The Mac Lawyer : Ben Stevens : Using Macs In The Practice Of Law

The following is a Guest Post from iGadgetLife website, which covering tech reviews and news:

Macs are great tools for a lot of different computer uses, and it can be argued that they are one of the most user friendly computer gadgets on the market. But someone new to Macs (or even a more experienced Mac user) may not realize that there are many different ways to manage and ride herd on all of those windows that a typical computing session incorporates.

In fact, there are many tips, tricks, and shortcuts that can make your Mac experience much more productive and enjoyable. Over the years I have found several that I use on a regular basis, and sometimes I still find a new one that is handy. Let's take a look at some of my favorite Mac window management tricks.

Basic Window Switching

Most users know that command-tab will switch between open windows. But Windows converts may be put off that command-tab only switches between running apps, not individual window instances. That is, if you have five Safari windows open and email, pressing command-tab will switch back and forth between Safari and email - it will not cycle through the open Safari windows as well.

Instead, use the command-tilde ("~") combination to cycle through your Safari windows (or any other multiple windows of the same app, such as Finder). Once you get used to this slight difference (the tilde key is right above the tab on the Mac layout), you will find that being able to cycle through only that app's current open windows is actually much easier than having to cycle through ALL open windows on the computer.

Another thing to note about window management on OS X is that the first click usually only gives the window focus. That is, if you have a background window that you want to click on, for example a link on a web page, you will find that it is a two click operation, The first click brings the window to the forefront, the second launches the link. There are exceptions to this (as we mention below), but in this way, accidental clicks on background windows are avoided.

Background Window Scrolling

As a user, we sometimes have need of background windows while working in a different activated window. However, switching different apps in and out of the foreground is not always the most efficient way of working. Thankfully OS X offers some handy ways to manage your background windows.

For starters, you can scroll a background window simply by hovering the mouse over it and scrolling. This works equally well with the two finger drag on the trackpad or the scroll ball and wheel on your mouse.

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Do you find yourself getting frustrated when trying to figure out how to insert certain characters (like ⌘, ⌦, §, or ¶) into documents?  I know that I used to – until I learned how to use the Character Palette.  Now this process is very quick and easy.

There are a couple of different ways to access the Character Palette, including (1) press Command, Option/Alt and T together to open it, and (2) go to the Edit menu and choose Special Characters  From there, you simply locate your desired characters and insert them by either clicking "Insert" or dragging the character into your document.

If you find that there are certain characters that you use more frequently, you can add them to your "Favorites" by selecting the character, clicking the "gear" icon on the bottom left, and selecting "Add to Favorites".  Finally, the search window in the bottom right can help you more easily locate certain characters if you need assistance.

You can learn much more about the Character Palette here and here.

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Virtually everyone knows that Keynote is a fantastic presentation program, far superior to PowerPoint.  However, some people have questions about the best way to create handouts from their Keynote presentation.  Macworld recently explained the process, which I have illustrated below:

1.  After you have created your presentation, go to the print options via File > Print or ⌘P

2.  Select Layout from the pop-up menu

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I am pleased to publish the following Guest Post from Jim Martin, and I hope that my readers find it to be helpful:

I have drafted many legal forms in my law practice and have published many of them in book form through West Publishing. Back in the days of standalone word processors and WordPerfect DOS, we could easily set the forms up to merge specific client information to generate documents for clients. Not so with Microsoft Word. We had to use Hot Docs for Word.

I switched my law practice from PC to Mac in October 2009. Alas, there is no Hot Docs for Mac. Then I switched my word processor from Microsoft Word to Apples Pages in February 2010. Alas alas, there is no Hot Docs for Pages. So, I have been hunting for software that searches and replaces multiple variables of text in an Apple Pages document in one pass. And I found it…from Apple. It’s built in. You just use Numbers to hold the client’s variable text, and you use Pages to generate the documents. Both Pages and Numbers are included in Apple iWork ’09. Pages is Apple’s answer to Word, and Numbers is its answer to Excel.

Apple Pages mail merge can merge variable text from an Apple Numbers document into an Apple Pages document. You usually think of mail merge as creating letters and envelopes. That’s how it works with Word, and that’s how it works with Pages, too. But Pages also lets you merge your own variables from a Numbers document into a Pages document.

The instructions for merging with your own variables, instead of just Address Book variables, are on page 236 of the Apple Pages ’09 User Guide. It’s really easy since it involves just two files, but I will walk you through the steps I go through to create legal form documents for merging with Apple Pages. Here goes:

1. Find the legal form. Texas lawyer J. Harris Morgan taught lawyers years ago to throw copies of legal documents into whiskey boxes next to our desks. So, go to the whiskey box and pull out the form you want to “mergify”. Let’s assume it’s a deed. Print it on page for convenience.
2. Mark through the variable text. Now, go through the deed and strike through all the variable text, like the grantor name, grantor address, grantee name, grantee address, property address, property legal description, county, etc. Take your time. You don’t want Client A’s name to be on Client B’s deed.
3. Create the form document in Pages. Open Apple Pages and type that legal form document into it, or cut and paste it from an actual client file. This is your template. Save it with a name like “Deed template 2010.03.27.pages”. Note that I always put the date in the file name so that I know when I created it. Also note that you don’t need to save the file as a template. Saving it as a .pages file works just fine.
4. Create the fill-in document in Numbers. Now open Apple Numbers and create a blank spreadsheet and save it with a name like “Deed fillin 2010.03.27”. This will hold the specifics for your client. This is the variable text.
5. Enter the variable names in Numbers. In the first row type a variable name in each column. For example, in row 1 column A type the variable name “grantor name”, and in column B type “grantor address”, etc. Enter a column name for every variable text item in the deed (property address, property legal description, county, etc.) Each name must be different. Save this file for future use. The second row will contain the client’s specific information in each column for those variables.
6. Enter the variables in the form document in Pages. Go back to your legal form document in Pages. Using your paper mark-up of the legal form as a guide, go to the first variable text item that you struck out and rename it with its variable name. I add 3 asterisks around it for ease in viewing. So, the first variable might be ***grantor name***. Then select that variable name and do the following in this order:
   1. In the form document in Pages, select the variable name including the asterisks so that it is highlighted;
   2. Click on the Inspector at the top of the Pages document’s bar;
   3. Click on the Merge button;
   4. Click the radio button for Numbers document;
   5. Navigate to your saved Numbers fill-in file and select it;
   6. Click the plus sign in the lower left of the Inspector window;
   7. Click Add Merge Field;
   8. Pages will insert your highlighted text into the window under the Merge Field column;
   9. The Target Name to the right is probably not the correct variable name that appears as a column in your Numbers file, so in the Inspector window click to the right of the Target Name that Pages inserted for your Merge Field and a drop down list will appear with all of the variable names you entered in the first row of your Numbers file; just select the correct Target Name for the variable text you are trying to insert in the form at that point (e.g., ***grantor name*** Merge Field should have “grantor name” as the Target Name if that is what you typed as the column heading).
   10. Do the above for every variable text entry in your legal form in Pages.
   11. Save your Pages document file for future use.
7. Enter client’s variable text in Numbers. The hard part is done. Open the Numbers fill in document. Enter the client’s information in row 2 of each column. So, under the grantor name column you would enter “John T. Jones”. Do this column by column. Save the Numbers file to your desktop or other location you can find.
8. Merge in Pages to create the client’s document. Now go back to your form document in Pages and do the following:
   1. Click Edit;
   2. Click Mail Merge;
   3. Click Numbers Document and choose your fill-in Numbers document by clicking Choose and navigating to it if not already shown;
   4. Select Merge to New Document;
   5. Click Merge, and Pages creates a new Pages document by merging the client’s variable information into the Pages form.

So, this worked for me. I just discovered it today. So these instructions are still in beta, even if Pages and Numbers are not. Let me know if this works for you or if you have any tips or tricks of your own to make this work better. Thanks.

Jim Martin
St. Petersburg, Florida
March 27, 2010 

This article was originally published by James W. Martin at his Florida Lawyer Blog and is published here with his permission.

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One of the questions that lawyers contemplating the switch from PC to Mac often ask is some variation of "Can I use the Mac on my existing PC network at my office" or "Can I access files on my PC server with my Mac?"  Of course, the answer is "yes" and My First Mac has published a step-by-step guide that shows how to network Macs and PCs.  You can access this guide by clicking here and get a glimpse of how much easier your life could be if you were using a Mac.

Source:  "How Do I Network My Mac and PC?" by Jeff Cyr, published at My First Mac.

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Macworld recently published the following tricks that everyone should know for owrking with PDF documents in Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard):

1. E-mail PDFs with one click :: When you have a file you want to share, just press Command-P, click on the PDF button in the Print dialog box, and then choose Mail PDF. Your Mac will create the PDF, launch Mail (or your default e-mail program) if it’s not already open, and then create a new message and add the PDF as an attachment.
2. Save a page (or three) from a PDF :: First, open the PDF in Preview (in your Applications folder). Reveal the sidebar by clicking on the Sidebar button on the Preview toolbar (or by pressing Command-Shift-D). You should see a thumbnail of every page in the document. If you don’t, click on the second button from the left at the bottom of the sidebar (or press Command-Option-2). Find the page you want to save, and then drag its thumbnail from the sidebar to a Finder window or to your Desktop. If you want to drag multiple pages, select them (Shift-click to select adjacent pages, or Command-click to select non-contiguous pages) and them drag them the same way. Whatever you select and drag to the Finder will be saved as a PDF with the name PDF name(dragged).pdf.
3. Merge PDF pages :: First open one of the PDFs with Preview, and display the sidebar with thumbnails (as described above). Drag the second PDF on top of the first one. This changes the display of the first PDF in the sidebar. Click on the arrow button to “close” or “open” the PDF, toggling between showing just its first page and all the pages it contains. This makes it easy to make sure you’ve put the documents in the right order. When you press Command-S to save the document, Preview will save the whole thing within the document of the first PDF file that you opened. (Alternatively, you can save it as new document by pressing Command-Shift-S and choosing a new name.)
4. Read PDFs more easily on a laptop :: Follow these steps to read PDF files like books on a laptop. In Preview, choose Tools -> Rotate Left or Rotate Right. Now you can hold your laptop like a book (screen in one hand; keyboard in the other). Flip the laptop to choose which side you want the screen on for easy reading.  If you use Adobe’s free Adobe Reader, you can go one step further. Choose View -> Rotate View -> Clockwise (or Counterclockwise), then press Command-L to enter full-screen mode. Flip pages by pressing the spacebar, or go back a page by pressing Shift-spacebar. You can read PDFs like this without the distraction of menus and toolbars, and make the content as big as your screen can hold.

Source: "Four Essential PDF Tips for Snow Leopard" by Kirk McElhearn, published at Macworld.com.

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I installed Snow Leopard shortly after its release, and overall I have really liked it. The one thing that has been driving me absolutely bonkers was the fact that now under Snow Leopard, Finder automatically resets its columns back to a narrow width.  If I had hair, I would have been pulling it out over this quirk, but luckily I have finally found a fix.

Let me explain the "problem" and then I'll show the simple solution.  When using Finder, my preferred view is the "multiple columns."  I'm not sure there's any specific reason why, but that's just how I like to navigate.  Prior to Snow Leopard, the columns would resize themselves in such a way that you could see the names of the files listed in each column.  Times were good, people were happy.

The "problem" is that when I installed Snow Leopard, Finder began making all columns extremely narrow by default, with no apparent option to change this setting.  Yes, it was nice to be able to see more columns, but it actually caused more problems than it solved.  My office uses a standardized naming method I use our client files (YYMMDD File Name), which results in everything being listed in chronological order.  Therefore, all I could typically see as  part of the date with little to no file name.  The image below shows how my "Applications" folder looks using the default column width.  Again, this can drive one mad in a very short period of time.  (Note: I realize that many would argue that it's a very short trip for me, but I digress...)

Since I am male, I am hesitant to ask for directions, so I tried every trick I could think of to attempt to change the default size of the colums, short of voodoo or black magic – though those options were becoming more appealing as time passed.  Finally, I gave in and conducted a Google search, and voila – found a solution.  To set a new default column size, you simply hold down the Option (Alt) key while sizing the columns in Finder.  Then, when you open a new Finder window, the default size is changed going forward.  The image below shows the same "Applications" folder from above after the columns have been resized.

