Advocate's Studio

One of my predictions for 2010 was a rise in dependence on mobile computing. When I say mobile computing, I am not talking about your basic laptop. I am talking smartphones – those pocket-able devices that really shouldn’t be called phones at all (I’m looking at YOU, ATT!)

Smartphones and, in particular, the iPhone have been game changers across the spectrum of users. Applications, much like the little tools that pop out of all corners of a Swiss Army knife, meet any and all needs. Eminently customizable, devices like the iPhone really do serve as high-tech duct tape.

I have become quite dependent upon my iPhone. Initially, it really was more toy to me than anything else. I was dazzled by the big, vibrant display and user-friendly interface – these were new to me, after years of dumb phone and Palm Treo 750 experience. Over time, however, I have stretched its capacity, tested its boundaries and found that it really does have an answer to almost any question.

Take, for example, this past weekend. I went skiing with my family over the kids’ spring vacation. Just before leaving, a Twitter friend asked if he could pass my website on to a friend looking for a lawyer with background in writing and social media. That message first arrived on my iPhone via Boxcar (link here) and I responded there.

On Friday, while wearing my skis and riding on a chairlift, a message popped through on my phone via Google Voice and another message came in through my email from my website’s contact form asking for assistance. Later, I emailed and then phoned the potential client and laid down the groundwork for a proposal.

Over the next couple of days, I received background information via email and conducted research using mobile Safari. I used the built-in Notes app to outline some questions. I used Dragon Dictation (link here) to “write” my initial piece of the proposal while riding in the car and used Documents to Go (link here) to create a Word document and edit the piece to final form. As the client preferred communicating by IM / chat, I downloaded BeeJive (link here) to seamlessly chat on the move.

While I was at it, I checked the weather with Weather Bug (link here), used Navigon’s Mobile Navigator (link here) to get me between destinations and Where (link here), AroundMe (link here) and Siri Personal Assistant (link here) to find decent restaurants and other spots high in the mountains. I passed the time pinning my location in Gowalla (link here) and Foursquare (link here). I videoed the kids on my 3GS iPhone and uploaded the content to Flickr (link here) via the app. I stayed in touch with online friends via Tweetie 2 (link here) and Facebook (link here). When I could get signal, my husband and I stayed in touch on the mountain by SMS.

Although I didn’t personally download it, my husband loaded the iSki app (link here), which provides snow condition reports, your downhill speed, vertical feet, and the location of other members of your party on the mountain by their cell phone numbers and GPS.

Because of its extreme versatility, I was able to use both native programs and download new applications to get the job done. No laptop required.

Although I didn’t use the applications during this particular weekend, I have in the past used Westlaw’s mobile webpage interface and Fastcase (link here) to research and send legal information to clients. From my phone, while moving from one place to another.

Think about this: a phone that can cover pretty much any material need and, if you don’t have a particular ability or tool installed, you can find and download one as the need arises. You can even delete that functionality later and add different features. On the fly.

It really is no wonder that smartphone sales have sky rocketed. Who wants to put a laptop in their pocket while riding a ski lift?

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• Meet Siri, your iPhone personal assistant (techstartups.com)
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I know what your thinking: not another Twitter interface! If you are into Twitter, you probably have a favorite or a combination of favorites for desktop and mobile that include Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Tweetie or even web and now mobile Brizzly (a personal fav).  So why should you consider another option?

Because you never know when one will combine all of the features you really want to have in one package. Sobees (link here), a Windows-based client, is a relatively unfamiliar option, with strengths in the area of customization.

First of all, Sobees works in XP, Vista and 7, covering a wide span of Windows-based machines. It also incorporates Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace along with Twitter. Next – Sobees gives the user a great deal of latitude in setting up their little “window on the world” with 16 different layouts and a drag and drop your social network interface. You also can choose whether to view your groups in columns or tabs – a nice feature.  There is support for lists and the ability to update all social networks with one, unified status entry – timesaver! Filtering and tweak options are plentiful and easy to set.

Image Taken from MakeUseOf

Sobees seems a pretty complete package. Whether you choose the desktop client or web interface (link here), I can’t imagine you could go wrong with the broad feature set.

Hat tip to MakeUseOf.

UPDATE: I should add here that, if customize-ability is of high important to you, you may want to check out a future version of Seesmic built on a plug-in architecture powered by Microsoft Silverlight. This means that you will be able to choose from third party developer applications to “plug into” your Seesmic Twitter interface and gain all sorts of added functionality. Consider a bookmarking plug-in for links or a mapping app for geolocation built right into Seesmic. Very, very cool. No foreseeable release date yet, but keep checking the wires (and the Studio).  Hat tip to The Next Web.

Do you save your Twitter tweets? Maybe you don’t have a need to keep all your posts about your last meal or Foursquare check-ins or latest calamity. If you primarily tweet your own blog posts, there are other ways to save that content within your own CMS. But if you use your Twitter stream as a business development tool and frequently save or retweet valuable links, you might want to keep a record of the cool stuff you find and share.

