Office-in-Briefcase Category Archives — Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog Published by International Military Lawyer

Technical advice to end the year

December 29, 2009 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

I follow futurelawyer.com because he has one of the great sites for lawyers like myself who travel with an office-in-the-briefcase. Here is an interesting blog for the end of the year. No this isn’t a gadget or a piece of software. But the “procedure” may come in handy. Hopefully it doesn’t bowl you over with laughing too hard.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have dropped smart phones in various water graves; twice, in the toilet (don’t ask), and once in a swimming pool, and once in Tampa Bay. In each case, I did my best to dry them out, but, alas, they died a terrible death. Now, LifeHacker informs me that I could have dried them in a bowl of rice, which, because of its ability to soak up moisture, can save wet electronics if applied soon enough. Since my accidents, I have been a lot more careful with my smartphones, so I hope I never have to try this one out. However, if it happens to you, keep this one in your pocket just in case.

Testimonial: Rice Resurrects Even the Most Soaked of Gadgets – Cellphones – Lifehacker.

Firefox plug-in alternative to Google reader

November 8, 2009 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

Frustrated with Google Reader, I began using and recommending Morning Coffee as a Firefox plug-in. I still think MC is a good tool if you are only interested in looking at certain websites once or twice a day, or once a week. However, for me that’s not flexible enough.

Thanks to Practicing Law in the 21st Century-A Law & Technology Blog, I have been directed to www.feedly.com as a plug-in to FF. This plug-in is a great alternative to Google Reader, and combined with MC can give you flexibility in keeping track of what’s happening out there. Basically it is a place to collate all of your RSS (or similar) feeds.d

Office-in-a-briefcase tip for now.

August 30, 2009 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

Office Tab.

Do you (as you should) use Firefox as your browser? If so, you are perhaps used to using tabs for opening multiple windows. I’m told even Explorer does that now. Also, Adobe and my favorite Nitro PDF also use tabs to navigate between documents. Anyway, here is a potential useful tool for your Office programs to set up tabs.

I’m a confirmed WordPerfect user – it’s so much better than Word – but I understand people are forced to use Word.

Computer for lawyers, not an app.

August 9, 2009 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

Here is a neat website that allows you to calculate a deadline and due dates. Not an application, so there’s nothing to install on your computer or iPhone or BB – and for the overhead conscious it’s free.

WolframAlpha.

There’s a free download which will allow you to have a widget in your Vista sidebar, or you can add to your Explorer or Firefox

Technology tip

July 25, 2009 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

Do you get .pdf documents? Do you want to use the text from the .pdf document in other documents? Do you want to edit the .pdf document?

I use PureText to copy parts of text for cut-and-pasting of small parts of a .pdf document. PureText is free. You highlight what text you want to copy and paste, click PT, and it removes all of the formatting and meta-clutter so it is easier to paste and edit into a document. Or you can take a “shot” of a part of the document and insert it as a picture.

Here is a free way to convert the whole .pdf document to a Word or .rtf file which can then be manipulated. (I stopped using Adobe a long time ago, it’s very expensive even for updates, Nitro is a cost-effective alternate to Adobe so you may also want to look into Nitro.)

Tech item

June 30, 2009 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

Here is this month’s technology/software item to go in your office-in-a-briefcase.

Gwabbit.

gwabbit is an Add-in for Microsoft Outlook and the BlackBerry that finds, gwabs and adds contacts from your emails to your Outlook address book with a single mouse click!

Members Instructions on new “media.”

June 22, 2009 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

Jury instructions to include rules on use of new media

Recent incidents of jurors using new media during cases in civilian courtrooms in the States have led a military judge to rework instructions given to panelists in military courts-martial.

Army Col. Ted Dixon, a military judge who edits the military judges’ benchbook, said he’s not aware of any cases of a servicemember posting information on an ongoing court-martial while serving as a juror, but he’s aware of such events in the civilian world.

As a result of cases like these, Dixon said he’s been working on specific language addressing networking phenomena such as Twitter and Facebook that judges would use when instructing troops who sit on court-martial panels. Fellow judges have been providing him feedback and there seems to be a general consensus, he said.

Technology

May 22, 2009 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

This week my technology item is PhoneTag.

PhoneTag is a fee based system to receive voicemails as a written email.

While on a business trip to Los Angeles in 2003, James Siminoff was out to dinner with friends. Before they could sit down, William had to sort through a 20 minute backlog of voicemails gathered during a day filled with meetings. Jesse commented to James, "Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just read your voicemail?" At the time, James was working with voice recognition technologies and had a creative idea on how to build a system that would enable people to stop listening to voicemail and READ IT. …and with that, PhoneTag was born.

Transferring large files

March 29, 2009 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

Are you like me — you need to send or receive large files via email. If that's the case — the law enforcement ROI, is a good example — here is a free, experimental way to transfer large files without having to send them by email. Most email accounts have size limits on what can be sent as an attachment to an email. I don't know yet if it works to a military computer.

JetBytes

tip: Future Lawyer

I can’t open it.

March 12, 2009 | The Law Office of Philip D. Cave

Every so often do you get a file and you can't open it? Check its file extension. The file extension comes at the end of the name of the file and is [dot].bz, and is a key to the name of the software program that created the file.

.bz

If you go to OpenWith.org you will find a host of free programs that may point you to a "reader" program that allows you to open the particular file you are having trouble with.