Last week I wrote about how to Convert Blog Posts To Audio And Listen On The Go. The post covered the native Mac text-to-voice application, which though useful, was somewhat lacking and didn’t make for the most pleasant listening experience. But community to the rescue – Greg Lambert suggested trying Vocalyze and Lisa Solomon pointed to his blog post about the application.

Volacyze turns blogs and and other written web content into audio snippets. They offer a ton of blogs, news sites and websites that you can add to your playlist. Can’t find your favorite newspaper, magazine, or news website? Fill out their content source suggestion box. However, though I may appreciate many blogs and news sites, rarely do I want to read every post and article that is published. I’d rather listen to posts that I saved to read later. (more…)

In less than a week many of us will descend on the Windy City for the 2012 ABA Techshow and what better way to navigate the masses than a spanking new mobile app. And it’s a good thing too, since reception can be spotty at best in some of the rooms and especially the vibrant exhibit hallways.

At first glance the app looks very useful if only for the schedule and list of exhibiters. Here’s a breakdown of the features:

Exhibitors – A list of exhibitors by name and category. It includes their booth location, brief description and contact information. Great feature.

Schedule – there are two of these — an Attendee Schedule which you need a mobile registration code to access, and a Public Schedule. You’ll also need the code to access the Contacts feature. The code is included with your registration confirmation.

Special Events – Make no mistake, Techshow is a social event and this will be your very handy guide. (more…)

Is your RSS reader overflowing? Are the choice pieces you saved to Instapaper to read later, unread? Have a dozen or more brower tabs open with interesting blog posts that you’ll “definitely” get to today?

Yes, yes, and yes. Maybe converting the blog posts to audio could help.

Since rejoining the gym, I’ve been looking for ways to keep toiling on the eliptical, treadmill, or the particularly tedious stationary bike. Rocking out to music is fine, but even that’s insufficient after 15 minutes or so and boredom sets in. The ensuing minutes seem agonizingly longer.

On the other hand, I’ve become a digital hoarder of blog posts and articles. So I started exploring ways to use the time at the gym (and subway rides) to consume the information that’s piling up at home. I ruled out printing and reading the posts at the gym, since first of all, I don’t have a printer (paperless office and all), and more importantly, I don’t want to risk injury by slipping off the treadmill when consumed with a particularly interesting post. (more…)

Conference season seems to be all year-round these days with mid-year and annual meetings, and a slew of association junkets. It’s where we escape our social networking dungeons and meet, engage and build relationships live and in person. A throwback. A welcome one.

But what we still can’t escape is the ubiquitous 3.5 x 2 inches business card. A deluge of 3.5 x 2 inches business cards. And they’re not going anywhere. So what do we do with the more than 50 cards collected? Rev up Outlook, Gmail, or other email clients and laboriously enter the information for each card?

Heavens no. We could Bump them, but it requires that both individuals have the app installed on their smartphone. I’ve had Bump on my iPhone for many moons and rarely use it or even update my information on it. So, after a recent Association meeting, business cards sprawled across my desk, I started researching alternatives and came across CardMunch from the folks at LinkedIn. (more…)

First things first: the whole team joins me in saying thanks to everyone who voted to name Fastcase for iPhone and iPad the 2011 Legal Productivity App of the Year. It’s really an honor, and we’re thrilled.

We originally built our legal research app as a research and development experiment – we wanted to see what we could learn from mobile research, and we thought we might get 10,000 downloads, ever. We were wrong. The Fastcase app has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, and has exceeded our wildest hopes. (more…)

Rulebook is the first app to offer a truly viable replacement to the paper rule books all lawyers buy each year, saving lawyers hundreds of dollars each year. Rulebook does not require an Internet connection in order to read, search, highlight and annotate the various court rules, all of which are available in one app.

