Tech4Attorneys

It’s official, I have decided to leave off using any of the proprietary billing software.  I created my own system, it if more flexible, syncs with all of my computers, and prints out a great looking (and accurate) invoice.

Long ago (1994-2006), I used TimeSlips to generate my bills.  That was, until the day that it simply stopped running on my computer, and “customer service” told me that I would have to pay for assistance or pay for an upgrade. I decided that I didn’t care to use TimeSlips and switched to Quickbooks.

Quickbooks worked rather well, up until just a few days ago, when … you guessed it, it suddenly stopped working. No matter how I tried to open my data file, I got error messages and then the program would shut down entirely.  The strange thing was that, up until that point, it had been working just fine on my main computer.

I did a little research on the error messages I was getting.  The only information on the Intuit Quickbooks site indicated that most of the error messages were related to permissions. (For those of you who don’t know about permissions, they are those little file settings that tell the computer what each user on a given computer may do or not do. Since I was (and am) the only user who uses my computer, my user account always has full administrative privileges, however, I checked the account again, and determined that, yes — I had full access to all files and folders).

One very interesting error message told me that I had to have Internet Explorer 6.0 or later on my computer.  Since I had IE8 installed, I didn’t see why the program refused to acknowledge that fact, but either this error or a permissions error would pop up each and every time, and then the program would simply crash.

My next step was to uninstall Quickbooks (2008) from my computer and attempt to reinstall it. More error messages resulted, the same errors, either related to permissions or to IE6.  After searching online for any helpful information, and finding none, I decided to call “customer service” at Intuit.

The web site stated that there was an approximately 20 minute wait to speak with a representative.  When I dialed the phone, a message said the wait would be 40 minutes.  I waited almost exactly 2 hours before anyone picked up at their end.

What the representative told me was that I would be charged $80 for them to help me (”if” they were able to help me), or I could upgrade to Quickbooks 2010 for $400.  I see, so once again all of my client data was going to be held hostage by a company using a proprietary format.  You can’t get your data out unless you cross our palms with silver.  When I indicated that I intended to do neither, and that I wasn’t about to pay several hundred dollars for a program, and then several hundred more dollars on annual support, she ended the conversation with a comment that my problem had to do with “permissions.”

Well, no it didn’t have anything at all to do with permissions, but I still had to get access to my data.  So, I tried installing Quickbooks on my netbook.  I did manage to get it to install (on the third attempt), however, I was now faced with a screen telling me I needed to obtain a validation number in order to register the program.

I called the number on the screen, waited about 10-15 minutes, and was asked for my registration number, name, and office phone number.  I told the man my name.  I even spelled it for him. M A V E E T Y.  He gave me a cheery, “I found your records Mrs. Sourtis!”  It was at this point that I’ll admit, I lost it.  After four hours of fighting with Quickbooks, two of them listening to canned new-age jazz over the phone, I asked the man how the Hell he got “Sourtis” out of “Maveety”?

This particular rep then wanted to argue with me about the quality of Intuit’s customer service. I kept telling him I did not intend to have that particular conversation with him, and that all I wanted was a validation number so that I could use Quickbooks 2008 on my netbook, get my data off of the netbook, and maybe generate a bill or two before close of business.  He wasn’t having it.  No, he wanted to convince me that Intuit’s customer service was superb!  I begged to differ and just kept asking for that validation number.

After about 10 more minutes, he finally gave me the validation number and at long last I was able to open up the data files on my netbook.  It was during the utter waste of what was very nearly an entire day that I decided no more time keeping programs.  No more having my data, for not just one but all of my clients, held hostage so that some company could squeeze a little more money out of me.

I determined that what I needed was a simple system that would make it easy to update client information, keep track of time, rates and expenses, and print out a nice looking invoice.  Oh, and I wanted to have it sync across all of my computers more or less instantly, and have the data appear on my iPhone in case a client called with a question while I was out of the office.  I also wanted it to be either cheap, or free.  Not too much to ask, really.

The next morning, I began work on what will be my time management and billing software solution for the foreseeable future.  It took me about two hours to create it, but it works, it works effectively, and could have been put together entirely for free.  (I chose to use some programs I already owned to create this, but the entire system could be created or the template for it opened in OpenOffice.org which is entirely free, and the syncing can be accomplished with Dropbox, which gives you free online storage of up to 2GB (which would hold a huge number of invoices).

