Choosing Your Cordless Mouse

I was a bit late to change to change to using a cordless mouse. The cord didn't really bother me all that much. Of course, like so many things in life, once you try the upgrade, you're hooked. When I started using a laptop fulltime, I found that I would often leave the wired mouse at the office when I traveled. It was just too big a hassle to unplug the cord from the docking station, wind it up and put it in my laptop bag. When I got a cordless mouse, I still had to remember to get the mouse transmitter unplugged from the USB, but it was a much more easily used travel companion. Of course the main reason to use a cordless mouse is that it is much more comfortable to use in most daily working situations.

When my last cordless mouse gave up the the ghost, I shopped a bit and found reviews of a really nice wireless mouse, the Logitech VX Nano. It is great for the road warrior because the USB transmitter is so tiny you can just leave it in the computer all of the time. Mine even fits in a USB port on my laptop within a half an inch of the docking station that I couldn't use for anything anyway. It came with a nice traveling case.

Of course as soon as you buy something a newer or better product comes out. In my case it was Jeff Beard, who published "What's New in Cordless Mice?" on his Law Tech Guru blog in December. Well thankfully for my piece of mind, Jeff liked my new mouse well enough, although it was not his favorite. Read Jeff's blog post and you will be able to impress all of your friends with your knowledge of the cordless mouse landscape. Well, OK, you may not want to brag about it at cocktail parties, but at least you'll have a good idea of which cordless mouse you'd like to own. (And, who knows, if I read Jeff's review often enough I may decide to become a dual cordless mouse owner.)

Tech Toys for the Holidays

With so many holiday gift guides popping up online, Sharon Nelson and I decided to cover "Tech Toys for the Holidays" for the November edition of our podcast, The Digital Edge: Lawyers and Technology. On the same page as the podcast, you will see the links to and prices for the various tech toys, ummm, I mean important technology tools that we cover.

Reid Trautz's 2007 Holiday Gift Guide for Lawyers

Just in time for the kickoff of holiday shopping season is Reid Trautz's 2007 Holiday Gift Guide for Lawyers. It includes lots of interesting ideas for presents for lawyers and laypeople alike, delivered with Reid's typical understated humorous style. "OK, I want that and that and ...."

Courtney Kennaday, Practice Management Advisor for the South Carolina Bar sent me an e-mail today noting another nifty gadget, the Drive eRazer, a bit of hardware that permanently erases data from a hard drive, allowing the hard drive to be safely re-used or donated to a charity. Now if you think that might make a great holiday gift for a lawyer or law firm administrator, well, you really need a serious attitude adjustment.

Jott: Extremely Useful Utility

I've just been using Jott for two days, but I really like it. I've received a couple of good reviews from other users and so I'll encourage my readers to give it a test drive. How many times do you have a bright idea in an odd location or think of something you need to remember to do at work? In a perfect world, you'd be carrying a pad and jot a note to yourself. (And in a perfect world, you'd even remember to take the note to work.)

I know I'm not the only one who has called my own number to leave myself a voice mail reminder. With Jott, I can do that in a much more usable form. I have Jott's 800 number to call on my mobile phone. I can talk for up to 30 seconds. It will then send me an e-mail with the text of what I dictated by voice and a link to the audio file in case the voice recognition software didn't get it correctly. By receiving text instead of just voice mail, it is easy to copy and paste into a calendar or to do list or e-mail to another. Of course that's how a Jott to me works. But I can also add others to my contacts in Jott and identify them by voice command to send them voice-dictated e-mail as well. It will import contacts from many popular e-mail programs including GMail and Outlook. Visit Jott.com for more info or to set up your account.

There's not much risk in trying it. It is free and you do not have to load any software on your phone or PC. You do need to to have access to both your e-mail and your mobile phone for verification when you set it up. Jott obviously retains the text for at least a time, so it is not for confidential matters. It is in public beta. There may be ads later. Jott has been available for a few months. I'm really glad I tried it.

AC Power in Your Car

There was a discussion on Solosez today about adapters for AC power in your car to power your laptop.

I certainly hope no one would try to drive and use a laptop. But as more people start using the wireless Internet cards, it won't be long before more lawyers facing long car trips figure that they can recruit a driver and then work all during the trip on their laptop. It sometimes is hard to see a laptop screen in daylight when operating only on battery power. We know that the monitor is much brighter if the laptop is plugged in. Amanda F. Benedict, a lawyer from Del Mar, CA, caught my attention with her recent purchase from Staples.com, it is a Targus inverter plug with a surge protector built in that fits into the cup holder so it doesn't pull out accidentially. Maybe it is just me, but those plugs seem to pop out of the car's power adapter (f/k/a cigarette lighter) easily and often. I have no idea if you actually NEED a surge protector when plugging into your car, but if you are buying one primarily to use with your laptop, you might as well get one, I'd think.

