Keeping track of time is very important to lawyers and many other professionals, so I have been keeping track of the iPhone time tracking apps.  I previously wrote about 17 such apps, then I wrote about an 18th app, and then I wrote about some online options you can use with your iPhone. 

Even though there are already quite a few good time tracking apps, there is always room for another good one, and I found one.  Adam McInnis of On-Core, Inc. recently wrote me to tell me about Time Master, an iPhone app that tracks time and expenses.  Adam is not an attorney (although his brother is a partner at Akin Gump) and this app is not specifically written for use by attorneys, but it includes all of the key features that an attorney would want to track time on an iPhone.

The app stores a list of clients and projects for each client, and can
optionally associate billing codes with a client and a project.  You can also
associate a billing rate with a client and project if you want.  You
can either manually tell the app how much time to bill on a project, or
you can tap in the gray area on the time entry screen to start a
timer.  One nice feature that I don’t remember seeing on other time
tracking apps is the ability to bill in specific increments — for
example, you can tell the app to bill in 6 minute increments for .1 billing, and you
can have the app automatically round up, down, or to the nearest such
increment.

   

The app gives you the ability to have multiple timers at once, although this is, of course, useless for attorneys who ethically cannot bill two clients at the same time.  (See ABA Formal Opinion 93-379.)  If you have a timer running and then you exit the app, the timer continues to run, and a badge appears on the icon of the app to let you know how many timers are currently running.  You have the ability to go back to a prior entry and adjust the time, which I consider an essential feature for when you go back to working on a project later in the same day or you need to fix a time entry because you let the timer run too long.

The app can easily prepare reports of your time and then you can e-mail the reports to yourself (or anyone else, such as your secretary).  The app gives you lots of options to customize the report that you e-mail, such as identifying which fields to include and the order in which the fields should appear.

   

I haven’t played around with the Expenses feature very much, but the app does give you the ability to track your expenses.  I can see this being useful when you are on the road.

All in all, this is a very nice app.  It includes all of the key features of an iPhone time tracking app and for this reason alone is one of the best, plus it adds a lot of customization features and polish.  At $9.99, it is one of the more expensive time tracking apps, but that is a reasonable price considering all that you get with this app.  To help you decide whether to buy this app (and to help you learn how to use it), the developer’s website includes helpful videos of all of the major features. 

If you are looking for a time tracking app for your iPhone, there were already several good options, but Time Master enters this crowded field as one of the best and it is definitely worth your consideration.

Click here to get Time Master ($9.99): 

Apple is about to sell its one billionth app, and if you are the lucky person to download app number 1,000,000,000, you will get a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod Touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro.  Visit this page on Apple’s website for more information, including the opportunity to enter the contest for free without even downloading an app.

But it is a lot more fun to just download some apps.  So what have other people been downloading?  Apple has a page on the iTunes store listing the all-time most downloaded apps.  The top paid apps of all time are:

1. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D ($5.99)

   

   — a racing game
2. Koi Pond ($0.99)

   

   — interact with fish in a pond of water
3. Enigmo ($3.99)

   

   — a puzzle game in which you direct drops of liquid
4. Bejeweled 2 ($2.99)

   

   — the classic game in which you get three or more jewels in a row to make them disappear
5. iBeer ($1.99)

   

   — a visual gag in which your iPhone appears to contain beer (or mouthwash)
6. Moto Chaser ($0.99)

   

   — a racing game
7. PocketGuitar ($0.99)

   

   — a virtual guitar
8. Flick Fishing ($0.99)

   

   — virtual fishing
9. Tetris ($4.99)

   

   — the Tetris game
10. Texas Hold’em ($4.99)

    

    — the only iPhone game sold by Apple, this poker game includes great graphics
11. Super Monkey Ball ($5.99)

    

    — a game in which your monkey rolls through mazes
12. Pocket God ($0.99)

    

    — control the ongoings on your island to either help or hurt your islanders
13. Cro-Mag Rally ($1.99)

    

    — a racing game
14. Ocarina ($0.99)

    

    — a virtual flute
15. Fieldrunners ($2.99)

    

    — a tower defense game
16. iFart Mobile ($0.99)

    

    — a productivity app
17. Touchgrind ($4.99)

    

    — a skateboarding game
18. iHunt ($0.99)

    

    — a hunting game
19. iShoot ($1.99)

    

    — an aim-and-shoot game
20. Monopoly Here & Now ($4.99)

    

    — a new version of the classic game

Arnold Kim at MacRumors.com has an interesting analysis of how many times some of these top 20 apps have been downloaded and how much money each has made for the developer.

