TechnoLawyer: Entertainment/Hobbies/Recreation

Today's issue of TL Serendipity contains these articles:

David Beck, Review: MacBook Air, MacLocks Lock, Duet Display

Neil Squillante, Why the Apple Watch Is Not Just a Small iPhone Plus Leather Loop Review

Thomas Sennett, Dragon Versus Dictation + Transcription

Tommy Lee, The One Reason I Use WordPerfect

Don't miss this issue — or any future issues.

How to Receive TL Serendipity
Our most serendipitous offering (hence its name), TL Serendipity consists of contributions by TechnoLawyer members who have important information to share. You'll no doubt enjoy it because of its mix of interesting topics and genuinely useful knowledge, including brutally honest product reviews and informative how-tos. The TL Serendipity newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL Serendipity contains these articles:

Neil Squillante, Top 10 Movies Involving Computers

John Ahern, How to Handle Write-Offs

Ken Laska, Six Reasons Young Lawyers Don't Dig Technology

Bobby Abrams, WordPerfect X7's Copy Protection Part 2

Don't miss this issue — or any future issues.

How to Receive TL Serendipity
Our most serendipitous offering (hence its name), TL Serendipity consists of contributions by TechnoLawyer members who have important information to share. You'll no doubt enjoy it because of its mix of interesting topics and genuinely useful knowledge, including brutally honest product reviews and informative how-tos. The TL Serendipity newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL Serendipity contains these articles:

Michael Schwartz, Technology That Has Recently Become Essential for Law Practice

Kalani Patterson, Apple Watch Musings From a Techie and Watch Fan

Neil Squillante, A Deeper Dive Into the Apple Watch's Step Tracking and Heart Rate Monitoring

Don't miss this issue — or any future issues.

How to Receive TL Serendipity
Our most serendipitous offering (hence its name), TL Serendipity consists of contributions by TechnoLawyer members who have important information to share. You'll no doubt enjoy it because of its mix of interesting topics and genuinely useful knowledge, including brutally honest product reviews and informative how-tos. The TL Serendipity newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL Serendipity contains these articles:

Neil Squillante, Apple Watch: Step Tracking

Tom Trottier, Online Banking Security Tips

Nicholas Bettinger, ActiveWords v. Stock Windows, Word, and Internet Explorer

Don't miss this issue — or any future issues.

How to Receive TL Serendipity
Our most serendipitous offering (hence its name), TL Serendipity consists of contributions by TechnoLawyer members who have important information to share. You'll no doubt enjoy it because of its mix of interesting topics and genuinely useful knowledge, including brutally honest product reviews and informative how-tos. The TL Serendipity newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 64 articles from the past week worthy of your attention. Below you'll find a sample article from each section of today's issue, including our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week.

What Is Two-Factor Authentication?

Best iPhone Apps for Lawyers

Two Lawyers Discuss Apple Watch (Podcast)

Comparative Review of 22 Fitness Bands

Congratulations to Allyson Kazmucha of iMore on winning our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award: Best iPhone Weather Apps

How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of both legal technology and mainstream technology of interest to the legal profession (e.g., monitors, smartphones, scanners, the iPad, and more). But not the only coverage. BlawgWorld enables you to stay on top of all the noteworthy legal and mainstream technology articles (and podcasts and videos) published elsewhere without having to hire a research assistant. Even when you're busy, you won't want to miss each issue's Pick of the Week. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 63 articles from the past week worthy of your attention. Below you'll find a sample article from each section of today's issue, including our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week.

10 Tips for Better Slide Decks (Video)

Review: Hours

Lawyer John Voorhees' Sweet Setup

One Month Living on Soylent

Congratulations to Erik Mazzone of Law Practice Matters on winning our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award: How to Spend $25 Million on Document Management Software

How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of both legal technology and mainstream technology of interest to the legal profession (e.g., monitors, smartphones, scanners, the iPad, and more). But not the only coverage. BlawgWorld enables you to stay on top of all the noteworthy legal and mainstream technology articles (and podcasts and videos) published elsewhere without having to hire a research assistant. Even when you're busy, you won't want to miss each issue's Pick of the Week. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers an app for managing and listening to podcasts on the iPhone with playback technologies that shorten their duration (see article below), an iPhone app for contemporaneous time-tracking, an iPhone app for analyzing your website, and an Android, iOS, and Windows Phone app for referencing information published by Microsoft about its products. Don't miss the next issue.

