Category Archives: Software

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WebMail Notifier: Another Great Firefox Add-on

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FirefoxAs I have said before, one of the reasons that I love Firefox is that it allows you to install add-ons to make the browser work the way that you want it to work. The newest extension that I have fallen in love with is WebMail Notifier.

WebMail Notifier checks your webmail accounts (including GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and others) and lets you know when you have new mail and how many messages you have. For my work email, I use Outlook. However, I have a variety of other email accounts that are aggregated into my GMail account. Before installing this add-on, I often forgot to check my GMail account. Since installing the add-on, however, I have remembered to check the account on a daily basis.

The add-on simply puts a small envelope on your bottom status bar. When you have mail, the envelope lights up. It’s very unobtrusive, yet effective.

If you have a webmail account, I recommend WebMail Notifier.

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My Review of Adobe Acrobat 9

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TechnolawyerLast week, my review of Adobe Acrobat 9 was published by Technolawyer. The review can be found on my Files page or downloaded directly from here.

The short version is that I love the program and would recommend it to anyone who has not yet upgraded. There are several new features as well as improvements to existing features. As I said in the review:

The greatest improvement that I have seen, however, resides in the Forms feature. With Acrobat 8, I could create a form. However, doing so was not an easy process. Every time I tried to use the feature, I ended up spending a lot of time trying to get the form right. And I still usually ended up with a form that worked, but was not what I wanted.

With version 9, however, Adobe has made the Forms feature much more functional. The form wizard recognizes the form fields better. Also, I can now easily add new fields or modify any of the automatically recognized fields. Plus, Adobe has made form creation even easier by having all of the fields appear in the left sidebar. This means I can easily access and modify them, and I can change the tab order of the fields simply by dragging the field names around.

Download my full review here.

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A Great Solution for Network Attached Storage

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The Affinity Law Office Technology Blog has a post on a great and cheap solution for network attached storage (NAS). They suggest using an older desktop PC and the FeeNAS server operating system. I have not yet tried this software, however, this is a project that I have been considering and I am quite pleased to find a free software solution.

If you are looking for a similar solution, this may be something you want to check out.

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LitiReviews Offers Reviews of Legal Software

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Lexbe.com has unvieled a new website called litiReviews. LitiReviews describes itsself as having:

the largest collection of free legal and litigation software reviews on the web.  All reviews (100+) are full-text, and have been published in legal magazines, journals, websites and blogs. LitiReview links to copies of reviews available on the internet, or hosted by us at the author’s request.

I haven’t yet had the chance to fully explore this site, however, I like the concept of a central location to search for reviews of legal software.

The site appears to collect reviews that are otherwise available on the internet and gather them together in a searchable format. The search function appears to work well and, on the reviews I tested, clicking on the review title either took me to the website where the review was originally published or downloaed a PDF of the original review.

This site may not answer all of the questions that you have about a particular piece of software. However, it does look like a good place to start your research on legal software.

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Google Chrome: My Initial Thoughts

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I downloaded Google Chrome today just to play with it and see what it was like. My initial thought is that, had it been introduce three years ago, it would be really cool. Right now, however, it ranks a shoulder shrug from me. Maybe it has some hidden jewels that I haven’t found yet. Unless someone points them out to me, I will not be switching my default browser from Firefox.

Despite my ambivilence at this point and given Google’s other successes, I would not be surprised to see myself using a Google browser 18-24 months in the future.

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You Send It Got Better

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You Send ItOne of my favorite online services is You Send It. It allows you to send large attachments via email. I have written about this service before. I have used the service to send discovery documents, pictures, and powerpoint presentations without having to worry about exceeding the limits on someone’s mailbox.

One of the great feautres is that the service has a plug-in that integrates with Outlook. This means that if I send an attachment that is above a certain size (I can set this size), then You Send It automatically kicks in and handles the file.

Another great feature is that there are many options available. They provide a free service that has size and number limitations (on both the individual message and over a period of time). They also provide pay services that include additional features.

Now You Send It has added an additional feature. In addition to the Outlook plug-in, they have a desktop application called You Send It Express that allows you to send and receive files directly from your desktop. They also have several other plug-ins that allow you to send large files directly from a variety of applications, including Adobe Acrobat, iPhoto, and Corel Draw X3.

If you have a large file to send to someone, you might want to check out You Send It.

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Another Great Firefox Extension

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I love the various extensions that you can add to Firefox to make it work the way that works best for me. Tom Mighell at Inter Alia has identified another great Firefox extension Picknik.

Picknik allows you to easily capture graphics and webpages right from within Firefox. Picknic is easy to use. Simply right click on a photo or web page and the graphic is opened in a new tab with editing functions such as rotate, crop, resize, etc.

Also you can easily save the graphic or post it to a variety of websites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Flickr. I recommend you add this extension to your Firefox browser.

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Is Anyone Else Having Problems Using Cambria with HP LaserJet 5

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Quite a while ago I made the switch to using Cambria as my default text font in my word processor. I really like the looks of it and I think that it looks good and is easier to read on both the screen and paper. Recently, however, I have been having problems printing from Word 2007 to my HP LaserJet 5 while using Cambria. When doing so, I end up with a document that looks like:

Sample Printed Cambria

As you might expect, this is quite annoying. My initial thought was that it might be a problem with the font itself. Maybe it became corrupted. However, the same document print to my two Lexmark printers at home just fine. If I change the font from Cambria to something else (I have tried both Calibri and Times New Roman) everything prints just fine.

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions? I am stumped.

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Another Word Tip

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One question I often get from others who are frustrated with Word deals with how to fix the formatting in a particular document. Often the formatting screw ups occur because someone was not properly using styles. Somethimes, however, the formatting is screwed up because the document is imported from aonther format or because someone pasted text without using the Paste Special function.

The best way to deal with this formatting problem is to take the formatting back to square one. You can easily do this simply by selecting the text and then pressing Ctrl + Enter. This converts the formatting for the selected text to the Normal style. Once it is there, you can then reformat the document as appropriate.