The top free apps of all time are:

1. Facebook

   

   — nice client for the social messaging giant
2. Google Earth

   

   — 3D version of satellite and aerial images of Earth
3. Pandora Radio

   

   — start with a song you like and Pandora will stream you the audio of similar songs
4. Tap Tap Revenge

   

   — tap scrolling dots in time with the music
5. Shazam

   

   — identify a song by just letting your iPhone listen to it for a few seconds
6. PAC-MAN Lite

   

   — the first stage of the classic game
7. Backgrounds

   

   — thousands of iPhone background images, updated daily
8. Touch Hockey: FS5

   

   — air hockey game
9. Labyrinth Lite Edition

   

   — the wooden maze, steel ball game you played as a kid
10. Flashlight

    

    — fill your screen with white
11. Urbanspoon

    

    — pick a restaurant with a fun slot machine interface and get reviews
12. Movies

    

    — see what is playing and more
13. iBowl

    

    — a bowling game
14. Lightsaber Unleashed

    

    — admit it, when were a kid you would have done anything to have a lightsaber with you at all times
15. Sol Free Solitaire

    

    — Klondike and more
16. MySpace Mobile

    

    — client for the social messaging giant
17. Virtual Zippo Lighter

    

    — Freebird!
18. The Weather Channel

    

    — one of the better weather apps
19. Bubble Wrap

    

    — pop the virtual bubbles
20. Remote

    

    — Apple’s app to remotely control iTunes on your computer or an Apple TV

Download an app, help Apple reach the one billion mark, and maybe you will be the lucky person who brings Apple into the 10 digit download number range.

Here is a quick tip suggested to me by Ernest “Ernie the Attorney” Svenson that is helpful if you are ever trying to remember who you recently talked to on your iPhone (perhaps as you are doing your billable time entries).  In the Phone app, tap the “Recents” button at the bottom to see a list of all of the people who you recently called or who called you.  For older entries you just see the day of the call listed, but tap the blue arrow on the right of each entry to see the specific time of the call.  Unfortunately, there is no way to display how long the call lasted once the call is over, but this might be enough to jog your memory and remember who you talked to and what you talked about. [UPDATE:  I haven’t tried this myself, but Martin points out in a comment to this post that you can use a script called alllog2ical.rb, available here, to get more info such as call duration.]

For some entries you may see a number in parentheses next to the person’s name, indicating that there were multiple calls with that person.  The time or date of the most recent call is listed in Recents, and you can tap the blue arrow to see a list of the precise date and times of the calls.

I’m not sure how many recent calls are stored.  I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the iPhone logs the last 80 calls, but mine doesn’t seem to have quite that many.  Suffice it to say that dozens of the most recent calls are logged.

The call log will be greatly improved when Apple releases the iPhone Software 3.0 this summer.  But even the current, limited, version of the call log is a useful part of the iPhone that you might forget is there.

There was a lot of iPhone news this week.  Much of it concerned rumors of features that may be included in the next iPhone that Apple will release, but so many of those predictions are mere guesswork that I won’t comment on them here, except to note that I think it would be a good idea for Apple to include a better camera with video recording capabilities in the next iPhone.  But there was other news, and here are a few iPhone-related stories that caught my eye this week.  If you missed them, click the links for more information.

• DRM-free music and variable pricing on iTunes.  (Macworld)
• GM and Segway have come up with what looks like a really cool iPhone accessory.  (iLounge)
• New Gmail interface for iPhone.  I really like the pop-up menus.
• Video preview of the classic game Myst on the iPhone.  (AppVee)
• Documents to Go by DataViz will be released in May.  (Just Another iPhone Blog)
• Working out with your iPhone is not a good idea.  I recommend that you just use an iPod shuffle.  (TUAW)
• Confessions of an iPhone app addict.  (Mercury News, via Apple Hot News)
• Ten crazy iPhone cases.  (TUAW)

Enjoy the weekend, and have a good Easter or Passover or whatever it is that you are celebrating.

As an attorney practicing in the only civil law jurisdiction in the U.S., I was intrigued to get an e-mail the other day from Max Malta, the developer of Vade Mecum.  “Vade mecum” literally means “go with me” in Latin, and the phrase generally refers to a useful manual that one always keeps close at hand.  The Vade Mecum iPhone app includes all of the major sources of Brazilian law, not only the Civil Code of Brazil (which, like the Louisiana Civil Code, is derived from the Napoleonic Code), but dozens of other sources of law including Brazil’s Federal Constitution, Code of Civil Procedure, Criminal Code, Commercial Code, Traffic Code, Labor Laws, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, etc. 

  

You can browse through articles one by one, jump to a specific article number, or search for laws containing words in the text.

