Have you ever found yourself looking at something and thinking, hey, this is neat, I wish I could show it to so-and-so right now?  With an iPhone, you can always take a picture or video and e-mail it to the person, but that is delayed gratification.  What would be really neat is to let someone else see something live, at the same time that you are seeing it.  The smart folks at Pointy Heads LLC (cute name) have come up with an iPhone app called Knocking Live that lets you stream live video from one iPhone to another iPhone so that someone else can see what you are seeing, while you are seeing it.

The app received a lot of publicity when it was released on December 1st because of the way that it showed up on the App Store.  You see, the Pointy Heads guys aren’t the first to come up with a way to stream live video from an iPhone.  A company called Qik showed a demo of an app that would allow you to stream live video from your iPhone to a website so that lots of people could watch the live stream at the same time.  I posted a video of a demo of the Qik app earlier this past July.  Unfortunately, Apple did not approve the original Qik app, presumably because the hack that Qik was using to stream video was not supported by Apple.  Thus, the Qik folks instead released a pared down app that allows you to upload video to the Qik website that folks can view later but which omits live streaming of video.  (Qik is available on other mobile phones, and some of them such as the Nokia S60 do support live video streaming.)

With that background, it is no surprise that when the Pointy Head guys submitted their app to Apple, it was also initially rejected.  But the developers were persistent, and they wrote an e-mail to Steve Jobs himself, urging him to approve the app.  As Ars Technica reports, the e-mail apparently worked.  The developers got a call from Apple saying that someone “directly from the top” had approved the app.  Read the full story over on Ars Technica to get all of the details on how this app got approved.  It’s a good read.

I’ve been trying out the app for the last two days, and my opinion is that it is VERY COOL, but unfortunately is at the moment VERY BUGGY.  Let’s start with the good news.  The app is free, at least for now.  The developers say that it is free for the first 50,000 users, and then it will cost $2.99, which is a very reasonable price for what this app does.  The app is also easy to use.  Just download it, create an account, and get a buddy with an iPhone to also create an account.  (The developer is working on similar apps
for the Blackberry and Android so that, in the future, you can even
stream video to someone who isn’t even using an iPhone. )  Either you or your buddy can send each other a friend or family invitation using a process that is similar to creating a friend on Facebook:  a request comes in, and you can either accept it or reject it.  I’ve blurred out the name below, but this gives you an idea of what it looks like:

 

Once you have a “friend” or “family” member you can start sending them video just by tapping their name in the app and then tapping the button that says “Share Video with” and then the person’s name.  Once you are connected, that person will see a live video stream (no audio) of whatever you are seeing on your iPhone.

On the receiving end, the app also works very well.  Using push notification, you will see a message pop up on your iPhone saying that [name] wants to share video with you and you will hear a sound on your iPhone that sounds like someone knocking on a door.  You don’t even have to be running the Knocking Live app to get the notice.  Just tap OK and the app will launch and, in a few seconds, you will start to see the video.

The app works best if you are both using Wi-Fi, but I’ve also tested it over 3G and that works too, although the video is more jerky.  As noted above, the app only sends the video, not the audio, but that is not a problem because you can call someone on your iPhone at the same time that you are using Knocking Video.  Just use your iPhone to call someone else’s iPhone, then start the Knocking Video app, then start sending video to that person’s iPhone.  You will both hear each other over the phone, and one of you will get to see the video from the other person.  It is sort of like a one-way video chat, except that the camera on your iPhone is facing away from you so the person sees what you are seeing and not your face (unless you turn your iPhone towards your face, of course).  Additionally, the developer says that audio will be added in a future version (although I would still probably prefer using the phone so that you can get two-way audio while you stream video one way).  The developer also notes in the app description on the App Store that simultaneous video streaming and telephone calls only works “on some connections.”  It worked fine for me.

Last night, for example, I called my brother who lives in San Francisco on his iPhone.  I was able to stream him live video from my house in New Orleans and show him my Christmas tree, and then later he was able to stream me live video from his house on the West Coast and show me his kitchen, all while we were talking on the iPhone:

For an even better demonstration of how this all works, the developer has posted this short promotional video to YouTube:

…and this 7 minute hands on demonstration to YouTube:

So that is the good news.  The bad news?  Oh man is it buggy.  Sometimes when I attempt to start the app, the app tries to launch for 30 seconds but then never does.  Other times, I get the app to launch and start sharing video, but after anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds, the app crashes and the video stops streaming.  I was never able to get the app working for more than about two minutes straight before it would crash.  The crashes were so frequent that at times I wondered how the app was even approved to be on the App Store … but then I remembered, oh yeah, the approval came “from the top.”

