself yet, but I frequently hear lawyers and others give Dropbox rave reviews, a service that lets you easily share files between multiple computers. With the Dropbox iPhone app, you can also access your files on your iPhone. Macworld gives the app a good review.
The ABA Journal reports on a blog post from attorney Sharon Nelson, the president of security company Sensei Enterprises, in which Nelson says that a 50-person law firm (which she does not identify) abandoned the iPhone because of the security risks that Nelson described in this article from the ABA Law Practice Magazine. The article says that if a sophisticated hacker gains access to your iPhone, using the right tools, he can bypass iPhone security features and access data.
Security is
very important for lawyers, but articles like this frustrate me a
little. First, the hacking required is very sophisticated. The hacker
mentioned in that article is Jonathan Zdziarski, the foremost authority on iPhone security who literally wrote the book on iPhone Forensics.
I have no doubt that if Zdziarski gets your iPhone and wants to do you
harm, you are in trouble. The random guy who picks up the iPhone you
left on a subway will almost certainly not be Jonathan Zdziarski.
Second, the
iPhone is not unique when it comes to security risks. What about the risk of losing a briefcase containing confidential client papers? What about the risk of losing a laptop computer containing hundreds of gigabytes and many years of confidential information? Is it reasonable for a law firm to bar its attorneys from using briefcases or using laptops? It would take a skilled hacker to bypass the password on your laptop (assuming that you are using one), but I have no doubt that there are a larger number of skilled Windows hackers and folks who can figure out how to open a briefcase out there than skilled iPhone hackers.
Law firms need to be concerned about security. Just last month, the FBI issued issued an advisory that it had seen “noticeable increases” in
efforts to hack into the law firm computer systems. Smart hackers can exploit holes in network routers to tunnel into a law firm, especially one that doesn’t have the latest security patches. Moreover, security experts will tell you that while computer crime is an important risk, so is social engineering. How easy would it be for a person to walk into your law firm, perhaps wearing a genuine looking uniform, or perhaps entering when a receptionist is away or distracted, and gain access to all sorts of paper files or computer terminals? And if a criminal calls lawyers and staff pretending to be from IT and asking for the user’s password, would anyone at your firm give it to them?
I can’t fault security firms such as Sensei Enterprises for issuing news stories which scare people. It helps to get them new customers, and if all law firms hired smart security consultants, the trend noted by the FBI last month would surely start to reverse itself. I also understand that because the iPhone is not only popular, but also a pop culture symbol, one can get a lot more attention writing a story about iPhone security than talking about Palm Treo security or Android security. Nevertheless, I think that people need to look at the big picture.
The problem is not iPhone security. The problem is security. Period. This includes computer security, smartphone security, physical office security, social engineering security, etc. If an attorney puts confidential information anywhere — be it on an iPhone, a laptop, or a legal pad — the attorney needs to be very cautious about what happens to that information. If you lose your briefcase, there is little you can do besides retrace your steps and hope to find it. If you lose an iPhone, you have the option of trying to determine its location using a service like MobileMe or you can immediately tell your system administrator (or use MobileMe) to remotely wipe the iPhone. It won’t work if a thief has already removed the SIM chip, but at least those are options that you don’t have with a lost briefcase or even a lost laptop.
Apple has already done a lot to improve security on the iPhone, and I’m sure that they will continue to do more. A lot of smart IT folks at major law firms have analyzed the state of iPhone security, and most of the most profitable firms in the country allow the use of iPhones. Indeed, just a few days ago, John Cox wrote an article in Network World entitled iPhone Winning Over Some Corporate Security Skeptics. That article quotes Andy Jurczyk, the CIO at Chicago-based law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP and a self-described security extremist, who says that there are currently more security measures for the Blackberry than for the iPhone, but nevertheless he became satisfied with the level of iPhone security once Apple added Microsoft ActiveSync support in 2008.
Each law firm needs to make its own decisions on security. Do you let your attorneys use a laptop at all? Have you ever hired a consultant to do a security audit? How easy is it to gain physical access to your office? What policies do you have in place when a disgruntled employee leaves? Each firm needs to decide what is best for its users, but when I hear that a firm decides to prohibit the use of laptops or iPhones or any other particular device, I can’t help but wonder whether the right focus is being placed on the most critical security risks.
Having said that, if you are an attorney using an iPhone, please use your iPhone’s passcode lock feature, and please don’t expose your iPhone to potential trouble by jailbreaking your iPhone.
With over 100,000 apps available for the iPhone, there are a lot of great apps out there. Every once in a while, an app comes along that really impresses me and stands out from the rest. Yesterday, Nuance released one such app, a version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking for the iPhone called Dragon Dictation. Simply dictate a message to your iPhone and, almost instantly, your voice is transcribed with amazing accuracy. With one tap you can send the transcription to an e-mail. You can dictate a message to your iPhone a heck of a lot faster than you can tap a message on the iPhone keyboard, even if you are a good iPhone typist, so with Dragon Dictation you can save a lot of time writing messages or other text. And for a limited time, this amazing app is free. All I can say is, wow.
