Ok. I got a new iPad. Can’t say that I would have bought one on my own, but that’s what makes it a perfect gift. I’m still figuring out where it fits in my life — though surfing while on the couch (possibly while couch surfing?) and watching media on the train both have been fun.
I did ahead and popped for the cash for the iPad version of OmniFocus. It is eye-wateringly expensive at 39.99 USD.
It is pretty cool though. It has such a fantastic interface — I love it. I think I like the maps integration for setting the context of certain actions the best. It just looks soooo shiny.
Totally another Gollum moment with an Apple product. My precious…
Tags:
ipad
Laptop Legal Links for 23 November through 4 December:
Laptop Legal Links for 9 October through 10 November:
I guess Apple found the love in their hearts for the Air!
Slashgear review.
But at a claimed 5 hours of battery life, how does that stack up to the new generation of netbooks? And at the price point it’s at, I think it’s still a tough call between the Air and the 13 inch MBP.
Typography for Lawyers is an excellent resource for quickly and effectively learning typography specifically aimed at (who else) lawyers. I think every lawyer should spend 20 minutes reading through it: Quite a handy resource and full of great tips for improving the look and feel of your documents.
A few supplemental notes on fonts. The site recommends a number of (very nice) fonts for legal briefs, such as Sabon and Stempel Garamond. They’re nice, but at this stage of the game (especially as I don’t do litigation), the price is a bit expensive at £100 plus for many of them (some are £400 or even over £1,000). That’s a fair bit of dosh to part with just for a better looking brief and I suspect most solo and small firm lawyers would feel the same.
On the mac, I find Baskerville to be a good (and free) option for text, which is available whether you use NeoOffice, Pages, or Word. It’s works well printed, though it’s a tad light for my taste on the screen. Exporting and sharing via PDF works just fine, but one downfall is that I’ve had some issues with sharing to those in Windows/Word environments — Baskersville shows up look either completely different or gets substituted with a courier like / monospaced font for some reason.
Georgia is my fallback font for text. It’s a system font, so frowned on by the site, but I find that most of the documents I produce these days are shared and exclusively used electronically, and Georgia is (AFAIK) a universal font (everyone has it installed) and looks pretty good reading it on laptops and monitors.
Generally, I tend to use a sans-serif font for headings — my preferred choice is Helvetica Neue (light and medium weights, often in a medium shade of blue). Never Arial for either text or headings — there’s a special circle reserved in a certain place for documents drafted with Arial as the text font.
Finally, I have to say I’m a bit ambivalent about double spacing after the end of a sentence. The author’s of Typography for Lawyers — among many others — say don’t do it and that this practice is a holdover from the days of manual typewriters. I disagree a bit — I think it does effectively set off each sentence and make for easier reading on the screen, though these days I take it out more often than not. Also years of double-tapping the space bar after each full stop make for a hard habit to break.
Tags:
drafting,
typography
Laptop Legal Links for 4 October through 5 October:
For all you legal bloggers out there that prefer coding to clicking through WYSIWYG editors, Daring Fireball‘s Markdown is a user friendly syntax that allows you to quickly draft blogposts without using full HTML and without having to highlight and point and click to get all the formatting you want.
So instead of typing out:
<blockquote>"I'm a quote!"</blockquote>
All you have to do is type:
>"I'm a quote!"
No more typing out bullet point code or long “a href=” you can simply use asterisks and square and curved brackets.
Install it into your WordPress blog to give it a run. As an added bonus, if you use MarsEdit, it has a preview text filter for Markdown.
There are a few plugins to choose from, I’m using Michael Fortin’s PHP markdown.
Tags:
markdown,
plugins
I’m a gold card member of Regus, which is handy as it allows me to drop in to a number of Regus offices and use their “business centre” to use some space and wifi to work for a bit. It’s not a bad service, and if you’re lucky, the business centre won’t be in the middle of the kitchen and you’ll be able to grab something better than instant coffee for your caffeine fix.
They now have an iPhone app, which helps find your nearest Regus office. I’ve been hacking this together with Google Maps and Address Book for awhile, but having an up-to-date list could come in quite handy. Especially as I’ve been wandering around London looking aimlessly for one on multiple occasions. The only thing it looks to be missing is perhaps some way to take notes or share with other users notes about the business centres — some are very minimal (as in a chair under a stairway) and others are quite plush.
Give it a test ride and let me know what you think.
Tags:
remote working
Just a quick note that I just installed WordPress Mobile Edition on laptop legal as a test. Seems pretty handy — I just had a look on my iPhone and it’s a nice clean interface with good navigation. I recommend checking it out for your site.
I might try and do some customisation of the theme this weekend just to play around with it a little…
Tags:
mobile