According to the developer, the server that supports this app is being overloaded right now, and that is the reason for the crashes.  I imagine that lots of people are reading the Ars Technica story and trying out this app since it is free.  The developer says that its technical team is currently working around the clock to fix this, so hopefully this will improve very soon.

Because it currently crashes so much, you cannot currently rely on this app for anything that is mission critical.  And while the app includes some other features that I haven’t tried yet (such as a Facebook integration), you definitely get the feeling while using the app that this is just a first release that is still lacking lots of features.  As noted above, audio is coming to a future version, and the ability to record is also a planned future feature.  Nevertheless, as the stability improves and features increase over time, this app will become very useful.  I can imagine many situations in which I would want to use this app, such as if I am at the park watching my kids do something cute and I want my wife at home to see it while it is happening.  As a proof of concept and a preview of what is coming to the iPhone in the future, this app is really neat.

Click here to get Knocking Live (free for first 50,000, then will cost $2.99): 

The ABA Journal lists 2,500 legal blogs in its online directory, and with so many out there, it can be difficult to locate the ones most likely to be of interest to you.  Thus, each year the ABA Journal’s editors select what they consider to be the 100 best blawgs and list them in the ABA Journal Blawg 100.  The 2009 list includes some great ones, such as the always humorous Above the Law, the informative Am Law Daily, several well written practice-specific blogs such as Drug and Device Law, SCOTUSblog and TaxGirl, and Jonathan Turley‘s informative and entertaining website.  I was delighted to learn that the ABA Journal chose iPhone J.D. for this year’s list in the Tech category. 

This type of list is necessarily somewhat arbitrary.  Some of the sites included may not be your cup of tea, and other sites that you love may be missing.  Indeed, this year, 40 of the 100 sites are new to the list, which means that previously selected sites such as The Mac Lawyer and Ernie the Attorney are omitted even though they were better than ever in 2009.  But even if incomplete, the list remains a great resource that you can use to discover great blawgs.  I’ve already made some new discoveries in this year’s list, as I do every year.

The ABA Journal asks people to vote on their ten favorite sites out of the 100 listed and sent an e-mail to the sites selected this year, encouraging us to urge our readers to vote.  I can understand why; this is a good way to increase awareness of the list and drive some traffic to the ABA Journal website.  I know that everyone who takes the time to produce a blog appreciates being recognized, so I encourage you to click here (or on the banner on the right) to vote for your favorite sites on the list.  You need to register to do so (boo) but it is quick and free (yeah).  If you decide to vote for iPhone J.D., I would be honored.  And if you also encourage your parents, kids, colleagues, neighbors, Facebook friends, Twitter followers, e-mail contacts, pets, and fellow citizens of your country to vote for iPhone J.D., well that just shows that you have good taste.

But seriously, thanks to the ABA Journal editors for including this website in the 2009 list.  I hope that being a part of the list encourages lawyers who don’t currently use an iPhone to take a look at the device, and encourages the increasing number of attorneys who do use an iPhone to become regular readers of iPhone J.D. and hopefully get even more out of their iPhones. 

By the way, if you are one of those new visitors who found this site via the ABA Journal, welcome!  Check out the iPhone J.D. Index to catch up on what you have missed so far.  It’s been a fun first year.

I saw a lot of "what I am thankful for" posts last week in connection with Thanksgiving, but this one by Michael Arrington was particularly interesting.  Arrington is now known as the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a Silicon Valley based blog, and I frequently link to iPhone-related posts on TechCrunch and its mobile-specific sibling, MobileCrunch.  But back in the 1990s, Arrington was just a Stanford Law grad and an associate at Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.  That firm represented NeXT, the computer company started by Steve Jobs after he was kicked out of Apple, and Arrington's post provides a little insider insight on working on the deal in which Apple acquired NeXT and brought Steve Jobs back to the company. 

That deal forever changed not just Apple, but thanks to the renaissance at Apple since Jobs returned, also had a huge impact on the computer industry, the consumer electronics industry, the music industry and the cell phone industry.  And it certainly had a huge effect on me; if it wasn't for that deal, Apple may not have ever produced the iPhone, I'd probably be using a Blackberry (yawn) and I can't imagine that I would be blogging about it. 