In fact, I found I liked the Dropbox set up so much, I actually signed up for the 100GB storage account ($20 a month or $200 for a year) and started moving many of the files I need to have synced across my system and which I consider to be “mission critical,” like my invoices.

I also look at Dropbox as my secondary backup for the important items.  I use Carbonite for my day to day backup solution, however, it never hurts to have backups of your backups.

So, goodbye Timeslips, farewell Quickbooks!!  I would say I was going to miss you, but that would be a lie.  Instead, I join the exodus away from systems that are more complex than they need to be, don’t work right, have problems installing, and have customer service that is not “service” in any sense of the word.

If you want to have a look at what others have had to say, do check the consumer reviews for Quickbooks 2009 at CNET. If people were saying this about my products and my customer service, I would be hanging my head in shame rather than trying to browbeat a customer into accepting the company line about the quality of the service.

Among the gems:

“Intuit continues its unblemished record of mediocrity”

“Terrible, Terrible, Terrible”

and, the ever-popular:

“A huge hassle re-doing templates every year”

The templates for creating a hassle-free time management system, complete with sync and templates you don’t need to update every time you turn around, will be discussed in detail in the January issue of the Tech4Attorneys newsletter, and the templates themselves will be available for download to our subscribers.

There has been a lot of activity over at Livescribe.com lately.

As you may know, we reviewed the Livescribe Pulse Pen in the inaugural issue of the Tech4Attorneys newsletter.  That was in September of this year.  Two months later, there is new software, new hardware, and a new third party application store.  In a word … wow.

Because the applications can take up a significant amount of space, Livescribe has discontinued the sale of its 1GB pen, and now sells the pens in 2 and 4GB models at roughly the same prices as before.

The Livescribe Desktop has been altered to accommodate purchase and download of third party applications in the new Application Store, which is still in beta.  The store works much like the iTunes store, and applications appear to be offered at similar prices.  Selection is limited at the moment, but considering that the store only went live last night, I am surprised there is anything there at all.

There are a few applications that are free, such as some small factoid databases (Academy Award Winners and Presidents of the United States being two), but those at least can give you an idea of how well the applications work with the pen.  Some of the applications are a little expensive.  I noticed a Spanish/English Dictionary for $14.99.  However, given that most stand alone portable language translators run about the same price, it doesn’t seem unreasonable.

The item that varies most from the iTunes model is the manner in which the user downloads the applications.  After purchase, the downloads are retained in a separate downloads section of the site (look to the left on the Livescribe Online page accessed through the desktop application, and you should see the downloads tab).  From the downloads tab you can download each purchased application.  Then, you move to the Application Manager tab of the desktop application in order to install each application individually.

It might seem a little convoluted when compared to the more automatic iTunes store, but the downloads tab serves as a backup of all the applications you have purchased forgoing the need to repurchase an item that might have been deleted from your device.

On the whole, it will be interesting to see what developers produce for the Pulse Pen.

If you have ever had to do online research, you know how expensive it can be.  Well, very recently, Google placed all of the published case law on their Google Scholar site, free, searchable, and with hot links to cited cases.

The Google Scholar site is very easy to navigate, provides a simple mechanism for searching (without the need to  understand or remember boolean search parameters).

If you have access to Adobe Acrobat (which allows you to create PDF documents which retain hot link information) it becomes a bit of a breeze to organize case materials in preparation for document production.  Since most, if not all, of the federal and state statutes have been available for free for some time now, this latest development is a godsend for solo practitioners who only occasionally need to do case or statutory research, and may eliminate the need for Lexis or Westlaw online research altogether.

I’ll be discussing the site in our next newsletter (which will be about Adobe Acrobat Professional and the paperless office).  Until then, check the site out.  It doesn’t cost anything except for your time.

I should preface this by saying that not all open letters are bad things.  I am a huge fan of Leo’s show, although I am behind in my listening (partly because some of the recent podcasts have had a weird echo effect that makes listening a surreal experience).  That said:

Dear Leo,

Most of the time I agree with you 100%, but every once in a while you say something that makes me question whether or not you actually heard the question properly.  Case in point is a lady who called to ask about a message she was getting about updating something … before she had even opened up her browser.  You went on to give a very good lecture on internet safety.

