Guest Post :: MacSparky's Review of Macworld Expo 2009
As my long-time readers may recall, my friend and fellow blogger, David Sparks of the MacSparky blog, attends the Macworld Expo every year, and he has been kind enough to report his findings to my readers. The following are David's thoughts on the 2009 Macworld Expo:
In addition to my job at Macsparky (the business card really does say "Chief Slacker"), I have another job that actually pays money as a business attorney. So every year in addition to looking for things new and geeky at Macworld Expo, I also take a look for tools useful in the practice of law. Here is this year's take:
Daylite Touch
Marketcircle's Daylite has become the “go to” applicaiton for running your law practice. This year they had a strong presence at Macworld including numerous demonstrations, presentations from the David Allen company, and previews of their soon to be released iPhone client. It supports full synching with your Daylight database. This is excellent news for Daylite users.
Livescribe Smartpen
Livescribe’s Pulse Smartpen is coming to the Mac. This is, essentially, a computer in a pen. It records all pen strokes and then recreates the pages on your screen. It also records audio while you are taking notes and indexes it to your notes. You must use their paper (printed with the required microdots to give the computer context) but I could use this every day in my practice. This could also be a nice gift for any university students in your life.
FileMaker Pro 10
The new version 10 of FileMaker took several lessons from their consumer product, Bento. It still uses the same file format so the upgrade should be relatively painless. With features and improvements such as persistent sorting, dynamic summary reports, and editable table views, it is clear this upgrade is all about the user experience.
MacSpeech
OmniFocus
Microvision Projector
Timeline 3d
SMART Digital White Board
These digital white boards combine the benefits of your analogue whiteboard with the technology of your Mac. This could be useful both in the conference room and the courtroom.
Who wrote that?
iWork 09
While a lot of people still refuse to look at iWork as a serious business tool, I continue to make other attorneys look bad using Keynote. It just about 10 years ahead of PowerPoint. The new improvements, particularly "Magic Move", will save me hours of fiddling. The increased mail merge hooks between Numbers and Pages will increase your ability to set up forms. I still must admit I do all of my serious writing in Scrivener (review here). Regardless, for me Keynote is worth the price of admission. While Apple appears to keep focusing its energies toward the Mac as a consumer device, the third party developer community continues to develop excellent resources allowing you to get the edge in your practice with your Mac.
Many thanks again to David Sparks for his excellent work in reporting on the 2009 Macworld Expo and for allowing me to republish his article here at The Mac Lawyer. If you haven't visited David's MacSparky blog, you should do so, as it's one of the very best on the web.