Yesterday, John Gruber at Daring Fireball recently posted a link to an old Fortune article by Stewert Alsop in which Alsop predicted at the time that Apple was making a mistake acquiring NeXT.  Alsop wrote:  "It is very, very difficult to see how Apple will translate the value of
Next's software into something meaningful to its own customers."  Obviously, Apple did quite well translating the NeXT software into the Mac OS X that runs Macs, not to mention the operating system that runs the iPhone.  To be fair, at the time, Alsop was concerned that Apple had acquired NeXT but not Steve Jobs, writing:  "Jobs has spent most of the time since December 20 making it clear that
he will not actually do anything for Apple once Apple's purchase of
Next is complete. In other words, he's going to take his money and run."  Fortunately, Steve Jobs did return to Apple and now it is impossible to think of Apple without thinking of Jobs.

I join Arrington in being thankful for Steve Jobs, and I think you will enjoy reading Arrington's good post.

It’s Cyber Monday and there are lots of deals on the Internet today.  Here’s one that will be of interest to iPhone J.D. readers:  sales on both Documents to Go (by DataViz) and Quickoffice.  Both are great apps for viewing and editing Word and Excel documents on your iPhone.  I regularly use them both.  I particularly like Documents to Go’s ability to access attachments in Exchange e-mails.  For some of my prior posts on Quickoffice, see here:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5.  For some of my prior posts on Documents to Go, see here:  1, 2, 3, 4.

Both apps are currently on sale, but the sales END TODAY, NOVEMBER 30TH.  If you don’t have either app right now, download them today and you can save a few dollars.

The list price of Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite is $19.99, but the company has been selling it for $9.99, and today you can get it for only $6.99.  Click here to get Quickoffice ($6.99 today only): 

The list price of Documents to Go with Exchange e-mail support is
$14.99, but today it is on sale for $11.99.  Click here to get
Documents to Go with Exchange ($11.99 today only): 

The list price of Documents to Go without Exchange is $9.99, but today it is on sale for $7.99.  Click here to get Documents to Go ($7.99 today only): 

This is a short work week, but there were still quite a few interesting iPhone-related news stories over the last few days.  Here are some that caught my attention.  For those of you in the U.S., have a wonderful Thanksgiving tomorrow, and I’ll “see” all of you again on Monday.

• Looking to buy a new product from Apple?  There is only one day every year that Apple holds a sale, and it is this Friday.  We won’t know until then what is on sale, and it may not include the iPhone, but you might be able to save some money on some useful accessories such as an AirPort Base Station or Apple In-Ear Headphones.  Apple also typically discounts third party items that work with the iPhone such as batteries, cases, speakers, etc.  To see what is on sale, visit your local Apple Store this Friday or visit the online Apple Store.
• RichardSolo is holding a sale on on the 1200 version of its iPhone external battery.  I received a free review unit of an older version of this battery last year (my review is here) and I love it and use it all the time.  The battery is regularly $54.95, but is 50% off from now until Monday, only $27.48. A great deal on a useful product.
• It is not just the season for sales; it is also the season for gift guides.  Here are two good gift guides for
  
  lawyers, both of which include iPhone related gifts.  Neil Squillante,
  
  publisher of the amazing TechnoLawyer newsletters, identifies a few
  
  gift ideas on the TechnoLawyer Blog.  Reid Trautz has also published a gift guide on his site, Reid My Blog!.
• Apple has received some bad publicity lately for rejecting a few apps from the App Store on grounds that are debatable.  This led Apple’s Senior VP for Worldwide Marketing to talk about the issue with BusinessWeek.  It’s an interesting interview that reveals, for example, that Apple receives 10,000 app submissions a week.  Many of those are presumably updates instead of new apps, but even so, wow.
• Macworld’s Dan Moren runs through all of the uses of the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button on the iPhone.
• Most of Apple’s current iPhone ads focus on the apps, but AppleInsider reports that Apple is now running two new ads that focus on an advantage of AT&T’s 3G versus the 3G you get with Verizon and Sprint, namely the ability to talk on the phone and use data at the same time.  Thus, you can talk on the phone and also get some information off the web or send an e-mail at the same time.  I use this feature all the time, so I’m glad to see Apple take note of it.
• If you want more information on Google Scholar (which I discussed here), then click here for an audio interview with Google’s Rick Klau by Ari Kaplan for Law.com’s Legal Technology Blog.  Rick Klau also appears on the latest episode of This Week in Law.
• And finally, Daniel Eran Dilger reports on an AdMob estimate that 50% of all mobile data traffic in the world is from the iPhone.