One of Rulebook’s best features, however, is the way it automatically updates rules when they are amended. This allows attorneys to know that their rules are up to date without the need to check pocket parts or go online. Rulebook’s updating process also preserves attorneys’ highlights, bookmarks and annotations even when rules are amended, something no other app, let alone paper rule books, can do.

When a book that has been downloaded to a lawyer’s personal library has been amended, the library icon in the bottom left-hand corner of the app glows orange. The lawyer needs merely touch the button to download the update. An attorney from New Jersey familiar with the updating process made the following comment about this function: Rulebook is “revolutionary—and I don’t say that lightly. The ability to have real-time, annotated reference materials like that, on any iOS device, and to customize that for your practice area, is one of my holy grails for legal technology.” All this, coupled with significantly lower prices than the paper equivalent attorneys are used to buying, makes Rulebook a great reference tool in the office as well as in court. (more…)

We’ve written about how we use Buffer App and also even did a post on how to use the app on your iPhone. Now, Buffer has come out with the highly requested iPhone app to go along with its Android app.

The iPhone app has been the most awaited Buffer feature, says Leo Widrich, Buffer Co-Founder.

First, a quick overview of how Buffer works. When you discover a blog post, article or website online that you want to share with your Twitter followers, Buffer it by clicking on the Buffer browser extension and the app automatically schedules the tweets for you throughout the day, at a schedule set up by you. This is a time saver as you don’t have to set a time for every tweet you wish to schedule.

Another great feature is the ability to buffer retweets from inside twitter.com. Twitter’s web interface only allows for native retweets with no commentary. With Buffer you can send out traditional retweets with one click along with accompanying editorials. (more…)

Congratulations to Nicole (Niki) Black, social media and technology maven, on the publication of her new book Cloud Computing for Lawyers, published by the ABA’s Law Practice Management Section.

We at Rocket Matter, providing the leading legal cloud computing practice management and time and billing software, are very excited about the book, which to us is further evidence of online legal software inevitability in 2012 and beyond.

This isn’t just some crazy, out-there, revolutionary press that brought this book to market, it’s the ABA, which means to us, we as an industry have arrived.

Congrats again to Niki for scoring a forward from leading legal business thinker Richard Susskind (The End of Lawyers), who introduces the book:

In relation to cloud computing, this book provides the way.  Written by an individual who understands the law and technology, it is a punchy primer for lawyers who want to grasp the potential of cloud computing and do so quickly. (more…)

Evernote is one of our favorite productivity apps — on the desktop, browser and mobile device. Check out the short Tech Tutorial Evernote video we made.

As good as the stand-alone application is, Evernote has its own app store with desktop and web software and services, along with native applications, extensions and features that make your Evernote experience even more awesome.

Evernote Trunk also features over 100 add-ons for users of its mobile app, from task managers to productivity tools to news readers.

So this week’s edition of mobile App of the Week is actually a trunk of apps — Evernote Trunk. Here are a few choice mobile app highlights:

EverClipper – Crop, rotate and resize photos on your iPhone, then save them in Evernote.

Genius Scan – Turn your iPhone into a pocket scanner that can save to Evernote. (more…)

Finis, on the right, and friends from MILO

Litigators: if you didn’t come up against Finis in a courtroom, consider yourself lucky. He had such a mastery of presentation via technology, notably the iPad, that lucrative judgements rained down on his side. I had the honor of watching one of Finis’ iPad CLE’s last week, the day he died. It was like watching David Copperfield: he was able to perform elegant magic with that tablet, moving from app to app.

Finis played many roles – he was a loving husband, a lawyer, a trial presentation consultant, a member of his local community, a technology consultant, and to many of us, a great friend. Finis’ enthusiasm about life was infectious. His interests ran many and deep. I often told people he knew more things about more things than anyone else I’ve ever met. He was constantly in the moment. His laugh, humor, and passion were infectious. His eyes would get big, almost like a kid, when he would talk about things that interested him. Every moment I spent with him was totally engaging and positive. Finis was one of those guys that made you feel more alive and alert. (more…)