Well actually, you know I can’t help but say a lot more than that one word, so let’s get to it. To use the app, simply start it up and tap the red button in the middle of the screen. Then speak your message. You can also say punctuation marks such as “comma”, “period”,
“question mark”, “exclamation mark” etc. To start a new paragraph just say “new paragraph”.
[UPDATE 12/10/09: Joet of Just Another iPhone Blog has posted a bunch of dictation tips, including instructions on telling the app to capitalize a word (just say “cap” before the word) or to even turn on and off all caps, and including tips on dictating punctuation and symbols.]
You can go for about 20 seconds at a time, and then the app will stop recording and show you what it has so far. Or, you can stop or pause yourself by tapping the Done button. Your speech is quickly translated and then you will see the text on your screen. If you want to add more text, just tap the red recording button again to add to your message.
In my tests, the accuracy of the transcription has been excellent. The app even adapts to your voice over time to improve accuracy, and thus Nuance recommends that you avoid letting other people use the Dragon Dictation app on your iPhone. If this matters to you, note that the app resists translating curse words — an issue of no consequence to me except that I love that it resulted in this amusing post by Andy Ihnatko.
Of course, like all voice-to-text systems, the transcription is it not 100% perfect. Fortunately, there are three easy ways to correct transcription errors. First, you can tap on a word that you want to correct, and a drop-down list will pop up with alternative suggestions. You can also correct an entire phrase by dragging your finger to highlight a few words.
Second, once you have selected the incorrect word, you can tap the red button and record it again. Third, you can tap the keyboard button at the bottom left and manually correct the error by typing it correctly. When you are using the keyboard, you place the cursor in the correct location by double-tapping in a spot.
When you are done with your message, it is very simple to export it, especially if you want to move the text to an e-mail. Just tap the arrow icon at the bottom right of the screen and select “Send to Mail” in the menu that comes up. Within the app itself, an e-mail panel opens with your message included. Address your e-mail, add a subject and click send, and you are done.
Another option is to “Send to Clipboard.” This option copies the text so that, within any other app, you can paste the text. For example, you might want to open the Facebook app, a Twitter client, or a word processor such as Documents to Go or Quickoffice and paste the text there. A final option is “Send to Txt Msg” which copies the text to the clipboard and opens up the Messages app. You need to start a new message manually and then paste the text into your text message.
Nuance posted this short video to YouTube that shows the app in action:
Any time a lawyer has someone else write down the lawyer’s words, security is an issue to consider. Note that the transcription does not happen within this app itself. Instead, the app sends your voice to a server operated by Nuance, the transcription happens on that server, and then the text is sent back to your iPhone. And that is not all that is sent to Nuance; the app also sends a list of the names in your iPhone’s Contacts (but nothing but the names) so that you can say the name of a person who you know and Dragon can do a good job of figuring out the text. For example, I was amazed when this app correctly transcribed “Ernest Svenson” on the first try until I realized that Dragon already knew about that name from my Contacts list. Ben Patterson of Yahoo! Tech asked Nuance about security and received this response from the developer of Dragon Dictation:
Search queries and dictation requests are transcribed by
fully automated speech recognition software, without the use of
humans. Data is uploaded and collected in order to improve performance
for individual users, and to improve the general performance of the
system.
All speech recognition requests and
associated data are processed in data centers in the U.S. that meet
stringent security and privacy standards; these are the same standards
that we use for processing private information in other areas of our
business.
The Dragon Dictation application
does upload a user’s contact names only (no phone numbers, email
addresses, etc.), and the data is used only for optimizing name
recognition when a user dictates. It maintains its integrity and
security.
Speaking more about the app’s use of your Contacts list, Michael Thompson,
Senior Vice President & General Manager with Nuance Mobile (the guy
in the above video), writes:
As you
may have experienced already, Dragon Dictation for the iPhone goes
through your contact list on your iPhone and uploads the names to our
server. We do this for a pretty simple reason: we
found that people are often dictating names from their address book and
expect the names to be recognized. We take this information and create
an anonymous user profile for your device that understands what names
are likely to dictate into a document. It’s important to note that we
only upload the names, not the e-mail addresses, phone numbers or any
other personally identifying information from your contacts.
Even
though there is no personally identifying information, we still treat
all of this information with the highest privacy standards. All of our
servers are located in the United States
and meet the most stringent privacy and security standards. We conform
to these high standards because we use the same data centers for other
areas of our business where we are required to store personal
information.