Andy Ihnatko, a Boston resident who writes a great technology column for the Chicago Sun-Times, is one of my favorite technology reporters.  He really knows his stuff, he offers great advice, and his writing style is very funny.  A few weeks ago, Ihnatko reviewed some of the iPhone apps that provide GPS turn-by-turn directions.  Most of these apps cost around $100, so I was surprised to see that Ihnatko’s favorite of the bunch was MotionX GPS Drive, which only costs $2.99.  That price includes one month of voice navigation.  After the month is finished, you can pay another $2.99 for another month of service, but this is not a subscription service; you can wait until you actually need to use the program again before paying the additional $2.99, which you do from within the app.  Since I rarely have a pressing need for turn-by-turn directions—my practice rarely requires me to drive to new locations, and my commute from my home to my office is just a few minutes—I can’t justify spending $100 for an app that I would use so infrequently.  But $2.99?  That I can afford, and I’ve tried this app a few times over the past month, both on short drives within New Orleans and on long drives to other cities.

My verdict is mixed.  The app is often very useful and ultimately I’m happy to have it and will use it again, but the app has drawbacks, such as the lack of text-to-speech which means that it doesn’t tell you the name of the street where you need to turn.  The app is also slow to recalculate routes.

Rather than go through all of the features of this app, let me simply refer you to Ihnatko’s article, the last part of which discusses the MotionX app in great detail.  MotionX itself also has a useful video showing you the app in action.  What follows are some of the highlights from my experience.

Like virtually all GPS navigation systems, this one includes a 3D map that shows you where you are and where you are going.  At the top, the app also tells you some basic information on the next turn and provides alternating information about the time remaining and estimated time of arrival.

To my surprise, however, I actually found this the least useful screen to display while driving.  While there is nothing wrong with the 3D map display (which you can change to an overhead 2D display if you want), and it is sort of fun to watch your virtual car drive down the road, when driving I need to pay attention to the road and a virtual map is often more distracting then helpful.  Like Ihnatko, I found it most useful to tap a button at the bottom that used to be called “iPod” and now seems to be called “List” in the latest version.  On this tab there are three possible screens.  The first one shows you your current location and other basic information.  The third one (not displayed below) gives you a list of each of the turns.  The middle one, the one displayed here on the right, is the one that is most useful because it displays, in a very easy to read fashion, how long you have to your next turn and the name of that street, as well as other helpful info such as the ETA:

If you are listening to your iPod while you are driving, you can optionally tap the “iPod” tab at the bottom of the screen to pull up a mini-screen that shows what is playing and has buttons for play, pause, FF, etc.  This mini-screen covers up the info on how long you have until you arrive:

Nice as these screens are, my opinion is that when I am driving, I really don’t want to look at screens at all.  I just want the iPhone to talk to me and tell me what to do next.  MotionX includes a very nice female voice that speaks clearly and does a nice job of telling you when you are coming up to a turn.  If the iPod is playing, you can choose to either have the app pause the music while talking to you, or the app can lower the volume of the music and talk over it.  Unfortunately, I consider it a huge flaw that the app doesn’t have text-to-speech.  In other words, it can tell you to “turn right in 100 feet,” but it doesn’t give you the name of the street on which you need to turn.  Because the app often tells you to turn when you are at least two blocks away but other times is slow to figure out where you are, I often find myself asking “do you mean this intersection that I’m coming up to now, or the next one, or maybe even one that I have already missed?” The omission of text-to-speech is less problematic when you are driving on an interstate because exits are spread far apart and the app does seem to know how to say a number such as “Exit 10.”  But when driving in the city, the inability to say the name of streets is a real problem.

Indeed, there are times when the failure to read street names can give you what seems like wrong directions.  For example, the other day I was driving to my son’s school.  I know from experience that I need to travel down one road until I reach a street called Metairie Road and then take a right.  To my complete surprise, as I approached Metairie Road, the app told me to prepare to turn left.  Huh?  Of course, I ignored the advice, and eventually figured out that the app was thinking that I had to turn left and then turn right because of the way it saw the intersection.  And sure enough, when I was finally at the intersection itself the app told me to turn left and then turn right.  You can see from the following pictures how the app got confused.  Anyone with a brain would just call this a right turn, but the app (or perhaps more specifically, Microsoft’s Bing service from which the app gets directions) “thought” otherwise.  If I didn’t already know the way and had been relying on the app, it would have been very confusing to have the app tell me to turn left, and then as I was turning left have the app tell me to now turn right.

Another annoyance, and this is a big one, is that the app and I frequently disagree on the best way to reach a location.  This is understandable and happens all the time when I use a service such as Google Maps to calculate a route.  But this disagreement becomes truly frustrating when you factor in that the app takes a long time to recalculate the route when you ignore the app’s directions.