Thanks to Geert Vanderkelen of the Some Abstract Type! for his post on this topic.

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It only takes you one time to experience a data loss without a current backup to make you understand just how important they are.  I learned that lesson the hard way several years ago.  The following article from Mac Tricks & Tips discusses the backup options for Macs:

Backup’s are very important. You should always have more than one backup if you are serious about making sure your data stays in one piece. Its ok backing them up to disk but what happens if you lost that disk or it doesn’t work. This post will hopefully explain some of the different ways in which you can back up your data. I recommend you pick two different options to make sure you don’t lose everything.

1) Time Machine

The first option you should have in place (I think by default) is Time Machine, you are given the option of data backup service installed by default so I recommend you use it. In essence Time Machine will backup files all of your file on your disk. Then as you change files and add files Time Machine will add them to the backup. This way you can go back in time and view how a file has changed as you have worked on it, you can pick a file from a specific period and restore it as necessary.

I think Time Machine is a great consumer backup system. Its simple to use, works and allows me to pick and choose files I want to restore. I have only used it a couple of times when I have wanted to restore a file, but it was a life saver when it was there. You do need a second hard disk for it to work effectively which is an added cost, however hard drives are getting cheaper all of the time. If you want to read more about using Time Machine read the Noob2Pro post I did a while ago.

Time Machine isn’t a proper backup tool, in that it doesn’t backup system files. If you ever do a full system restore it combines it with a fresh install from your installation disk. As a result you can’t make full backups to take a machine to a certain point and use this disk on a second computer. This is where option number two comes in.

2) Disk Cloners

There are a variety of disk cloners out there on the market. In essence they copy the entire contents of you disk and place it on a second drive. This enables you to quickly restore a backup by plugging the hard drive into your Mac or copying the DVD’s contents onto a your Mac. The advantage of this is that you can create a bootable backup, so you can boot directly from the back up. You can’t do this with Time Machine or other similar software.

There are two decent pieces of software out there which you can use for this sort of thing. SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner. They are very similar in the feature set. If you want to look into this type of back up software take a look at the feature set and try the pieces of software out. I prefer the Time Machine backup as it is a lot simpler. I don’t need to have a lot of full backups. I just need to keep my personal files intact.

3) Online Backup

I mentioned in the opening paragraph that you ideally need two types of backup. The second option I prefer is an online backup. The reason for this is that it acts as an off site backup. The best backup systems are ones where the first backup is next to your computer for easy access, then a second off site to protect against fire, theft etc. This is where online backups come into play.

There are a variety of different online backup systems. Most do the same basic thing. You upload the files to there server, you let them sit around, then when you need them you re-download them. There are lots of different options which such as using Amazon file cloud or a dedicated service which works on the same level. One service I have been trying out over the last couple of days is Backblaze. Its cheap, offers a lot of space and works well. If you want a second method which is cheap and reliable the online method would probably work well, there are plenty around so have a quick google and see what you can find.

Conclusion

Hopefully I have opened your eyes to different ways you can backup your files. The automated methods which I have listed are the best, this is because you don’t need to think about backing up every day, it does it automatically. You can of course burn files to disk using a DVD burner and select the files you want. This however needs a lot of disks and it takes a lot of time (plus burnable DVD’s break down and become useless after a while). Using hard drives, I think, is more valuable for money. 

Source:  "Backup Solutions For The Mac" published at Mac Tricks & Tips.

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Last Friday, AT&T finally enabled Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) support for the iPhone 3G and 3G-S here in the U.S.  Now, users can send pictures, location data, contact information, voice memos, and video quickly and easily.

The MMS service is very easy to use.  From the Messages app, you simply tap the camera icon on the bottom left, and the iPhone will prompt you to either take a photo or choose an existing image from your camera roll. You can also enter some text to accompany your picture or video, although the text and image will appear in separate balloons when they’re sent.

You can also send other helpful content via MMS, such as location data (via Maps), contact info (via Address Book), and voice memos (via Voice Memos).  For instance, to send contact information, you simply open the desired contact, select "Share Contact", and then you will have an option to do so via either email or MMS.

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Last week, I published explained how "The Paperless Law Office" is possible and the ways that it can benefit your firm.  Does it make a difference if your firm uses a web-based (SaaS) case management program?  The short answer is no, as explained in a recent article by Larry Port.

The process of quickly scanning, storing, and accessing your documents is explained step-by-step (with illustrations) in Mr. Port's article.  If you use Rocket Matter (like my firm does), then simply follow these steps:

1. Choose Scan to Folder using the ScanSnap Quick Menu.
2. Name the file appropriately and store in an easy location.
3. Open Rocket Matter and navigate to the file you wish to work with.
4. Click “Add Document”, click on the “Add File” link, and select your recently scanned item.
5. If desired, you can enter notes about your file or describe it with a title and tags, and you can also add billable time if appropriate.
6. To access the document, simply click on the link to download it when needed.

Source:  "How Can I Use My ScanSnap with a Legal Software as a Service Tool Like Rocket Matter?" by Larry Port of Rocket Matter, published at ScanSnap's "Ask the Expert" forum.

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Some attorneys just seem to love WordPerfect.  I am not (and have never been) one of them, though I have several good friends who are.  For that reason, I occasionally receive files in *.wpd format, which I must open on my Mac.  This might seem to pose a slight problem, since there hasn't been a Mac version of WordPerfect for several years.

Fortunately, there are several solutions to this "problem."  The one that I prefer is to simply open the *.wpd files using NeoOffice, a free open source word processor, and then saving into one of the many available formats, which will work with virtually all of the Mac word processing programs. In fact, many attorneys use NeoOffice as their word processing program, though I prefer Pages for my firm.

Of course, if you don't want to use NeoOffice, you can also utilize one of the following methods: online translators (Zamzar or Media-Convert), translation program (MacLinkPlus), other word processing programs (Open Office, AbiWord, or Nisus Writer), or run WordPerfect for Macintosh using Classic environment (pre-Intel Macs) or Sheepshaver
(Intel Macs).

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This month's Law Practice Today webzine from the ABA Law Practice Management Section focuses on how to implement and utilize paperless strategies in law offices.  I had the pleasure of serving as the editor for this issue, and I am very pleased with the result.  You can read the following articles at the links provided below, and I hope that you find them helpful:

• Some Thoughts on Becoming Paperless by Ernest Svenson
• Going Paperless for the Law Office: A Practical Guide by Michael J. Morse
• The Document Naming System in Our Paperless Office by Donna Neff and Natalie Sanna
• Less Paper Does Not Equal Less Training (at first!) by Adriana Linares
• The Paperless Office as a Risk Management Enterprise by Jim Calloway

As many of you already know, my family law practice is not paper-based, as all of our documents are scanned and stored digitally.  Not only does this make my practice more efficient, I can access all of the documents in all my clients' files from anywhere, which enables me to work and/or send information to them at any time, no matter where I am.  If you want to learn more about how I utilize technology in my practice, I am speaking about this topic at the upcoming MILOfest 2009 seminar, which is being held in Orlando, Florida from November 5 – 7, 2009.  You can learn much more about this seminar by clicking here.

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Rumor has it that AT&T will officially allow "tethering" later this year, which will enable using an iPhone as a modem to connect laptops to the internet.  If you do not want to wait, you can follow the following steps to begin tethering your Mac right now:

1. On the iPhone, goto help.benm.at in Safari.
2. On that web page, scroll down to Mobileconfigs –> Downloads –> USA –> ATT and install the profile.
3. On the iPhone, go to Settings –> General –> Reset –> Reset Network settings (this step is to enable Visual Voicemail).
4. Restart the iPhone just in case, especially if it does not reboot at this point.
5. Turn on Bluetooth on the iPhone in Settings –> Bluetooth.
6. On the iPhone, turn on tethering in Settings –> General –> Network –> Internet tethering.
7. On the Mac, click on BlueTooth icon in upper right menu bar or in System Preferences –> Bluetooth. Choose “Set up a BlueTooth Device”
8. Setup and pair the Mac with the iPhone, make sure the iPhone is in BlueTooth discoverable screen.
9. Click on BlueTooth icon again in upper right menu bar, choose your phone from the drop-down menu and connect to network.

Source:  "10 Steps To Turning Your iPhone Into A Modem For Your Laptop" by Eugene S. Melchionne, published at Legal Practice Pro.

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The following Guest Post is from Joey Heape, Director of Media & Tech for the South Carolina Bar:

At South Carolina Bar, I normally work in a Windows environment and use Remote Desktop that comes as a part of Windows XP Pro to access workstations, administer our local servers and our web server. While I use a PC at the office I use a MacBook Pro or a Mac Pro when I’m at home or on the road. So how do I do this? Well, I use Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Connection for the Mac. Microsoft has had this product for a number of years and it works quite well. It’s a free download and works great if you are using a Mac to control a PC.

South Carolina Bar is mostly a Windows environment. However, we have eight Mac workstations and three Mac laptops in our environment too. Those that work from home using Macs have to be able to access their Mac workstations with a Mac from home. There are many companies that offer remote control products like GoToMyPC , MobileMe or some subscription based model where you access your destination computer through a third-party. While these are easy to do they cost you a monthly subscription.

Enter Apple Remote Desktop. Since I’m the system administrator at South Carolina Bar, we have purchased Apple’s Remote Desktop product to manage the Macs on our network. We can update software and do many administrative tasks with this program. But did you know there is a scaled down version of Apple Remote Desktop that comes with Mac OS X? It’s called Screen Sharing.

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The Secure Digital (SD) memory card slots in the new 13" and 15" MacBook Pros are not only handy for transferring videos and photos from a camera, but did you know that you can use SD cards as a startup disk?  This can be particularly helpful if you need to troubleshoot your Mac.

In the video below, you will learn how to create a SD card startup disk for the 13" and 15" MacBook Pros.  Please note that you will need an SD card with a capacity of at least 8GB, and the OS X installation disc that came with your Mac.  I hope you find this video helpful.  You can also download this video by clicking here.

Source:  "Create an SD Card Startup Disk for the New MacBook Pros" by Roman Loyola, published at Macworld.com.

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If you need to create a time lapse video, you should check out the video below from Macworld.com, which details two methods for doing so. You can create a very basic time lapse moving using Gawker, a free program, or you can use Evocam ($30) and QuickTime Pro ($30) if you need or want more options.

Source:  "Make a Time-Lapse Video" by Rob Griffiths, published at Macworld.com.

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If you are an attorney disposing of an old Mac, you should be sure that any confidential information is securely removed before doing so.  The process outlined below can securely erase your hard drive, and the software enabling you to do so is included free as part of Mac OS X.

• Launch Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities) and when the application opens select the drive you want to erase in the pane on the left side of the Disk Utility window.
• Click the Erase tab and then click the Security Options button below.
• You can choose one of the following four options:
  
  • Don’t Erase Data :: Doesn’t erase any data but wipes out the directory that tells your Mac where your data is. Unfortunately, several third-party utilities can scour your drive and recover your data after you've employed this option. This option is not secure.
  • Zero Out Data :: Writes zeros over your drive one time.  While it's not up to government standards, recovering data from this drive will be a chore.
  • 7-Pass Erase :: Meets that US Department of Defense 5220-22 M standard, as it writes over your data seven times.
  • 35-Pass Erase :: Goes even further by overwriting your drive 35 times to make your data super-mega-ultra-really gone.

Source: "Securely Wipe Your Hard Drive" by Christopher Breen, published at Macworld.com.

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After all my recent posts about the benefits of the iPhone 3G-S, I thought it might be prudent to address the security concerns involved with disposing of your old iPhone after you decide to upgrade. Attorneys should always be concerned about protecting their client's information. Amid reports that it is possible to recover data off old iPhones, everyone should utilize the following steps to minimize the chances of your information being compromised:

1. Restore the iPhone from within iTunes.
2. On the "Info" tab, un-check all options so you don't synchronize calendars, email, bookmarks, and contacts.
3. On the Photos, Podcasts, and Video tabs, uncheck "Sync ...".
4. Create 3 big playlists at large as the storage capacity of your iPhone.
5. On the Music tab, select the first of your 3 playlists to sync. Make sure the storage bar at the bottom looks full after syncing.
6. Sync your iPhone, change to the next playlist, sync again, and repeat one last time.

