Category Archives: Software

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Cool Web Applications Usable by Anyone

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Recently, Dumb Little Man posted 21 Excellent Web Apps for College Students. The list included some obvious choices such as Wikipedia, Gmail, Zoho, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. It also included other suggestions such as Remember the Milk, Bookfinder, Drop.io, and Flowchart.com.

You should review the entire list. Although written for college students, there is almost certainly something on the list the you can find useful. For example, although I have no need to Rate My Professor, I was able to use the website to track down a college professor that I had lost track of and, over the last several years, had been casually searching for. The instacalc is also quite useful, especially for the math challenged attorneys that I often run into.

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More Thoughts on Digital Signatures

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I have written multiple times about using digital signatures. As I have pointed out before, however, what I am referring to in my posts is actually just a picture of my signature added to a PDF file. A true digital signature is different and includes security and verification protocols. Recently Adobe Acrobat hosted a webinar on using and deploying digital signatures.

Unfortunately, most of the conversation was over my head. It looks like I was not the only one. Ernie the Attorney reports at PDF for Lawyers:

The other day I attended a free online webinar by some Adobe gurus who dove deep into the arcana of digital signatures.  After the dive I realized that I had a mild case of the bends.

Here’s the problem.  Like most people who don’t live in an ‘enterprise world,’ where there’s a rigorous document review cycle, I just want to sometimes slap a ‘digital signature’ on a document and not have the recipient feel like I’ve sent them some bizarre totemic glyph.
My needs are simple.  Apparently, true digital signatures are not.
Ernie correctly notes that people are not familiar with digital signatures and most do not know what to do when they see one. As Ernie explains:
A signature, digital or not, has to satisfy two elements: (1) non-repudiability, and (2) acceptance by the receiving party.  In other words, the point of signing a document is so the recipient knows it’s from you, and that you can’t deny it’s from you (i.e. you can’t repudiate authorship of the document).  Digital signatures are far superior to regular signatures in this arena.  Where they fail miserably is in the ‘acceptance’ part.
Because digital signatures are not familiar to most people they freak out if they see a bunch of numbers where they’re used to seeing indecipherable human scrawl.  So, how to remedy this problem?
The quick and dirty fix is to do what I outline in that blurb I mentioned a few sentences ago. Just create a stamp and slap that on the document you want to ‘sign.’  It won’t be secure like a real digital signature (and if you want to repudiate it you can say your secretary exceeded her authority and stamped it without your knowledge).  But, let’s say you’re a fair-minded, by-the-rules kind of guy (or gal).  Is there another option?
Turns out there is (although this wasn’t covered in the Adobe webinar; I had to find it myself using a snorkle).

Check out Ernie’s entire post to see a simple way of incorporating both a normal looking signature and a digital signature in your electronic documents.

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A Great Offer from Log Me In

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I am a big fan of Log Me In. I use it to access my home computer remotely. In fact, my ancient monitor on my home desktop (which I use mostly as a server type machine) recently died and I have just been using Log Me In to control it rather than replacing the monitor right now. Because I use Log Me In, I receive emails from them periodically, The last one I received, I thought it was great marketing.

The email started by emphasizing that you can use Log Me In to access your computer while you are traveling, it then went right for those of use who serve as tech support for our friends and family:

If you’re spending time with your parents during the holidays, be sure to install LogMeIn Pro on their PCs so you can help them out remotely next time they call with a computer problem.

I thought that this was a great point. In fact, I have recently installed Log Me In on a couple of computers that I support and it works great to to fix simple problems from my home or office.

If you have never tried Log Me In, give it a whirl. Also, during the holidays, they are selling Log Me In Pro at a 50% discount ($34.95 per year).

I know that GoToMyPC is the popular remote access solution. I have heard many stories about how much people like GoToMyPC. I prefer LogMeIn because it works well for me and it is less expensive than GoToMyPC. Additonally, Log Me In offers a free solution that allows you to remotely control your computer. Log Me In Pro includes more features and I use it for my main computer. However, it is great to be able to install the free version and gain remote access to a computer that you need to work on.

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Creating a Digital Signature

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I know that I have written before about creating a digital signature. (Just to clarify, by digital signature, in this instance I am talking about a digital picture of your physical signature.)

Ernie Svenson recently announced that he was putting on a CLE seminar on digital workflow. As Ernie explained at the time:

In the past two years I’ve given several presentations on ‘Digital Workflow,’ or how to make your law practice less dependent on paper. Whenever I give this talk the room is always packed with people who want to know the step-by-step process of becoming more digital.