  
 

I don’t speak Portuguese or practice law in Brazil so I can’t say much about the content — and admittedly I am stretching to even title this post a “review” of the app — but it looks like a comprehensive and useful iPhone app for anyone dealing with Brazilian law.  The reviews on the iTunes app store are excellent, and the Brazilian iPhone website Blog do iPhone gives the app a very favorable review (click here for an English translation via Google), even noting that one Brazilian attorney remarked after seeing Vade Mecum that he would buy an iPhone just to be able to use this app and have all of the key laws in his pocket.  The comments on that Blog do iPhone post make it clear that there are many happy users of this app in Brazil, including lawyers and law students.  (One commenter notes: “At last, a legal program for my iPhone!”  I wish we had more law-related apps here in the U.S., but I guess we are doing much better than iPhone users in other countries.)

It’s nice to know that attorneys in other countries are taking advantage of their iPhones just as we are here in the States, and I wish Max the best of luck as an iPhone developer.

Click here to get Vade Mecum ($9.99): 

Small Dog Electronics is one of my favorite places to buy gadgets, especially those related to the Mac and iPhone.  Their employees are extremely knowledgeable and their customer service is top-notch.  Plus, it is obvious from their website that they love what they do — and they love their dogs!  They publish an informative, free newsletter called Kibbles & Bytes, a weekly publication that includes Apple news and commentary, Mac and iPhone tips, and updates on items on sale.

A recent issue of Kibbles & Bytes includes an article by Small Dog’s marketing manager Ed Shepard with tips for getting the most out of your iPhone’s battery power.  Much has been written on this subject, but Ed’s article is one of the best I have seen, so I asked if he would let me re-publish the article here.  He graciously agreed (Thanks, Ed!) and here it is:

Squeeze More Juice from Your iPhone/iPod Touch Battery

by Ed Shepard, Kibbles & Bytes #614

The iPhone 3G is an incredible device. I recently took a ten day trip with
my iPhone, and used it every single day in dozens of different ways (including
as—go figure—a cell phone). It has become an essential tool in both my digital
and real life.

As I wrote in last week’s Kibbles & Bytes newsletter, I do wish the
battery in the iPhone had a little extra stamina. I’m getting the TruePower extended battery for
iPhone 2G/3G/iPod touch before my next extended trip.

In the meantime, here are twelve tips suggested by Apple and learned from
our experience that should help wring a little extra juice from an iPhone or
iPod touch battery.

1. Always make sure your iPhone has the latest software from Apple, as
   
   engineers may find new ways to optimize battery performance. You can update to
   
   the latest software with iTunes 7.7 or higher.
2. Turn off Wi-Fi: If you rarely use Wi-Fi, you can turn it off to save power.
   
   Go to Settings > Wi-Fi and set Wi-Fi to Off. However,
   
   if you frequently use your iPhone to browse the web, battery life may be
   
   improved by using Wi-Fi instead of cellular data networks.
3. Turn off Bluetooth: If you rarely use a Bluetooth headset or car kit, you
   
   can turn off Bluetooth to save power. Go to Settings > General >
   
   Bluetooth and set Bluetooth to Off.
4. Use Airplane Mode in low- or no-coverage areas: Because your iPhone always
   
   tries to maintain a connection with the cellular network, it may use more power
   
   in low- or no-coverage areas. Turning on Airplane Mode can increase battery
   
   life in these situations; however, you will be unable to make or receive calls.
   
   To turn on Airplane Mode, go to Settings and set Airplane Mode to On.
5. Turn off 3G: Using 3G cellular networks loads data faster, but may also
   
   decrease battery life, especially in areas with limited 3G coverage. To disable
   
   3G, from the Home screen choose Settings > General > Network
   
   and set Enable 3G to Off. You will still be able to make and receive calls and
   
   access cellular data networks via EDGE or GPRS where available.
6. Adjust brightness: Dimming the screen is another way to extend battery life.
   
   Go to Settings > Brightness and drag the slider to the left
   
   to lower the default screen brightness. In addition, turning on Auto-Brightness
   
   allows the screen to adjust its brightness based on current lighting
   
   conditions. Go to Settings > Brightness and set
   
   Auto-Brightness to On.
7. Fetch new data less frequently: Applications such as Mail can be set to
   
   fetch data wirelessly at specific intervals. The more frequently email or other
   
   data is fetched, the quicker your battery may drain. To fetch new data
   
   manually, from the Home screen choose Settings > Fetch New Data
   
   and tap Manually. To increase the fetch interval, go to Settings >
   
   Fetch New Data and tap Hourly. Note that this is a global setting and
   
   applies to all applications that do not support push services.
8. Turn off push mail: If you have a push mail account such as Yahoo!, MobileMe
   
   or Microsoft Exchange, turn off push mail when you don’t need it. Go to Settings
   
   > Fetch New Data and set Push to Off. Messages sent to your push
   
   email accounts will now be received on your phone based on the global Fetch
   
   setting rather than as they arrive.
9. Auto-check fewer email accounts: You can save power by checking fewer email
   
   accounts. This can be accomplished by turning off an email account or by
   
   deleting it. To turn off an account, go to Settings > Mail,
   
   Contacts, Calendars, choose an email account and set Account to Off.
   