LISTEN FASTER WITHOUT MISSING ANYTHING

Here you are now in the 20th year of the post-Cobain era. Do you really want to hear Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for the thousandth time? Or a radio advertisement for a lawyer? Leave your overplayed playlists and radio stations behind for podcasts, which are free, contain few to no advertisements, and include both big media programming such as Bloomberg Law as well as notable indie phenoms such as Legal Talk Network. All you need is a podcast app.

Overcast … in One Sentence

Launched this week, Overcast is an iPhone app for finding, subscribing to, managing, and listening to podcasts.

The Killer Feature

Many podcast apps exist (including one by Apple called Podcasts), all of which enable you to play episodes at a faster speed to save time. This seems like a good idea, but in practice probably only works well for John Moschitta.

Taking a different approach, Overcast features a technology called Smart Speed, which eliminates silent gaps in podcasts. Also, you can ratchet up the speed in very small increments such as 1.1x to prevent podcasts from sounding like, well, John Moschitta. Overcast tracks and displays the time you save versus listening in realtime.

Other Notable Features

Overcast has a built-in podcasts directory that should eventually mirror iTunes given its high profile creator Marco Arment of Tumblr, Instapaper, and Accidental Tech Podcast fame. The app also provides editorial picks in various categories to help get you started. If you can't find a podcast, you can manually enter its RSS feed. Overcast can also import podcasts from other apps.

Once you subscribe to a podcast, you can choose how many unplayed episodes to keep, whether to receive notifications of new episodes, and whether to use Smart Speed (see above) and/or Voice Boost. The latter equalizes volume across podcasts.

The playback screen has play, skip back, and skip forward buttons (you can adjust the time interval for each in the app's system-wide settings), and also provides access to show notes with a swipe gesture on the podcast's cover art.

Overcast enables you to create customized playlists to organize the podcasts to which you subscribe. Various settings exist such as whether to play newest to oldest or vice versa.

What Else Should You Know?

Overcast offers a sync service that will become more useful when the iPad version ships. The app doesn't support video podcasts. Overcast is free but the marquee features such as Smart Speed, Voice Boost and the ability to download episodes using cellular data sell as a $4.99 in-app purchase bundle. Learn more about Overcast.

How to Receive TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on November 26, 2013 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

Thanks to iTunes Radio, you can flood your office with a custom radio station. An iTunes Match subscription will eliminate the commercials and make your music collection available from the cloud. However, if you have a lot of music ripped from CDs or from online sources other than iTunes, follow the steps in this issue of SmallLaw first to maximize matches and minimize uploads. It's the perfect weekend project. Also, don't miss the SmallLaw Pick of the Week (newsletter only) for a for a review of business-class VoIP telephone system Ooma Office.

FIVE STEPS FOR OPTIMIZING ITUNES MATCH AND ITUNES RADIO

iOS 7, while still buggy despite several updates, has a mind boggling number of new features, including iTunes Radio — a hidden productivity tool as it can make tedious tasks that don't require much thought more tolerable. It also works in iTunes 11 if you don't have an iOS device.

Like Pandora, iTunes Radio enables you to create your own radio stations based on an artist, song, genre, etc. Unlike Pandora, iTunes Radio has access to more music and features new album previews (search for "First Play") thanks to Apple's iTunes Store.

Initially, I liked the commercials in iTunes Radio because of their relevance — mostly promotions for new albums. As publisher of TechnoLawyer, I feel especially strongly about advertising relevance. Apparently, Apple doesn't because those music-related commercials quickly vanished and were replaced by the usual mass market suspects such as cars and fast food.

So I decided to invest in iTunes Match, which costs $24.99 per year. In addition to eliminating commercials from iTunes Radio, iTunes Match makes your iTunes library available for streaming from up to 10 PCs, Macs, and iOS devices.

If you bought your entire music collection from iTunes, you can flip the iTunes Match switch without any worries.

However, if you have music ripped from CDs or obtained from stores and sources other than iTunes (such as Napster circa 1999), it pays to clean up your library first for two reasons.

