Tag Archives | Excel

ABA Techshow: 60 Apps in 60 Minutes

By on April 18, 2011 in Apps

Last week I presented the very popular 60 Apps in 60 Minutes section of the ABA Techshow with Jeff Richardson of iPhone J.D. and Reid Trautz of Reid My Blog! The presentation was very popular – standing room only. Listed below are the apps from that presentation along with links to the App Store. Lots of great apps in there and many of them are free. I’ve generally linked to the iPad version of these apps, but many are universal or have an iPhone app as well.

Productivity

  • Calvetica (iTunes link). Fast alternative calendar app for iPhone.
  • Keynote (iTunes link). Presentation design and delivery app.
  • Penultimate (iTunes link). Handwritten notes in notebooks.
  • iThoughts HD (iTunes link). Mindmapping with great export options.
  • PDF Expert (iTunes link). PDF annotation.
  • Documents to Go Premium (iTunes link). Microsoft Word and Excel compatible file editor.
  • Dragon Dictation (iTunes link). Dictation.
  • Satchel (iTunes link). Tool for using Backpack from 37Signals.
  • Plaintext (iTunes link). Text editor that syncs with Dropbox.
  • TextExpander Touch (iTunes link). Utility that expands text snippets into full words, sentences or more!
  • CarbonFin Outliner (iTunes link). Hierarchical outliner.
  • Minimal Folio (iTunes link). Presentation delivery alternative for images and PDF.
  • Mind Meister (iTunes link). Mindmapping.
  • GoodReader (iTunes link). File manager and PDF annotation.
  • Note Taker HD (iTunes link). Handwritten note taking, PDF annotation.

Utility

Camera and Camera Utilities

  • ProHDR (iTunes link). Better than built in HDR in iPhone 4.
  • Prizmo (iTunes link). Scan and OCR text.
  • Price Check (iTunes link). Scan a bar code in a store to check if you are getting the best deal.
  • Photosync (iTunes link). Easily move photos between iOS devices, dropbox, your computer.
  • Eyeglasses (iTunes link). Read the small print.
  • Skype (iTunes link). Voice and video chat.
  • Photogene (iTunes link). Photo editor.
  • JotNot (iTunes link). Document scanner and optimizer.

Remote Access

Law

  • Black’s Law Dictionary (iTunes link). Dictionary.
  • Book of Jargon (iTunes link). Financial terms glossary.
  • TrialPad (iTunes link). Exhibit presentation and annotation app.
  • FastCase (iTunes link). Legal research.
  • Court Days Pro (iTunes link). Calculate days between dates, can customize with rules.
  • WordPerfect Viewer (iTunes link). View WordPerfect files.

News and Social

  • Appolicious (iTunes link). Keep abreast of new apps.
  • Flipboard (iTunes link). Presents your social feeds in glossy magazine style.
  • Zite (iTunes link). Pandora for news.
  • Reeder (iTunes link). RSS feed reader, syncs with Google Reader.
  • Instapaper (iTunes link). Store web articles for reading later.
  • Trickle (iTunes link). Passive twitter consumption tool.
  • Groupon (iTunes link). Coupon app.
  • Hootsuite (iTunes link). Social media management and aggregation.

Entertainment

  • Infinity Blade (iTunes link). Dungeon crawl game with amazing graphics.
  • Garage Band (iTunes link). Make music.
  • TuneIn Radio (iTunes link). Find, organize, listen and record your favorite radio stations.
  • iType2Go (iTunes link). See where you are going while texting.
  • iMovie (iTunes link). Make movies on your iPhone or iPad.
  • Atari’s Greatest Hits (iTunes link). Games from your youth.
  • Food Truck Fiesta (iTunes link). Find lunch fast.

Translation

  • Google Translate (iTunes link). Translation app works over the internet.
  • Jibbigo (iTunes link). Translation app with dictionaries installed on phone.
  • Word Lens (iTunes link). Translation with augmented reality.

This was my first Techshow and it was a lot of fun to meet the folks I share the blogosphere with. Thanks to Jeff and Reid for helping make a great presentation!

Comments { 2 }

Hey Lawyer! New iPad? Get These Apps First (Word and Excel Compatibility – Part 6)

By on February 28, 2011 in Apps

This is part 6 of my 8 part series about starter apps for a lawyer to build a basic work machine. I’m not digging into a lot of custom apps here – just the meat and potatoes of the workflow for many lawyers. Last time I talked about presentation apps. Today I’ll talk about a subject that is probably of top concern to many lawyers – Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel compatibility.