   To remove an account, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars,
   
   choose an email account and tap Delete Account.
10. Minimize use of location services: Applications that actively use location
    
    services such as Maps may reduce battery life. To disable location services, go
    
    to Settings > General > Location Services or use
    
    location services only when needed.
11. Minimize use of third-party applications: Excessive use of applications such
    
    as games that prevent the screen from dimming or shutting off or applications
    
    that use location services can reduce battery life.
12. Lock Your iPhone: It may seem obvious, but you should lock your iPhone when
    
    you aren’t using it. You will be able to receive calls and text messages while
    
    it is locked, but nothing happens if you touch the screen. To lock iPhone,
    
    press the Sleep/Wake button. You can also set the Auto-Lock interval so your
    
    iPhone will turn off more quickly after a period of inactivity. To set
    
    Auto-Lock, go to Settings > General > Auto-Lock and set
    
    the interval to a short time, such as 1 minute.

Bonus tip: Use iPhone Regularly: For proper maintenance of
a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving
occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month
(charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).

Finally, the iPhone 3G is stated to offer up to five hours of talk time on
3G, ten hours of talk time on 2G, five hours of internet use on 3G, six hours
of internet use on Wi-Fi, seven hours of video playback, or twenty-four hours
of audio playback on a full charge at original capacity. The iPhone features up
to 300 hours of standby time.

– – – – – – – –

Thanks again to Ed and Small Dog Electronics for these helpful tips.

If you are like most of the lawyers that I know, then you enjoy a good cocktail.  Granted, I do live in New Orleans so my perspective might be skewed, but hopefully you agree that it is a lot of fun to explore new drinks and enjoy the classic ones with friends, either when out at a bar or at your bar at home.

On July 11, 2008, I stood in line at my local AT&T store to buy an iPhone 3G on the release date.  It was a long line, so there was ample time to talk to the other people, and behind me was Ted Haigh from Burbank, California.  Ted does graphic design work for movies, but he is better known as Dr. Cocktail, one of America’s foremost authorities on the history of the cocktail.  He was in New Orleans for the opening of the new location of the Museum of the American Cocktail, a museum of which he is the Curator, and indeed, a good number of the items in the museum come from his personal collection.

Ted played a role in the creation of the iPhone app Cocktails+.  The other person responsible for the content is Martin Doudoroff, a cocktail enthusiast and technology consultant in New York.  The two of them also created a great online database for cocktails called CocktailDB.  Ted and Martin recently agreed to divide and conquer; Ted is focusing on the online CocktailDB and Martin is focusing on further development of the iPhone app.  And since then, Martin and programmer Ian Baird have added some fun new features, such as the ability to share a recipe from the app via Twitter or Facebook.

If you are looking for a good collection of cocktail recipes on your iPhone, Cocktails+ is a great choice.  The problem with many cocktail collections is that some of the drinks sound like they were just made up yesterday.  But Cocktails+ has great respect for the history of the cocktail.  Each recipe in this app comes from a classic cocktail guide and includes a source and date.  A lawyer’s dream:  cocktails plus citations!

  

Indeed, the older the recipe, the more dated the background in the app (as if you were looking at old paper) — a fun detail.  And for many cocktails, there are multiple versions from different sources over the decades.  For the Sazerac, for example, there is a version from 2003 that uses Herbsaint, a version from the 1940s that uses Pernod, and a version from 1930 that uses absinthe.

  

It is easy to find a recipe from the over 2,000 available.  You can browse by title, by flavor, by type, or by base ingredient, or you can use the search function to search by title or ingredient. 

  

When you are looking at a recipe, if you want to learn more about any ingredient, just tap on it.  This will bring you to a helpful screen describing the ingredient, including possible substitutes if you are missing something in your bar.

  

Although I love Cocktails+ for the classic recipes, the app also includes new recipes from three famous contemporary bartenders.  Many of those, however, are a little over the top for me.  For example, the recipe for a Brandy New Fashioned from famous Seattle bartender Jamie Boudreau includes only three ingredients, but one of those ingredients — Bourdreau’s Cherry Bitters — itself is composed of almost two dozen ingredients and takes over four weeks to make.  Sounds like a fun drink to order and appreciate at a bar, but I seriously doubt I would take the time to make one.

You can mark a recipe as a favorite, but I wish that the app offered the ability to add notes.  Martin tells me that this is the #1 requested new feature for the app, so perhaps we will see this added in the future.  It would also be nice to be able to add new recipes that you come across.  But what Cocktails+ offers now is still a great app.  Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reviewed several iPhone cocktail apps earlier this year, and Cocktails+ was one of its favorites.  You can read the article here, although you may need to be a Wall Street Journal subscriber for that link to work.

If you want to see Cocktails+ in action, you can click here to see a video of the app provided by the developer. 

