Advocate's Studio

I usually save the mobile apps for my Mobile App of The Day blog, but this one seems particularly useful for attorneys and worth a mention here in the Studio. Remarks is a new PDF app designed for the iPad from the fine folks at Readdle who know a thing or two about annotation and PDFs on the mobile screen. It is a fully featured PDF annotating application, with a variety of tools to fine-tune your marks. You can highlight, underline, strikeout text, draw upon the documents – that means pretty much anything you can do with the document on paper. But what sets Remarks apart from other apps, like another fav of mine iAnnotate and the like, is the extremely simple view / interface. It drops the complex layers and just gives you the WYSIWYG experience. Combine that with an able note-taking interface and it seems Remarks might be a replacement for more than few apps on your iPad. Notes become PDFs, which can then be easily viewed, printed and edited on your computer. Share notes with others for their perusal and comments. From the iTunes description, here are a list of features:

★ Make notes

Write everything you think is important on a meeting, lecture or presentation.
★ Sketch new ideas
Draw the plan to take over the world. Maybe even two, just in case.

★ Type in text notes
Prefer typing text to handwriting? We have a tool for that.

★ Annotate PDFs
Mark important things in books, journals or documents that you need to review.

★ Draw with your finger
Use it to make remarks in scanned books or simply draw something beautiful.

★ Co-edit notes with friends
You can edit notes made by any other Remarks user and vice versa.

What else Remarks lets you do:

✓ Add Notes Quickly
Only one tap is needed to start new a note, no matter where in the application are you located at the moment.

✓ Exchange documents with your computer
Use a USB cable and iTunes File Sharing to transfer notes and PDFs between your iPad and your computer.

✓ Edit your notes on the Mac or PC
You can make changes into your notes using any PDF editing application like Preview on the Mac or Adobe Reader on the PC

✓ Annotate Email Attachments
Open PDF attachments directly from the Mail app to annotate them.

✓ Share Notes With Your Friends
Email your notes to any other person with Remarks and they will be able to edit it like their own.

✓ Import PDFs from Dropbox, Box.Net, Safari and other applications.
Use “Open In” to transfer documents for note-taking or annotation from any popular cloud storage or iPad app.

You can get Remarks for $4.99 in the app store – a small price to pay if it becomes your favorite note-taking, PDF annotating, document collaboration app on the go.

Do you have use for a free project management application that helps you organize your efforts and the efforts of others in an easy to understand format? Check out Trello – a great app billed as a super-simple team workflow and list manager.

Based on the Web so its easily accessible by members of your working team, tasks can be assigned and tracked via a “board.” On the board, users can create “to do” lists, which serve as the point for creating and assigning tasks, updated upon completion.

Cards are tasks. The card is intended to track something that needs to get done. Cards can hold attachments, be embedded with video, be assigned users, include due dates, hold checklists. And because “drag and drop” is so much fun, you can drag and drop board members onto a card and drag cards into the “to do” list. Invite users to the board via email. Receive notifications about board activity so you can keep on top of what is happening. Or ping a user using the Twitter convention of @ in front of their name.

I like the fact that the board updates in realtime so that you can see progress as it happens – when others update the board, lists or cards, you will “see” it happen. With an eye towards organizational use, Trello will also support permissions for users. Or make your board public and show your business’ goals and efforts. It comes in Web app and iOS app flavors, but can be easily manipulated on any devices browser via trello.com. For now is free to use. It uses SSL security.  Add outside content via embed.

I can see dozens of uses for Trello. Use it to plan an event, prepare for a presentation, get a work project done, write a novel, or deal with customers. What a cool tool – thanks Trello!

I remember the “good” old days when the alternative to typing was to speak your document into a little microcassette recorder so that your assistant could type it for you. I still encounter folks who prefer dictation to typing up their own stuff, for whatever reason that may be. But don’t you “dictators” long for being in charge of your words from first utterance until final text edit?