Source:  "Formatting An iPhone To Wipe Data" by Rich Mogull, published at the Securosis blog.

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Today, I am pleased to present another Guest Post from Larry Port, "How and Why a Lawyer Should Implement a Getting Things Done System":

Yesterday, as part of our weeklong Legal efficiency-fest, we introduced the Getting Things Done productivity system at a high level, including its advantages and general ideas. Each day, from here to the end of the week, we’ll write guest posts at prominent legal blogs exploring the system in more detail.

In a profession such as law, where time is quite literally money and losing track of tasks and events incurs significant penalties, an organizational system such as GTD is key. The current economic downturn places even more emphasis on streamlining operations and gaining efficiencies.

Granted, you may have your own system that works wonders. But if “the art of stress-free productivity”, as the GTD book is subtitled, seems compelling, and you’re wondering what exactly GTD is, take a look at my first post here. But let’s say you’re ready to take the plunge. How do you start?

The good news is, you don’t need your entire firm’s buy-in. You can come up with your own GTD system just fine.

Start Capturing

For stress-free productivity, you need a capture device. Get all of the noise out of your head out and into a system that can be reviewed. This means capturing anything you have to do, whether it’s prepare a motion, send a fax, call a client, or lookup a case on Westlaw.

The whole trick is to organize your to-do’s as a series of “next action” items. They can’t be vague or unclear. According to GTD, you want to write down the next possible step you can take to execute the task. It’s not enough to write “Do Research”. Instead, write “Research related case precedent for relevance to bankruptcy case”, a specific and concrete action you can perform.

Organize

Next action items need to be categorized for easy reference. This sounds obvious, but here’s the interesting twist: you might not want to label them as you have in the past. Instead of organizing your tasks by what they are, organize them by where you can perform them. If you have a list for “Courthouse”, “Phone”, or “Computer”, then you can always know what to work on based on where you find yourself.

Schedule a Weekly Review

Getting organized is one thing, but staying organized is another. It’s easy and invigorating to roll up one’s sleeves every once in a while and organize the office and write up a to-do list. The hard part is maintaining that level of focus on a day to day basis.

The GTD weekly review is designed to keep practitioners on course. Once a week, block off a an hour or so on the calendar. Make sure all lists are updated and reviewed. Like most things in the system, the weekly review is a simple yet powerful technique.

Tickler Files

Law firms, whether they realize it or not, use tickler files as a matter of necessity. They constantly calendar ahead court appointments and deadlines. But usually, that’s as far as their advance calendaring goes. GTD is a big proponent of maintaining tickler reminders, which is a very powerful technique for following up with prospective customers or referring attorneys.

What Organizational Tool Should I Use?

One of the cool things about GTD is it’s more of an idea that anything, and is “platform agnostic” as we say in technology circles. You could invest in technology, 3 x 5 index cards, Moleskine notebooks, or any other organization tool.

We designed Rocket Matter, with its new task functionality, for attorneys to leverage a full-blown GTD system. Tasks are quickly added and organized, can be associated with matters, and funneled into invoices.

On the other end of the technology spectrum is the Hipster PDA, a 3 x 5 index card system. Take a look at DIYPlanner.com for some cool templates to get you started, and Levenger sells a great leather index card holder to give it a little class.

The David Allen Company, in addition to providing educational material, offers their own paper-based organizers here.

Stay Tuned

We’ll be delving into these topics in further detail throughout the week. So stay tuned for tomorrow, where we’ll explore how to turn your “stuff” on the horizon into Next Action items.

Purchase “Getting Things Done” at Amazon.com.

Larry Port is a Founding Partner and Chief Software Architect for Rocket Matter, LLC.  You can follow him on Twitter here.

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For better or worse, ringtones are here to stay, and everyone seems to want to personalize them.  Fortunately, you can now create simple, free iPhone ringtones from your iTunes library.  I have made several for myself, and you can too by following these easy steps:

1. Open iTunes 8 and find the song you want to turn in to a ringtone
2. Right click on that song and select “Get Info”
3. On the “Options” tab, use the “Start Time” and “End Time” boxes to customize the start and end times for your ringtone
4. Make sure that your ringtone 40 seconds or less and click “ok”
5. With your selected song still highlighted, click on “Advanced” in your menu bar and select “Create AAC Version”
6. A duplicate copy of your song will then appear in iTunes.  It will have the same filename but shorter “time”
7. Go back to the original song and uncheck the “Start Time” and “End Time” boxes
8. Drag the duplicate song to your Desktop, right click on it and select "duplicate"
9. Once the duplicate song has been created on your Desktop, delete the duplicate file in iTunes
10. On your Desktop, rename the file's extension from "m4a" to “.m4r”.  This turns your song file into an iPhone ringtone file.
11. Drag the newly renamed .m4r (songname.m4r) file back into iTunes and you should see your new ringtone under “Ringtones” in iTunes
12. Sync your iPhone to get your new ringtone on it, and you're done!

Note: This process works with MP3, ACC, and AIFF files.  Only DRM-free songs can be used with this ringtone creation process.  Any song downloaded from iTunes Music Store will have DRM (Digital Rights Management), so don’t use those songs.  Any song ripped from a CD or downloaded from DRM-free sources (P2P, Amazon, your friend) will work just fine.

Source:  "iPhone Ringtones: Create FREE iPhone Ringtones Using iTunes 8" by Will Park, published at IntoMobile.com.

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This month's The Legal Mac column from Law Practice Today, the ABALaw Practice Management Section's webzine, discusses the issues involved in working remotely with your Mac.  I am pleased to present, "Working Remotely on the Mac" by Jason Wietholter, Director of Technology, Opveon Litigation Services:

Get advice for using your Mac as a work tool no matter where you are.

In this day and age, demands for our time and our presence require us to be everywhere and work from everywhere. We choose Macs because they are dependable and easy to use. Working remotely on the Mac platform is just as simple and reliable. With services such as Mobile Me and the growing popularity of the entire Mac platform, more and more options are opening up to facilitate working on the road; everything from the hardware necessary to the software and services that help keep everything running smoothly.

The hardware is simple. It just works. Whether you have a MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro or even an iPhone, your Apple device has the tools you need to work on the road - already built in. All you’re missing is an internet connection. Each one of these Macs has its benefits and a certain set of constraints. Obviously, the iPhone is the smallest and most mobile option, but you give up some flexibility in not having expansion options, such as USB ports. All of the other laptops in the Mac line offer different levels of power. The MacBook and MacBook Air are the “lightweights” of the breed while the MacBook Pro is for the “heavy lifting” users out there. The beauty of the Apple hardware lineup is that you can have a laptop for the road and a desktop for your office or home and use them in perfect harmony. The basis of the Mac OS X operating system and the software available for the Mac platform make working remotely as beautiful as the hardware your run it on.

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Even though there are many fine time and billing programs for the Mac, some attorneys prefer to take an "old school" approach and use timesheets.  If you prefer this low-tech option, you should read the article at the Esquire | Mac blog, which provides the following easy to use templates:

• Numbers Billing Template
• Excel Billing Template

If you decide to use either of these timesheets, you will want to keep your spreadsheet easily accessible.  One way to accomplish this is to keep it in your Dock.  To do so, simply drag the document to the right side of the Dock (where your “stacks” folders are kept), and it will stay in the Dock for one click access to your timesheet.

Source:  "Excel and Numbers Templates for Attorney Billing Timesheets" by Adam Greivell, published at his excellent Esquire | Mac blog.

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I posted an article several years ago explaining how to use a PC version of the Fujitsu ScanSnap on your Mac.  In fact, that post has been one of the most popular ones on this blog.  My office is still using that PC ScanSnap (model 5110EOX2) on our Macs every day, without a hitch (for over five years now).

I have discovered that there is now a way to install the more recent version of ScanSnap Manager with virtually all of the PC ScanSnaps, so I thought that I'd post about the newest process and included models.  Thanks to the folks at the MacOSXHints Forum for their thread on this topic.  There are some important notes and cautions in that thread, and I recommend you read it before installing this software.

First, download and install the updated ScanSnap Manager (revision: V2.2 L11) by clicking here.  Then, you need to install the appropriate patch kit.  For models S300, S500, S510, fi-5110EOX, or fi-5110EOX2, install Patch Rev. 0.4a by clicking here, and for models S300, S500, S510, and fi-5110EOX3, install Patch Rev. 0.4b by clicking here.  Once you have downloaded, unzipped, and installed these, you should be ready to go.

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This month's The Legal Mac column from Law Practice Today, the ABA Law Practice Management Section's webzine, features an excellent discussion of the options available to those Mac-using attorneys who want or need to use Windows programs. I am pleased to present "Using Windows on Your Mac" by David Sparks:

One of the excuses that attorneys give for their reluctance to switch from PCs to Macs is that they "need" Windows for one reason or another. The good news is that Macs can run other operating systems, including Windows, whenever needed.

As a Mac-using attorney, I often raise eyebrows when people look over my shoulder to see Windows on my screen. They are even more surprised when they found out how easy it is to run Windows on a Mac.

In 2006, Apple moved the entire Macintosh line to Intel processors. This is the same hardware used by most PC manufacturers. While there are some small differences, Macs and PCs are all using compatible hardware. Almost immediately after this transition, Apple and third party software developers found ways to run Windows on Apple hardware. There are currently three primary methods:

Apple Boot Camp - One Operating System at a Time

Boot Camp is Apple's own free virtualization application built into every new Macintosh computer. It allows you to make two separate partitions on your hard drive, one for Windows and one for the Apple OS X operating system. Once you enable Boot Camp, you are presented a choice when you boot up, Windows or OS X? You simply click the desired operating system and away it goes.

If you choose Windows, your installed Windows partition will load no differently than if it were a Dell or Lenovo. You can run any Windows application your hardware will support. If you click the button for Apple OS X, your computer boots into the Macintosh operating system. This, in essence, gives you two computers in one.

One of the biggest advantages of Boot Camp is that it allows you to devote the entire resources of your computer to whichever operating system you choose. If you load Windows, the entire processor, memory, and operating components are driving Windows. People who operate graphics intensive video software often prefer to use Boot Camp for this reason.

The fact that Boot Camp only runs one operating system at a time is also its biggest detriment. A lot of Mac users want to have the benefits of Windows and Mac OS X at the same time. That is not possible with Boot Camp. This leads to the second method, third party virtualization solutions.

Third Party Virtualization - Peaceful Coexistence

While Boot Camp provides a free and easy solution to run Windows on your Mac, some users prefer to run both Windows and OS X at the same time. Using virtualization applications such as Parallels or VMWare Fusion, both of which cost $70, you can install Windows (or Linux) to run as its own OS X application. These applications support any version of Windows from Windows 95 up through the recently released Windows 7 beta.

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The following Guest Post is from one of my readers, Marissa Clake, who is an International Business Management major at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in China:

Watching movies is an essential part of my leisure life on weekends. Having tons of DVDs, I had been using DVD Hunter to organize them on my Mac.  Unfortunately, this program required me to insert each DVD disc every time I wanted to watch it.

Fortunately, I discovered a terrific program called DVD-Library for Mac which enables me to backup my commercial DVDs.  It is a beta version, so it is not perfectly stable, but its main functions work quite well and it is free.  

I use it to make ISO file for all my encrypted DVDs, and because it doesn’t remove the protection, I don’t worry about breaking the law.  With only a few clicks, I can watch the backup movies on my Mac conveniently, and the quality of the ISO image is as good as the original DVDs.

This software has enabled me to built a virtual library for my DVDs on my Mac.  Because it records the information about each movie, I can easily find the movie I want to watch. It’s really cool software. You can find out more about it and/or download it for yourself by clicking HERE. 

Below is a quick tutorial for this software, but you can find a more detailed tutorial at the developer’s website.

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Smart lawyers are always looking for ways to keep their data more secure. The following Guest Post by Blair from LaptopLogic -- your premier source for laptop reviews -- gives a simple step-by-step process to do so:

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One question that I get fairly often is how to create a pleading template in Pages.  One of my readers, Thomas K. Brown, emailed me a few months ago and shared his template with me.  I asked Tom to write this Guest Post to explain the steps he used to create this template, which he was kind enough to do.