Allow me to explain.  A major reason that this app is so inexpensive is that maps are not a part of the app itself.  On the plus side, this means that you don’t have to spend the time downloading an app that is over a gigabyte (and re-download it every time that app is updated), plus you don’t have to use up that much space on your iPhone.  On the other hand, whenever the app tells you to turn now but you ignore that advice because you know that the better route is go via a different street, it takes the app a very long time to figure out that you deviated from the original route, compute a new route, get the maps for that route, and then tell you what to do next.  And again, all of this is made more confusing because, as noted above, the app lacks text-to-speech so even after recalculating a route, you don’t know if the app is now going the way that you want to go or if the app has come up with some alternative but also inferior route.

Moreover, if you happen to deviate from the app’s planned route when you are out of the city, in an area where your AT&T coverage is flaky, you sometimes get this helpful screen:

Fortunately, you don’t actually have to tap that “Try Again” button; the app will keep trying, and when it gets a good enough signal it will eventually do its thing again.

For all of these reasons, I find that I cannot completely depend on MotionX to get me to destinations. I wish that there was a way that, before the trip starts, you can adjust the recommended route so that the app knows which way you plan to go and then tailor the driving advice to that route.  That would avoid many of these problems.

You might think that after this long critique, I wouldn’t recommend this app.  To the contrary, I actually do recommend this app to anyone who is willing to understand and live with the app’s limitations. Indeed, for $2.99 I think it is a bargain.  You see, I find it helps to think of the app as a person in the passenger seat offering driving advice with a traditional fold out map who has offered to help you navigate but on whom you are not completely relying.  When you and your passenger agree on where you are going and the passenger sees where you are on the app, you can get very useful assistance on where you are and how long you have to the next turn.  (You can always tap a button in the top left of the screen, at any time, to have the app talk to you and tell you how long before the next turn.)  And to be fair, most of the time, this is exactly what happens with this app.  On the other hand, when you and your virtual passenger find yourself disagreeing on the best route, just go your own way and eventually this virtual passenger will accept your choice and then start helping you again.  And if this virtual passenger is having trouble finding where you are on the map (because of your bad data connection and/or the reroute delay), just be happy that you told yourself at the outset that you would not rely completely on this virtual passenger but instead just consider the offered advice to be a suggestion.  Thinking of the app this way, as just a helpful aide that is sometimes wrong, the app actually becomes very useful for the 90% of the time when you and the app are in sync.  Indeed, on long trips the app is even more useful.  You don’t have to worry about wondering how far you have to go; just tap that button at the top left (which I do a pretty good job of tapping without even looking at the screen) and the app will cheerfully tell you how far you have to go before the next exit or turn.  Just be aware, though, that long trips sometimes mean traveling in areas with no AT&T signal or just a weak Edge signal, and the app can perform poorly under those conditions.

Finally, I should disclose that I don’t have a on-dash mount for my iPhone in my car.  Using a device such as (just to pick one at random from Amazon) the Kensington Dash Car Mount for iPhone
might result in the iPhone getting a better GPS and data signal and surely would make it easier to glance at the iPhone when you are driving.  Instead, I just connected to a power cable from my cigarette lighter but kept the iPhone in my cup holder next to my seat.  I should also note that I was playing my iPhone via a tape adapter through my car stereo.  Under those conditions, the MotionX voice was plenty loud over my car speakers.  However, if you are not using an external speaker on your iPhone, and if the road is noisy, you might not find the voice loud enough simply because of the limitations on the speaker in the iPhone.

If I ever try out one of the more expensive iPhone GPS turn-by-turn direction apps, I’ll let you know how much better that app is—although don’t forget that Ihnatko did try out many of those expensive apps and still picked MotionX GPS.  If you travel a lot and want a good app that you can depend on, I encourage you to take the time to research those other, expensive apps.  But if you just want something inexpensive and you are willing to accept the limitations of this app and look at it as just some helpful secondary advice that you won’t rely on 100% to get you there, then I think that you will actually become quite fond of MotionX GPS.  I plan to keep it on my iPhone, and while I won’t pay the $2.99 every single month, I’ll be happy to pay that much whenever I find myself traveling out of town or otherwise in need of assistance.

Click here to get MotionX GPS Drive ($2.99): 

A friend of mine mentioned to me Clio, an online practice management tool that handles document management, tasks, client contacts, time entry and billing.  This is a web-based SaaS (software as a service) product that you access on your computer via a web browser, and what caught my interest is that the website has a very nice interface customized for the iPhone.

The product is aimed at solo and small law firms, and because I work in a large law firm, it is impossible for me to give this product a true test and post a real review.  Nevertheless, I was intrigued by the iPhone interface, and after e-mailing Jack Newton, the President and co-founder of Themis Solutions Inc. (which makes Clio), I thought it might be helpful to some of you to see a few screen shots of this product in action.  It looks like a very useful product and has received some good reviews.  (Examples:  1, 2 and 3.)

