A More Robust User Interface

                The most immediately obvious improvement in Ice Cream Sandwich is a cleaner, better-looking UI. The improved notifications drop-down menu appends a built-in settings button for easy access to the device’s control center and adds the ability to dismiss notifications and updates by swiping them off of the screen.  In ICS, icons can be grouped into folders on the home screens by dragging one on top of another, and widgets are now resizable.  The applications pane now also displays available widgets and swipes from left to right instead of scrolling vertically.  The user experience feels altogether more polished with snappy screen transitions and built-in animations for closing the applications pane and turning off the screen.

Better Email and IT Features

Android 4.0 provides a more enterprise-friendly experience for the corporate user.  For the first time, IT departments can enforce Exchange ActiveSync policies requiring Android devices to be encrypted before connecting to a mail server.  (But be forewarned, the encryption process in Android 4.0 is irreversible short of performing a factory reset of the phone!)  Ice Cream Sandwich also makes working with email easier than ever.  The new built-in spell-check functionality recognizes a wider range of terms, resolves errors more accurately, and provides only 3 suggestions for misspelled terms instead of the previous 5.

More Power to the People

The tech-savvy android fan will appreciate just how much power Android 4.0 puts in the hands of its users.  Ice Cream Sandwich stops short of granting a user the ability to uninstall manufacturer-loaded bloatware, but it does take a very important step forward by introducing the disable applications feature.  Instead of using an exploit to grab Root access in order to uninstall unwanted software, Android 4.0 allows any standard user to disable most preloaded applications – effectively preventing them from running.  ICS also provides granular control over network data.  Users can monitor how much data each application consumes and set hard limits at which the phone will stop consuming data, thus avoiding painful overage fees.

Add to this list all of the features that I have not had the opportunity to touch on and it’s pretty easy to see why Ice Cream Sandwich represents a must-have upgrade for any Android user.

Even though our system allows us to use Lync to communicate with people outside our Firm, it is not obvious who those people are.  I recently came across an interesting new tool found here that will report back which contacts you have that are likely Lync available.  When I ran it against my personal contanct list, it found 25 people that I can direcly communicate with.  When I had it scan my suggested contact list (this is the dynamic list of people that I have emailed in the past), it found an additional 51 people that I can Lync with.

While I do not want to or need to Lync with all of these people, I did identify a few people that would make a lot of sense.  I hope you find value in this tool as well.

When:Friday, February 10, 2012

Time:12:00 – 1:00 Eastern

Register: Click Here to Register

ANSOR Legal Marketing and Experience Suite helps law firms of all sizes maximize their Microsoft investment while accelerating the proposal development process. ANSOR Proposal Generation Center built on the power of Microsoft Office and SharePoint delivers a robust set of Legal Marketing Components that allow your firm to develop, manage, and deploy approved marketing content. The webinar will focus on how firms can quickly generate unique, high quality proposals and marketing content as well as delivering new capabilities in collaboration, workflow, and access to experience content.

Presenter:
Rich Westle. a management consultant with Kraft Kennedy, leads solution development and product strategy for ANSOR Software, and has been involved in leading teams to deliver SharePoint based solutions to the legal market since 2004. Rich has been a featured speaker in the area of developing law firm experience management systems, most recently at the LexisNexis Redwood Analytics conference and Gensler Legal Market Summit.

There is a new type of laptop that is becoming available called the Ultrabook.  Intel has trademarked the name and you can read more about it here.  This new design concept has already been successful in the MacBook Air.  When I look at my requirements and the Ultrabook specs, this is a laptop that seems to meet my needs.  There are many vendors coming out with Ultrabooks and I have listed some of them below.  I will likely try to hold out for the 14” or even 15” screen models due out later this year.

Acer S3

Apple MacBook Air

Dell XPS 13

HP Folio 13

Lenovo U300S

Samsung Series 9

Toshiba Z835

As these are all relatively new, the reviews are just starting to come out.  Click here to see a comparison of 5 of these models.  I will report back once I finally get one and share the results.

When: Friday, February 24, 2012
Time: 12:00-1:00 Eastern
Register: Click Here to Register

Presenter BIO:

Joe Hoegler is the Practice Leader of Kraft Kennedy’s Infrastructure and Enterprise Systems Practice Group. He provides technical leadership and strategic guidance on client engagements involving a broad range of law firm technologies and is responsible for directing technology strategy and providing technical management at the firm. As of December 2011, he has led or advised over 35 law firm clients totaling over 35,000 users on projects related to Exchange 2010, ranging in size from 30 to 6,000 users. Joe is a Microsoft Certified Master on Exchange 2010, one of only approximately 50 people worldwide who hold this certification.