But better, yet just download the app right now … FOR FREE.  I was ready to recommend Cocktails+ at its regular price of $9.99.  But the developer is offering a special THIS WEEK ONLY — you can currently download the Cocktails+ app for free as a part of a promotion of the new “Publish to Facebook” feature.  This offer ends this Sunday, April 12, so be sure that you download the app now.

Cheers!

Click here for Cocktails+ (free now; normally $9.99): 

There were two articles in the New York Times this past weekend about the iPhone.  They are both getting a lot of buzz, so I though I would link to them in case you haven’t seen them yet, and write a little about one of the articles.

First, there was an article in the Fashion & Style section (of all places) called “The iPhone Gold Rush.”  It talks about some of the (few, lucky) iPhone app developers who have made a ton of money, such as the developer of the iPhone game iShoot who made $800,000 in five months.  A related article also ran in the Bits section of the Times.

Second, there was an article by Virginia Heffernan, the former television critic for the New York Times who now writes a column for the New York Times Magazine called “The Medium” which covers, among other topics, the convergence of television and the Internet.  I’ve long been a fan of Heffernan’s writing, even though she has been criticized as highfalutin and called to task for her esoteric references, not to mention once called the “Sarah Palin of Journalism.”  Her column that ran yesterday is called “I Hate My iPhone.”  When you combine the unprecedented popularity of the iPhone with a title like that in a publication as esteemed as the Sunday New York Times Magazine, there is no wonder why the article has been making the rounds on the Internet.  (One of my favorite critiques of her article was this one by Mike Rose in The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

In the article, Heffernan talks of her purchasing an iPhone and then returning it.  The article is quintessential Heffernan, with phrases like this:  “the iPhone probably sips, like a lipsticky girl with a vodka drink” and “that device’s tarty little face and those yapping ‘apps'”.  Um, okay.  After I stepped over the clever phrases and looked for the reasons that Heffernan returned her iPhone, I found two.  First, she says that she has been a Blackberry user for years and she had trouble getting used to the iPhone’s virtual keyboard.  Heffernan doesn’t say how long she used the iPhone before returning it, but it sounds like it was just a few days, and even she admits that during that time she mostly just kept it in her bag.  She even notes that she felt hesitant to touch the screen after “years of not touching screens — so as not to smudge or scar.”  To perhaps state the obvious, anyone afraid to touch an iPhone’s screen cannot possibly understand all that an iPhone offers.  And it is a shame that she didn’t give herself more time with the iPhone.  The virtual keyboard isn’t perfect, but it is a good tradeoff for not having a physical keyboard always take up half of the space on the front of the device when you only need it a fraction of the time you are using the iPhone.  Moreover, just as it took time to get used to witting with Graffiti on an old Palm or to type with thumbs on a Blackberry or Treo, it does take time to get used to the iPhone’s keyboard.  It appears that her occasional usage over just a few days was not enough.

Second, she found that her AT&T coverage in New York was worse than her T-Mobile coverage.  That is obviously a fair complaint; I’ve heard many people say that Verizon has the best coverage in Manhattan and the surrounding areas.  On the other hand, I get great AT&T 3G coverage in New Orleans.  And I don’t see how returning an AT&T iPhone for an AT&T Blackberry would solve her coverage woes.

What I find most odd is that Heffernan seems like the perfect candidate for an iPhone.  She uses a Mac and an iPod, and Heffernan frequently writes about technology, social media, online videos, and other media.  The iPhone needs to have a phone, of course, but I find that the phone is one of the features that I actually use the least on my iPhone.  I am more often using my iPhone to run third party apps, surf the Internet, watch short YouTube videos, look at pictures, read e-mails or Twitter updates or Facebook updates, etc., and these are the very sorts of things that Heffernan has been writing about for years.  A device like a Blackberry Bold may be better at composing e-mails for those who demand a physical keyboard, but I don’t believe that the Blackberry can compete with the iPhone on all of these other features.  I can’t help but think that if Heffernan had just taken the time to get to know the iPhone, she would scoff at the idea of returning it for a Blackberry.

On the other hand, her experience did result in a fun article with an attention-grabbing headline that caused me, and countless others, to pause while flipping through the pages of the Times Magazine and has resulted in numerous links across the Internet.  For a journalist, I suppose that is one measure of success.  But I also know that lots of attorneys (and others) will read her article, and I hope that it doesn’t mislead them into failing to consider all that an iPhone can offer.

Since the day that the iPhone was first introduced, people have asked for the ability to edit and transfer Microsoft Office documents.  DataViz, whose Documents to Go software offered this feature on other smartphones such as the Palm Treo for many years, started working on such a program a year ago.  A beta of a Dataviz iPhone app has been previewed, but is still not available.