The pictures below speak for themselves showing what the product can do on an iPhone, but for more information, you can take a tour on the Clio website, where you will also find a free 30 day evaluation.

    

    

    

    

   

I received a lot of good feedback from my article earlier this week about using Google Scholar’s new caselaw feature to search legal opinions.  Thanks, and if you missed the article, you might want to check it out.  Other iPhone-related news from this past week:

• The Webby Awards have named the Ten Most Influential Internet Moments of the Decade and the listed events include the launch of Wikipedia, the 2008 Presidential campaign and, you guessed it, the debut of the iPhone.
• Macworld’s Dan Moren speculates on what might be included in the next version of the iPhone.
• In what almost sounds like a scene out of a heist movie, Philip Elmer-DeWitt writes for Fortune about an iPhone robbery in Belgium.  Over 3,000 iPhones were stolen when a hole was cut in a warehouse roof exactly over the spot where the iPhones were waiting, leading police to suspect an inside job.
• The end of the year must be approaching if we are getting “best of” lists.  Alex Ahlund of the website AppVee writes an article for TechCrunch about what he considers the 35 best apps of 2009.
• There are now over a dozen GPS apps that will give you turn-by-turn directions, the most recent being Magellian RoadMate.  CNET has a review of the new Magellian app, and Art of the iPhone runs through the available apps and concludes that Navigon MobileNavigator is the best although many others are almost as good, and says that MotionX GPS is the best value.  [UPDATE:  TUAW reports today that Navigon is on sale for the next 10 days; save $20 on the app itself and save $10 on the live traffic add-on.]
• If you are traveling by air instead of by car, I’ve written in the past about the possibility of using your iPhone as a boarding pass.  According to this report by Alexander Vaughn of AppAdvice, it isn’t worth the hassle and you might as well just print out your boarding pass.
• If you are going to take a flight, you might want to carry your iPhone with you in case you need to record anything.  The New York Times has an interesting article about Steve Bierfeldt, a man who was interrogated by security scanners at an airport simply because he was carrying almost $5,000 in cash.  Bierfeldt used an iPhone app to record the interrogation, and then used that recording to show that he had been treated unfairly.  (Thanks to New York attorney Jeffrey Dupler for the link.)
• You might want to avoid these travel hassles by just traveling virtually.  If so, Macworld reports that the helpful Google Earth app has been updated to version 2.0.  The big improvement is that the app now syncs any saved maps that you have with your Google account.  I find that this makes the app much more useful.  Click here to get Google Earth (free): 

  

• The DigitalArts website has an interesting interview with iPhone app developer (and former Apple employee) Dave Howell, the man who developed the successful Air Sharing app.
• I’m always excited to hear about new hardware that goes with the iPhone, although these next two items probably won’t show up on my Christmas list.  First, iPhone Alley writes about iBreath, an accessory that attaches to your iPhone and works as a breathalyzer.  Plus, it doubles as an FM radio transmitter because, well, hmm, I’m not exactly sure why, but apparently it does that too.  Second, they write about an app that allows you to connect a stethoscope to your iPhone.
• Sebastien of the iPhone Download Blog notes 10 Tips Every iPhone User Should Know.  Most of them have been reported here before, but it is always nice to see reminders of good tips.
  
• And finally, iPhone developer Qneo—developer of such memorable apps as A Rotary Telephone! and Nuke-O-Meter—has developed an app called Blower that is supposed to produce a sound so loud that it actually causes air to come out of your iPhone speaker so that you can use the iPhone to handle common chores such as blowing out birthday candles.  No word on whether the iPhone also gets to make the wish.  The reviews on the App Store say that the app produces virtually zero airflow, but the developer has produced a YouTube video showing the app in action, so decide who you want to believe.  For all of your iPhone blowing needs, click here to get Blower ($0.99): 

  

I’m a big fan of the Take Control series of electronic books, published by Adam and Tonya Engst, the folks who run the excellent and long-running Macintosh newsletter TidBITS.  Take Control books are published electronically as PDF files, which means that there is very little delay between when the book is finished and when it is published, and it also means that the books can be, and are, updated when new information comes along.  Every Take Control book has a “Check for Updates” button on the first page of the PDF.  Thus, while Take Control books are as comprehensive and informative as other good books, they are unique because they are also great sources for fresh information.

Just last week, two new iPhone-related Take Control books were
released.  I was given free copies for review purposes, and I enjoyed
reading both of them.