A combination of tools and techniques allow me to work this way:

1. Leveraging Outlook’s “Instant Search” capabilities
2. Practicing the four Ds: “Do it, Drop it, Delegate it or Defer it”
3. Minutia: tips, tricks and add-ins

1. Instant Search

Arguably the best thing to happen to e-mail in a long time, Outlook’s Instant Search function works so well that I can find any e-mail that I know I have ever sent or received with just a simple query right in Outlook’s browser window. As an attorney, I used to create intricate folder structures in which to file e-mails; Outlook’s terrible ability to search required doing so in order to be able to find anything. Now, every piece of e-mail I send or receive gets stored in a single folder.

(Instant Search requires Outlook 2007 or 2010 and Windows 7, although the functionality can be replicated using Microsoft Desktop Search and other versions of Windows/Outlook.)

While conforming to my firm’s retention policy, I keep every single e-mail in one folder (aptly named All). At +250,000 items and +12GB, it’s not the largest mailbox folder in existence. It’s my understanding, however, that it really doesn’t matter how large the folder grows. I won’t ever experience performance issues, and, using proper search techniques (see this Micrsoft article for a description of the search query syntax), I can find what I want instantly just by knowing what it is I’m looking for.

A little while back, IBM released the results of a study which concluded that “actively creating [and filing into] folders does not increase efficiency or success” in finding e-mails at a later date. Specifically, they found that it took an average 17 seconds to find an e-mail using search as compared to 58 seconds when navigating through folders to find a message. Add to that the fact that “10% of [a person's] total email time [is spent] filing messages,” and the conclusion is that you can save yourself a lot of time if you stop filing messages and just learn to search for them properly.

For those of you (attorneys in particular) who may not believe this is possible or practical, think about it this way: whatever criteria you use to file the e-mail in the first place are, and always will be, inherent in the e-mail (sender, recipient, date, subject, body or attachments). Down the road, when you need to locate that e-mail, the memory cues that you would otherwise use to navigate to that e-mail in your folder structure can be applied to a search query, allowing you to find it with greater ease than a combination of navigating and searching.

2. The Four Ds: “Do it, Drop it, Delegate it or Defer it”

I don’t know if he gets credit for it, but I first came across the Four Ds when reading Scott Hanselman article on Zero Email Bounce. Though I was already a practicioner of both the empty inbox and the philosophy articulated in the Four Ds, it resonated.

It boils down to the following: treat your inbox like a To Do list, and when you are going through your inbox (whether you do so regularly throughout the day, on a set schedule, or in some other fashion), do not move on to the next message until you have acted on the one you are viewing.

Your actions can either be to “do” whatever it is that the e-mail requires you to do; delete the message so that it is no longer in your inbox*; delegate the “to do” action (typically by forwarding the message to someone else); or else defer the action.

(*Previously, I indicated that I don’t delete any messages. While I hit the ‘delete’ key to get things out of my inbox and into the Deleted folder, as I discuss below I actually move those to the All folder on a periodic basis.)

The last D – deferring – one was one of the keys to my becoming successful at maintaining a clean inbox while not losing track of my responsibilities. While there are lots of ways to defer an e-mail/action, the method I practice is to move the e-mail to my calendar. As I discuss below, I have an add-in which makes this a single-click action, and allows me to postpone addressing an issue until some appropriate time in the future. This means that I have to be religious about addressing calendar reminders when they pop up, but here, too, the 4 Ds reapply: either act on the action or reschedule it to some future time/date when you expect you will be able to act.

3. Tips, tricks and add-ins

The rest are details. I use an Outlook add-in named SimplyFile, which accomplishes three essential tasks:

1. When I send a new message, it automatically files the sent copy in my All folder.
2. When I reply to or forward an e-mail it not only files my sent item, it also files the original message to which I am replying or fowarding to my All folder, saving me the extra step of having to deal with that originating message.
3. It includes a ‘Schedule it’ button on my Outlook ribbon which allows me to turn an e-mail into a calendar appointment.

One of my 4 Ds is to delete messages, which I do in the normal fashion. Microsoft recommends that you not let your Inbox, Sent Items or Deleted Items folders grow too large, so every now and then I move everything from Deleted Items to All. I do the same thing for the Sent Items folder (even though not much accumulates there due to SimplyFile, messages sent from my iPhone or iPad get copied there).

I do, as appropriate, file messages into my firm’s document management system, in accordance with our retention policy. The technique I outline above, however, is one that is practicable both for handling your non-filed e-mails and by people who do not have a DMS integrated with Outlook.

