TechnoLawyer: Business Productivity/Word Processing

Below you'll find one of the five articles from today's edition of TechnoLawyer NewsWire:

Adobe Acrobat on Steroids
By Brett Burney
Adobe sells several different versions of Acrobat, but even the most powerful version lacks features that lawyers need. As a result, a vibrant after-market of plug-ins exists. One such product, ARTS PDF's Aerialist, bills itself as "the ultimate plug-in for Adobe Acrobat." What does it do? Perhaps it's better to ask what it doesn't do. Among its many lawyer-friendly features, Aerialist can insert bates numbers, page numbers, dates, author information, and more into PDF documents, and generate bookmarks based on headings and font styles. Aerialist also features advanced document assembly and disassembly tools. For example, you can merge or split PDF files in any fashion — by pages, page ranges, bookmarks, page marks, etc. — while retaining cross-document linking. You can also use Aerialist to convert and merge different file types (.doc, .pdf, .xls, etc.) on the fly. Instead of applying each of these functions manually, you can take advantage of Aerialist's batch processing tools. You can even sequence the tasks performed on your files. Need even more power? Check out ARTS PDF's Aerialist Professional, which includes Aerialist's feature set plus even more advanced tools. For example, Aerialist Professional is the only plug-in that supports the creation of document layers. You can also use Aerialist Professional to edit and fix images within a PDF file, automatically build a table of contents for individual documents or collections of documents, and automatically link keywords within your documents. Best of all, you can batch process files by simply dropping them into "watched folders." Aerialist is available in both Windows and Mac versions. Aerialist Professional is currently available for Windows with a Mac version en route. Pricing starts at $379 for Aerialist and $699 for Aerialist Professional with volume discounts available. You can download a 30-day free demo. Learn more about Aerialist.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that enables you to learn about new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Below you'll find one of the five articles from today's edition of TechnoLawyer NewsWire:

This Cleaner Does Windows, and You Need Not Even Ask
By Brett Burney
Don't you wish smart appliances existed that would automatically clean our floors, do our laundry, wash our dishes, and more without requiring any input from us? Although automated home cleaning does not yet exist, automated document cleaning has arrived in the form of Workshare Protect 4. This new utility doesn't just remove metadata from Microsoft Office documents, it does so automatically and transparently. Workshare Protect enables you to set firmwide parameters for metadata removal and other security measures. You can even decide what to strip from a document depending on the nature of the activity. For example, you might treat internally e-mailed documents differently from externally e-mailed documents. In addition to removing metadata, Workshare Protect can also convert e-mail attachments to PDF format and even compress attachments into .zip format when they reach a specified size. Best of all, Workshare Protect does all of its work behind the scenes automatically, which eliminates the need to train your staff. That said, your power users can view reports showing the risk rating of their documents and what Workshare Protect will remove. You can even grant special privileges to such users so that they can tweak Workshare Protect's actions on a document by document basis — even within the same e-mail message. Workshare Protect works with GroupWise, Lotus Notes, and Outlook, and with Microsoft Office 97/2000/XP/2003. You can download a free trial. Learn more about Workshare Protect.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that enables you to learn about new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Below you'll find one of the five articles from today's edition of TechnoLawyer NewsWire:

Follow That Document
By Brett Burney
What's the best way to share an electronic document with someone? Print it out? E-mail it to them? These methods work, but they don't facilitate the integration of changes other people may make to your document. Workshare Professional 4 provides "secure document compliance for Microsoft Office." The thrust of the application is to give you an efficient and secure way to collaborate with others on electronic documents. Tightly integrated with Microsoft Office, Workshare Professional 4 enables you to tag a document as the "master," and then send it to one or more "reviewers." It also integrates with your e-mail client (Lotus Notes, Groupwise, or Outlook) so that it can monitor when modified documents return. Best of all, Workshare Professional keeps an audit trail of any and all changes that were made to a document — think "track changes" on steroids. It can even produce a "Document Audit Report" showing change history, metadata, and send history. Got a document management system? Workshare Professional integrates with all the major players, including Documentum, Hummingbird, Interwoven, and SharePoint. New features in version 4 include one click PDF conversion and security, an enhanced Report Wizard, an "Always On Audit" for Word documents, the ability to centrally apply document policies, integration with DeltaView, and much more. Pricing for Workshare Professional 4 starts at $349 per seat with a 10-seat minimum; it's free for existing firms that have a software subscription. Learn more about Workshare Professional.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that enables you to learn about new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Desktop search software is a hot topic as evidenced by all the reviews in our Fat Friday newsletter. Goebel Group, a search technology integrator, has published a handy chart comparing/contrasting all the major desktop search tools such as Google Desktop Search and X1. My one question about this emerging market — will all the free products harm traditional players such as dtSearch and Enfish that pioneered this market, or will the fee-based products be able to differentiate themselves?