Take Control of iPhone OS 3 ($15) is written by Ted Landau, a noted troubleshooting guru.  (This is a new version of a book that used to be called Take Control of Your iPhone, which I reviewed earlier this year; it you bought the last edition you will be getting information on a discounted upgrade.)  This book goes into great detail on the intricacies of syncing your iPhone, using MobileMe, managing third party apps, mastering keyboard and speech input, and using Wi-Fi, Edge, 3G and Bluetooth.  Also, because this is Ted Landau, he includes a healthy dose of troubleshooting tips for when something goes wrong with your iPhone.  Click here to download a free sample PDF from the book with Table of Contents, Introduction, Quick Start, and section starts.

The other new book is Take Control of Your iPhone Apps ($10) by Jeff Carlson,
the Managing Editor of TidBITS and a columnist for the Seattle Times. 
Carlson’s book focuses on the iPhone’s built-in apps with step-by-step
instructions on how to use Calendar, Phone, Contacts, Safari, Mail,
Messages, Camera, Photos, Maps, Compass, iPod and Remote.  (Okay,
technically Remote doesn’t come built in to the iPhone, but Apple makes
this free app to control an Apple TV, so it is almost like a built-in app.)  This book also has a free sample that you can download to get a feel for the book.

Carlson’s book is aimed at beginners.  Landau’s book is great for beginners but has tips that would be appreciated by more advanced iPhone users as well.  The iPhone is so easy to use that I know that many people get by just fine without ever reading anything, but if you (or someone who you knows) could use just a little more information—even if it is just to confirm what you think you already know—these are both very useful e-books.

Because the books are electronic, you can get instant gratification.  Just download the book and in minutes or even seconds, the book will be on your computer and you can start to read it.  If you use the links below to purchase either or both books, a small percentage of the sale goes to iPhone J.D. to help offset the cost of running this site.

Click here to get Take Control of iPhone OS 3 for $15.00.

Click here to get Take Control of Your iPhone Apps for $10.00.

Yesterday, Google announced that it expanded its Google Scholar service to include free, full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state courts.  Google is not the first to offer free caselaw research, but given Google’s search expertise, this service has the potential to be huge.  According to a post by Ernie Svenson, federal opinions (including tax and bankruptcy) go back to 1924, and state opinions go back to 1950.  Svenson got this information directly from Rick Klau, the Google employee who worked on this project as a part of the “do something interesting with 20% of your time here” policy that Google encourages for all of its employees.  (Klau is a fascinating guy; earlier this year, he gave the commencement address at the University of Richmond, where he went to law school, and the transcript of that speech is a good read.)

Lots of blawgs are discussing Google Scholar right now, but I don’t see anyone talking about how nice it is that this service lets you view or search for virtually any case at any time on your iPhone (or other smartphone).  Now, even if you are out of your office, you can quickly search for cases or pull up a specific case on your iPhone for free.

Google Scholar is not specially formatted for the iPhone screen.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see an iPhone version of Google Scholar in the future, nor would I be surprised to see a third party app that acts as an iPhone front end to Google Scholar.  But for now, here are some tips and tricks for using Google Scholar on an iPhone (many of which will also work on your computer).

The first thing that you will want to do is set a bookmark for Google Scholar in Safari on your iPhone.  You can of course just bookmark the main Google Scholar page, but I find it more efficient to bookmark a search page that is set to the state that you are most likely to search.  This allows you to avoid tapping the “Advanced Search” link, and then scrolling down, and then selecting your state, and then running the search.  For me, my default jurisdiction is Louisiana, so I have made the following address my bookmark in Safari:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=apple&as_sdt=4&as_sdts=19

You can change the word “apple” after the “q=” to whatever you want, but you need to have some default query.  The last number on that address is 19 for Louisiana, but you can change that to another number depending upon your preferred search jurisdiction:

With this bookmark, your starting screen will look something like this picture on the left.  Just tap in the search field at the top and you can replace “apple” with whatever it is that you want to search, which can be search terms or a specific case citation:

    

Enter your search term, press the search button, and you will see your result:

    

I’m not sure what magic Google is using to rank the search results, but in typical Google fashion, it appears to do an excellent job of putting the most relevant and important cases near the top of the search results.  I haven’t compared running a search on Google Scholar to running a search on Westlaw/Lexis, but Dan Friedlander has, and he writes
on his blog that for his sample search, the results seem similar.  Eugene Lee says that Google’s service allows him to find important cases even faster that West/Lexis.  [UPDATE:  Texas attorney Don Cruse also comments on the ranking of search results on his website The Supreme Court of Texas Blog.]  I’m
sure that others will be writing about this in the future.