Tom explained that even though he was a novice Pages user, he was able to create this template in just 30 minutes. He found Pages' design to be intuitive and not overburdened with features 99% of users don't need -- an assessment with which I heartily agree.  Without further adieu, I am pleased to share Tom's Guest Post with you:

Like many jurisdictions, my state has specific rules covering the form of pleadings and other documents filed with the courts.  Nothing too onerous (margins, font size, contents of captions, etc.), but I thought having a generic pleading template standing by would keep me from reinventing the wheel every time I needed to file something.

I've done most of my work in MS Office 2004 - I never did the 2008 upgrade despite the sluggish performance of the old PowerPC code running on my Intel-based MacBook (which has grown decidedly less sexy after the recent "Spotlight on Notebooks" event).  One must give props to Apple for pulling something like Rosetta off in the first place.  When the pokiness of the old Office really started getting to me not long ago, I thought I'd give iWork a shot.  After all, at $79 it's not like a huge risk to take if things didn't work out.  Fortunately, they worked out rather well.

My first task was to do the pleading template.  I could have loaded other documents that I had done previously in Word and work from there.  Pages does a pretty good job with conversions and warns you if it's unsure of anything.  To test how intuitive the application was, though, I thought I'd start from scratch and see how long it took to get the basic document together.  It took about 30 minutes.  Here's what I did, step by step.  For the Pages pros out there I'm sure there are more sophisticated techniques, but for a novice like me this worked, and worked quickly.

1. Margins.  My jurisdiction requires left and top margins of 1.5", which is easy enough. Open the Inspector (the i button in the tool bar, or View -> Show Inspector), and in the Document Inspector (the icon that looks like a blank page at the left), choose the Document tab.  Adjust the margins accordingly.  It's helpful to keep the Inspector open.
2. Heading.  The court must be identified in the heading of any pleading.  I like to define styles to make formatting easier to edit and apply down the road.  Open the Styles Drawer (View -> Show Styles Drawer) and you'll notice there's already a Heading style defined (though likely not formatted as you want).  Type in the court's name and manually format it to your specifications.  In my case, I bold and center the text and switch the font to Times New Roman.  With your cursor still in the line you just typed, hold your mouse over the Heading style in the Styles Drawer.  A little down arrow will appear immediately to the right.  Click it and choose Redefine Style from Selection.  This will allow you to apply an identical style in other areas of the document if needed, and if you ever need to change its format, you need only do it in one place and the updated style will automatically apply to every occurrence.
3. Caption.  Captions in my jurisdiction are the typical two column format with the parties listed on the left and the case number on the right.  I've seen pleadings divided with a single column of colons or right parentheses.  Sometimes I've seen attempts at lines drawn out of pipes (|) and equals (=) making a curious form of ASCII art.  When I see two columns I naturally think of a table. 
   Click Table in the tool bar.  If you've left the Inspector open, it will automatically switch to the table formatting tab.  Uncheck the Header Row box and reduce the number of rows to one and the columns to two.  Next, grab the handle in the middle of the right column and drag it all the way to the right side of the page.  You may have to first click outside of the table and the somewhere inside of the table to get this to appear.  The columns should remain equal widths.
   To make the inverted T style of caption, turn off the borders on the top and left of the left column and the top and right of the right column.  Do this by double clicking inside of the cell, then select the appropriate border in the Cell Borders section in the Inspector and set the style to None.  Do this for each of the four sides you want to remove.  When you're done, it will look like the familiar upside-down T. 
   Inside of each cell you can format the text to suit your needs.  I like to left justify the party names, right justify their posture in the case, and center the "vs.".  I also like to both horizontally and vertically center the case number in the right column.  You'll notice that when you click in a table the formatting options in the tool bar changes.  To vertically center something, use the button with the two arrows pointing from above and below a line.
4. Body.  My pleadings generally have some introductory text and then a list of numbered paragraphs.  Type some text and make it look as you'd like your body text to look, then redefine the Body style as shown above.  For the numbered paragraphs, simply click the list button in the tool bar.  I chose the legal style of course.
5. Signature Block.  Some filings require multiple signatures, such as a Consent Order or Joint Motion for Something-or-other.  Similar to the caption above, I use a table with two columns and two rows but again with the Header Row unchecked.  I format each cell accordingly, and simply use the underline character to draw out a signature line.  I'm sure there's a niftier way of doing this but remember -- this exercise took like 30 minutes for a total Pages newbie.

And that's it.  With no prior experience in Pages I was able to do up a pleading without breaking a sweat.  Like most Apple products, Pages is intuitive and powerful enough for my needs.  And at $79 it's a great deal.  You can download a copy of my sample template by clicking HERE.

Thomas K. Brown is an immigration and family law attorney who practices in Rockville, Maryland.

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After reading last week's Guest Post by Todd Juneau, Paul Meyerson submitted a comment suggesting some additional ways to get the most out of Boot Camp.  I asked him to expand his thoughts into a Guest Post, which I am now pleased to share with you:

As a Mac consultant in New York City for Templeton & Associates, I have a number of clients around the city that occasionally require Mac-PC interactivity.  If at all possible, we try to keep our users on the Mac side, but occasionally there is an application or two that just need Windows.  For those clients, I had been recommending Parallels, as Todd mentioned, although VM Ware's newest offering, Fusion v. 2.0, has me seriously leaning towards that application.  I've found in personal use that VM Ware is MUCH faster to boot, takes less of the Mac's resources (Parallels can slow the Mac to a crawl while it's trying to load up), and is just more compatible than is Parallels on a wide range of Windows applications.  However, ultimately, both are emulation software, and as a result are much slower than even an entry level PC -- even if that PC was running the languid Vista!  

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As my readers are aware, I presented two seminars at the ABA TechShow 2008 this past March in Chicago.  One was "How Lawyers Practice Law and Serve Clients with Macs -- Really!" which I co=presented with Jeff Richardson.  Our written materials from that session were recently republished in the September 2008 Law Practice Today webzine, as follows:

While most lawyers are wedded to the PC, these two lawyers enumerate the advantages of the Mac, for work, for home, and for the pure enjoyment of it.

For over a decade, every one of the hundreds of press releases issued by Apple has ended by noting that "Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh." Apple's critical role in the early days of personal computers is beyond debate, but for a period of time in the 1990s, Apple seemed to have lost its way. Its computer lineup was confusing, its market share reached an all time low, the company's stock price fell to $5 a share (in current share prices), and Dell CEO Michael Dell famously quipped that if he owned Apple, "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." 

Since then, the company has had a resurgence. Apple's computers and software have received rave reviews, its market share is at the highest point since the Mac was first introduced in 1984, Apple has taken over the digital music market with the ubiquitous iPod, the company is already a formidable presence in the cell phone market with the iPhone introduced just last year, and at the time of this writing (January of 2008) Apple's stock price has risen to over $200 a share.

With a record number of people now switching from PCs to Macs, the question for lawyers is: should you switch too? And if you do, should you maybe just switch for your home computer, or also for your office as well? Most importantly, what do you gain and what do you lose by making the switch?

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The following guest post is from Gerry Oginski, a Mac-using medical malpractice & personal injury trial lawyer in Great Neck, New York:

As the internet has taken hold and more lawyers have recognized the benefits of marketing online, one marketing tool is defining the standard of advertising on the web. Online videos. It is the newest, hottest tool available for lawyers to communicate their message on the web. Admittedly, attorney videos are one-way communication, but they offer significant advantages over every other advertising medium.

Most attorneys have failed to understand the true value of video and how it can improve their chances of a potential client calling them over their competitor. Legal marketing experts agree that the sooner you start to see the value of video marketing, the sooner you'll see the results. Legal marketing expert Larry Bodine recently commented that putting video on your website is "...a great opportunity to present how you look, how you talk, what you're like, and make yourself more attractive to clients. It's a great business-getting technique." The key to encouraging a website visitor to call you, is with video. Static websites and fancy graphics just do not cut it any more, and fail to distinguish yourself from your competitor. Tom Foster, CEO of Foster Web Marketing says "If you get in early by putting video on your website, you can take advantage of good search placement on the video search engines."

If you thought that internet video was for the MTV crowd, you'd be wrong. If you thought that video for your website was only for geeky techno-lawyers, you'd be wrong too. If you thought that putting a video of yourself online was useless, you'd definitely be wrong. In fact, Google thinks you're so wrong that they recently paid one billion dollars to buy a video sharing site called YouTube. To give you an idea about the reach that internet video has, consider a ten minute video clip by comedian and ventriloquist Jeff Dunham: his video has been viewed over 60 million times. Most attorney videos are viewed in the hundreds of times, but it shows the potential that video has. Plus, if done correctly, does not cost you anything more if it is watched 100 times or 100,000 times.

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The following Guest Post is from William A. Jackson, M.D., a Radiologist with Beaufort Medical Imaging at Beaufort Memorial Hospital:

Why is a physician writing on an attorney's blog?  First, I have been a Mac user for fourteen years, and this blog is about Mac use.  The inspiration for this particular post came from a discussion with a fellow physician who is currently involved in a medical malpractice case.  He was asked for the medical images involved in the case, which he provided on a CD.  The requesting attorney was unfamiliar with the viewing software on the CD, and he did not realize all of the images were there but needed to be scrolled through.  Accusations were then made that information was deliberately withheld, which had its own set of hearings and unnecessarily increased the cost, time and stress for all involved.  As an impartial party, I saw an opportunity to contribute information that could have prevented this misunderstanding and offer an advantage to fellow Mac users.

Modern digital medical images are stored in DICOM format.  DICOM (Digital Imaging and COmmunications in Medicine) is a standardized format based on a lossless JPEG format that can carry additional medical data about the images.  The data identifies the type of study, patient name and date, much like the metadata tags that people are now applying to their digital photos.  In order to view the DICOM images, you must have a DICOM viewer.  At the hospital (or office) that took the images, they will have PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System).  These systems can stores thousands of images and allow for viewing of the images at multiple locations.  The images can be printed on conventional film or burned onto a CD or DVD.  Due to cost savings and convenience, the CD/DVD format is preferred.  Most CD/DVD's will include a copy of a free DICOM viewer; however, most assume that a Windows PC will be used and that Internet Explorer will be the default browser, often with ActiveX turned on.

So what are Mac users to do?  Of course, they can opt to use Boot camp, virtualization or a spare PC, but they can still have problems based on the assumptions already mentioned.  The best option for Mac users is OsiriX.  OsiriX is an open source DICOM viewer for Mac OS X.  It can open CD's and DVD's that contain DICOM images.  This allows you to view the images just as a radiologist or other physician would view them on a PACS.  The settings can be adjusted and areas of interest measured if desired.  OsiriX has the capability if working as a 3-D work station which is likely well above the needs of most attorneys.  The most important aspect, I feel, is the ability to view the images in a familiar format.  If you rely on the software included on the CD/DVD, each will have its own user interface.  This means that you must learn multiple ways of doing the same thing, often with contradictory results for the same action on different viewers.  This consistent user interface will make you more efficient at handling the images and less likely to over look some of the images.

OsiriX can allow you to store a copy of the images so you will still have them if the CD/DVD is damaged or lost.  You can make your own discs to distribute to your colleagues or witnesses.  You can store the images on a hard drive, locally or networked.  You can then export the images in a variety of formats.  You can burn CD's or DVD's.  You can also export to other drives or iPods.  They can be upload to web servers or iDisks.  Images can be exported in standard JPEG for incorporation into presentations.

As a radiologist, I find OsiriX useful even though I work at a hospital with a good PACS.  OsiriX is better at finding the DICOM images than our PACS, although some of that is due to protective settings on the PACS.  OsiriX opens nearly every disc that comes in.  There is one office that formats the disc in such a way that I have to manually find and load the images, which is fortunately the rare exception.  In fact OsiriX is so powerful, that there have even been a couple of times when it saved the day.  A referring physician wanted the outside images loaded onto our PACS and even with a $150,000 imaging work station designed to import images,  I had to extract the images from the disc, burn a new one using OsiriX, and then we could load the images onto PACS through the work station.  Not bad for free software!

William A. Jackson, M.D.
Beaufort Medical Imaging
Beaufort Memorial Hospital

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In anticipation of the move to my new MacBook Air, I decided to spend this past weekend trimming any unnecessary "fat" from my MacBook.  Before this "diet," my hard drive weighed in at just approximately 102 GB, which was too big for the Air's 80 GB hard drive.