However, what you missed (and I heard) was what the message said which was “update now or remind me later.”  There are many programs on the market (everything made by Adobe, for instance) that by default keep update and patch notification programs running in the background.  Whenever they detect an update (usually almost instantly after boot) the user gets a notification that an update is available and a message asking whether the user wants to update now or be reminded later.  These are not viruses or malware, they are simply updates from legitimate companies whose software the user has purchased and installed on their computer.

I had visions of this poor woman reformatting her hard drive and reinstalling Windows only to be slowly driven completely insane … when she got the same damn message a short while after reinstalling the program that was sending her the update information.

I don’t know if anyone in online chat was sending you messages about this, I only know that the possibility of it being a legitimate update message was never addressed.  So, please, if you hear those magic words again (update now or remind me later), ask the caller if there is any other information in the message that might indicate it is not something to rise to the level of wiping the drive and starting over.

My next concern relates to Windows 7.  As mentioned, I’m way behind in my podcasts and this may be old news to you, but Windows 7 is not Vista made more stable and with some additional bells and whistles.  Several of my printers and two of my scanners work fine with Vista, however, one of the printers would not work with the beta release of Windows 7, and both of my scanners – while they worked well with the beta release – would not work with the final release of Windows 7.

The reason?  The usual reason of course: the hardware companies are dragging their heels when it comes to the creation of drivers.  I called Canon.  I called Fujitsu.  Everyone seems to have the same old story.  Even though the beta release was available for months, they haven’t even started working on compatible drivers for their hardware.  The general response was that they would have something in beta in “six months to a year.”  With some products, that the companies now consider to be legacy (oh my …. a four year old black and white laser printer is considered “legacy”?), they are not even planning to produce drivers for Windows 7.  Which means, either keep one computer in XP or Vista, or trash that perfectly good printer.

So, as much as I love Windows 7, I have to disagree with you as to whether everyone who uses Windows should immediately upgrade.  They stand the very real risk of losing potentially critical hardware functionality unless they do some up-front planning.  Windows 7 is a great platform, but until the companies who manufacture the peripheral hardware get a clue and stop trying to force new hardware down our throats by failing to properly support the products we consumers have already purchased, there are going to be some people who should not upgrade.

As to why the podcasts are echoing, I haven’t a clue.  I’ve checked my headset and my iPhone, and both play other podcasts and music fine without the echo.  My guess is that if I unsubscribe, delete the old podcasts and then resubscribe and redownload, things will probably be fine.  You routinely provide so much great information (which I am then able to pass on to my subscribers) that I will always be a listener.  I have to remember that even you will sometimes provide advice that might not be completely correct, and working on the air and in the moment without a lot of time to reflect on what you are saying, has got to be difficult.

End of mild rant.

Most sincerely,

Ricky Maveety

You’ve got a device hooked up to your computer that will not function.  You bang your head against the wall, you do your best to will it to work.  Finally, you call support, and they tell you that you have a “driver problem.”

So, you ask the people at support how you are supposed to go about fixing this driver problem of yours?  And, they reply “we no longer support that model” or “we no longer support that software version.”  This is not an issue of Mac versus Windows, although the advertisements coming from both camps would love the consumer to believe it is.  If you believe it, then congratulations all the advertising worked on you and you are officially an average consumer. No need to feel ashamed about that.  Most people are average consumers.  That’s why they use the term “average” to describe them.

The real reason you are having that humongous problem with your previously “old faithful” printer or scanner is that the manufacturer doesn’t want your device to last “forever.”  In fact, they would prefer that it only last you a year or two.  They want you to love the brand, but they are banking on coming back to them every few years to get the “new and improved” printer (scanner, monitor, mouse —  insert your own type of hardware or software here).

Planned obsolescence is one of the largest, if not the largest, reason that modern culture is a “throwaway” culture.  If the company that makes something intends that something to last the consumer only a year, they are hoping that’s what will happen.  They do not want consumers to find a way to make that product last for any longer than what the company has planned.  Are you still driving the same car after 300,000 miles?  The auto manufacturer is going to advertise that fact up down and sideways to show how durable their cars are.  Does that mean they intend that every car sold to a consumer is going to last that long?  Hell no!!  They would much rather have you buy a new model every year, as long as it is from them.