Tap on a case link to see the text of a case, and you can scroll down to find your search terms highlighted.  (Each word is highlighted in a different color.)  As shown above, the search screens are not specially formatted for an iPhone screen.  However, the opinions themselves display very nicely on the iPhone screen once you double tap to zoom in on the text:

    

Sometimes I find it very helpful to see the search terms highlighted.  Other times, however, so many search terms appear in the text that highlighting just gets in the way of reading the case.  For example, I would prefer to read the version on the right instead of the version on the left:

    

Here is how I got rid of the highlighted search terms.  (And by the way, this trick works in a regular web browser on your computer; this isn’t just limited to the iPhone.)  At the top of the Safari screen, tap on the address field.  You will see a long address that looks something like this:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10058997680149974036&q=Class+predominance&hl=en&as_sdt=8000004 

Select everything after the case number—start at the end of the address and go all the way to the “&q=” that is right before your search terms—and delete that part by selecting CUT.  Then click on the GO button at the bottom right.  That leaves an address containing nothing at the end but the “case=” followed by a unique case number for the case:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10058997680149974036

    

When you hit GO, you will see a version of the case that has no search terms, and thus has no search terms highlighted.  This is similar to using the “Find” feature on Westlaw or the “Lexsee” feature on Lexis to jump directly to a specific case without using any search terms.

When you find a legal opinion that is relevant to you, you can use the helpful “How Cited” tab to find other decisions that have cited your found opinion.  This is somewhat similar to Shepards on Lexis or KeyCite on Westlaw, although Google does not currently characterize the citing authority to tell you if, for example, another case overturns or distinguishes your case.  I also wish that the service included statutes in addition to cases.  But I hate to nitpick too much right now.  This service is free and barely 24 hours old, and I’m sure that it will improve over time.

One cannot help but wonder what West and Lexis think about Google Scholar.  Their official position is essentially “no big deal.”  Monica Bay reports on these statements from them on her great blawg, The Common Scold:

West:  Google has shared with us their plans to
expand Google Scholar to include the search of publicly available
caselaw and some legal journals. We believe that government-authored
information should be accessible to the public, and Google joins
existing sites such as FindLaw, the Legal Information Institute at
Cornell University Law School and scores of others as sites that offer
this information free of charge.  Our customers rely on us for very specialized information and legal
insight, and use Westlaw to find exactly the right answer on very
specific points of law.

Lexis:  Free case law is not new to the Internet and is
included on some of our own sites like lexisONE, LexisWeb and
lawyers.com.  However, our legal customers generally require more than
raw, unfiltered content to inform their business decisions. They look
to LexisNexis to find needles in the ever-growing information haystack,
not the haystack itself.  Not only do we provide the most complete portfolio of public and
proprietary legal content, but LexisNexis enables legal professionals
to conduct their research more efficiently, effectively, and with the
assurance of accuracy.  The LexisNexis legal research service provides
critical analysis and commentary such as Mathew Bender, citation
analysis like Shepard’s, deep online linkages built over time to
relevant content, and unique functionality such as pinpoint searching
by topic or by complex legal phrases.  Our goal is to deliver relevant, reliable results that enable our customers to make informed decisions faster.

Of course they are right.  This is not the first free caselaw service on the Internet (even though it may quickly become the best), and Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis currently offer a lot that Google is not offering including summaries and headnotes, case histories, formatted downloads suitable for printing, etc.  On the other hand, let’s not forget that Google’s service is free and will improve over time.  It is always difficult to compete with free-and-good-enough.  I’m reminded of a few weeks ago when Google announced that it was bringing free turn-by-turn navigation to Android and wanted to also bring it to the iPhone, and that same day the stock price of navigation device manufacturers TomTom and Garmin plummeted as investors worried about the future of their business models. [UPDATE 11-20-09:  Randall Ryder points out on Lawyerist
that the Google service compares very well to a service like Fastcase,
even if it doesn’t currently match Westlaw or Lexis.  I agree.  In
fact, notwithstanding the “fast” in Fastcase, one thing I love about
the Google service is that searching legal opinions is MUCH MUCH faster
than Westlaw, Lexis or Fastcase.  No log-in is required to start using the Google service, and searching and displaying results is almost instantaneous.  The speed really makes up for some of the missing features that appear on Westlaw and Lexis.]

But even if Google’s legal opinion search service stays exactly where it is with no further improvements, I still love it because it allows me to easily and quickly find a case for free, no matter where I am, as long as I have my iPhone with me and some kind of data connection.  Every lawyer with an iPhone should take note of Google’s new service.