And that’s it. There are countless articles written on additional techniques for prioritizing messages, compartmentalizing your day to enable you to manage e-mail effectively, etc. While everyone needs to find a method that works for them, I can tell you quite honestly that I actually feel good when I see an empty inbox. It has been worth it to develop the habits and techniques that allow me to accomplish that on a daily basis.

Finally, for anyone still using complex folder structures, I strongly encourage you to consider leveraging the power of Instant Search in Outlook 2010 & 2007. You can find what you need just as fast if not faster, and you can save yourself a lot of time in not filing in the first place.

While the details of this specific seizure are clear, this event should serve as a reminder of one of the risks associated with cloud/SaaS/Hosted providers. If the government targets a service that your firm uses, all of the data you store could disappear in an instant.  Possible services include file sharing services, firm website hosting services, online backup systems and even nfrastructure as a service firms.   When evaluating the cloud these concerns should be taken into consideration and understood.  Your firm might not be doing anything wrong, but could suffer greatly if someone else is and the government decides to intervene.

Legal Tech New York
New York Hilton – 2nd Floor – Gibson Suite
Wednesday, February 1st
10:30am-11:30am

Leveraging SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Office to Expedite Proposal Development
Duane Morris, a worldwide firm with more than 600 attorneys across 12 primary practice areas, has seen a significant increase in the need to deliver a higher volume of unique proposals. In response, the firm has implement ANSOR Proposal Generation Center, ANSOR Experience Management System, and ANSOR Marketing Content Library. These solutions, implemented on the SharePoint 2010 Server platform and Microsoft Office platform, have helped Duane Morris increase the number of unique and high quality proposals and marketing content, as well as delivering new capabilities in collaboration, reporting, workflow and access to experience content.

Speakers:

• Rich Westle- Solution Director/ANSOR Software, Management Consultant/Kraft Kennedy
  Rich Westle leads solution development and product strategy for ANSOR Software, and has been involved in leading teams to deliver SharePoint based solutions to the legal market since 2004. Rich has been a featured speaker in the area of developing law firm experience management systems, most recently at the LexisNexis Redwood Analytics conference and Gensler Legal Market Summit.
• Cheryl Disch- Sr Manager, Marketing Information Systems/Duane Morris

After doing some sweet talking to my CTO on why we needed an AppleTV, we purchased one for the office. At $99, it costs less than a laptop battery so it didn’t really take much convincing. Once I got it connected on our network, I was able to stream content to it. With AirPlay, you can use an iPhone or iPad to show presentations and other content without a laptop. On current iOS devices (iPhone 4S and iPad 2) you can use AirPlay mirroring which lets you output exactly what’s on the device to your projector. This can be very handy for quick viewing of web content or demoing or training iOS applications. We currently have the Apple TV connected to our internal only WiFi network and any employee with an iOS device on the network can output content to the projector seamlessly.

There are some catches however. Apple TV only outputs HDMI which means you need a projector or TV with an HDMI or DVI input. Anything else (like standard VGA) will require some kind of video convertor which will probably cost more than the Apple TV. Also, as far as I know, there’s no way to share your iPhone or iPad screen via WebEx, LiveMeeting or some other online meeting tool so this would only be useful for meetings where everyone is in the room.

I think this can be a handy tool as long as you have the pre-requisites (HDMI projector and WiFi). It remains to be seen how much this will actually get used. However, at only $99, if it only gets used every now and then for Angry Birds on an 80” screen, it’s still worth it.

The first step is to create a contact that will serve as the recipient for the SMS message.  You will need to consult the settings for your particular carrier to find the format for this address.  For AT&T users, the format will be [10-digit phone number]@txt.att.net.  Once the contact is created, create an email rule similar to the one below:

This rule will tell Exchange to forward any message marked as “High Importance” to the contact that was created for the SMS address. While the above view is from a Windows Outlook client, the same can be accomplished through OWA, or in Entourage or Outlook 2011 for Mac.

Within a few minutes (depending on your reception and your carrier), you will receive a text version of the email message that was marked with high importance.  Because of the inherent 160 character limitation of SMS messaging, it is unlikely that you will be able to read the entire message, however the SMS message will alert you to the fact that you have a priority email and you can then read it in the native iOS email client. Keep in mind, the source of the text message may vary based upon your carrier. Here is how the text message may appear on an AT&T connected device. Note the highlighted portion of the text.

One thing to be careful of… Normal text messaging rates will apply, so if you receive a large number of priority messages, and do not have an unlimited messaging plan, this could get expensive very quickly.  You can lower the number of messages that get forwarded by tweaking the rule to filter for certain senders, but its always a good idea to be aware of your SMS plan.