First, when a match exists between your library and the iTunes Store you need not upload that song. The more songs that match, the faster you'll get up and running.

Second, many classic albums have been remastered. If you have the lousy sounding version from the early days of CDs, you can delete it after iTunes Match matches your library. Then you can download the better sounding remaster at no charge. This can save you boatloads of money, especially since you can keep the remasters even if you unsubscribe from iTunes Match.

In this issue of SmallLaw, I'll explain how to prepare your iTunes library for iTunes Match. It may seem like a lot of work, but on average it takes less than one minute per album. Before you begin, make sure iTunes' Sidebar is showing (you can find this setting under the View menu).

1. Collect Your Non-iTunes Store Songs

In iTunes, create a smart playlist that will collect your music ripped from CDs or purchased elsewhere. Filter by "Kind" (file type). To keep it simple, process one file type at a time. If you're comfortable with Boolean logic, you can collect every file type. For example:

"Kind Contains MP3" OR "Kind Contains WAV" OR "Kind Contains Apple Lossless"

This article explains how to create complex Boolean expressions like the above.

If you're not sure which file types you have in your library, click Music in the Sidebar, click Songs, click the View menu, select Show View Options, and check the Kind box. A Kind menu will then appear. Click on Kind to sort by file type and write down all file types other than Purchased AAC Audio File and Protected AAC Audio File.

2. Create Your Task Playlist

Once you have your smart playlist set up, select all songs, right click, and choose Get Info. In the Comments field, enter something like "Cleanup."

Then right click on the playlist itself and add a new condition — "Comment Contains Cleanup"

Organize the playlist by album. Finally, under the View submenu on the right side, select Grid. This visual organization by album works best even if your albums are partial and not complete.

3. Verify Matches

Click on the first album. You'll see the songs below. To the right of the album name, you'll see an arrow inside a circle. Click that and select "Show in iTunes Store." If the exact same album shows up in the iTunes Store, you've got a match! Proceed to the next step.

If there's no match, search iTunes to find the album. If it's in iTunes, it probably has a slightly different album title. Go back to your playlist, select all the songs, right click, and choose Get Info. Change the title of the album to match the name in the iTunes Store. If Album Artist is blank, it can't hurt to fill that in too.

Now repeat the beginning of this step to see if you can go directly to the album in the iTunes Store. If so, proceed to the next step.

If you still don't get a match, the album is probably a compilation. You'll need to look more carefully at the version in the iTunes Store. For example, I had to change the artist for "Concert for Bangladesh" to George Harrison for every song even though some of the songs were sung by others. After making this change, I got a match.

If you get a match but the album title in the store says "(Remastered)" and yours doesn't, add this to your album title to be safe in case Apple someday tightens its matching algorithm. Also, you may want to jot down these albums so that you can later replace them with the newer remastered version as explained above.

4. Ensure That Album Artwork Will Work

Now you need to make sure you have album artwork for all the songs on the album. If you obviously have none, right click the first song, and select "Get Album Artwork."

Even if it looks like you've got album artwork you probably don't for all songs because of a longstanding flaw in iTunes. It's better to be safe than sorry.

Right click on the first track, select Get Info, click on the Artwork tab, and copy the album artwork to your clipboard. Now select all the songs in the album, Get Info, and paste the artwork into the Artwork box on the right side. iTunes will embed the actual album image into each song file instead of relying on its smart association technology, which has never worked reliably for songs not purchased from iTunes.

5. Cull Your Task Playlist

Once again select all the songs in the album. Delete "Cleanup" from the Comments field. The album will then disappear from the smart playlist. Proceed to the next album and repeat the above process.

Happy Listening

When you finish processing all the albums in the smart playlist, you can subscribe to iTunes Match and experience it as Apple intended with minimal uploading thanks to all the matches.

One last warning — iTunes Radio may dent your wallet. After not buying any music in months, I've bought several new songs (discovery) as well as several old songs that I haven't heard in years (rediscovery).