About six months ago Dane Ciolino and I were tapped to give this presentation together, which was great because, over the years, Dane and I have often had lunch together to talk about our ‘paperless law practices’ and share ideas on how to make things better. So presenting together was a lot of fun for us, and (from the feedback we got) entertaining and informative for the audience.

* * *

It occurred to us that there’s a big demand for this kind of information, and it’s not really being presented very often around Louisiana. So, we decided to take the bull by the horns and put on our own CLE Seminar. The idea is to create a group of basic, intermediate, and advanced sessions. And to present them on a fairly regular basis. We’re going to start with a 3 hour session on December 12th, in the morning. For more information, and to register for the seminar, click here.

Since then, they have added several useful pages to their CLE website, including a page on the IRS requirements for keeping records electronically and basics on scanning. The page that caught my eye, however, was on digital signatures.

That page has a PDF download that explains how to create a digital signature as well as how to “flatten” your PDF so that the siganture is not easily removed. The page also includes javascript code that allows yout to add the flatten command to your Acrobat menus.

This is a great resource and I urge you to check it also. Also, if you are anywhere near where Ernie is giving one of his presentations, I would suggest that you attend that as well, if at all possible.

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Nitro PDF, A Viable Alternative to Adobe Acrobat?

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The Greatest American Lawyer recently suggested a viable alternative to Adobe Acrobat: Nitro PDF. Most Acrobat alternatives do nothing more than simply create PDFs. In my mind, that is not the purpose of Adobe Acrobat. It has many more features that allow you to comment on or otherwise handle your PDF documents. According to GAL, Nitro PDF includes these features:

You need to do more than read PDF documents.  You need to be able to engage in mark-up, editing, commenting, and creating PDF documents.  I have been using both Nitro and Adobe products for years.  I have always been shocked at how good Nitro is at mimicking the Adobe Standard functionality.

I have not tried Nitro PDF before, but it sounds like they have the right idea here. If you are looking for a full featured PDF program and don’t want to buy Acrobat, now might be the time to check out Nitro PDF. The regular price is $99. However, Nitro PDF has a Christmas special that is valid unit December 19. The special pricing is $49.50.

As GAL noted in his post, even if you already have a full version of Acrobat, Nitro makes a good option to give your staff full PDF functionality without the cost of Acrobat.

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Backing Up Your Gmail Account

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I along with many other people I know have a Gmail account. I don’t use mine for business, however, I know that some people do.

If you are using your Gmail account for anything that is at all important, you need to check out Gmail Backup. Gmail backup is a nifty utility that allows you to backup your Gmail account. thus preventing you from losing any of your important emails. Google is good, but it is not infallible. Given the email outages that have happened with the Gmail service, it is not inconceivable that you could lose some of your emails at times.

If you use Gmail for anything important at all, I suggest you check out Gmail Backup.

Hat tip to Inter Alia for pointing this out.

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Windows 7: Is It the Silver Lining in the Vista Cloud?

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I know that large numbers of people, including myself, have stuck with Windows XP and avoided Windows Vista. A recent post from Lifehacker provides hope that Windows 7 may not suck. The post gives us the Top 10 Things to Look Forward to in Windows 7.

Of the 10 items, three of them jumped out at me as quite useful.

9. Calculator, WordPad, and Paint got overhauled.

It sucks that Windows 7 is stripping the built-in Photo Gallery and movie-making software that you’ll find in Vista (even the Windows Calendar is nowhere to be found in the 7 Preview), but a few of their built-in stalwarts did get some attention. WordPad and Paint both got the Office 2007 ribbon installed, and Calculator now incorporates real world uses into it. At this point only masochists still use Paint and WordPad, but the extension of the ribbon to those inconsequential programs may be a harbinger for more upgrades and ribbon appearances in the future.

I am actually not a big fan of the ribbon, but I love the fact that the built in calculator will actually be useful. This is a nice touch that just makes computing that much easier.

7. You can switch between Wi-Fi networks in one click from the system tray.

File this under “a small change can make a huge difference”: Click on the Wi-Fi adapter in your system tray to pop up a menu of available wireless networks. From there you can refresh the list, and choose the one you want to connect to in one click. Another boon for roaming notebook users.

This is another simple thing that can make your computing life better. Why does Windows make us wade through a bunch of stupid screens just to find and access wireless networks? Making this accessible with just a couple of clicks is a great improvement.