Meanwhile, TechCrunch reported (as did PC World) that Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft’s Business Division, stated yesterday at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco that we may be seeing Microsoft Office on the iPhone soon.  His interviewer asked for more information on this, and Elop reportedly said “not yet, keep watching.”  Note that this is really nothing new — a year ago, Microsoft was talking about possibly developing iPhone apps.

In the meantime, one company is actually delivering — or, in part, about to deliver — the ability to edit Word and Excel files on the iPhone.  Quickoffice previously sold a series of apps with the MobileFiles name, and they are now rebranding and expanding those products (albeit with some price increases).

Quickoffice used to offer a free app called MobileFiles which could be used to download (but not upload) files from iDisk and view certain files such as images and Microsoft Office files.  QuickOffice has stopped offering that product.

The product that used to be called MobileFiles 2.0 is now called Quckoffice Files.  It remains at $3.99, and allows you to upload and download files from iDisk, transfer files to and from your iPhone using Wi-Fi, e-mail files from  your iPhone, and view a large variety of file formats including Microsoft Office, PDF, iWork, web archives, HTML, and MP3.  (The ability to view iWork files is a new edition to this app.)  Many attorneys will find that this app is the best solution to transfer files to and from the iPhone and view them.

If you want to edit spreadsheets, the app that used to be called MobileFiles Pro is now called Quicksheet, and the price has increased from $9.99 to $12.99.  Quicksheet offers all of the functions of Quickofice Files and adds the ability to edit and create Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.  (Excell 2007 spreadsheets can be viewed but not edited.)  Everything that I said about this app in my review of MobileFiles Pro remains true, the only change being some interface improvements.  This app works well.  (Note that Mariner Software similarly offers a $9.99 product called Mariner Calc that allows you to edit Excel files on the iPhone.  I have’t tried it yet.)

If you want to edit Word documents, Quickoffice has announced that they will release Quickword in just a few weeks.  Quickoffice says that this app will include the ability to select, cut, copy and paste text.  Apple will of course bring those functions to the iPhone in the 3.0 update coming out this summer.  It seems curious that Quickoffice would want to introduce a proprietary version of this feature just months before Apple brings the feature to all iPhone apps.  Perhaps Quickoffice just wanted to beat DataViz and Microsoft to the punch.  Unsurprisingly, Quickoffice says that it will support the iPhone 3.0 version of cut and paste when it is available.

If you want to get all of the Quickoffice apps, Harry McCracken reports that you will be able to buy a Quickoffice suite for $20.  (This might be a reason for you to wait to buy Quicksheet by itself right now.)

The curious thing about editing Office files on a smartphone is that while it seems like a great idea, it may not be something that you use very much in practice.  I had DataViz’s Documents to Go on my Palm Treo for many years, and while I frequently used the program to view files, I virtually never edited Word documents.  Editing spreadsheets is a little more useful because it is nice to be able to see how changing just one or two numbers can change a total.  But regardless of how often you actualy edit Office files on a device such as the iPhone, it is empowering to know that you can do it.  I’m glad that Quickoffice has already figured out how to do this, and I look forward to seeing competing apps from DataViz and, perhaps, Microsoft itself.

Click here to get Quickoffice Files ($3.99): 

Click here to get Quicksheet ($12.99): 

What happens when four lawyers from diverse practices and backgrounds get together to discuss how each uses their iPhone to improve their productivity and reduce a few of life’s frustrations?  You get a great list of iPhone apps that are sure to help you too! Apple reports over 25,000 apps are now available via the iTunes store, making it a daunting task to sift through to find the best. So here are some of the favorite picks from David Sparks of the MacSparky website, Ben Stevens of The Mac Lawyer website and Reid Trautz of Reid My Blog! (who are presenting on this topic at this year’s ABA TECHSHOW, which is taking place right now in Chicago) and Jeff Richardson who runs iPhone J.D., a site dedicated to attorneys using iPhones.

