Category Archives: Android

Print Off Your Research Through the Cloud

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Posted in Android, Apps, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, Macintosh, Windows | Tagged , ,

One of the challenges lawyers will face as they become more mobile is how to manage their information. There are obvious ways if you can keep it electronic: print to PDF or save it in its native format and upload it your cloud-based storage or e-mail it as an attachment. There are some documents that you may need to save in print and we are starting to see some interesting options developing for printing from anywhere. While Google Cloud Print is getting a lot of press, it is not the only game in town.

Let’s look at Google Cloud Print first.  When it was initially released, it would only find locally-connected printers.  So despite leveraging the Internet, networked printers weren’t available.  That’s changed and – once you’ve configured it through Google Chrome – I can now see both my networked laser printer as well as my locally installed printers, both physical and virtual, like PDF printers.  It’s free but it’s usefulness is limited.  It will only work from Cloud Print enabled resources, and there aren’t many.  It’s obviously early days, though, and this is going to have a big impact for mobile researchers.

Printershare is an alternative and it has a free version that is essentially a trial.  You can print 20 pages and then you need to upgrade. Mobile users may be particularly interested in Printershare because you can print from just about anything and it will find nearby printers using WiFi and bluetooth networks.  Using the Printershare Android app, I could locate nearby printers as well as printing back to my own, remotely shared printer.  Printershare is available for Windows, Mac, iPhone, and Android.

PrinterOn is another print-via-the-Internet resource, based here in Canada.  You can download and install your own free version of their PrintWhere software.  They also offer an iPhone/iPad app as well as one for Blackberry.  Once installed, the PrintWhere software discovers available printers.  When you send a print job, it is encrypted and sent from PrinterOn’s servers to your printer.  I wasn’t successful at getting their software to run, but I’m inclined to see it as a problem with my machine (and perhaps Windows’ firewall) in light of the success they’re having bringing PrintSpot (printing hot spots) online.

There are other ways to print remotely by configuring your network to allow Internet-based print requests to come in and find your printer.  That’s great if you’re comfortable managing that set up, but I’m going to keep my eyes on cloud-based printing as it seems to be the easier way to have printer access when I’m away from my network.

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Mobile E-mail on Android Easier with K-9

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Posted in Android, Apps, E-mail, E-mail Management, GMail, Mobile, Outlook | Tagged ,

One important way you can impact your productivity is when you can take a tool that works for you and wrangle more information with it.  If you use Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird for e-mail, you may know that you can manage multiple e-mail accounts with the software.  For example, if you have an e-mail address with your law firm’s domain (you@your-law-firm.com) and a personal address from Google Mail, you can access both at once.  Being able to look at all of your e-mail at once can reduce the need to have two different applications open or two different places to visit.

Mobile users with Android devices may have missed that possibility, where you might have been using the default e-mail Android e-mail app for one account and an app for another account, like the GMail for Mobile app.  You might take a look at K-9 Mail as an alternative.  The free app works like typical dessktop software, managing multiple accounts and having a broader feature set for managing each account than the default software in Android.

I have been using K-9 and like the single view to my e-mail.  It picks up Google Mail accounts very easily; other accounts may require a bit more customization.  Since it uses IMAP – leaving messages on the server even when I move them around and reorganize them – I can always see the latest activity in my accounts without synchronizing, even if I have accessed the accounts from another computer (or even another Android e-mail app!).

If you’re an Android phone user, K-9 is definitely worth a look.

[via Lifehacker]

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Mobile Lawyers Accessmylibrary for Free Business Research

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Posted in Android, Business Information, Canada, Cengage Gale, iPad, Mobile, News, U.S. | Tagged , , ,

Libraries appear to be fighting (losing) battles over funding, prestige, perceptions of usefulness around the globe.  One of the things that many North American public library systems and consortia have been doing is licensing electronic databases for your use.  They skew heavily towards primary and secondary school users and that type of research.  But there are business information databases and directories that can be helpful to any legal researcher.  Greg Lambert and Ann Lee Gibson mention these databases in a recent American Bar Association Law Practice magazine piece.

Information Today reports that Cengage Learning’s Gale Group has released an app for iPad and Android devices that makes using their Accessmylibrary resource easier than ever and takes you into fee-based resources normally only accessible from your library’s site.  You can access some information by going to Accessmylibrary.com and entering information about your local public library.

The apps use geolocation to determine which library’s resources are available to you, looking in a 10 mile radius.  Open up the app while you are on the move and you’ll see that the library – and subscribed databases – has changed.  It’s great marketing for the libraries, except that you never have to enter one to get access to this information.

Unlike my local public library, where I have to enter my library card number, the app does not require any additional authentication.  In at least one of the libraries that I can see during the day, I can get access to databases like Legaltrac, the National Newspaper Index, and the CPI.Q Canadian Periodicals database.

Grab the app and keep it in mind when you’re looking for a quick answer or secondary information relating to your legal issue.  Open it up on your commute and see if you have resources available that are different from your local library.  It’s a great resource for information that might not be found in your typical legal research subscription.

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Mobile Lawyers Can Take Note of Catch

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Posted in Android, Evernote, iPhone, Iterasi, Mobile, Research Notebooks, Social media | Tagged

There are a number of online research notebook tools, including Evernote and Iterasi, but these can sometimes be overwhelming.  Mobile users have an alternative for grabbing information while on the go in Catch.com.  It is a note-taking tool that is available on Android devices, the iPhone, and iPad.  As you grab images, Web addresses, and type notes, it can save and synchronize them out to the Catch.com site.  You can also work directly at Catch.com to type in your notes.

Like many new Web sites providing information management tools, Catch utilizes tags to help you organize your notes.  Unlike a lot of sites, where the tags are distinct from the content – you usually click on a list of words after creating your content – the tags are built into your content.  As you type, you place a hash tag (or shebang) # in front of the word, and it becomes a tag.  All subsequent notes can adopt the same tag, giving you a controlled vocabulary so that you can reuse the same keywords – same spelling, etc. – and connect up related notes.  Each tagged word becomes a clickable link, so you can retrieve all related notes by clicking on the tagged word and, if you want to retrieve a different group, just click on a new keyword.

Catch also has a sharing feature, where you can send out a Twitter message or Facebook post with a link to your online note.  I’m not sure lawyers would want to share in such a broadcast manner, but it’s an interesting idea that you could send a link to someone by e-mail and they could view the item.

I’m not a heavy mobile device user but I can see how this would be great for spontaneous information capture, as opposed to research requiring notebooks.

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