Well, from the “do it yourself” bin, you can get all the fun of dictation with quick conversion to editable text on your smartphone or desktop and the convenience of Evernote with Quicktate. Quicktate is a third-party service that allows you to speak your notes either directly into Evernote or as an audio note attached to email to your Evernote account or via a telephone number and receive back simple, searchable text notes. Quicktate uses live audio transcribers to convert voice to text, no matter how small or larger the recording. If Quicktate integration is enabled, Evernote will “notify” Quicktate when an audio recording has been saved and Quicktate retrieves a copy, transcribes the note and sends it back via email and directly back into yoru Evernote account. It currently works for notes created going forward, but they are working on allowing users to transcribe old audio notes as well. Notes tagged with NOQT will not get automatically transcribed. While Quicktate doesn’t save the audio notes, it saves transcripts in your Quicktate account, organized by month. You can even enable Quicktate to transcribe your voicemail messages and return them into Evernote.

Quicktate’s transciption API has been used by services other than Evernote, such as YouMail, TweetCall, Voxie and Voice on the Go.

The service costs – Economy is $4.99 per month and includes 700 words, with each word over costing $.0125 cents. Standard, for $19,99 per month includes 3,000 words with overage costing $.011 per word. There is also a pay as you go option for $.0175 cents per word. Quicktate also offers a free trial so you can see how you like the service.

If you prefer the freedom of dictation but want the convenience of searchable text, Quicktate might be your ticket. Paired with Evernote, you can become a chattering, organizing machine. And, if you are an Evernote fan generally, you may want to check out their Trunk - it is chock full of applications that work with Evernote to make the service more efficient and effective for your particular needs.

Stymied by the prospect of condensing your amazing idea, your raison d’etre, your invaluable services or the reason why someone should pay attention to you or your business into one compelling minute? Harvard Business School has the web app for you with the HBS Elevator Pitch Builder. Enter the app and get prompts for “who”, “what”, “why” and “goal.” In each section, you are given a number of words relevant to the section and designed to catalyze your point. There is also a “tip” link to help you if you find that you are still stuck. Because of my curious nature, I of course had to try this out. Under the “who”, I wrote:

I am a creative, original thinker, authoritative in my field and responsive to customer need.

The “what” boils down to your “tag line” – or, as the MBA’s put it, “your value phrased as key results or impact.” I wrote:

Effective decisions, deeper analysis and pointed research, brought to you in half the time.

The “why” asks for what differentiates you and makes you better. I had to think about this one for a little bit. Eventually, I wrote:

Having spent my entire career researching and writing, leveraging technology, and employing creative methods to improve productivity without sacrificing quality, I offer a unique combination of expertise and efficiency.

Then, I had to state my goals. Making more money than Bill Gates didn’t seem a realistic option and my intent was to come up with a useful elevator pitch, should I ever find myself in need of one. But I didn’t have an immediate goal in mind. So I simply wrote:

I am looking to step up to the next level.

O.k. I know. Not very impactful. And the HBS geniuses caught on – this is what they had to say.

Avoid jargon, business-speak or trendy buzz words. Your audience has set through all those boring meetings, has attended those seminars, has read those books. You want to be memorable and that means using your own voice.

The analysis gave me word count, number of repeated words and elapsed time. I still had about 45 seconds to work in my own voice. It gave me average stats, so I could compare. I could email or print my pitch, or edit the pitch to tighten it up.

A pretty cool little tool for making you think about the meaning of life. Thanks Harvard.

Adobe teamed up with Echosign, an electronic signature service, a while back and now its hitting up the iPad and iPhone with all of the legally binding digital goodness in Echosign’s universal iOS app. Echosign allows you to send instant fax and e-signatures, track changes to contracts in real time, auto store and manage signed agreements, all with enterprise-grade security. Echosign has a number of different integrations, but this new iDevice option is pretty sweet. Download the iOS app for free and Echosign subscribers can attach their electronic signatures to any document within the app, along with the great sending and tracking features found in the full-service version. Echosign is no fly-by-night either – a lot of big names you might recognize rely on it for the contract execution and tracking efforts (Twitter, Google, Facebook, VMware, Dell, and Groupon, to name a few). So what are you waiting for? Get signing!