Category Archives: Software

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Adobe Acrobat Seminars

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It is no secret that  Adobe Acrobat is one of my favorite programs. I am excited about the launch of version 9 and am curious about what new features that Adobe has added to make Acrobat even better for lawyers.

Fortunately, Adobe appears to want to answer that question. Rick Borstein has announced on his blog that he will be free 1 hour eseminars where he’ll “show off the latest legal-specific features of Adobe Acrobat 9.”

Rick says that during the seminar, you will

  • Find out which features are in which version of Acrobat
  • Learn how to create a PDF Portfolio for a Closing Binder
  • Discover the new and powerful Document Comparison tool to help you spot changes fast
  • See how to accelerate Redaction workflows with pattern-based search
  • Split documents for electronic filing workflows
  • See new, easier-to-user forms creation and data collection tools
  • Use enhanced Bates Numbering to help you manage your case
  • Take advantage of new ClearScan OCR
  • Export PDFs for re-editing in a word processing program

Right now he has three different seminars scheduled. I am getting ready to sign up now. If you are at all interested, simply click here to go to Rick’s blog and sign up.

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PicLens Makes Pictures Easy to Use

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A couple of months ago, Matt Homan recommended PicLens for anyone who “EVER view photos or other images in the web.” At the time, I thought the suggestion was interesting, but I did nothing other than bookmark Matt’s post and the PicLens site.

Recently I was using Flickr and was again frustrated at how awful their browsing ability is. After getting frustrated, I remembered PicLens and quickly installed the software in my browser. After using it for just a few seconds, I was hooked.

PicLens allows you to create full screen immersive views of pictures on a variety of websites, including Flickr, Google Images, MySpace, Facebook, and others.

It is a great program and it is easy to use. I recommend you try it out.

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Damn You Buzz Bruggeman!

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Recently I had a self imposed (or maybe a wife imposed) moratorium on purchasing new software. Some days I think I like to collect software as much as I do other gadgets. To that end, I download a lot of free trial software, play with it for a while, and then discard it when the trial period expires.

A little more than 60 days ago, I decided to download a free trial of ActiveWords, which was developed by Buzz Bruggeman. The principal behind ActiveWords is simple. You type in a few letters or a word and ActiveWords replaces what you typed either with other text, or by navigating to a website, or by launching a program, or by performing a set of actions.

I have heard of ActiveWords for years, but I had never tried it before, figuring that I don’t really do that many things that it would be useful for. Oh how I was wrong.

When I downloaded it, it took me a while to get things started. I quickly realized, however, that this program was designed for me. I am a minimalist when it comes to my desktop, my menus and my quick launch bar. I keep very few icons on my desktop and only my used programs on my quick launch bar. Additionally, I keep my menu very organized with folders and subfolders. This means that for programs I have to navigate through several submenus to launch a program I use infrequently.

With ActiveWords, however, I simply assign an active word to the program. So, for example, when I type CM, ActiveWords launches CaseMap for me. If I type GM, ActiveWords launches Firefox and navigates to my GMail account. Similarly, Lit, navigates to my Litigation folder in My Computer.

The program is easy to use. Adding new active words is easy and takes only a few seconds. Another great feature is that you can assign as many different words to perform the same function. For example, with the My Documents folder, depending on the day, I may think of it as mydocuments, docs, or mydocs. With ActiveWords I can associate each of these with the action of opening the My Documents folder. Thus, regardless of which word I type, the My Documents folder opens.

In a very sneaky move, ActiveWords gives you a 60 day free trial of the program. This means that it gives you plenty of time to learn to use the program and get hooked on it. Once you start using ActiveWords, my guess is that you will not give it up easily. On day 61 I tried to perform an ActiveWords function and it did not work. After checking a few things, quickly realized that my free trial had expired. I briefly considered bravely computing without ActiveWords. After about 15 seconds, I had shelved that idea and was on ActiveWords’ website buying a copy of the program.

Download this program and give it a whirl. If you start using, you will wonder how you lived without it. On day 61, I predict that you too will be taking Buzz’s name in vain and pulling out your credit card.

One of the goals I have with this blog is to discuss the ways in which we can leverage technology to practice law more effectively. I know of no other utility that allows you to do this more efficiently and effectively than ActiveWords.

Update: I wanted to add a couple of updates to this post. First, as alluded to in the comments below, ActiveWords installs a monitor bar that stretches across the top of you monitor. This bar allows easy access to ActiveWords and its features. It also shows when you are entering an active word. Personally, I hate when programs install monitor bars like this. I want to control my own desktop. Fortunately, the monitor bar is easily disabled. Had I not been able to disable the monitor bar, I would have uninstalled the program.

Second, I do have one minor quibble with the program that I forgot to mention. When you are adding a command to navigate to a website or to open a particular folder, ActiveWords has a “Use Current” button that allows you to designate the open folder or website as the location to navigate to. My problem is that I use Firefox for web browsing and the Use Current button does not pull the address from the Firefox window.