Neil J. Squillante is the publisher of TechnoLawyer.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Written by practicing lawyers who manage successful small firms and legal technology and practice management experts who have achieved rock star status, this newsletter provides practical advice on management, marketing, and technology issues in small law firms, as well as comprehensive legal product reviews with accompanying TechnoScore ratings. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on August 20, 2013 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

What's on your iPad home screen? How about your iPhone? In this issue of SmallLaw, TechnoLawyer publisher Neil Squillante discusses the 28 apps on his iPad mini's home screen (plus a few on his second screen). Neil uses his iPad mini primarily for work plus he's an information architecture expert. Therefore, you'll not only learn about useful apps (including one that launched last week), but also benefit from Neil's insight into how to organize your apps for maximum efficiency. Also, don't miss the SmallLaw Pick of the Week (newsletter only) for advice on how to recruit a winner.

IF I SHOW YOU MY IPAD HOME SCREEN (AND APPS) WILL YOU SHOW ME YOURS?

Lawyer and productivity guru David Sparks regularly publishes a column in his MacSparky publication called Home Screens in which he interviews people about the apps on that screen.

MacSparky is not a legal publication so David rarely interviews lawyers. He also focuses on the iPhone rather than the iPad. I thought I'd use this issue of SmallLaw to pay homage to David's clever column by discussing my iPad's home screen — both the apps I use and my organizational methodology (I have two 32 GB Verizon iPad minis, both of which I've set up identically). After reading this article, I encourage you to reply and discuss the apps on your home screen and how you organize them. Your article will have just as large an audience as this one.

The Dock

Many iPad users place the apps they use most often in the dock. That's certainly the case for me. From left to right, my dock contains:

1. Safari: No surprise here. I also use Safari on my iPhone and Macs with all my bookmarks synced via iCloud. I'm a huge fan of Safari's Reader function, which removes all the cruft from web pages and also makes virtually any web page mobile-friendly. If you've never used Reader, you'll find it a revelation.

2. Mail: My favorite email client, Mail makes managing my email accounts a breeze. I don't use Mail's VIP feature because the number of accounts I have and the filters I've set up at the server level ensure that only relevant email arrives in my inboxes. For example, we have a dedicated, shared email account for press releases from legal vendors.

3. Editorial: Here we enter the realm of third-party apps. Launched last week, Editorial just displaced WriteRoom as my text editor (I'm writing this article in Editorial). I've used Editorial for just a short time, but it's so powerful that WriteRoom may not earn back this prime real estate. I don't use a text editor only for editing and writing articles, but also for composing important and/or long email messages. This eliminates the risk of prematurely sending a sensitive email message by mistake. Like most iPad text editors, Editorial can send what you've written to the Mail app.

4. Adobe Reader: I use this app to access documents needed to create sales proposals. I used to store other PDF documents in this app too but I've since moved them elsewhere as I'll explain below.

5. Soulver: I wrote extensively about this cross between a calculator and a spreadsheet in our TL Research Guide to the iPad Mini as a Productivity Tool. I use it to add up and keep records of the checks we deposit, crunch numbers for sales proposals, and more. The developers will soon release a new version with iCloud support, which will enable me to access all of my Soulver documents on both of my iPad minis and my iPhone.

6. NewsBlur: I switched to NewsBlur for my RSS reader after the demise of Google Reader. What's an RSS reader? It's an application that enables journalists and information junkies to monitor dozens or even hundreds of web sites.

The Top Row (Portrait Orientation)

To avoid confusing you, I'll discuss the rest of my apps row by row, but I organize apps by both column and row. Apps in the left-most and right-most columns are easier to tap than apps in the interior columns so I place more important apps in the outer positions.

1. Calendar: I've tried some third-party calendar apps, but I like Apple's the best. I just wish it offered the same alert sounds that exist on the Mac for consistency.

2. Writing Folder: Yes, I use app folders and here we have our first, which contains four apps associated with writing — Notes, iA Writer, Merriam Webster Dictionary/Thesaurus, Pages, and WriteRoom. Notes syncs via iCloud and also exists on the iPhone so I use it for notes I need when I don't have my iPad with me. I use Pages for more structured documents than a text editor can handle. The two text editors in this folder serve as as backups in case a bad update temporarily makes my primary text editor unusable.

3. Productivity Folder: This folder contains apps that for me have just one function — FileMaker Pro (a homemade database with important information), GoodReader (it can access our file server), Google Drive (we're Google Apps customers so maybe this app will come in handy someday), Salesforce (our sales leads), Chrome (backup web browser), and Documents (moving documents from my computer to my iPad via WiFi).