After taking the steps set forth below, I managed to trim my hard drive down to a svelte 47.5 GB.  I was then able to use bring that data over to the Air using Migration Assistant.  As was the case with our new iMacs, this was a quick and easy process.

Here's what I did for the "diet":

• Removed extraneous language resources from Mac OS X, such as Afrikaans, Albanian, etc.  The free program Monolingual does an excellent job of removing these that I have never used and won't ever need.  This step yielded a savings of 3.2 GB.
• Removed printer drivers for printers that I didn't have.  I only use two printers now, and I can always download any other drivers in the future if the need arises.  To remove these, navigate to HD/Library/Printers/ and then simply drag the unneeded ones to the trash, which saved me another 2.29 GB.
• Downloaded and ran AppZapper to remove unwanted or unused programs.  After looking around, I found there were a few programs that I simply never use.  By zapping them, I was able to squeeze out another .5 GB.
• Decided whether to use Parallels or VM Ware Fusion.  I saw no reason to keep both, and one of them was removed, yielding a whopping 20 GB savings.  I will post an article tomorrow discussing which of the two I kept and why.
• Moved my iTunes library to an portable external hard drive.  I bought a Western Digital My Passport 250 GB drive that weighs only 3.7 ounces and is roughly the size of an iPhone.  It's USB powered, so it's extremely portable.  I can have my music and movies with me when I want to, yet avoid the extra weight the rest of the time.

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The following guest post is from my friend and blogger extraordinaire , David Swanner :

I have a wall of DVD's at home (probably about 175) and the bookcase is starting to get wobbly. I wanted a simple way to pull these movies onto the computer and store them all on a hard drive. I'd seen a number of media servers before, but didn't know how to get started.

I called my tech guy and he suggested keeping everything in iTunes on a Mac-Mini and a 2 Terabyte Western Digital Hard Drive.

What Can We Do?

• Access All Movies in iTunes - We have a triple bookcase of about 175 movies that we're importing into iTunes. My guess is with a 2 terabyte hard drive that is mirrored (automatic backup) we should be able to hold about 350-500 movies. We are using Mac the Ripper and Handbrake to get comercial movies onto the Mac-Mini.
• Use Apple's Front Row and Remote to Watch Movies - We can use the little white remote that comes with Mac's to watch movies. I change the tv to a different video input, click on the menu button and can navigate all of the movies and tv shows on the hard drive with the remote and not have to use a keyboard and mouse.
• Have All Music in the House in One Place - While both my wife and I like music, our tastes rarely overlap. I tend towards 80's synth pop and 60's blues, while my wife likes country and hip hop. But we do have some tastes that overlap. Both of our CD collections are loaded onto iTunes and we can set up playlists and put music on our iPods from either 'collection'. This keeps us from both buying the same song from iTunes Music Store.
• Have All Pictures in the House in One Place - It gives us a centralized location that is constantly backed up to have all of our family pictures.
• Allow us to Watch iTunes Video Purchases on the Big Screen - By hooking up the Mac-Mini to our stereo/tv system, it allows us to watch the movies and the tv shows that I've downloaded from iTunes Music Store on our 42" TV, instead of the 3" iPod Touch screen. Before, I was downloading seasons of Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Dexter and Weeds on my computer at the office and bringing home a few episodes at a time on my iPod and plugging my iPod directly into the TV. Now, I'm downloading the seasons on the Mac-Mini at home and transferring a few episodes as needed to the iPod when I do cardio at the gym and go out and about.
• Have All Music Hooked Into the Home Sound System - We have a nice Sony tuner with Polk speakers that sound great. However, with our music on iTunes and iPods, we mainly listen to it on a Bose Sound Dock or a Polk Audio iSonic2 speaker/alarm clock. Both of those are great, but aren't the same as the home stereo. By connecting up the Mac-Mini and iTunes, we're getting our entire music collection over the home stereo.
• Watch Streaming Internet on TV - A number of TV shows (Battlestar Galactica, Gray's Anatomy, Desparate Houswives) stream their entire episodes on the internet, with either limited or no commericals. My wife and I are becoming a fan of watching tv without commercials. We've watched the Battlestar Galactica on the computer the next morning without commercials, rather than staying up and watching it with commercials. With hooking the Mac-Mini and it's internet connection up to the TV, we can now watch the internet versions on a 42" TV. Cool stuff.
• YouTube on Your TV - Again, with the internet connection to the TV, you can watch full size YouTube clips with full sound.
• The Internet on TV - Anything you can find on the internet, can be put up on the TV in full color on full sound.
• Eliminate Bookcases of DVD's and Inserting Individual DVD's to Watch Movies - As we convert movies, one by one into digital format, we are eliminating the creeking, wobbly bookcase of DVD's that dominates one wall of our living room. Also, our 4 year old, which is just learning how to put disks in the DVD player (and our 1 year old who is learning how to put 'stuff' in the DVD player) can use the Apple Remote to pick her favorite movies without Mommy and Daddy having to put the disk in for her.

How Did We Do It?

It was actually very simple. The main thing was to consolidate all of the music and video onto a single computer. We also put everything onto the Western Digital Hard Drive. The hard drive is set up in a RAID 1 configuration. That means it is set up in a disk mirroring configuration that automatically backs things up, so there is a copy if the hard drive goes down. ALL of the music, video and pictures are put on the hard drive and not the Mac-Mini. That way if we have to upgrade the Mac-Mini, put a new OS on it, or anything, our movies, music and pictures won't be affected.

When importing movies from DVD into the computer, I used Mac The Ripper to pull the movie off the DVD. We then used Handbrake to convert the 'dvd files' into a single .mpg that iTunes can read. From there, it's a simple process to drag and drop the movie into iTunes. From there, it can be played in iTunes or from Front Row.

We have been saving just the movie portion of the DVD and stripping out the previews, extras and menu selections. That seems to work well.

We have a number of TV shows on DVD (Boston Legal, Adventures of Brisco County, Jr, ...), which have a number of episodes per disk. It seems to be much easier to just import each disk individually and not try to save each individual episode. So instead of 22 episodes of Brisco County, Jr., there are 5 disks, I have Season 1, Parts 1-5. Not perfect, but each disk is set up differently and I don't think it's worth the effort to peel each individual episode out. (Now I can watch Boston Legal on my iPod while I'm at the gym). Good stuff.

My sincere thanks to David Swanner for this guest post.  You can learn more about David by visiting his firm's website, DavidVsGoliath.com, or his blogs, SCTrialLaw.com and Trial Lawyer Resource Center.

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The following guest post is from fellow Mac-using lawyer, G. Ware Cornell Jr.:

For more years than I would like to count, I started every jury trial with a legal pad (the 14 inch variety) and turned it ninety degrees and drew five or six lines down it. I would do this on several pages, sometimes drawing six or seven lines and sometimes less, depending on the configuration of the courtroom. With my pad turned sideways I would frantically write the name of the juror, his or her jury number and the seat number assigned by the judge.

This process was pretty easy to screw up. Sometimes it was my fault, such as when I omitted a prospective juror, and sometimes it was the fault of the court who might summarily excuse a member of the panel before any lawyer voir dire.

Once jurors were in the box, I would frantically write down answers to standard (which means important) questions. Then at the very bottom I would put in the stuff that wasn't standard. Finally I would take my pad and, based on what I could read or remember, select a jury.

Ten years ago, when I first started bringing laptops to trial, I tried to create jury selection template in Excel. I failed completely, but every time some new version of Excel came out I would try again, and repeat my failure.

Last fall I was in trial in Miami. I had just downloaded a trial version of iWork'08. There was some problem with the venire, and as a result I had a little time to kill. I decided to see if Numbers would do what Excel couldn't. To my amazement I had a very functional juror selection form in about ten minutes. Since then I have refined it a bit, but it is still basically the template I made in that courtroom.

My table has 22 rows, and in the first column I put what are (for my employment law practice) standard questions going down the row. The final row is for individualized notes. Given the ease with which templates are created or modified in Numbers, the questions are easily adaptable to specific practice issues. I also took advantage of slide and drop down menus to answer common questions like cities of residence.

With respect to residence in our courts, we do not often get specific residence addresses. However the community tin which a panel member resides gives important clues. When I was using a legal pad, I would rarely write out the full name of the city and use abbreviations like "FL" for Fort Lauderdale or "Hwd" for Hollywood. On my pad the residence information would not be in a line across the pad because other important information such as a trial scheduling issue might be covered before residence locations would be discussed. With the template every jurors residence is in one row, making access easier and more reliable.

I also used slide menus for age estimates in decades, since generally speaking asking a prospective juror her age is a recipe for disaster.

Note that in the example above age is reflected as twenty, but the juror has lived in South Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties primarily) for twenty five years. Age is estimated in decades in this template.

Few residents have lived in South Florida their whole lives. Most judges will make inquiry about length of residence during the court's voir dire.  I use a slide response since it really doesn't matter if it is eight years or eleven, I am looking for the degree of ties to the community. For instance, over forty percent of South Florida residents today did not live here during Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which was until Katrina the most destructive hurricane in history. In one case years ago, a witness claimed a certain event occurred on a particular August day.  In closing argument I showed a NOAA map recording the passage of Hurricane Andrew on that very day.  I wanted jurors who would remember how destructive that storm was and who would know how long it was before it was business as usual.

Other questions in my template are peculiar to my practice. However it is easy enough to change the questions to fit cases, and to save those changes as your own template using the "File" menu in Numbers.

One thing I like to ask at either pretrial or calendar call is how the court conducts voir dire. By this I want to know how big a panel will be ordered and where the jurors will sit, and in how many rows. If I have this information I can prepare my seating chart before I enter the courtroom. However, even if I don't the template allows me to easily create one even as the panel is being led into the gallery.

When you start a new document in Numbers, it creates a table with thirteen columns. Columns can be easily added or subtracted from the table, but most jury boxes put between six and nine seat in a seating row. Since each column represents a juror, I cut the number of columns to match the seat diagram with an extra column on the left for standard questions.

It is important to know where the first juror will sit. Juror number one will often be in the first seat of a row closest to the judge, but not always. Once I know where juror number one will be, I can give each seat a number. It is easy to delete or add rows in Numbers. As a result each table will represent one seating row. New tables are added simply by copying the first table, pasting and then adjusting the seating capacity of the second and/or third rows. This process works even when overflow jurors are placed in the court's seating gallery.

The following illustration shows sixteen prospective jurors sitting in two rows.  In this configuration the jury box is most likely to the judge's left. If it were reversed the numbering would be reversed as well.

Along the bottom of the screen, certain information may be highlighted in green or red. Based on a juror's overall response I give each panel member a quick overall assessment of suitability. A juror I really want will get a high enough assessment to get a "green light", where as the one's of whom I have the most concerned will get a "red light." The template automatically highlights these panel members.

Finally I have a question with a drop down menu to tract peremptory and challenges for cause. I have not attempted to create any capacity to automatically configure the jury box based on challenges. I presume it is possible, however given the prevalence of back-striking in our state courts (a practice generally disallowed in U.S. District Court) and the number of jurors that may ultimately be seated in federal court, I rely on my ability to count to help me visualize who will ultimately be seated in the box.

Jury selection remains a critical part of a trial lawyer's job. Years ago, lawyers were given basic information about a prospective venire a week or so in advance. Most trial lawyers today, except those who have tried highly publicized cases in which selection questionnaires were utilized, never see even the names of panel members until they are brought to the courtroom. What follows is an often hurried process in which selection error possibilities dramatically increase.

Templates cannot substitute for experience and skill during voir dire. But a jury selection template can simplify and routinize the process, and that creates a bit more time for a lawyer to focus on the panel with an eye towards selecting the best possible jury on any given day.

You can download a copy of the Jury Selection Template in Numbers format by clicking HERE.

G. Ware Cornell Jr. is a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer in Weston, Florida where he primarily practices employment law with the firm of Cornell & Associates P.A. He is a graduate of Emory University, the University of Georgia School of Law, and served as the first senior law clerk for United States District Judge William M. Hoeveler in the Southern District of Florida upon his investiture in 1977. Mr. Cornell was recently selected as a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, a trial lawyers' honorary society.