Update #2: The scripts that Buzz refers to below (that would not show up in the comments) are:

To add an internet site:

<alt>d</alt><ctrl>c</ctrl><ADD WIZARD:INTERNET><wait for window:title=Add New ActiveWord><ctrl>v</ctrl><tab><alt>n</alt>

To toggle the Monitor Bar:

<HIDE SHOW AWMONITOR>

Thanks to Buzz for sharing these.

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Acrobat & Mobiliti Problem

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I am using Adobe Acrobat Pro 8 and Mobiliti Basic 7.1. I presume that most people are familiar with Acrobat. Mobiliti is a program that creates a virtual network on your laptop that allows you to access designated folders when you are disconnected from your network. I love this program. It allows me to keep my files synchronized. Plus, it preserves all of my file paths. I recommend it to anyone who uses a laptop.

I have a problem that has been vexing me for a while, however. When I am disconnected from the network and running on the virtual network, Acrobat operates very slowly when trying to access the virtual network (either to save or open a file within Acrobat). When I click on a folder on the virtual network, it takes about 20 seconds for Acrobat to open that folder (yes, I counted).

This can become very frustrating quite quickly.

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

Does anyone have any suggestions?

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Another Word Tip: Squeezing Text on a Page

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I love tips that help us use MS Word more effectively. Nerino Petro at Compujurist has a great little post detailing how to take the last bit of text that appears by itself on the last page and squeeze it into the previous page. Not only does Nerino share this tip, but he also tells us how to do it in both Word 2003 and Word 2007.

I would note that you should be wary of trying this on briefs that are filed with courts that enforce strict page limits and font sizes. Word adjusts the font sizes to repaginate the document.

If you need to solve this problem, jump over to the post and see the details. I will give you a hint. The Print Preview feature plays an important role.

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Favorite: Shrinkify

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I have written before that TinyURL Creator is one of my favorite Firefox extensions. That is no more. I have a new favorite: Shrinkify. Both of these extensions do the same thing. Namely, they take a really long web address and convert it into something that is short and easily used.

For example, if you search for Shrinkify on Google, the search results web address is: http://www.google.com/search?q=shrinkify&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

That same address shrinkified is http://shrinkify.com/837. Similarly, the same address in a TinyURL is http://tinyurl.com/6ao2m4.

Given that both of these do the same thing and both are accessed in the same manner (right click on the web page), one may wonder why I prefer Shrinkify over TinyURL Creator. That answer is simple. When I shrinkify a web address, I temporarily get a black band across the top of my screen telling me what the URL is. When I use TinyURL Creator, I get a box that tells me the URL. With TinyURL Creator, however, I have to click the box closed to make it go away. With Shrinkify, the information goes away automatically. Thus, Shrinkify saves me an entirely unnecessary mouse click.

If you aren’t using anything to shrink your URLs, I encourage you to try one or both of these services. Both work fine and will make your URL life much more simple.

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This is Not a Metadata Problem

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I have spoken on multiple occasions to attorneys about the dangers of metadata. I have found that many attorneys are not aware of the problem and do not know how to follow simple steps to manage metadata.

I was completely stunned, however, by this post which describes a business plan that was submitted to a venture capitalist with all of the tracked changes and comments intact. This is not a situation in which someone used a metadata viewer to mine the document for unscrubbed changes. No, this is one where the author never bothered to accept the changes and they they appeared when the document was opened. Some of my favorite comments:

“When you talk through this point on your slides, make Chanukah jokes, he is Jewish and will get them”

“I’d delete this section since we don’t have these features on the roadmap and haven’t figured out how to code this unless you believe the investors won’t catch this.”

“VCs are typically stupid when it comes to this section so be prepared for a dumb question blizzard.”

(Hat tip to mathewingram.com for the link.)

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Rick Borstein Does it Again!

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AdobeI am not sure how he does it, but Rick is able to figure out what problems I am encountering in Acrobat and tell me the solutions. All without me having to bug him by email. Earlier this week, Rick posted on his blog an answer to the question of how to extract nonsequential pages from a document.

Acrobat allows you to easily extract sequential pages, however, there was no easy way to extract nonsequential pages. Or at least I thought there wasn’t. Rick, however, comes to the rescue with his explanation of how to do so. He explains:

Yes, it’s true that you cannot select and extract a discontinuous range of pages using the Extract Pages option and the Pages Panel.

However, you can drag and drop a non-sequential bunch of pages between two PDFs using the Pages Panel:

Go read the entire post, however, because not only does he give you step by step instructions on how to do is, he also includes a video showing it being done.

This is another excellent post from Rick and another example of why his blog’s feed should be in your RSS reader.

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10 Sync Tools

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From MakeUseOf.com comes 10 Sync Tools Every Office Worker Should Know Of. There are some good suggestions here, including Google Browser Sync and Mozy. The other programs are ones that I have not used before. One that I find interesting is SyncToy, which allows you to sync files between your PC and your USB Thumb Drive.

Check out the entire post to see all of the sync products they discuss.