Even if you do most of your drafting in raw text (which I recommend), you will inevitably need to view and edit a .doc or .xls file. For those times, my preferred app right now is QuickOffice Connect Mobile Suite (iTunes link). For a mobile Microsoft Office compatibility suite, this app offers everything you would expect. While you won’t be generating cross referenced tables of contents and custom styles in QuickOffice (or any of the competitors), all the basic formatting tools a lawyer uses are there. The reason this app is at the top of my list compared to the other capable apps in this area is in how it manages files. QuickOffice uses an intuitive drag, drop and tap interface that resembles how one might work on a desktop computer. Given that file management and version control is so important for lawyers, this feature pushes QuickOffice ahead of the competition in my eyes. QuickOffice Connect Mobile Suite is also just $14.99 at this writing (usually $24.99) (iTunes link).

That said, Dataviz’s Documents to Go Premium (iTunes Link) is still on my iPad and gets used from time to time. The main positive distinguishing feature between QuickOffice and Documents to Go is that DTG supports footnoting and QuickOffice does not. If documents with footnotes are part of your workflow, then you are going to want DTG. I draft contracts and correspondence rather than briefs and memoranda so footnotes are rare in my legal writing workflow. On the flip side, I find DTG’s file management scheme simply Byzantine at times with unintuitive panels of file management options that don’t seem linked together in any intuitive way. I’d love to see this aspect of the app get a refresh.

One thing to remember with both of these apps is that they aren’t WYSIWYG like your desktop version of Office. This is unfortunate as WYSIWYG seems like it is certainly possible on the iPad. Indeed, Apple’s Pages for iPad is much closer to a WYSIWYG experience. I think the reason QuickOffice and DTG don’t offer WYSIWYG views is because they are ports from older mobile devices and mobile operating systems (I think Palm may have been the original platform) where WYSIWYG was not an option.

Both apps have a standard version. Documents to Go’s (iTunes link) basic version is $9.99, but it lacks PowerPoint editing and cloud storage access. The basic version of QO is QuickOffice Mobile Suite (iTunes link) $4.99 but also lacks cloud storage integration and is only an iPhone app. Because cloud file storage is so critical for effective workflow on the iPad, I only recommend the premium versions of these two apps. There are other “Office” suite apps out there including Office2 HD (iTunes link) and the Pages (iTunes Link) / Numbers (iTunes link) combination, but these apps did not fare as well as DTG and QO in handling the quirky formatting of typical law firm documents (see my posts about pleading formatting and business agreement formatting on the iPad).

Stuck with a WordPerfect file? Well, you can’t edit it, but you can view it with WPD Viewer (iTunes link).

Comments { 7 }

Quickoffice coming to iPad?

By on February 13, 2010 in Apps

Two tools I use heavily on my iPhone are Quickoffice and Documents To Go: mobile office suites that allow editing of Word and Excel files. iPhone J.D. has covered these products extensively since introduction and on Friday posted a great review of the latest offering from Quickoffice. I encourage you to check it out.

The obvious question one has in using these products is whether they will be updated for the iPad. At least with respect to Quickoffice, it sounds like something may already be in the works. The Unofficial Apple Weblog interviewed the Quickoffice team at MacWorld today and posted the video below. In addition to giving a good overview of some of the new Quickoffice features and functionality, they hint at iPad development for the product (at about 5:10).

Obviously, a tool like Quickoffice on the iPad would offer amazing functionality given that the overwhelming majority of law offices use Word and Excel. While the Pages and Numbers apps in the iPad iWork suite will import and export the Word and Excel formats, Quickoffice is a known commodity in the mobile environment and may be a more comfortable choice for some.

I’m hopeful that Quickoffice has its product available at or near launch of the iPad.

Comments { 0 }

Redmond Considering Office for iPad?

By on February 11, 2010 in Apps

Well, “considering” may be a strong statement.

T3 reports that a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft says the company is “looking at” a version of its popular Office suite for the iPad. This is something I ruminated about a few days ago in the context of how having the ability to read and write from common storage on the device could encourage more robust app development. It would be interesting to see how Microsoft tackles a purposely more limited platform, given its historical penchant for somewhat bloated products.

Comments { 0 }