Productivity

• People (free): This app is essentially an iPhone gateway into an online White Pages that is very powerful and very comprehensive. Reid notes that he has located contact information for individuals by using this app that he didn’t think could be easily found.
• Note2Self ($2.99):  This is David’s favorite voice recorder on the iPhone. It automatically starts recording when you hold it up to your ear and as soon as you are done, it gives you an easy menu that allows you to email the voice file to yourself (or your secretary). This is perfect for capturing ideas and tasks for later action.
• reQall (Free): This voice-to-email reminder system is the poor man’s replacement for Jott, and works quite well. Just download the app, open a free account with reQall, and go!  Just dial reQall and speak for up to 30 seconds; within minutes reQall transcribes the message and e-mails it to your pre-designated account. Messages can be sent to others email addresses too.  [Jeff adds:  I haven’t tried reQall yet, but David Pogue gives it a very favorable review in today’s New York Times.]
• Evernote (Free):  Evernote is a cloud based information manager. You can drop notes, pictures, snippets, and other bits of information in it. Evernote then synchronizes the data between multiple devices including PC and Mac computers. While the information is up in the cloud, the Evernote servers do their best to apply optical character recognition to all of your files (including pictures) making it even easier to search your data. The iPhone application does a great job of capturing new bits of information and giving you access to all of your other Evernote data.
• OmniFocus ($19.99):  A Seattle based Mac-only developer, OmniGroup, last year quietly released what David considers the best task list management application he’s ever used. Based loosely on David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” system, this application allows you to sort tasks and projects on a variety of criteria including project, priority, context, and time. Their OmniFocus iPhone application puts all of the power of this application in your pocket. You can use this application for everything in your practice from managing the most complex litigation to remembering when to order new stationary. It also is location aware. That means that if you are in the supermarket, the application reminds you to buy spicy carrots for taco night.
• Things ($9.99): Currently the best-selling task management app at the iTunes store, Things is also based on the “GTD” system. Many users, including Reid, like the simpler, cleaner interface and easier learning curve than OmniFocus. Tasks are easily added and monitored, and related items like web pages and documents are easily associated with each one. Things also has a Mac application–named Best of Macworld 2009–that syncs with the iPhone via any wireless network.
• Calc-12E ($15.99):  David loves the HP 12-C financial calculator. This application faithfully recreates the device on your iPhone. It has the same buttons, functions, and the same RPN calculations. It also has some added bonuses. For instance, with the touch of a button you can email yourself TVM reports.

Email

• EasyWriter ($2.99):  Why hasn’t the iPhone’s built-in Mail app supported landscape mode from the beginning?  Apple’s upcoming 3.0 revision of the iPhone OS software (due this summer) will finally add this feature, but in the meantime David has been using this app which allows you to compose email in landscape. With built in text snippets for frequently typed words and phrases and spell check, David considers this is a no brainer for anyone who writes a lot of email.
• Sideways ($1.99): The app Reid uses to type emails in the landscape mode, similar to Easy Writer above.
• iSignature ($0.99):  The iPhone lets you use a single signature for all of your e-mails.  This app allows you to select from up to six signatures to use in your e-mail.  Jeff’s review on iPhone J.D. is here.
• gMail (free):  Ben has his firm’s email hosted in gMail (using Google Apps), and this free web app gives him instant access to his email account, including the ability to archive.  Jeff uses gMail as his back-up e-mail account, and he also loves this web app.  Note that there is nothing to download from iTunes; just go to mail.google.com using Safari on your iPhone and you will see an iPhone-formatted webpage.  Jeff suggests using the + button in Safari to add a link to gMail on your home screen, which you can tap to launch just like you would any other app.

Legal Research

• Cliff Maier Attorney Reference Apps ($0.99 to $8.99):  Attorney and part time iPhone application developer Cliff Maier has released a variety of reference applications for the iPhone covering various federal and state rules and statutes. Being a California attorney, David particularly like having the California Evidence Code and Code of Civil Procedure on his iPhone. Jeff loves the Fed. R. Civ. Pro. and Fed. R. App. Pro. apps.  The applications range in price from $0.99 to $8.99 and cover a variety of federal and state jurisdictions.  Jeff posted an interview with Cliff Maier on iPhone J.D., along with several reviews of many of these apps.  They were great when they were first released, and with the recent addition of features such as bookmarks, a jump button, improved search, and multiple ways of viewing the rules (by sections are “flattened” all at once), Cliff Maier has set the standard for what a good iPhone legal reference app can be.
• The Law Pod reference apps ($0.99):  Most attorneys will prefer Cliff Maier’s apps because they have more features, but it is nice to have an alternative, especially one that is inexpensive.  The Law Pod has done a nice job creating apps with the federal rules.  Click here for the review on iPhone J.D.
• Manual of the United States of America ($0.99):  With this app from Clint Bagwell Consulting, you get several reference materials including the Constitution, selected Supreme Court cases, the Federalist Papers. While not useful on a daily basis, it makes David smile knowing he’s got Publius on his iPhone.  Jeff’s review on iPhone J.D. is here.
• Wikipanion (free):  There are lots of Wikipedia apps for the iPhone, but Jeff likes this one the best.  The price is right (free) and it is very powerful, allowing your iPhone to quickly link to a virtually unlimited source of knowledge.

Time & Billing

• Time tracking apps (free to $59.99):  Jeff has described almost two dozen apps on iPhone J.D. that allow you to track your time using your iPhone, which can be especially useful when you are away from the office.
• DateCalcPro ($2.99):  This application answers the often asked question, “What is 45 days from today?”. If you need to calculate dates (most attorneys do), this full-featured application does it quickly and easily.
• DaysFrom ($0.99):  Another app that allows you to quickly calculate dates in the future or past.  This one lacks some advanced features, but is simple and fast, which makes it Jeff’s favorite. 