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

With all the Firefox reviews and tips in recent editions of our Topical Compilation newsletter, I thought it worth pointing out that PC Magazine has published a helpful article entitled Top 15 Firefox Extensions.  Caveat — many of the utilities reviewed are still in beta release. FoxyTunes 1.1 gets my vote as the most intriguing — it permits you to control iTunes or other music software from within Firefox.

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

An incredible 67.8% of TechnoLawyer members use Adobe Acrobat.  If you use Acrobat, listen up — tomorrow's edition of our TechnoFeature newsletter will contain an exclusive review of Acrobat 7. Here is the synopsis:

Acrobat 7's Seven Most Notable New Features
In this article, CaseSoft CEO Greg Krehel reviews the seven new features of Adobe Acrobat 7 likely to generate the greatest interest among lawyers, paralegals, and legal assistants. Additionally, Greg also explores the differences among the five different products in the Acrobat family. This article contains 1,301 words.

Incidentally, for those of you who use both Acrobat and CaseMap, Greg asked me to pass along the following: "There's a new "Send-to-CaseMap" Plug-in for Acrobat 7. You can obtain it at no-charge. The behavior of the Plug-in remains the same."

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Tuesdays, TechnoFeature is a weekly newsletter that contains in-depth articles written by leading legal technology and practice management experts. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Regarding a recent Answers to Questions newsletter, TechnoLawyer member Robert Ray writes: "In his review of indexing tools, Jason Havens mentioned several commercial programs that can search your files and, with extra cost plugins, search Outlook. You can download "Lookout" from Microsoft, which does the same thing and is free. You can search files, e-mails, notes, PDF files, contacts, tasks, etc. at the same time." Good point, but how long can we expect software from Microsoft to remain free? In this case, probably for a while given all the free alternatives from Google and others. Ultimately, however, someone will have to pay so don't be surprised to find advertising in these tools someday.

About Quips
A Quip is a brief member contribution for which we don't have room in our Answers to Questions or Fat Friday newsletters. Instead, Quips appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

Recently, we let you know about FileHand in our TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter.  TechnoLawyer Michael Etchison responds as follows: "Filehand looks very interesting. I suppose I could just go ahead and believe the company about its not being spyware. But is it too much to expect that when a product loudly proclaimed as "free" but which becomes crippled in 30 days unless you buy it have its price listed?"

About Quips
A Quip is a brief member contribution for which we don't have room in our Answers to Questions or Fat Friday newsletters. Instead, Quips appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

Corel WordPerfect has experienced something of a rebirth lately in TechnoLawyer.  Not only did we recently distribute a number of WordPerfect 12 reviews in Topical Compilation, but Corel returned to TechnoLawyer as a sponsor after a three year absence.  TechnoLawyer member Pamela Packard adds to the cavalcade of coverage with this quick take: "I recently bought WordPerfect 12. It is wonderful. For another point of view from a paralegal perspective, I find Word to be the least user friendly software I have ever used. Generating table of contents is the biggest pain in the world, pleading footers take way too much of my time, just to name a few pet peeves. The secretaries where I work quite often feel the same."

About Quips
A Quip is a brief member contribution for which we don't have room in our Answers to Questions or Fat Friday newsletters. Instead, Quips appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

Blinkx, which we covered recently in TechnoLawyer NewsWire, has launched version 2.0 of its desktop and online search software.  Among its new features, Blinkx 2.0 can now search for TV clips on the Internet.  Also, a beta of Blinkx 2.0 is now available for Mac users.

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.