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 some remarks 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.

Click here to get AT&T Mark the Spot (free): 

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:

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.