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Most attorneys have to work with numbers on a fairly regular basis.  Litigation attorneys often have to calculate damages.  Personal injury attorneys must divide by three to calculate their fees.  Family law attorneys (like myself) often need to compute the parties' income and expenses.

Mac OS X comes with a great built=in Calculator (pictured at right), but sometimes it would be nice to be able to do quick calculations on the fly without having to open that program.  Well, thanks to the following tip from the Mac Tricks and Tips blog, now I can do just that.

Spotlight will perform basic calculations without having to open any other programs.  Simply push Command + Space to open Spotlight and then simply type in the desired math function, such as

Source: "Using Spotlight For Quick Calculations" by James Powell, published at his Mac Tricks and Tips blog.

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Several weeks ago, I published a post from Todd Vachon about working with RealLegal's .ptx files on Macs.  Mr. Vachon has updated his article on this subject, and I urge you to check it out if you work with these types of files.  You can read his updated article by clicking HERE.

Source:  "Working with RealLegal .ptx Files on the Mac" by Todd Vachon, published at his Todd Vachon Photography blog.

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Mac-using attorneys who work with RealLegal's .ptx files will find the following article by Todd Vachon very helpful:

Recently, while doing some research on producing video depositions, I came across RealLegal's .ptx files. Those in the legal profession will recognize this format is the method not a few court reporters use to deliver deposition transcripts. This can present a challenge for Mac users because the .ptx file is a proprietary encrypted file, only readable with RealLegal's software which is not well supported for the Mac.

It's true that RealLegal offers free readers for both the PC and Mac, but if you look at the fine print you'll realize that the Mac version is written to run in 'classic' mode. Classic mode is not supported under OS 10.5 'Leopard' or on any Intel Mac. In other words, RealLegal isn't really interested in continuing to support the Mac market. If you have a PowerPC Mac running OSX.4 or prior, this solution may work for you for now. If not, read on...

Since I was interested in producing synchronized video depositions, I needed to find a way to easily access these files. Here are some of my initial findings:

For producing synchronized video depositions, Clarity Legal Software makes DepoSmart which it claims can read RealLegal e-Transcript XML files. I haven't tested it out yet, but it sounds promising. Clarity also produces free cross platform viewer software. All Clarity's is available for either platform (and really supported by the look of it).

What if you just want to be able to read .ptx files on you mac? I use Codeweaver's Crossover software to run a PC only program that I need to use. Crossover is a commercial application of the opensource Wine project, which is dedicated to running Windows application on Intel chips without the need for Windows. If you have an Intel Mac this is your ticket. Crossover is available as a free 30-day trial version.

I found that the PC version of RealLegal's free reader ran perfectly well in Crossover. If you want to give Crossover a try, here's some details on how I set it up that should save you some time: After installing Crossover for Mac and running it, click on the 'manage bottles' link and create a new Windows 2000 'bottle'. When Crossover is done setting up the bottle, click on the applications button and then the install software button. Choose the 'install unsupported software' option - don't panic, this just means it's not on the limited list of tested software - not surprising since there isn't a big market for it outside of the legal profession. Navigate to the envsetup.exe file you downloaded from the RealLegal site and choose it. Follow the installation directions. When it's done you should get a finder window with the viewer's program icon. Open the viewer application and use it like you would any other app.

What if you want to convert your transcript into a universal format that anyone can read, like a potential expert witness? Select the entire transcript (I found I needed to click and drag the whole document to do this - see what I mean about junky proprietary software?). Remember that it thinks it is running under windows, so the copy command is Control-C instead of the Mac's Command-C (Pasting on the Mac side is still Command-V). Next I opened Pages [Apple's word processor] and pasted the text in. From there choose File>Print and choose the 'Save as PDF' option and you'll have a cross-platform shareable PDF. [Note: other word processors, such as Word for Mac or even TextEdit may work for this, but I haven't tested them.]

If you own Adobe Acrobat Professional, you can take this a step further. [Note: I found I couldn't paste a transcript of 20 or more pages directly into a blank Acrobat PDF. My test file was 50 pages long. So I used Pages to create the initial PDF file, then opened it in Acrobat to index it.] Acrobat will allow you to index the file so you can search it for any word and quickly locate each usage. Open your PDf in Acrobat and choose Advanced>Document Processing>Manage Embedded Index. Click the 'Embed Index' button and Acrobat will index the entire document. The nice thing about this is that the index can be searched by anyone with the latest free Adobe Acrobat reader software. Adobe by the way has a very good track record at maintaining cross platform compatibility.

I hope this helps you if you've found yourself in the same boat. I'd love to hear some feedback on these workarounds or other ideas if you have them. Let me know of your experience with this issue.

Source:  "Working with RealLegal .ptx Files on the Mac" by Todd Vachon, published at his Todd Vachon Photography blog.

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I want my readers to be aware that there is a Mac security threat (called a "trojan horse") making its rounds across the internet.  This malware, named the OSX.RSPlug.A Trojan Horse, is apparently associated with suggestive photos/videos of pop train-wreck Britney Spears.  Please note that this is not virus -- meaning that it can't self-propagate from one machine to another.

When you believe that you have found the video of Ms. Spears and click to watch it, you receive a message stating that your machine lacks the necessary codec.  A disk image will then start downloading, and it can then mount and launch an installer which asks for your admin password.  If you enter the password, you have allowed the trojan horse to be installed.

Of course, you should NEVER install anything that you receive from an untrusted source.  (Note:  I won't comment or pass judgment on the impropriety of searching for or viewing suggestive videos or photos of scantily clad or nude pop stars.)  If you find your machine is infected, Macworld has outlined the necessary steps to remove the trojan horse from your machine.

While I know that it is somewhat disconcerting to have to remember that malware exists, since it's not something that Mac users face that often, don't forget that this particular threat only poses a problem if you are careless and give your Mac permission to install it.  Even with this threat, Mac OS X is still quite safe and secure, and I don't plan to get any "security software" at this time. 

Source:  "Trojan Horse Warning: What You Need to Know" by Rob Griffiths, published at Macworld.

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If you are a trial lawyer, you will find this article particularly useful.  During presentation (to a jury, mediator, etc.), it is often helpful to emphasize one particular portion of a document.  One demonstrative way to do this is through the use of a "callout."

Apple's Keynote can be used to easily create elegant callouts, as shown in a recent post at The Trial Technologist's View blog.  This post contains an easy to follow video tutorial that shows just how easy it is to create callouts with Keynote.  I urge you to check it out and determine if you can use this in your practice.

Source: "Video Tutorial: Document Blowups in Keynote" by Blake Boyd, posted at The Trial Technologist's View blog.

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Several months ago, I posted a way to connect a Mac notebook computer to the internet using a Bluetooth telephone.  I have been using this method for quite some time, and it works flawlessly.

One of the reasons I was hesitating to get an iPhone was because I didn't want to lose the ability to use my cell phone as a wireless modem from time to time.  Well, I now have one less excuse, because the folks at Dragon Forged have figured out how to do just that.

The step-by-step illustrated instructions are listed HERE, and of course, this method is completely free!  Thanks to those guys and gals for their efforts in figuring out how to do this and for sharing it with the rest of us.

Note:  I am still waiting on the 3G iPhone to be released before I get one, so I have not tested this method myself.

Source:  "Tethering the iPhone for OS X" posted at the Dragon Forged blog.  Thanks also to Finis Price of the TechnoEsq blog for pointing out this information at the Macs in Law Offices (MILO) group.

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If you need to send multiple attachments to an email, you should check out Attaché, an AppleScript droplet by Martin Michel.  This add-in quickly creates an new email with all the attachments included and listed.  You can put Attaché anywhere you like, though the Desktop and Dock seem the most logical locations, and then simply select the files you want to send and drop them onto it.  Best of all, Attaché is free and can be downloaded by clicking here.

Source: "Attaché: Droplet for Quick Mail.app Attachment Lists" by Tim Gaden, published at his excellent Hawk Wings blog.

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Do you have an old printer sitting around that you would like to use?  Back when I was using PCs, I had a Kyocera FS-1200 printer that was great.  It produced high-quality pages at a very fast speed -- pretty much all you could ask for from a printer.  The problem is that there is not a driver to use this printer with Mac OS X Tiger.

Yesterday, I decided that perhaps it was time to use this printer as something other than a place to stack legal magazines to be read "one day."  I spent less than five minutes searching online, when I found this article in the MacWorld forums.  It discusses a generic printer driver that can be used to operate over 500 older printers from various manufacturers, including Brother, Epson, HP, Samsung, and my FS-1200.

I spent approximately five more minutes downloading and installing this driver, and now my old PC printer works like a charm with my MacBook.  If you need a driver for an older printer, check out this article and chances are it will solve your problem.  In less than ten total minutes, my old printer was revived and is now printing as good as new.

Source:  "Found an OS X Printer Driver for Old Printers" posted in the MacWorld forums.

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I previously posted about my fondness for the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner.  What I didn't mention was that my particular ScanSnap (model 5110EOX2) is actually a holdover from my old PC-using days.  I had this scanner for roughly a year before I moved my office to Macs two years ago.

Some time after that, Fujitsu released a Mac-specific (white) version of the ScanSnap.  However, many people want to use the PC (black) model with their Macs -- either because they already owned one before the Mac version was released or or because the PC version is slightly less expensive than it's white cousin.

Both models work basically the same.  They both come with the full version of Adobe Acrobat, and they both work quickly and efficiently.  However, there is a difference that I want to address in this article.  The Mac driver for the black (PC) version is only available in Japanese.  Domo Arigato! 

All of the features work just fine, but nothing is in English, which makes it a bit tricky figuring out certain things.  Fortunately, all of the dialog boxes are in the same places as shown in the English manual, but it's not practical to keep that on hand in case you need it.

Never fear though, there is a solution to this situation which enables you to load the Japanese drivers and then convert them to English.  The following instructions walk you through this process step-by-step:

1. Download the English and Japanese versions of the ScanSnap software from Fujitsu (be sure to download the correct version for your Mac, Intel or PPC).
   • Japenese Link (Currently V20L22)
   • English Link (Currently V20L10)
2. Mount the Japenese disk image (V20L22.dmg) and install (just keep clicking the blue button on the right hand side to advance the installation).
3. After installation, unmount the Japanese image to avoid confusion later on.
4. Mount the English disk image (V20L20.dmg) but DO NOT install it.
5. Open the English disk image (you should see a file named "ScanSnap_V20L11" or "ScanSnap_V20L11.pkg").
6. Right-Click (control-click) on that image and select "Show Package Contents".
7. Open the "Contents" folder and open the "Resources" folder.
8. Locate the file called "ScanSnap_V20L11.pax.gz" and double-click on it.
9. After it has unarchived the file, a ScanSnap folder should now appear on your desktop. Open it.
10. In this folder, you should see the "ScanSnap Manager" which shows the WHITE version of the scanner.  Right-Click (control-click) on the application and select "Show Package Contents".
11. Open the "Contents" folder and open the "Resources" folder.
12. Locate the folder called "English.lproj" and copy this folder to a safe place (like your Desktop).
13. At this point, it will help you avoid clutter and confusion by closing all of the various open windows.
14. Go to your Applications folder, find the ScanSnap folder there, and open it.
15. In this folder, locate the "ScanSnap Manager" which shows the BLACK version of the scanner, which is the Japenese version that needs to be change. Right-Click (control-click) on the application and select "Show Package Contents".
16. Open the "Contents" folder and open the "Resources" folder.
17. Copy the "English.lproj" that you just extracted to this folder.
18. Voila! You should now have support for multiple Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners with English localization!

Source:  "ScanSnap fi-5110EOX for Macintosh" thread in the MaxOSXHints Forums.

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Did you know that you can quit programs "on the fly"?  As you probably know, you can cycle through your open applicaitons by hitting ⌘ + Tab.  While doing that, you can close any desired applications by keeping the ⌘ key pressed and then hitting the "Q" key while cycling over the application you want to close.  The illustration below from Tim Gaden's Hawk Wings blog shows this process in action:

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If you've ever used iChat, you already know what a great messaging program it is.  If your company has blocked your messaging access to the internet, this tip from MacOSXHints might be the solution you've been waiting for:

Many companies block the default port used by most IM clients. However, you can change iChat's port from 5190 to 80, which is the same port your browser uses. Open iChat, then go to Preferences » Accounts » Server Settings, and change the port number from 5190 to 80. You must be offline (iChat: Log out of AIM) before you can make this change. This will allow iChat to connect to the IM servers, and off to text messaging you go. I'm pretty sure this tip will only work for text messaging, since voice and video chat use ports that are not changable in iChat.