[Jeff adds:  Yesterday I posted this review of iPhone date calculators.]

File Sharing

• Air Sharing ($4.99):  One of the more popular apps for the iPhone allows you to access your computer files (documents, spreadsheets, slideshows, etc.) from your iPhone, provided you have set up access to those files via the Air Sharing service. Takes about 10 minutes to set up, then works like a charm. Was free in beta, now $4.99.
• FileMagnet ($4.99):  This application allows you to store documents and PDF files on your iPhone for later reference. There are several applications in this category, but David has found that FileMagnet has got the job done for him on trips and in trial.
• MobileFiles 2.0 ($3.99) and MobileFiles Pro ($9.99):  Jeff used to use DataCase, but has recently changed to MobileFiles Pro because the app makes it so easy to get documents to and from the iPhone.  The Pro version even allows you to use and edit Excel Spreadsheets, so (for example) you can keep a legal interest spreadsheet on the iPhone and actually use it, unlike other apps which just let you view a static image of a spreadsheet.  The app will soon add the ability to edit Word files.

Travel

• Google Maps (included): The purpose of this article is to cover apps that you can add to your iPhone, but this built-in app is so good that we couldn’t resist mentioning it.  The interactive features of Google Maps via the iPhone is worth the price of the phone service alone. David often use the Google Locator feature to find himself on the map, and then search for nearby restaurants; with a couple quick taps on the screen, you are talking to the restaurant to check table availability. Works for myriad businesses.
• Google Mobile App (free):  Jeff loves that he can quickly start this app, hold up the iPhone to his face, and then say what he is looking for and have a Google search run based on what he says.  This is often a lot faster and more convenient than typing out search terms.
• Say Where (free): A voice recognition add-on to Google Maps that allows you to speak your destination rather than enter the text into Maps. Amazingly accurate!
• Where To? ($2.99):  This application does no more than streamline the Google maps search process but it does it with panaché. Several of us like that it also lets you save favorite searches. Using it on an iPhone 3g, it can locate all the courthouses relative to your current location in seconds.
• Google Earth (Free):  David recalls when getting aerial photographs of a property was an expensive and time consuming process. Now you can do it right on your iPhone using Google Earth.
• Various weather apps:  It is always nice to know the weather when you are traveling.  Jeff likes the free apps AccuWeather, WeatherBug and The Weather Channel apps, but perhaps Jeff’s favorite is not an app at all — Weather Underground has a fabulous iPhone-formatted version of its website at i.wund.com.

Social Networking

• Twitterific (free): Reid likes this free for using Twitter from your iPhone, but is considering a switch based on Jeff’s opinion below.
• TwitterFon (free):  This is currently Jeff’s favorite Twitter app.
• Facebook for iPhone (free): Popular and useful for accessing Facebook when you are away from your computer. Works well, as it allows updates of your status, monitoring of others’ status, and chatting with online friends.  Ben uses this far more often than he should, and Jeff is also quickly finding it addictive.

News

• NYTimes (free):  Nice app for reading the latest New York Times articles.
• USA Today (free):  While the articles are less in depth than the New York Times, this iPhone app is very nicely done.
• ABA Journal (free):  The latest legal news.

Fun and Relaxation

• Relax ($2.99): When you are upset, angry, or stressed out many experts say to relax and visualize something peaceful. Well, this app is that visualization: It contains looping videos of soothing scenes–such as a crackling fire, seashore, and mountain streams–that will tame the beast in all of us. Ahhhhhh.
• Wurdle ($1.99):  This is Jeff’s favorite timewaster on the iPhone.  Similar to the Boggle game you played as a kid.
• 2Accross ($5.99):  This is currently Jeff’s favorite crossword app for the iPhone.  You can access tons of free crosswords, plus if you are a New York Times subscriber, you can download all of the current and archived Times crosswords.
• Remote (free):  If you have an AppleTV, Apple’s free Remote app is a must have.  The iPhone makes a great remote control for the AppleTV.
• Shazam (Free): How often have you heard a song on the radio but can’t remember or didn’t catch the name of it? Enter Shazam. Merely hold your iPhone near the music source and press the “Tag Now” button, and in less than 20 seconds you have the name and artist of the song–accurate about 95% of the time in our experience. Of course, you can immediately buy it via iTunes. Cha-ching!
• Movies (free):  This great app from Flixster allows you to find movie listings for local theaters along with descriptions and movie trailers.  You can even buy tickets online via this app.
• i.TV (free):  Jeff loves this app which gives you not only your local TV listings, but also movie theater listings, access to your Netflix account, the ability to buy tickets, etc.

Of course, with more apps coming on the market everyday and the new iPhone 3.0 just around the corner, we’ll probably be back soon with more ideas for you, your iPhone, and your law practice.