[UPDATE 12/10/09: Dragon announced today that it is working on an update to the app that will allow you to turn off the feature of uploading the names of your contacts to Nuance. Thus, if this is a privacy concern for you, there should be a solution soon.] [UPDATE #2 12/10/09: As David Pogue of the New York Times points out, it is a little strange for people to be so worried about Nuance getting your list of contacts when so many other companies have so much more information about you already.] [UPDATE 2/16/09: Version 1.1 of the app is now available, which allows you to choose to not upload Contacts data and to delete any previously uploaded Contacts data from the Nuance server.]
Because the app talks to a Nuance server to do its magic, you need to have a network connection to use the app. On WiFi, I find that transcription is almost instantaneous. Even on 3G, it only takes a few seconds to work. I haven’t tried the app on a slower Edge connection.
As amazing as this app is, it is just the beginning. Nuance VP Michael Thompson wrote
that the company has “a bunch more applications, languages and features
planned.” For example, one missing feature is the ability to tell the
app to capitalize a word. [See above tip for capitalization.] Also, the app doesn’t include a legal or
medical dictionary, and I would not be surprised to see this as a
future add-on that can be purchased (or a future, separate version of
the app).
Nuance is also planning to a launch another app called Dragon Search. They already have a web page set up and the app is in testing now. Dragon Search will allow you to speak your search terms and get simultaneous results from websites such as Google (or Yahoo or Bing), YouTube, Twitter, iTunes and Wikipedia. Google has long offered its free Google Mobile app that allows you to speak your search terms, so presumably the hook for Dragon Search will be the simultaneous results from multiple sites, not just Google.
Dragon Dictate is not the first iPhone app to handle
dictation. For example, Voxie Pro Recorder can record and transcribe text. The app itself costs only $1.99, but you have to pay extra for transcription services, which are done by real people. This is great for accuracy, and they even offer Legal and Medical transcription, but you pay by the word and the cost can get expensive as you can see in these service plans. Another option is QuickVoice2Text Email
which costs only $0.99, but it takes about ten minutes to transcribe your voice. What Dragon has going for it is the years of experience of Dragon
NaturallySpeaking, the premier speech to text engine on the PC and Mac, and the speed and low price of automated transcription by a computer.
As noted above, for a
limited time, the Dragon Dictation app is free. Nuance has not announced what the price will be when this limited time offer ends. I strongly encourage you to run, do not walk, to your nearest App Store and download this app right now, while it is free. I guarantee that the time
will come when you will find this app handy to have.
Click here to get Dragon Dictate (free for a limited time):
Have you ever had a problem with your AT&T service on your iPhone and wished that there was a simple way to tell AT&T about the problem? Yesterday, AT&T released its fifth iPhone app, an app called Mark the Spot that allows you to alert AT&T to a problem.
When you launch the app, the app determines your current location, based on the assumption that you are in the spot that is having the problem. However, if you want to tell AT&T about a problem that happened in a different location, just tap the Map button and find the location where the incident occurred. A red X will stay in the middle of the screen, and as you scroll around a map the marker will tell you the latitude and longitude and address of that location. Incidentally, this free app is probably the easiest way to quickly determine the latitude and longitude and/or address of a location, so if that function is useful to you consider downloading Mark the Spot for this reason alone.
Next, indicate the type of problem that you had at that location, selecting from choices such as "dropped call" or "no coverage." Finally, indicate whether the problem happens once, seldom, often or always. If you want, you can tap the Additional Info button to bring up a field where you can type a message to provide more information on your problem.
When you are finished with your report, tap Submit. The app then provides your information to AT&T. I'm not exactly sure how it does that if you happen to be in an area that has no AT&T coverage to begin with. I can't imagine that the app is allowed to run in the background to send the report after your AT&T coverage returns. Perhaps the app sends a text message that gets queued until you have service again, but there is certainly no record of that left on the iPhone. Regardless of how it is that AT&T gets your report, AT&T sends you a free text message within an hour of getting the report to acknowledge receipt.
Because this app was just released, it is too soon to say how much the app helps AT&T to improve coverage. Nevertheless, it is encouraging to hear AT&T say that it will "utilize this feedback to optimize and enhance the network. Problems will be clustered to highlight areas for investigation." Note that AT&T says that "multiple submissions at the same time for the same issue by the same user do not receive higher weighting."
I've seen someremarks that the existence of this app is evidence of AT&T admitting to problems with its coverage as highlighted in Verizon ads currently airing. I think that is unfair; every wireless network has problem spots, but now AT&T is giving its customers an easy way to do something about it. Assuming that AT&T makes good use of the reports that it receives, I think that this app is a wonderful idea and gives AT&T customers a way to provide feedback so quickly and easily that there is no reason not to speak up when a customer encounters a problem area. AT&T can get a lot of valuable information from this app that will allow it to improve coverage for its customers. Kudos to AT&T for taking steps towards improving coverage.