Tulsa lawyer Jody Nathan showed me something that looked like one of these at our recent OBA Solo and Small Firm Conference. But it turned to be an auto adapter that had two USB plugs. Check it out. It is compact and very inexpensive and you can charge two USB devices at once.

I understand some of the hybrid cars come with AC power plugs. So you'd better get your adapter quick if you want to be on the cutting edge. Soon everyone may have one.

Librarians Show Off Cool Gadgets

Like many others, I love a program about tech-related gadgets. Too bad none of us can afford all of the gadgets we want. Barbara Fullerton, Manager, Librarian Relations, 10-K Wizard, Sabrina Pacifici, Editor & Publisher, LLRX.com and beSpacific.com and Aaron Schmidt, Director, North Plains Public Library, gave their annual presentation on gadgets at the Computers in Libraries meeting. They have posted a PDF of their PowerPoint for all to enjoy. This is one of the best gadget round-ups you will find. They even include gadgets not yet available. Hat tip to beSpacific for the link.

Top 10 Hacks on Flickr

I am sure most all of you are aware of Flickr, the photo sharing website. One of the most interesting aspects of Web 2.0 is how many creative people and organizations build on the work of others. One creates an interesting Web application and then another builds something even more interesting related to that. So, even though the following list may not be directly useful in your law practice, I really wanted to pass along Thomas Hawk's Top 10 Hacks on Flickr. Readers have then added to his list with their suggestions for additions in the comments.

Computer, can you hear me now?

Now that I've been using speech recognition software (DragonDictate NaturallySpeaking Preferred Edition version 9) for a few more weeks, I decided to write an article about it for the Oklahoma Bar Journal.

The article is titled "Computer, Can You Hear Me Now?  One Lawyer's Surprisingly Positive Experience with Speech Recognition Software." It is online at http://www.okbar.org/members/map/articles/2006/090206.htm

In case anyone is curious, here's the headset I ended up buying.

I needed to be able to use one headset for both computer and phone. It just arrived and I have not installed it yet. This purchase pretty much precludes me from buying any interesting hardware or software for the rest of the year. But do you see that little blue button? It is a toggle switch with a computer icon on one side and a telephone icon oh the other. It will sit on the desk between the laptop in its docking station and the telephone. That is exactly what I want instead of buttons on the headset.

Top Gadgets from Engadget

If you like gadgets, then you'll want to check out the winners of the 2005 Engadget awards. Features both reader's choice and the staff choice.

Mobile Phones and ICE

This tip from Law Tech Guru Jeff Beard was news to me. We should all have at least one entry for the name ICE in our mobile phone contacts. ICE stands for In Case of Emergency. If one is incapacitated, then emergency responders may check your mobile phone to see if you have an ICE listing. Jeff notes that putting a period in front (as in .ICE) will put it at the top of the list of contacts. Jeff also suggests a contact named Call If Found with your landline number in case you lose your phone and some honest person finds it.

CaseMap's ReportBooks and Palm's LifeDrive

The new edition of LLRX.com was posted a few days ago. As always there's lots of good content, but I direct your attention to two product reviews: Dennis Kennedy reviews CaseMap's new ReportBook and Brett Burney reviews the new Palm LifeDrive. These are well-written reviews from experts. I'd strongly encourage you to read the reviews even if you think you have no interest in the products. You might change your mind. But more importantly the discussions of these very different cutting edge products will give you some insight into your future as a practitioner and the type of tools that most of us will be using some day. (Of course, these two vendors would say "Why wait?")

First Podcasting, Now Screencasting

The Oklahoma City-based IP blog Phosita has just placed something cool on the Web. Using the software Camtasia Studio, OKC attorney Douglas J. Sorocco, has created a screencast as a demonstration of his firm's blog and the power of Camtasia. Check it out and learn more about how Doug used Camtasia. I do have to say that getting Camtasia has been on my "if I had more time and more money" list for over a year. But I think I've been inspired to move it up to "next month" on my priorities.

Are you doing your backup?

OK, if you aren't doing your data backups properly, if your staff backs up most of the data but not all, or if you don't back up the laptop because "a lot" of the data is on the network, you are hearby sentenced to go to Engadget's Worst Data Disaster contest and read horror stories until you repent-- for real. Sorry, but the contest is over. But your data is still viable, at least right now.

Engadget is an interesting gadget site with many gadgets reviewed or noted daily.

Mac Lawyers & iPod Users

Not knowing much about a topic never stopped me from briefing it, so why shouldn't I write about Macs in the law office? In the February 12, 2005, Oklahoma  Bar Journal my article "Macs Become a Familiar Sight in Law Offices" appears, along with a sidebar about my new favorite gadget, "The iPod: A Gadget You Can Truly Love."  Note to the Mac lawyers: Don't get too excited before you click, this is more an acknowledgement than real analysis.

Top 100 Gadgets

OK, this may not have a lot to do with law, but you know you'll have to read Mobile PC's Top 100 Gadgets of All Time as soon as you see #99 is the Swingline 747 Stapler and #98 is the Pez Dispenser.