4. Tools Folder: These lightweight apps don't need much explanation — The Weather Channel, Dark Sky, Calculator Pro, Hightail, Maps, Google Maps, Alarm Clock HD Pro, Clock, Speed Test, and Airport Utility.

The Second Row

1. Podcasts: I have a love/hate relationship with podcasts. They cover niche topics of interest to me, but the hosts remind me of Wayne and Garth. Leaving aside the interesting content delivered unprofessionally, the app itself is a gem. iCloud syncing enables you to start listening on your iPhone and pick up where you stopped on your iPad.

2. Yelp: A must for restaurants if you live in a large city. I don't trust the anonymous reviews, but I use the app on the iPad to bookmark my favorite restaurants and those I want to try. On my iPhone, I can sort my bookmarked restaurants by proximity.

3. App Store: The source of all apps so I've got to have it front and center.

4. Reminders: Although it's not perfect, Reminders helps me manage my tasks better than anything else I've tried thanks to its simplicity (no user guide required) and iCloud syncing. I use it for my three categories of tasks — long-term projects that could take weeks, months, or years, short-term projects such as a sales proposal, and alarms for ephemeral tasks that I dictate via Siri (e.g., remind me to buy a hard drive tonight at 9:00 pm).

The Third Row

1. NoteSuite: Shortly after reporting on NoteSuite in TL NewsWire, I began using it to store PDF documents I need to reference, annotate PDF documents, and take handwritten and typed notes. This app replaced Remarks for note-taking and saved me from buying an Acrobat.com subscription thanks to its iCloud syncing. I have the Mac version too. There's no iPhone version yet, but if that ever surfaces I will no longer need to use Apple's Notes for notes I need when I only have my iPhone with me. NoteSuite has some quirks, but it's an impressive 1.0 release.

2. Music: Back in 2010, I poked fun at my neighbor behind his back because he listened to music on his first-generation iPad. Well, I don't walk around Manhattan listening to music on my iPad mini (nor do I take photos with it), but I use the Music app with headphones at home often enough that I moved it to my home screen.

3. Settings: I dig into this app every day to connect to my Beats Pill, turn on/off my cellular data, make sure a new magazine subscription doesn't auto-renew, etc.

4. Remote: I use this app at home to play music from my Mac through my Apple TV.

The Fourth Row and Page 2

1. Messages: This is a killer app. Because everyone in our company and most people with whom I frequently communicate use an iPhone, their text messages go not only to my iPhone but also to both of my iPad minis. So convenient.

And that's it for my home screen. I don't currently use the rest of the fourth row or any of the fifth row. But I have a second page of apps, all of which are in folders. I won't discuss the apps, but I'll share the folders with you — Newsstand, Books, Periodicals (publications not in Newsstand), Multimedia, Photography, Services (e.g., ETrade and Verizon), Games, Shopping, Social Media, and Communications (Bria, GoToMeeting, FaceTime, Skype, and WebEx).

Now Show Us Your Home Screen

Think I'm missing out on some important apps? Got better apps for certain tasks than the apps I use? Please reply to this issue of SmallLaw to discuss the apps on the home screen of your iPad and/or iPhone.

Neil J. Squillante is the publisher of TechnoLawyer.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Written by practicing lawyers who manage successful small firms and legal technology and practice management experts who have achieved rock star status, this newsletter provides practical advice on management, marketing, and technology issues in small law firms, as well as comprehensive legal product reviews with accompanying TechnoScore ratings. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 123 articles from the past week worthy of your attention. Below you'll find a sample article from each section of today's issue, including our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week.

Lean Law Firm Technology

Review: Five Premium Noise-Canceling Headphones

Is Your Law Firm Contaminated?

Marketing Gets Technical

Congratulations to M. David Stone of PCMag.com on winning our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award: Can This Gizmo Turn Your iPad Into a Mobile Scanner?

Don't miss today's issue or any future issues of BlawgWorld.

How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. BlawgWorld enables you to stay on top of all the noteworthy articles (and podcasts) published online without having to hire a research assistant. Even when you're busy, you won't want to miss each issue's Pick of the Week. The BlawgWorld newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.