A few days ago, Jenna Wortham of the New York Times wrote a great story on the iPhone App Store. The article includes interviews with iPhone developers, compares developing apps for the iPhone to developing apps for other smartphones, and includes some interesting quotes from Apple executives such as Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, who explained to the Times that Apple is trying to do the right thing:
“I think, by and large, we do a very good job there,” Mr. Schiller
said. “Sometimes we make a judgment call both ways, that people give us
feedback on, either rejecting something that perhaps on second
consideration shouldn’t be, or accepting something that on second
consideration shouldn’t be.”
For Apple, the review process is a necessary evil. The company
places high value on what it describes as “customer trust,” or the idea
that users have faith that an application distributed on the iPhone
won’t crash the platform, steal personal information or contain illegal
content.
Mr. Schiller says the majority of applications sail
through the review with no difficulty, and those that do require
greater scrutiny are largely those that are slowed down by bugs or
glitches in the coding.
“We care deeply about the feedback,
both good and bad,” he says. “While there are some complaints, they are
just a small fraction of what happens in the process.”
This article reminds me of statements Apple made this past August which I discussed here. If you enjoy using third party apps on your iPhone, I think you will enjoy reading this New York Times article. And there is also a good related article in which Schiller lists some of his favorite apps.
There have been a lot of new visitors to iPhone J.D. this week thanks to the ABA Journal article listing this as one of the Top 100 Blawgs. If you are new here, check out the iPhone J.D. Index to get caught up. For long time readers of iPhone J.D., I’d appreciate your vote. Now, on to the iPhone news from this week:
Earlier this year, I wrote a post on the origin and meaning of the “i” in “iPhone.” More recently, Caleb Crain wrote an interesting article for the New York Times Magazine in which he argues that one should not use capital letters in the middle of words, a practice that he calls Camel Case but which I have more frequently seen referred to as InterCaps. Crain argues that we should all write Iphone instead of iPhone. Um… no.
This AP article lists suggests some good hardware gifts for an iPhone owner.
Dan Dearing writes an article in Networld World about how corporate environments that currently shun the iPhone should learn to accept it because their users are using them anyway.
The new website App Rejections writes about iPhone apps that Apple has rejected from the App Store. Some of the stories are quite humorous.
If you like to take pictures with your iPhone, Rik Fairlie of the New York Times suggests some good apps.
Michael Agger writes in Slate about “iPhone moms” who use iPhones themselves but also let their kids use their iPhones. Neil Swidey writes a similar article for the Boston Globe.
Looking for a fun game on your iPhone that you can play in very short intervals? I really like Ramp Champ from Iconfactory,
a twist on the classic boardwalk skee-ball game. And speaking of letting your kid use your iPhone, my four year
old son also loves this game too. It is free for a limited time, so get it while you can.
Click here to get Ramp Champ (free for now):
Speaking of free, Sean Ludwig of PC Magazine identifies his Top 40 Free iPhone Apps. There are some good ones on his list.
Apparently, an iPhone can still work even if it is so cracked that you need Scotch Tape to keep it together. (via Denise Howell)
Dan Moren writes for Macworld about adding locations to calendar events on the iPhone.
Philip Michaels writes for Macworld about improvements to the PDF viewer in Documents to Go. The improvements are great, and this app is now my favorite PDF viewer for the iPhone.
If you travel a lot, you should check out the FlightTrack app. David Pogue of the New York Times gives it a great review. Click here for FlightTrack Pro ($9.99):
I know a lot of lawyers who are fantastic guitar players. For example, Doc Schneider of King & Spalding in Atlanta has some great songs on iTunes. (Some of my favorites: The Legal Guitarist, Wherever You Are, Choices and Chances and The Best Year of My Life.) And Jonathan Hoffman of Martin Bischoff in Seattle has five different albums of fun and nicely done songs for dog lovers. (I myself play piano, although I do hope to learn the guitar one day.) For all of you out there who play guitar, Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times suggests some great guitar-related iPhone Apps.
And finally, I know many attorneys who use Dragon Naturally Speaking software on their computers. This software lets you dictate to your computer and has very good accuracy. I have tried the product before, but because I am a very fast touch typist, it isn’t something that I have wanted to use. But apparently Nuance, the manufacturer, is coming out with an iPhone app. I can definitely talk faster than I can type on my iPhone, so this app looks very intriguing. There is no release date yet nor has a price been announced, but this demo of a beta version from Gear Diary is very very interesting:
Looking ahead to satisfying your CLE hours in 2010, I’ve 
The Wall Street Journal 
If you are a lobbyist, a governmental relations attorney, or just a congressional news junkie, you’ll want to check out the new C-SPAN Radio app. Art of the iPhone provides a 
Looking for a fun game on your iPhone that you can play in very short intervals? I really like