Source: "Use iChat Behind a Company Firewall" published at MacOSXHints.com.

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As you are aware, I switched from my PowerBook to my new MacBook in mid-January.  I love the new computer, but I have had one problem with it -- until today.  Since it arrived, I have not been able to access the internet from anywhere as I could with the PowerBook.  Allow me to explain...

For the last couple of years, I had a Verizon Wireless PC card to connect my PowerBook (and my PC laptop before it) to the internet from anywhere.  The card I used was a Novatel PCMCIA Card, and it worked flawlessly on both PC and Mac platforms.  I always had fast, reliable service, and I was able to connect to both my office network and the internet at large when I was away from my home or office.

However, the MacBook doesn't have a PC card slot, which rendered my existing card useless.  Verizon does offer a USB card, but their customer service department didn't do anything to entice me to make the conversion.  In fact, they offered me the same options as someone who had never been a Verizon customer, basically igoring our mutli-year relationship.  Also, I was a little hesitant to lock myself into another long-term contract with all of the technological developments occuring almost weekly.

My regluar cellphone service is with Alltel, using a Motorola RAZR v3c.  I have read where some people had been able to connect various laptops to the internet using only their cellphones, and I decided to find out if this option would work for me.  After a quick Google search on this topic, I found an article by Michael Ash which explained how to connect a Mac to Alltel's network using a RAZR.  After spending less than five minutes following Mr. Ash's procedure, I was able to connect as described. 

Because I have excellent service from Alltel, I can once again access the internet from anywhere I have cellular service, which is almost everywhere.  The access speed is somewhat slower than I had with Verizon, but it's still fast enough to be functional.  Also, $0 is much better than the $70 per month I was paying with Verizon.  The setup for this new procecure was fast and easy... and it just works -- very Mac-like.

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As you may recall, I published a guest post from David Sparks several months ago, in which he discussed his first few weeks as a Mac convert after being a PC user for over 20 years.  Today, Mr. Sparks discussues a problem that he encountered and solved related to his calendar:

Well its been a few months now since I chucked my PC laptop and bought my shiny Macbook Pro.  One problem that continued to pester me is one that is near and dear to the heart of all attorneys, the calendar.  My office uses a PC Network with a specialized legal application called "Timematters" which performs pretty well with one exception (*cough* regular email crashes *cough).  Timematters is a PC only application and one of the things it does well is sync with my Treo 650.  This way my secretary and staff is entering contacts, appointments, and task items which sync into my Treo.  This is very helpful to me.  The problem is when I want to look at my calendar at home on something other than the tiny Treo screen.  So therein lies the challenge -- sync my Treo with my Mac without screwing up the data when I return to my office.  (It would not be fun explaining to my colleagues how I managed to wipe out the contact database)  As an aside I was never able to successfully do this on my old PC laptop either.

This is not as easy at it should seem.  The Palm desktop may be the worst program ever written in both its PC and Mac variants.  But I think the Mac version is particularly loathsome.  I try to sync with it and it takes FOREVER.  Furthermore, it doesn't always grab all the data and worse yet it seems to corrupt data when I send it back at work.   I also tried "The Missing Sync" to no avail (although a lot people swear by it). 

The good news is I've found a solution using Google Calendar and GooSync.  GooSync can be found at www.goosync.com and is made by a UK based company, Toffa International.  GooSync allows you to sync your Google Calendar with just about any cell phone that has a calendar app.  If you go to their site they have a list of supported phones.  With my Treo it actually installed a small palm application that, with a press of a button, allows me to sync my treo to my google calendar.  GooSync talks to my google calendar and sync's all changes on both the phone and those on google.  When I go back to the office it then integrates those changes straight into my windows based calendar software without a hiccup.

One nice feature of this is there are no cables.  You can sync your phone from anywhere.  I usually hit the GooSync button on my Treo as I drive home from the office and again in the morning as I head back in.  The free version of GooSync will synchronize for 30 days.  If you purchase a 1 year subscription at 20 pounds (which ended up costing me about $40, it will sync an entire year.

If you really want to go crazy, you can also buy Spanning Sync.  This program installs a system preference tool that works very similar to the .mac synchronization.  When you first set it up you can attach each of your google calendars to a separately created calendar in Apple iCal.  I've had it running on my MacBook Pro now for 2 weeks with no problem whatsoever.  Because it allows you to sync multiple calendars I can pull down my office calendar (uploaded with GooSync), my wife's calendar, the Google US holiday calendar, and any other public google calendar.   I can make adjustments to both calendars and the sync process puts it all together on both systems.

I've been very pleased with this program.  My wife still works on a PC and it allows her and I to keep up with each other.  This also lets me see my calendar, via google calendar, even when I'm away from my mac.  It also works fine on multiple macs.  I bought my daughter an iMac and the program works fine on my user account on her computer.  If you don't believe me then go to the website, SpanningSync.com.  They have a very nice video demonstration.

They offer a trial demonstration of 15 days.  They have an interesting license schedule, its $25 a year or a one-time fee of $65.  I bought the one year license.  I highly recommend this program if you have need of viewing and editing your calendar from other computers, or share calendar data with other users (especially cross platform).  It is a great little application that quietly does exactly what you expect it to every time.

The net result for me with these two programs is that my secretary, my wife, and I can all be looking at and changing my calendar from multiple locations and multiple platforms and at the end of the day everything syncs up flawlessly.  Since my calendar is constantly changing, this is a very good thing.

David W. Sparks is an attorney with George & Shields LLP in Irvine, California. He specializes in litigation and transactional practice.  He is described as a "creative thinker focused on precision, detail-oriented litigation preparation and strategic business planning to obtain the best possible outcome for clients."  David can be reached via email by clicking HERE.  My thanks are extended to David for his great guest post.

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If you only want to include a portion of an email in a new email (such as a reply or forwarded message), you can simply select the part of the text you want to include in your response before clicking "Reply" or "Forward".  Your new email message contains only the text you have selected and omits the other portions of the prior email. 

This tip comes in very handy in a legal setting.  There are frequently occasions where I want to forward certain information to a client or when I want to forward a portion of a client's email to my assistant.

Source:  "Selective Quoting in Mail.app" by Mike Sivcevic, published at his Silver Mac blog.

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We all know and love Apple's Preview program as an image viewer extraordinaire', but did you know that it can also be used to create image files?  Best of all, the creation process is quick and easy -- in other words, very Mac-like -- the way things should be.

If you have an image file on your clipboard (by using the "copy" command from virtually any program), you can simply use preview Preview and press Command-N.  A new image file is created using the graphics on the clipboard, and you can then use File --> Save to save the image in a format and location of your choosing.

Source:  "Use Preview to Create Image Files" by Rob Griffiths, published at Macworld.

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The use of vCards (electronic business cards) can make exchange of one's personal information much easier and more efficient.  Including an option to download your vCard in your email signature line is a quick, easy option that you should consider.

Mail.app guru extraordinaire Tim Gaden has posted a great "how to" at his excellent Hawk Wings blog, which offers two ways to add a vCard with your contact information to a Mail.app signature.

• Option One  ::  Add it as a hyperlink to a remotely-stored vCard file, so that recipients can easily download it into their Address Books.  This is the method I recommend, and you simply follow these steps:
  
  • Select the desired text in your email signature;
  • Control-click on it;
  • Select the new Edit Link option; and
  • Enter the web address where your vCard is stored. 

• Option Two  ::  Export your card from Address Book and drag into the desired signature pane of Mail's preferences, which send your vCard with every signed email.  (Note: This method will make your emals larger and can slow their transmission.)

Here is my new and improved Mail.app signature:

J. Benjamin Stevens
Stevens - MacPhail, P.A.
1188 Asheville Highway
Spartanburg, SC 29303
(864) 598-9172 or (800) 897-8856
Email:  Ben@StevensFirm.com
Family Law blog:  www.SCFamilyLaw.com
Family Law website:  www.StevensFirm.com
Mac Legal Technology blog:  www.TheMacLawyer.com
Personal Injury blog:  www.SCPILaw.com
Download vCard

Source:  "Adding a vCard to a Mail.app Signature" by Tim Gaden, published at his Hawk Wings blog.

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A few days ago, I wrote a post about the basics of the Dock.  Today, I want to tell you how to use the Dock to save time in your day-to-day fuctions and thus increase your efficiency.  You can use Mac OS X's drag and drop functionality with the Dock to do the following:

• Grab text and drop it onto Mail's icon  in the Dock to automatically open an email with that text included in the body of the message.
• You can use the same drap and drop method to email documents (*.pdf, *.doc, etc.) by grabbing their icons and dropping them onto Mail's icon.
  
• Grab a web address and drag it onto your preferred web brower icon (Firefox, Safari, Camino, etc.) and it will open in a separate tab or window.
• Grab text and drag it onto Safari's icon to automatically conduct a Google search for those terms.
  

This process is something that should be more widely promoted by Apple and Mac enthusiasts because it can really change (and improve) your approach to several frequently performed tasks.  Hopefully, now that you are aware of it, you can use it to help yourself and spread the word to help your fellow Mac users.  If you have any other Dock tips, please feel free to submit them to me for publication here.

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It's always been there for you, but do you appreciate it?  I'm referring, of course, to the Dock -- that little strip of icons sitting there on your screen.  This feature of Mac OS X can make your life much easier, and all you need to do is spend a few moments to learn some of the neat things it can do.

Fortunately, the excellent Silver Mac blog posted an article that gives a great look at the Dock. This article covers the basic ("what are these icons?"), the intermediate ("what do the black triangles under them mean?"), and the advanced ("how can I customize the Dock?").

There is one other cool feature that the Dock can do that wasn't covered in this article, but I'm saving that for a separate post later this week.  Sorry to be a tease, but it's worth the wait.  In the meantime, check out this article to tide you over.

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Today, I am pleased to present a guest post from one of my readers, Robert E. Nuddleman, Esq. of San Jose, California which explains how to protect files on USB "thumb" drives.  Robert has used Macs in his practice for about six years, and he says that he is "continually amazed with the performance versus Windows."  He is also a blogger, and you should check out his Employment Law Blog.  Without further adieu, here is Robert's guest post:

Many attorneys use USB thumb drives to transport files from one computer to another.  As the federal government can tell you, however, losing the thumb drive can have serious consequences.  You do not want to face disciplinary proceedings because that confidential memo was lost and recovered by someone savvy enough to get it into the wrong hands.  The best option is to encrypt the data on the thumbdrive.

While there are a plethora of programs and methods for protecting files on a USB thumb drive if you are using a Windows machine, there are very few options for Mac users.  You can find a third party program on versiontracker.com or you can create an encrypted disk image using Mac's native Disk Utility.  After I tried a couple of third party programs I was not satisfied so I decided to give Disk Utility a try.  After reading a few tutorials, I figured it out and it's a lot easier than I thought.

Launching into the how-to, it can be helpful to understand Disk Images.  If you ever downloaded a Mac program and installed it, you are familiar with Disk Images.  A Disk Image is a .dmg file that contains the applications or documents that you drag and drop into your applications folder. A Disk Image acts like a folder where you can put files, applications, folders, etc.  Disk Images have many uses, including creating an encrypted file that you can use to transfer confidential information.

So, here's how to create an encrypted Disk Image on your thumbdrive that you can use to easily transport confidential information.  Please note that I am running OS X 10.3.9, and the exact method may be a little different if you are running OS X 10.4.