Sure, Twitter has a search function and you can peruse your own profile page to see your latest tweets. But, did you know that Twitter does not store your tweets much past a few days to a couple weeks? If you are relying solely on Twitter, you are missing a great deal of your back story. Friendfeed, for as long as it lasts, offers a fantastic means of saving and searching your own content – simply feed your tweets into the service and use their awesome filter-able search to quickly pull your desired link.

But maybe you aren’t so sure that Friendfeed will be around for the long haul and you still want to be able to put your finger on your Twitter content. As I am always looking for the quick, simple way to store, I feed my tweets into Google Reader. You can find your own Twitter feed RSS towards the bottom right of your page. Anything with an RSS feed can be sucked into Reader. Simple, cloud-based storage that is also searchable within the Reader app.

There are other third party means of archiving your content – Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb has a great list of these tools (link here). The one I find most intriguing (but haven’t yet used) is Twistory (link here) an app that integrates with your calendar to show your tweets over the span of days, months and years. You can even use it to feed in other people’s tweet streams, if you are so interested. Another application, The Archivist (link here) offers a desktop option for saving and storing tweets generated by saved searches. Pretty cool!

If you are like me and share tons of articles, as well as retweet others’ great content, on a regular basis, you might want to consider implementing one of these back-up systems. You never know when an old tweet might contain the precise answer you are looking for.

I talk a lot about internet search here in the Studio. No surprise, really, since so much of what we do involves reaching outside to pull relevant information inside. But how do you locate and pull your own, internal information?

I got to thinking about this as I read this post at IHeartTech (link here) called 10 Critical Computer Skills Every Attorney Should Know. The information really pertains to anyone who stores more than a handful of files on their own system.

How do you access your own documents and pertinent information? If you are a professional, it is highly likely that you have hundreds of files containing valuable, mine-able data – data you can use so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel on a regular basis. I am aware that some people manually set up their own, digital filing system and use that system as their only organizational means. This is fine, provided you maintain the parameters and design that system on Day 1 so that it can fit your needs on Day 1,756. I do manually organize my information into folders and try very hard to maintain the conventions to facilitate my later attempts to retrieve information or otherwise perform analysis regarding data sets.

But what if you can’t find a document that you know is there. You can recall some of its attributes, but not its name or its file location? There are other automated ways to deal with MIA information and employing these tools can save you a fistful of headache.

In addition to the manual system, there are search and indexing tools built into your own operating system. Even Windows XP has a little known feature called the Indexing Service – my IT professionals didn’t even know what the Indexing Service was when I first told them about it years ago. Later OS, including Vista and Windows 7, as well as the Mac OS, include forms of universal search that also employ indexing features.

What is an indexing system? It is an application within the OS that scans all documents and files, mining for keywords and identifying terms, and creates a database of summaries of the data. The database may then be searched using keywords and, in the case of the old XP system, rudimentary Boolean search connectors. The old XP system, which resides within the Computer Management  function, allowed one to filter results by date, relevance, title, and path. The search function works quite quickly on a large set of data – I have nearly 2,000Word documents alone on my old XP machine. Although it hogs space and slows the computer slightly, I have come to rely on Indexing on that old clunker.

My newer Vista system has the search function built into the OS in a more organic way – it is integrated and  can pull keywords across applications, out of documents, emails, folders and internet favorites. Mac OS have a similar feature in Searchlight. The Windows integrated search can be added to XP systems, but I find it incredibly slow in XP, hence my reliance on the relatively more agile Indexing System on my older box. On my faster laptop, this search feature works fine and can pull my data quickly. I have yet to stump it.

If these built-in tools don’t quite do it for you, there are other options. Google has a free download, Google Desktop Search (link here), that works much like a Google Search on your own computer. It works on Windows, Linux and Mac. The beauty of this tool is that it can search networked or shared drives – a feature unavailable in the old Windows Indexing service. You can select whether to include both internal and external search and you can exclude folders from results. There are add-ons and widgets, and the ability to incorporate the tool within Outlook.

The IHeartTech article points out two paid software options: Copernic and X1. I have no personal experience with either of these systems, so I cannot comment in detail. I do understand that they can be employed throughout an enterprise, serving as a nifty knowledge management tool.

Consider how you store and retrieve your own information. Can you improve your tools? There is always something tech around the bend designed to make your life easier.

This is downright crazy! The Next Web (link here) shared this Social Media Cheat Sheet by Drew McLellin (dailybloggr.com – link here) about a week ago. While it doesn’t really simplify the comparison process, it does include an awful lot of information. And you can always resort to the familiar green – good, yellow – proceed with caution, red – WATCH OUT! coding for a quick analysis. Because the Advocate is all about social media, even this crazy chart has its place.