The same is true of the manufacturers of computer software and hardware.  Windows, Mac, Corel, Adobe, HP, Canon, Dell, Sony — it does not matter what manufacturer I mention here, or whether we are talking about operating systems, software or hardware, the entire business model revolves around planned obsolescence.

It doesn’t do the individual consumer any good to complain, however, work in concert with others, and you can at least discover solutions to the problem.  If I wrote any more about this, I’d be giving away most of what is in this month’s Tech4Attorneys newsletter, and I don’t want to do that.  The idea is to have you all become subscribing readers.

Hint, hint.

I’ve got a ScanSnap S51o and an S300.  I have always been a big ScanSnap supporter … until now.

I recently converted to Windows 7.  I had been using the beta version of the OS for several months, and both of my ScanSnaps had worked just fine.  Things changed when I moved over to the final version of Windows 7.

Neither scanner works now.  Not at all. Fujitsu has known that Windows 7 has been coming for how long now?  At least 10 months and probably longer.  So, when I called them today, what was I told?  “It will be at least three months until we are able to release any drivers to support Scan Snap Scanners.  We are beta testing drivers at the moment and after that, they have to be certified by Microsoft.”

I’m sorry, but  WHAT??  You are “beta testing” …. NOW??  What exactly has Fujitsu been doing for the past several months?  Twiddling their thumbs??

So, heads up people.  If you own a Windows 7 PC, do not purchase any Fujitsu imaging products until you are certain they have a driver that is going to work for you.

A post script an hour or so after posting this, I got a call from Fujitsu informing me that “Windows 7 has not been released yet.”  Really??  So what was that I got in the mail four days ago and see sitting on the shelves at Office Depot??

Some research and a bit of experimentation got me a driver that actually does work for both the S510 and S300, with Windows 7 no less.  Of course, I should have been able to get this from Fujitsu, but “should have” are the key words.

The driver that actually works will be made available to our subscribers for download.

If you are not the type of attorney who needs an annual subscription to one of the online legal research sites, such as Lexis/Nexis or Westlaw, consider LexisOne as an alternative.

LexisOne allows the user to purchase as little or as much online research time as they need.  For example, yesterday I purchased a week of unlimited State and Federal case law and code research for $237.05.   That’s compared with the nearly $6,000 of a comparable annual subscription with either Lexis or Westlaw.

Yes, if an attorney was to purchase research time a week at a time in this manner they would spend far more than $6,000.  However, for the attorney who only needs access to online research materials for the occasional case and for a limited amount of time, the ability to purchase time in short increments is a godsend.

I will be looking into whether or not Westlaw allows for a la carte research for a future issue of the monthly newsletter, but you should know that if you need it, Lexis One is there for you, and a great bargain.

I was looking forward to having a Roboform application for the iPhone.  For those of you who do not know about Roboform, it is a password manager, and an awfully good one.  The free version limits the user to the number of passwords that may be saved, the paid version allows for an unlimited number of passwords.

I have used Roboform Pro (the paid version, $29.95 for a single license) for many years.  Upgrades are regularly created and are free.  So, I am a big fan.  Their tech support isn’t the best ever, but for a program that functions so reliably, the lack of support has never been that much of an issue.

On October 16th of this year, Roboform finally released an app for the iPhone.  Considering what a pain in the rear it is to (1) remember what my password is for any one site and then (2) type it in without errors on the iPhone screen, I was chomping at the bit to have the ability to autofill my passwords.

On a regular computer, you go to the website where you need to log in, and then Roboform detects that you are at the target site and simply fills and submits the user ID and password and logs you in.  Hey, presto … all done.  On the iPhone it is a bit different.  Apparently, Roboform can’t perform its magic trick with the iPhone’s Safari browser, so the user has to do the trick backwards.  By that I mean, you tap on the Roboform icon on the iPhone, select the site URL, and tell Roboform to go to that site.

