Advocate's Studio

Just past the outer boundaries of my short-term memory, I posted in the Studio about cutting-edge tools around the antiquated concept of the business card. While it is indeed a concept that has been around for more than a century – back in the very old day, people employed them for personal use as calling cards – recent developments have catapulted them past the present and straight into the future. I discussed some of that cool card tech in that earlier post (link here).

Rather than rehash that tech, I thought it might be interesting to share with you the apps / non-apps that I am currently using to pass my contact information. My tool belt holds three items: Bump; Cardreader; and, some beautiful, old-fashioned, paper cards.

Bump (site link here ) is an app that was suggested in the comments to my original post and I really love it. Until recently, its only limitation was that you needed another iPhone user to take advantage of it. With its most recent update, it works with Android phones too! And since Apple and Google will soon be taking over the world, Bump should become ubiquitous.

From their site, Bump:

is a quick and easy way to connect two phones by simply bumping them together. Exchange your phone number, photos, or compare friends with just a bump.

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There are two parts to Bump: the app running on your device and a smart matching algorithm running on our servers in the cloud. The app on your phone uses the phone’s sensors to literally “feel” the bump, and it sends that info up to the cloud. The matching algorithm listens to the bumps from phones around the world and pairs up phones that felt the same bump. Then we just route information between the two phones in each pair.

It really does work! You can send your own contact information, or you can attach a contact from your phone and send it to someone else. So easy- with very few exceptions, Bump has worked perfectly for me. App store link here.

Check out the demo video below:

Next up is Cardreader (site link here). This is a recent download of mine. For people who still believe in the old-fashioned, paper-style contact herald, Cardreader can get that information into your iPhone with relatively little effort.

Cardreader is essentially a mobile scanner. It works best on an iPhone 3GS, as it makes full use of that phone’s auto-focus function. The tech employed is pretty impressive: it uses a real OCR engine – the ABBYY Mobile OCR Engine. It does not send the information to a web server for processing – all processing is done locally within the app so there are no worries about sensitive contact data being shared.

Open the Cardreader app, and it shows a list of contacts with images to the left. The little “i” at the bottom opens up the settings, where you can access FAQ and Instructions, set shake protections, set dictionaries, toggle image enhancement, camera lock, perspective card view, and reset settings. There is a little business card icon at the top right. Click on that icon and the camera opens. Camera view is overlaid with the words “top” and “bottom” so you can allign the card properly. Take a picture of the business card you want to import (you also can select one from your iPhone photo album). The data is read through the OCR processor and you are given the ability to edit and save. When done, the information and picture are synced with the address book and stored in contacts.

As if this wasn’t cool enough, you can browse visually through your address book using the built in 3D card view feature, which looks suspiciously like iTunes Cover Flow. This feature alone might make the app worth the $5.99 price.

I have taken several card pictures with it. The more challenging the card layout, the greater the likelihood of errors requiring correction. I have to say that I am mostly impressed with the results. Below is a picture of a card I took that sucked up the information flawlessly – no edits necessary:

My feeling on Cardreader is that it is a fantastic implementation of iPhone technology that serves a very useful purpose for business professionals. App store link here.

Last but not least, I want to show off my new paper cards. I performed some crowdsourced investigation of the opinions shared by my social media friends and came up with this fantastic on-line printing company, Moo Cards (U.S. site link here). Moo prints custom business cards, mini cards, post cards and greeting cards using your uploaded artwork or one of their scads of gorgeous designs. Speaking of gorgeous, let’s talk about their card stock and print quality. It is to die for. The web interface worked beautifully (that has not been my universal experience with online printers and photo production) and service was fast and perfect. And they are a very reasonable price for full-color, two-sided graphics.

I cannot rave enough about these cards. I created my information graphic and uploaded it. I then selected a series of 11 diferent backgrounds from their design library. My cards arrived with glorious color, each with a different design on the back. Although my image below does not do them justice, this will give you an idea of how beautiful they are:

My “card” arsenal is now complete!

What are you using?

Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites carried this post (link here) on Fastcase’s new iPhone application. What’s so special about it? Well, for one, free case law and statutes. Or is that two? Bob indicates that FastCase offers the largest, free, law library on the iPhone.  He does a comprehensive review of a pre-release version of what he describes as a fast and easy-to-use tool at the link above, complete with screenshots. I recommend you hit the link for the details – I haven’t my own copy yet to play with. However, this paragraph bears repeating:

As I noted at the outset, the app will be free to download and searching the Fastcase library using the app will also be free. First-time users will be required to register, but there will be no cost. Current Fastcase subscribers will be able to use their existing log-on and password.

How cool is that? I really can’t wait for this one to release.

If you are all down with the Real Time Congress app I discussed back some days ago, but feel that there is a gaping hole in your ability to keep tabs on the Executive branch, now there is an app for that too. Armed with an iPhone and a new app called, appropriately, The White House(link here), you can tap into all things Presidential, including blogs, video, photos, newsroom briefs, and live broadcasts over 3G or Wi-Fi. The app shows summarized versions of the news found on the White House’s main website, Whitehouse.gov, but there are links to the site for those interested in the entire shebang. The live broadcasts include such gems as the upcoming State of the Union address, and the app includes a schedule of future broadcasts so you can stay right up to date.

All in all, a nice addition to your news tools.

Would you pay $999.99 for an iPhone app? How about an iPhone app that includes a full Bar prep course for approximately 1/4 to 1/3 less than the full-on, in-person BarBri course? BarMax CA, (link here), currently the most expensive application in the App store, is brought to you by Mike Ghaffary of TrialPay. The app is more than a gigabyte in size and is loaded with Bar prep features. Included are hordes of pages of review material, hundreds of hours of audio lectures and the ability to review the entire course via your iPhone. Furthermore, as part of the app, you can request the supporting paperwork from the various sections to be sent to you from BarMax.

As can be seen from the name, BarMax CA is for the California Bar, which includes multi-state, state essay and ethics portions of the test. BarMax intends to develop apps for other states and is also plannnig to offer a discounted ($500) version that includes the multi-state portion only.

BarBri also has a free Bar prep app, but you must be enrolled in the BarBri course to access the content.

What do you think? Could you study for the Bar exam using only your iPhone / iPod Touch? Are the classroom and paper elements necessary? I am a bit old school here and think I might need that human interaction in order to “get it.” However, I am not of the generation that grew up with on-line course work. Maybe BarMax is the wave of the future of education.

Hat tip to Techcrunch.

Clearly, Nuance is not content to rest on its laurels with its somewhat controversial, but ultimately way cool, text-to-speech iPhone application. Apart from making Naturally Speaking available for iPod Touch and clearing up the contacts upload issue, Nuance has also just released a voice-driven search app called Dragon Search (App store link) that works across search engines. This distinguishes Dragon from Google and Bing, which only permit search on their own search engines, and Vlingo, which searches via Yahoo. It is a free application and employs a simple, easy-to-use interface. Both search engine selection and results appear on the same page.

Check it out, and let me know what you think!