Advocate's Studio

I admit that I am a bit late on breaking the news on this one, but I do want to link to my article reviewing Google Wave that ran last month in the GP Solo Technology eReport published by the ABA. Already, the information appears a tiny bit dated, but that’s just the speed that the Web travels. Check out some of the other great articles too, you might recognize a few names and certainly will pick up some good information!

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• 9 Best Practices for Attorneys Using Facebook (insidefacebook.com)
• Five Best Collaboration Tools [Hive Five] (lifehacker.com)
• What Is Google Wave [In Two Minutes] (jeffisageek.net)

You can always count on Lifehacker for a great list of tools and you have to love free. While you may have many of these, odds are you don’t have all of them, and there likely is something of use to you in this list. From Windows 7 beta (no longer available), to icon organizers and Hulu, from speedy DNS server finders to widgets for your desktop, there are lots of goodies in Santa’s bag. Popularity is judged by the level of interest in the original Lifehacker post on each tool, so it is someone subjective. Check in and check out with a new computer toy to help you get the job done.

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• From the Tips Box: Gmail File Hosting, Cell Phone Tricks, and History Clearing [From The Tips Box] (lifehacker.com)

When it comes to apps, apparently the iPhone has nothing on Twitter. From the humble inception two years ago of a single Twitter app, Twitterverse tools have since multiplied 50,000-fold. Fifty-thousand! The Next Web reports on comments to this effect by Ryan Sarver, Twitter’s Director of Platform, at the ongoing Le Web Conference. Sarver confirmed Twitter’s commitment to application development by, among other points, advising that Twitter would be opening its firehose and that it would be launching a developer’s platform. So, expect more Twitter tools from third parties. Aggregation and rating sites like oneforty, which seek to organize the plethora of existing Twitter applications, are bound to become more popular.

I availed myself of a few Twitter tools yesterday. I spend some quality time finally personalizing and activating my Twitter background. Using my vector graphics program, a free on-line Twitter background editor and a Firefox add-on that lets me drop active links onto my Twitter background (you need the add-on to use the links as well), I made a spiffy new page that offers links to my other Web outposts. You can visit my new background here.

I can’t wait until they create a Dragon Naturally Speaking app for Twitter updates!

What attorney hasn’t longed for a simple means of comparing, merging and incorporating changes into documents? It’s what we do!

For the hefty price of FREE, CompareMyDocs offers a web-based service that compares and marks up to seven documents. Differences are displayed in a neat interface. Changes are color-coded and you can hover over text to accept or reject a particular change. After you are done with CompareMyDocs, simply download the final to your own word processor for the finishing touches.

CompareMyDocs works for Rich Text Format and Word formatted documents. The site cautions that it works best for text only documents, as tables and other graphics are not displayed.  It is currently in Beta.

CompareMyDocs is a close cousin of the desktop application TextFlow. TextFlow is not yet widely available and remains closed while tweaking is done. CompareMyDocs, however, is available – it launched today.

Now before you go pegging me with assertions that a web-based document comparison app is no place for client-sensitive information, consider how difficult it is to even edit or compare versions of your firm’s newsletter! I still get agita using the comparable functions in Word 2007. Consider it for what it is worth: a handy free app that offers a simpler view of the life and times of your documents.

Hat Tip to ReadWriteWeb

You can never have enough of them. Particularly if they will help you run your business, solve your problems and make your job easier.

The ABA Journal has compiled a list of “70 Sizzling Apps” – lawyer-friendly helpers that run the gamut from word-smithing to productivity to accessibility to task management to fun and games (lawyers need a break too!).  Some apps, particularly in the latter category, do not really exhibit a clear connection to the practice of law, but they are all interesting and worthwhile to some degree.

Here is a sample of apps listed by the ABA article:

WaffleTurtle offers searchable iPhone apps of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure ($2.99); Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure ($2.99); Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act ($4.99); Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure ($2.99); Federal Rules of Criminal Proce­dure ($2.99); Federal Rules of Evidence ($2.99); Lanham Act ($2.99); local patent rules from seven federal district courts whose dockets attract great numbers of intellectual property cases ($2.99); Sarbanes-Oxley Act ($1.99); securities laws including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Invest­ment Company Act of 1940 and the Invest­ment Advis­ers Act of 1940 ($4.99); federal copyright code ($1.99); and federal patent laws ($2.99).

I was suprised to see that a few of my favorites didn’t make the list. One of these is reQall, a free iPhone app and companion web service  that beg for a $24 per year Pro subscription to keep track of your to do list. It’s quite ingenious: it takes emails or voice recordings of to-do list items, transcribes to text, organizes tasks by location or keywords, offers shared reminders with co-workers, friends or family, includes memory jogging functions, syncs with Google calendar and Outlook, and now sports a related items link that will sync reQall with Evernote and group items accordingly.

Whatever your preference in apps, there is no shortage to choose from, as the ABA so aptly points out!