The downside to this?  First, many of the sites I visit most frequently using my iPhone have their own dedicated browser applications.  They are not intended to be viewed on the Safari browser, or any other iPhone browser application.  That means they are almost impossible to read on Roboform’s dedicated browser.

The only viable option is to make sure that your desktop setup allows you to stay logged in after you submit your password, so that you can close out the Roboform application and then go back to the site using either that site’s dedicated browser or Safari.  It’s not very efficient, but it’s still better than trying to memorize all of those passwords.

However, there are a few sites where the problem is complicated even further.  I am talking about the mobile Google apps which take interaction problems with Roboform to a whole new level of weird.  Here’s the basic problem:

When you subscribe to a mobile Google application on your computer, you send a link to your mobile phone, then you access that link through Safari on the phone.  You can’t actually go to the mobile Gmail or Google Docs page on your desktop, the link doesn’t work.

That means you can’t create a login on your desktop computer.  However, the iPhone version of Roboform works by syncing the passcodes you have created on your desktop with your iPhone, and doesn’t let you create new passcodes on the phone.  The iPhone, meanwhile, will not access the desktop version of the Google login screen.  Catch-22 ensues.

Here’s how to get around the problem.

Go to your regular Google login page on your desktop computer.  If you are logged in, then log out and log back in again.  When you click on the Log In button, hold down your Shift and Alt keys (Firefox) or just the Alt key (for IE).  You will be asked how you want to save this “new” passcode.  Give it a new name to distinguish it from your regular Google log in (I named mine “Google Mobile.”)  Make certain that the “Remember Me” option is selected.

Now, using your Roboform toolbar, select Logins and Edit.  Scroll down to your new Mobile passcode, and note the URL at the very bottom of the Edit screen.  This is what you are going to want to change in order to get Roboform to work properly.  Pull out your iPhone and click on the Google application icon for the appropriate application.  Get yourself logged in to the iPhone app, then move up to the search bar and select the entire URL for the site and copy it.

Create a new email, paste in the URL you copied and send the email containing the URL to yourself.  When you receive the email containing the URL, just copy and paste it into the appropriate location on the edit screen.  Save and close that passcode screen.

When you sync your Roboform Online passwords with your iPhone, Roboform will now know that it needs to go to the Google mobile page rather than the desktop when you are logging in on your iPhone.  Yes, you will still need to exit Roboform after you log in, but if you have told Google to keep you logged in, at least you can then go back into any of the Google applications through their iPhone homepage links and you should stay logged in.

It’s still a bit of a pain in the rear, but it’s better than trying to remember and then manually enter passwords and user IDs.

Roboform has indicated that, at some point, it hopes to have the ability to interact with Safari directly.  If you only have a few passwords that you need to remember, the Roboform free download will probably work just fine for you.  Creating a Roboform Online account (necessary to back up and sync passcodes) is also free, as is the iPhone Roboform application itself.

Especially if you work on the go and use a laptop, or more importantly a netbook,  you need to guard against wasting any of your screen space for tools you seldom or never use.

Many useful browsing tools tend to park themselves in separate toolbars, each nested underneath your navigation toolbar. If you happen to use Firefox as your browser, there are several addons which can leave the functions of these toolbars intact while eliminating them almost entirely from your screen.

I’ll be discussing the how-tos of the various addons in our November Tech4Attorneys newsletter (which at $60.00 for an entire year is pretty inexpensive), but in short, the addons that I highly recommend (and which work quite well with Firefox 3.5.3 are:

1. Omnibar;
2. Treestyle Tab;
3. Faviconize Tab;
4. Identifavicon;
5. Permatabs Mod; and
6. Speeddial.

Use these addons in conjunction with the tiniest bit of tool bar customization and you can go from this …

Before

To this:

After

The After image is my SpeedDial page, which currently consists of the 16 pages I use everyday.  It’s quite simple to modify the SpeedDial settings to make this page as large or as small as you want.  The default is 9 thumbnail images, and some of my SpeedDial pages are set to 25.  However, the point of this post is not so much using SpeedDial as it is the fact that, as you can see comparing the two images, the amount of browser content space that is regained using the other addons mentioned is significant.

If your netbook goes with you everywhere (and mine does), this may be a good reason to consider switching to Firefox.