6. You can decide what you do and don’t want to see in the system tray.

No more registry-editing to blanket-disable balloon notifications in your system tray! Windows 7 lets you set what icons and notifications you see in your tray with a detailed dialog box. Just right-click the system tray and choose “Customize…” in the menu.

Finally! I have never understood why my choice was either to have all of my icons in my system tray show or essentially none of them show. This either/or choice is stupid. Getting to choose the icons you want is something that should have happened long ago. I am happy to see its arrival.

Right now Windows 7 is still in pre-beta release. Thus, it may turn out to be as hated as Vista. However, there are some signs that this might actually turn out to be a decent operating system. Allegedly Microsoft wants this software done in time to have it ship with computers for the Christmas 2009 season. In the meantime, I will be waiting to see what might be happening with this new version.

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Adobe Creates a Community for Acrobat Users

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Ernest Svenson posted an announcement today at PDF for Lawyers that he and David Masters are moderating the legal group at the new Adobe Acrobat User Community. Ernie explains:

I happy to announce that Adobe has created an online forum called Adobe Acrobat User Community. It’s free to join, and there are lots of good reasons to do so. First of all, there are some great free online seminars coming up (e.g. Digital Signatures on Dec 17th, and Scanning & OCR on Jan 21st of next year).

But, if you are in the legal profession, a great reason to join is the sub-group on Legal issues. I am a co-moderator of that forum, along with David Masters, whom many of you know is the author of The Lawyers’ Guide to Adobe Acrobat. The more people who participate and share their knowledge the more beneficial the forum will be. So stop by and sign up if you can.

Did I mention it’s free?!

I have already signed up. If you use Acrobat in your practice (and you should), you should check it out as well.

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Tips for Using Google Docs

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Google Docs is becoming more popular as people realize the advantage of having documents accessible to them anywhere they have internet access. Recently Digital Inspiration posted a “practical guide to Google Docs.” The post includes tips such as the following:

Q: How do I upload all my Microsoft Office documents from the desktop on to Google Docs?

A: List Uploader is a Windows utility that enables you to bulk upload files to Google Docs via drag-n-drop or through the right click menu.

Mac OS X users can upload documents through GDocsUploader – simply drag-n-drop the document onto the uploader icon. Another option is GDocsBar – just drag your files in the Firefox sidebar and they’ll automatically get uploaded to Google Docs.

Q: How do I associate the common Office file extensions like doc/xls/ppt with Google Docs so that desktop documents open directly in the web browser?

A: Get the Google Toolbar for Firefox and select the ‘Google Docs’ checkbox from Toolbar options. This will let you open Office documents directly in the browser bypassing Microsoft Office.

Q: I am worried that someone may hack into my Google Account and delete the important files. To play safe, I want to download all documents from Google Docs locally and burn them on to a CD. Is it possible?

A: To download a copy of all your Google Docs documents on to the hard drive, get this Grease Monkey script. It will create a list of all your online documents that you can download in one step using the DownloadThemAll add-on.

Click here to see the remainder of the tips. If you use Google Docs, you definitely want to read this post.

Thanks to Dumb Little Man for pointing me in the direction of this post.

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Citations the Easy Way

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Bonnie Shucha of WisBlawg recently pointed her readers in the direction of a great new Firefox add-on called CiteGenie.

CiteGenie describes itself as being able to:

Automagically copy text with correct citations from Westlaw and other websites

Cite Genie further explains:

Cutting and pasting when doing legal research using your browser is simple. But having to construct the citation for what you pasted is not so simple. This is especially true with legal citations from sources like Westlaw. You have to stop and copy the case name separately, determine the pinpoint page numbers, and adjust the date and court name format.

So I decided to write a browser plugin that would automatically add a pinpoint citation to the text I copy and paste. Thus CiteGenie was born.

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When CiteGenie is installed, it adds a new option to the browser’s right-click menu to “Copy with CiteGenie.”  To use CiteGenie, simply highlight the text in the court opinion, right-click and select the “Copy with CiteGenie” option (or just press Ctrl-Shift-C).  Then you can paste the text into any other program, such as your word processor, and the text will be pasted, along with the pinpoint citation for the selected text from the court opinion.

This sounds almost too good to be true. However, a review of CiteGenie on LLRX.com reveals that it may work as easily and accurately as promised.

I have not yet had the opportunity to use CiteGenie in a brief. However, I have installed it in my browser and am ready to take advantage of it.