Anagram to Improve Your Outlook Contacts

Al Nye the Lawyer Guy just posted a positive review of Anagram. I'm sure many of your Outlooks contacts look like mine, with just a name and an e-mail address. You can right click on the sender's name in an e-mail and add it to your Contacts, but you have to type (or copy and paste) the address, phone, fax and other fields in the Contact fields individually. We should do that, but often don't. Sometimes I paste a whole signature block into the big space at the botton of a Contact. Al says Anagram does a great job of streamlining this by capturing highlighted text and inserting it in all the right fields automatically. With a 45 day free trial and a price tag of $19.95, this may be a great tool to power up your Contacts (or Palm.)

Flash Drive to the Rescue!

When I was at the ABA Midyear Meeting, my laptop refused to connect to the Internet. The underlying problem was simply some corrupted DLL files, but, as the doctors would say, it presented itself in such as way as to send us down a lot of blind alleys. I received help from an outstanding IT person, but because of our schedule of presentations to attend and give, I was off-line for a couple of days. I didn't just need to check e-mail, however. I had completed projects I needed to send back to the office.

My USB flash drive (aka jump drive, aka thumb drive) really helped salvage the situation. I could quickly copy the work to it and then just find any Internet-connected computer with a USB port to e-mail the project out. I could have done the same thing by burning a CD, perhaps, but this was easier. I also had a person ask to borrow my laptop for a PowerPoint presentation. About 15 minutes before it began, she handed me her presentation on a floppy disk. Of course, none of the 3 or 4 laptops in the room had a floppy drive. I rushed to the business service center where they had a floppy drive and they copied it to my flash drive.

These keychain-sized devices can hold lots of information. You can get one with a capacity of 128 megabytes for around $20-$30 and 256 megabytes for $35 or $40. Every lawyer should have one in his or her toolbox. I keep duplicates of many of my PowerPoint presentations on mine. If my laptop suddenly dies, I can still do the presentation if can I locate another computer.

UPDATE: After thinking a bit more about how my flash drive aided me so much, I took the logical step and dumped my old keychain in favor of my JOGR flash drive on my keys. This particular model is rubber coated, shockproof and waterproof. We'll see how it does coping with keys and change in my pocket. I bet within the next three months, I'll be really glad I had it around to either obtain or share some computer data when I didn't have my computer handy.

Is That a Hard Drive in Your Pocket?

The Seagate USB 2.0 Pocket Hard Drive is less than three inches in diameter and comes in 2.5 and 5.0 Gigabyte sizes. It has a retractable USB cord included and (according to the computer magazine I'm holding) the 5GB should cost $160 street. Convenient and cute. I haven't personally seen one, but we all should be familiar with Seagate hard drives.

Managing Your Digital Photos

By now many of us have hundreds, or thousands, of digital images on our computer hard drives or CD-ROMs which we have downloaded from our digital cameras. You can potentially acquire quite a collection of these over the years. How do you manage (and edit) all of these digital images? I know what tools most of you are currently using- whatever came for free with the camera or computer.

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch reviews Google's new release of the free tool Picasa 2 and contrasts it with Adobe Photoshop Album 2, which he has used for some time. You will find this review worth reading. It is a great primer on how photo management tools work. I may be easily entertained, but I love the fact that Picasa includes an "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for quick automatic photo retouching. Thanks to Tom Mighell's Inter Alia for the pointer.

If you still want to read more about digital photo tools, today David Pogue of The New York Times publishes a comparison between Apple's iPhoto 5 for the Macintosh and Picasa 2. (NY Times may require free registration.)

Great Electronics Reviews

Even though Christmas is over, you may still want to download Wired Magazine's TEST reviews publication. It has reviews of all sorts of products and gadgets. If it plugs into something, there's likely a review contained in its 117 pages.  Download from here. When you get to the site, I suggest you right click on the download link and select "Save target as.." to save it to your computer as opposed to just opening it. (8 MB download) WARNING: This may make you wish you had more disposable income.

The Mirra Personal Server 2.0

I was very intrigued when I read Brett Burney's Review of the Mirra Personal Server 2.0 on LLRX.com. I didn't get one of these for Christmas, so I may have to buy one myself for my home system. I think that many lawyers should be investigating external hard drives as a part of their disaster recovery plans. They are much less expensive now. I haven't seen the Mirra in person, but according to Brett it is fairly easy to configure. Then it simply makes a mirror image copy of everything you have designated on your hard drive, or your entire hard drive for that matter. The Mirra is more expensive than some similar products, but it has some exciting features that have sold me. You can invite others to share certain of your folders by logging into the Mirra website. You can give yourself a similar invitation to share all of your folders. So, for one price, it looks like a lawyer can set up a secure extranet to share documents with clients and others online, remote access for the owner to access files remotely and have a back-up solution that functions automatically. Yes, I'm very interested.