1. Put your thumbdrive into your USB port.
2. Open Disk Utility (under Applications --> Utilities).
3. From the top menu, choose Images, then New, then Blank Image.
4. In the "Save As" box, choose the file name for your Disk Image.  I like to use the size of the Disk Image as a file name because I have several different-sized thumbdrives and I have a different Disk Image for each drive.
5. Choose where you will save the Disk Image file.  I like to save it right onto the thumbdrive, but you can save it to your harddrive and copy it later if you'd like.  If you are saving it directly to your thumbdrive, it may be a good idea to remove any files from the thumbdrive.
6. On the "Size" dropdown menu, I usually choose "Custom" and then designate the size of the file.  There are defaults for various sizes.  I like to make the Disk Image slightly smaller than the full capacity of the thumbdrive (i.e., if I have a 1 gigabyte drive I will make a 900 megabyte Disk Image).  That way I can transfer some files without using the disk image if I want.  You can choose any size file you want and you can place more than one Disk Image on your thumbdrive.
7. Under "Encryption", choose AES-128.  This is a fairly high level of encryption.  The federal government certified AES-128 for classified information at the secret level.  Top Secret requires AES-192 or AES-156, but 128-bit encryption is plenty powerful.
8. Under "Format", choose read/write Disk Image, then click on "Create".
9. Disk Utility will create the Disk Image and ask you for a password.  Choose your password carefully because if you lose the password you will not be able to recover the data.  You have to input the password twice to make sure you don't make any mistakes.  Secure passwords do not use words that can be found in a dictionary and are best if they have a combination of upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
10. You can choose to add the password to your keychain, which will mean you do not have to input the password to open the file when attached to the computer you used to create the Disk Image, but you will have to input the password to open the file on any other computer.  If you do not add the password to your keychain, you will have to input the password every time you open the Disk Image even if you open it with the computer you used to create the Disk Image.
11. Your Disk Image is now complete so you can close Disk Utilities.

When you open the Finder, you will see the newly created Disk Image mounted on your system (i.e., it will have an eject button that will unmount the drive when you are done).  You can now drag and drop any files you want onto the Disk Image.  You can work directly off the Disk Image so you don't have to worry about copying the files back and forth. Simply open the files the same way you would as if it were on any other drive.

When you are done, you simply eject the Disk Image.  Note: You must eject the Disk Image before you eject the USB drive.  Otherwise you'll get a warning telling you that the Disk is in use.  You can now carry your USB thumbdrive without worrying about falling into the wrong hands.

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This post is for those who may have gotten an iPod for Christmas and for those who maybe already have an iPod but never learned all the features of iTunes. If you fall into either category, you should check out the excellent tutorial provided by MacZealots.com, which covers the following topics:

• Getting Music on Your Computer
• Keeping Your Music Organized
• Using the Radio Feature
• Burning CDs
• Using the iTunes Music Store
• Sharing Your iTunes Music With Your Other Computers
• Discovering Podcasts

Source: "Learning iTunes, Organize Your Music" by Emily Hambidge, published at MacZealots.com.

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If you regularly work with multiple applications and windows open at the same time, like I do, you should certainly know about Exposé. This built-in feature of Mac OS X allows you to see at once as thumbnails all open windows in all applications or even in a single application. As Apple describes it, "Find the window you need. Now."

The basic functions of Exposé work as follows:

• See All Open Windows at Once: When you press the F9 key, Exposé instantly tiles all of your open windows, scales them down, and neatly arranges them. As you move your mouse over each tile, its title is displayed in the center of the window. By clicking on a tile, all windows returns to full size and the window you clicked becomes the active window.

• See All Open Windows in the Current Application: Similarly, by pressing the F10 key, you can have Exposé tile the open windows in the current application, while dimming the open windows of all other applications. Again, you can click on any window to make it the active window. Also, you can use the Tab key to switch between open applications and thus view the open tiled windows for each.

• See Your Desktop: Finally, you can use the F11 key to have Exposé hide all open windows and give you instant access to your desktop. This could be handy if you wanted to get to a document on your desktop without having to minimize or hide all other open windows to get there.

Note: If you're using a PowerBook, you may need to press the function (fn) key at the same time as the F9, F10, or F11 keys, depending on your machine's settings.

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If you're like me, you regularly create a large number of letters to be faxed each week. Our firm's letterhead is professionally printed, with two green colors. It is not terribly expensive, but it is not cheap either. I found a way to easily create what I called "fax letterhead", which can be used for faxes so as not to waste our regular, printed letterhead. In this post, will show you how I create this fax letterhead and reduce our operating expenses. Of course, the best part is that this process is quick and easy, and the recipient never knows the difference.

1. Scan your existing letterhead. The scan should be of a fairly high quality, but it does not have to be super quality.
2. Save the scanned letterhead in a picture format. I saved mine as a *.jpg file, but other formats, such as *.gif, *.tiff, *.jpeg, etc. will work equally well.
3. Create your Word document as you normally would.
4. From the Menu at top, select "Insert > Watermark..."
5. In the "Insert Watermark" box that appears, click the button beside "Picture" to select that option
6. Then click "Select Picture"
7. Browse to where you saved your scanned letterhead picture file, click on the file name, then click the "Insert" button
8. In the "Insert Watermark" box, check the "Washout" to de-select that option
9. In the "Scale" box, type 100
10. Click the "OK" button.

Once you have completed these steps, your scanned letterhead should appear as a background on your document and look slightly grayed out or faded. When you print your document, it will print out normally and not appear faded. Hopefully, you will find this process helpful and it will make you more efficient and cost-effective. If you have any suggestions, tips, or thoughts please feel free to submit a comment.

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Adobe Acrobat is a great program, used by many attorneys to prepare and organize exhibits for trial. Attorneys frequently need to insert Bates (numbering) stamps in their documents. Unfortunately, it is not easily apparent how to insert Bates stamps into a document in Acrobat.

Here is the step-by-step process explaining how to do so, courtesy of Mac enthusiast and fellow trial lawyer Kern Lewis of Foreman, Lewis & Hutchison:

1. Open the *.pdf document to be stamped
2. On the menu, select "Document > Add Headers & Footers..."
3. Click on "Footer" in the top of the window that appears
4. Select the pane in which you want the stamp placed (left, middle, or right)
5. Click the "Insert Page Number" drop down menu to select the desired number format
6. Click "Insert" button
7. (Optional) Go to pane and insert any desired text before or after number (i.e. "Plaintiff's Exhibit")
8. (Optional) You can also choose the font type and size, number at which to start, insert dates, etc. from the selection window if you so desire.
9. Click "OK" and you are done.

Note: This explains how to insert Bates stamps into a document in Adobe Acrobat Version 7, because like most users, I am still using Version 7 at this time. Since Adobe has recently introduced Version 8, the process may (or may not) be different in this new version.

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I wrote a post earlier this week on how to add an application to your Mac. I thought it would only be prudent to follow up with a post on how to remove applications as well.

Generally, to remove an application, you need only to drag the program from your Applications folder to the Trash. If you then decide that you didn't mean to do so, you can drag the program from the Trash back to your Applications folder, and you're back in business (so long as you have not yet emptied your Trash).

LifeHacker featured a program last week called AppDelete, which scans your Mac and automatically deletes any preference and config files that are associated with that program. To use AppDelete, you simply drag the application onto the AppDelete icon, which can be kept in your Dock. To make this even better, if that is possible, AppDelete is free!

Thanks to LifeHacker for its post on this subject.

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If you already own a Mac, this post is probaby not for you -- because you already know how easy it is to install a program on your computer. Rather, this post is for those who are contemplating getting a Mac and just aren't sure how installing a program on a Mac compares to doing so on a PC. As with the vast majority of all things Mac, this process is ultra simple.

1. Generally, you will download the application, and it will come in the form of a *.dmg file onto your Desktop.
2. You then double-click the *.dmg file, which mounts the disk image, which looks like a little hard drive.
3. You then double-click the disk image to view its contents, which will include the application and any "read me" files.
4. Finally, drag the application file into your Applications folder.

As a security precaution, Mac OS X will ask you for your password before letting you install any application. Yes, it is a little bit of a pain to have to go through this step each time you install something, but then again, it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside that your Mac wants to keep itself safe and secure.

Also, if you want to place the application icon in your Dock, you can either (a) drag the application's icon to the Dock and drop it there or (b) start the application, right click on its icon in the Dock, and select Keep in Dock.

The Silver Mac blog has a great post on installing applications, which includes an illustrated step-by-step guide. If you want to know more (or see this process in action), check it out by clicking HERE.

Source: "How to Install an Application on Your Mac" by Mike Sivcevic, published at his Silver Mac blog.

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Mac OS X offers several options to capture all or part of your screen:

• Press Command + Shift + 3 to take a picture of the whole screen

• Press Command + Shift + 4 and drag the gray box to select the part of the screen that you want to capture

The picture is saved as a TIFF file on your Desktop, generally called Picture 1, Picture 2, etc.

If you want to copy the screen capture to the Clipboard instead of saving it as a file, simply:

• Press Control + Command + Shift + 3 to copy the entire screen to the Clipboard

• Press Control + Command + Shift + 4 to copy the selected range to the Clipboard

Source: "The Secret Screen Capture Shortcut" published at Apple.com.

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You probably know that you can quickly search / locate anything on your harddrive via Mac OS X's Spotlight, simply by clicking Command (⌘) + Spacebar. As quickly as you can type in your search terms, Spotlight lists all relevant files, emails, contacts, images, movies, calendars, and applications. Best of all, the content of all such items is constantly indexed and updated, so your search results include what appears inside a file or document, and not just its title.

Sometimes, you may want to show the selected search result item in the Finder. By simply clicking Command (⌘) and your desired entry in Spotlight's drop-down search result list, a new Finder window will open to the folder containing the item you selected. This method apparently will not work with some items, such as iCal events, Mail messages, and bookmarks, but it seems to work just fine for everything else.

Source: "Show Spotlight Results in Finder" by Rob Griffiths, posted at Mac OS X Hints Weblog.

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Did you know that your Mac will zoom in on anything? This feature is available simply by holding down Control and using your scroll wheel. If you use a notebook computer, you substitute two fingerson your trackpad for the scroll wheel. Using this function, you can zoom in and out to your heart's content. This feature comes in handy when trying to view small text or fine detail, or simply to give old tired eyes a break after a long day.

Source: "Quick Zoom with Your Mac" by Adam Pash, published at the LifeHacker blog, citing this post published at The Daring Fireball blog.

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Have you ever wanted to send an email at a later, specified time? If so, you can use Andreas Mann's "Schedule Delivery" script (part of his Mail Scripts collection), to schedule delivery without leaving Mail and without restricting the way you compose your email.

Here are the step by step instructions:

1. Compose your message as you normally do and add any attachments you want to send.

2. Save the message in the Drafts folder.

3. Run the "Schedule Delivery" Script (via a hotkey or a quick launcher like Quicksilver), and you are presented with a window that allows you to schedule the delivery of all emails in your Drafts folder.

4. Be sure to have your computer on at the scheduled delivery time in order for the email to be sent.

Mail Scripts is freeware (but obviously donations are not refused), and it is available from Andreas' web site.

Source: "Two Ways to Send Emails at a Specific Time" by Tim Gaden, published at his excellent Hawk Wings blog.

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I wrestled a bit with this post because it may fall into the "duh" category. However, I then remembered that it took a while before I learned this trick myself and how happy I was when I did. Therefore, post it I shall...

If you have spent time with a Mac, you have undoubtedly noticed that it probably did not have a "right-click" button. The basic Apple mouse is a one button creature, with that being the left-click function. Mac laptops also feature only one button as well, again a left-click. I have never understood the logic (illogic?) behind this design decision, but the fact remains that there are many helpful functions that can be performed with a simple right-click.

Never fear, you can quickly mimic the right click by pressing the Control key and then clicking the mouse. Depending on where you are when you do this, you get one of the following options:

• Control-click on a link in Safari and you'll see various options to download, open in new windows, add to bookmarks, etc.
  
• Control-click on a desktop item to show a menu with Finder commands such as New Folder, Get Info, etc.
  
• Control-click on the Macintosh HD (or any other hard drive) or CD to show a menu with numerous options.
  
• Control-click on a folder to bring up a menu with options such as Open, Get Info, Move to Trash, etc.
  
• Control-click on a file to bring up a menu with options such Open, Get Info, Move to Trash, Duplicate, etc.

Note that many of the newer Macs (such as the iMac and Mac Pro) now ship with the two button Apple Mighty Mouse, but my favorite desktop, the Mac mini does not ship with a mouse. I hope that this "duh" post is helpful to at least one of my readers and that it's not "too basic" for the rest of you.

Source: "Switcher Tip: Right Click on a 1 Button Mouse" published at Switch To A Mac.

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