Microsoft released office for iPad last week. They have promised to release Office for Android soon as well.

The good news is that it is free to download. The bad news is that it can only be used as a reader. If you want to create or edit documents, you need an Office 365 account. And if you have a personal Office 365 account, the terms don’t let you use it for commercial purposes.

Office 365 is Microsoft’s cloud based service that is purchased for an annual fee.

Even if your office has one of the many flavours of Microsoft . . . [more]

I love my iPad mini. I have been using it for just over one year. It has proved to be tremendously helpful in my civil litigation practice.

There are hundreds of similar pieces about “ipad apps for lawyers.” This is a simple setup that works for me. 

My basic tools are PDF Converter and PDF Expert.

I use the PDF Converter app to convert Word documents into PDFs so that I can annotate them using the PDF expert app.

Using the PDF expert app, I can mark up any PDF document. I can highlight it, put text annotations, arrows, . . . [more]

Apple fans often brag that Apple devices are far less susceptible to hackers and security breaches than PCs and other devices. While that was the case in the past, you can no longer use Apple devices and blissfully assume you can’t or won’t be hacked or infected with malware.

Last Friday, without a lot of fanfare, Apple released iOS update 7.0.6. iPads and iPhones use the iOS operating system. This update fixes a coding mistake that could allow a hacker to capture the information you think you are securely sharing with an online merchant or when logging in on a . . . [more]

We have long been fans of Tom Mighell’s iPad books, which include iPad in One Hour for Lawyers, iPad Apps in One Hour for Lawyers, and now the third member of the series, iPad in One Hour for Litigators. If lawyers have tended to fall in love with the iPad, litigators are becoming obsessed with it.

The small form factor, the ease of use and the ability to compete with large firms which have huge litigation budgets have all been factors. One thing we’ve seen as we lecture is that litigators buy the iPad and only then ask, . . . [more]

I’ve spent the last week trying out Google Chrome on my iPhone and iPad, and I have a simple recommendation for anyone who hasn’t tried it yet: install it now. You’ll love it.

Google Chrome provides several significant benefits over the built-in Safari browser:

• Google Account Sync. Logging into your Google Account automatically syncs your bookmarks, browser history
• The OmniBar. The Omnibar (the unified address / search bar) is my favorite features of Google Chrome’s desktop web browser. On my mobile experiences, I frequently frustrated myself by typing search terms into the Safari address bar. No more: Google Chrome

As short as 6 weeks ago in a SLAW post on my most frequently used iPad apps I bemoaned the fact that there was not a robust word processor for the iPad.

Either I overlooked what must have been a recent update to Pages for iPad at that time or in fact there was an actual update in the last 6 weeks, since it is now relatively easy to add footnotes (and headers and footers, among other things) while word processing in Pages.

The online help from Apple here discusses how to do this (it is simply a matter of . . . [more]

I was asked to present this week at a special lunch session of the Toronto Association of Law Libraries as one of several speakers to discuss tablets and their apps. In my case, I will discuss the new iPad (or iPad3, as it is sometimes called).

If interested, set out below are my general comments on iPads along with a list of apps I most frequently use. . . . [more]

Yes, “The new iPad”, not the iPad 3, or the iPad HD, and no doubt millions of people will rush to buy one. In Q4, Apple sold 15.4 million ipads – which is more than any PC manufacturer sold of theirPC lines. 

I upgraded to a Google Galaxy Nexus phone a few weeks ago – and for a short time actually had cutting edge tech for both smartphones and tablets. That is always going to be a short-lived experience.

The new iPad features a higher resolution display, quad-core processor, better camera and HD 1080P video recording (like the iPhone 4s). . . . [more]

Having recently travelled to the UK and the US with my 3G/WiFi iPad 1 as my sole communication device, I thought I would pass on a few thoughts on travelling with an iPad.

1) Roaming Charges Using your Canadian 3G SimCard Outside of Canada: Since I tend to be stingy (not a good quality), I have never tested using my Canadian 3G access while abroad. However, comments from others suggest it can be very expensive.

2) WiFi not as Common as One Might Think: Depending on your hotel chain of choice, I find that free WiFi is not . . . [more]

The LegalTech 2012 Conference last week was a bit overwhelming for me as a first-time attendee.

As a knowledge management (KM) lawyer / law librarian, my continuing legal education opportunities tend to focus more on conferences related to KM or law libraries, such as the upcoming annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries / L’Association canadienne des bibliothèques de droit held in Toronto in May.

However, I think it was worthwhile attending LegalTech, although I might not need to attend every year. The main difference for me was the large number of technology vendors exhibiting or presenting their . . . [more]

The 2011 Apple in Law Offices Survey saw over 750 respondents provide insight on how Apple devices, ranging from the iPhone to the MacBook, are impacting the way they practice law.

iPad

Unsurprisingly, the iPad saw a huge jump in usage. In the 2010 survey, 26% of respondents used an iPad in their law office; in the 2011 survey, that figure jumped to 56%. The remaining 44% of lawyers without an iPad apparently don’t plan on going without one for long: 71% of respondents were considering purchasing iPads for their law office in the next year:

Mobile

On the mobile . . . [more]

I had an opportunity to download the new Irwin Law iPad app recently along with a copy of Ted Tjaden’s Legal Research and Writing text. We have a copy of this excellent title in our firm library in print or course, but for testing purposes, I thought it would be a good choice for an eBook.

First I want to congratulate Jeff Miller and his team at Irwin Law. They made an excellent choice of partners in Nubook. The Irwin Law app was easy to find in the Apple App Store, the download process was simple. It was also . . . [more]