TechnoLawyer: Email/Messaging/Telephony

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Our most serendipitous offering, Fat Friday consists of unsolicited contributions by TechnoLawyer members. You'll no doubt enjoy it because of its mix of interesting topics and genuinely useful knowledge, including brutally honest product reviews and informative how-tos. The Fat Friday newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to Answers to Questions: Susan Berry at Wolters Kluwer Law & Business responds to recent Posts about Loislaw for online legal research, Sherry Wiley explains how she got a Vista PC to work on her home and office networks, Caren Schwartz reviews MyFax, Randy Gold explains how to burn iTunes files to an MP3 CD, and Stephen Seldin explains how to transform a scanned document into editable word processing file. Don't miss this issue.

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Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 53 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:

How Lawyers Will Use Google Wave

How to View an Upside Down PDF on the iPhone

Reduced Hours, Full Success: Part Time Partners (PDF)

Why Law Firm Blogs Fail as Legal Marketing Tools

This issue also contains links to every article in the October 2009 issue of Law Practice Today. Don't miss this issue or future issues.

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Coming today to Answers to Questions: Jason Grimes explains what sets LexisNexis and Westlaw apart from their competitors, Andrea Cannavina shares her thoughts on Olympus' DS2 file format and reviews the Philips Pocket Memo 9600 and Grundig Digta 420 digital dictation recorders, Sean LaRoque discusses the security of email fax services, Randy Gold reviews Dell's onsite laptop repair service, and Steven McNichols reviews Snagit for capturing Web pages. Don't miss this issue.

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Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In Answers to Questions, TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers. This newsletter's popularity stems from the relevance of the questions and answers to virtually everyone in the legal profession. The Answers to Questions newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers an email client for Mac and Windows, a secure document sharing service, a Web application for creating public or private discussion forums, a service that enables you to monitor social networks via email, and BlackBerry syncing software for Macs (see article below). Don't miss the next issue.

Email on Performance-Enhancing Technology

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled, "Why Email No Longer Rules." The article notes that while email usage continues to grow (21% more email accounts than in 2008), social media is growing faster (31% more accounts). That hardly sounds like a dying medium. Doesn't the Wall Street Journal, the bastion of financial news, realize that a hot new medium will have a faster growth rate than a hot "old" medium because fewer people use the new one? No, email is far from dead. But it's certainly ripe for some new tools given its central role in law firm workflows.

Postbox 1.0 … in One Sentence
Postbox is an email client with a new approach to email management.

The Killer Feature
When you consider that email harkens back to the 1970s, it has a surprisingly rich structure — date, from, to, cc, subject, body, attachments, etc. Why then do so many email clients either lack the ability to search these parameters or take forever to display the search results?

Postbox claims to address this shortcoming with what it calls "ultra-fast search." Using the Search Panel, you can create narrow searches such as messages that contain a certain word within a date range. Alternatively, you can use Postbox's search syntax (e.g., from:Barack) to create these searches directly in the search box.

Postbox displays the matching messages in the left column, and highlights your search terms when you view a message. In the right column. it lists matching attachments. You can search from any window, including the Compose Message window, enabling you to find a previous attachment that you want to send again.

Other Notable Features
Postbox features an assortment of organizational tools. For example, you can list all recent messages involving a contact, and organize messages using Topics (e.g., client/matter). You can also view messages by conversation. Unlike Gmail, which gives you no alternative, Postbox enables you to toggle between a traditional view and the conversation view.

Postbox also organizes the content within messages. In the inspector panel to the right of each message you'll find attachments, addresses, URLs, etc. You can edit and annotate any message, and archive a group of messages when a case or deal closes.

Even though everyone knows you shouldn't use email messages as a task list, everyone does it anyway. Rather than scold you, Postbox enables you to mark messages as ToDos, which pins them to the top of your message list so they don't get lost among messages that don't contain a task.

What Else Should You Know?
Postbox runs on Mac or Windows. Because it's built atop Mozilla, developers can port their Thunderbird utilities to work with Postbox (e.g., calendars). Postbox costs $39.95. For an additional $24.95, you'll receive all future upgrades at no additional charge. You can try Postbox free for 30 days. Learn more about Postbox 1.0.

How to Receive TechnoLawyer NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to Fat Friday: Tom Rowe defends Microsoft's Zune Pass, Kimberly DeCarrera reviews the BlackBerry Tour, William Leininger reviews Acer's Aspire Timeline 3810TZ laptop, Mark Olberding reviews Chrometa for automatic time capture, and Andrew Paterson reviews Gmail's spam filtering abilities. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive Fat Friday
Our most serendipitous offering, Fat Friday consists of unsolicited contributions by TechnoLawyer members. You'll no doubt enjoy it because of its mix of interesting topics and genuinely useful knowledge, including brutally honest product reviews and informative how-tos. The Fat Friday newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to Answers to Questions: Constance Sutton compares Loislaw with Westlaw for legal research, Craig Humphrey reviews Microsoft Mesh, Windows Home Server, and F5 Firepass for remote access, David Estes shares a tip for integrating Vista PCs into your network, Daniel Fennick compares Floola with iTunes, and Timothy Cleary reviews eFax (plus some thoughts on security issues). Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive Answers to Questions
Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In Answers to Questions, TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers. This newsletter's popularity stems from the relevance of the questions and answers to virtually everyone in the legal profession. The Answers to Questions newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 54 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:

Are Clients Missing the Wave Because Attorneys Don't Surf?

Why Companies Are Switching From BlackBerry to iPhone

The Evolution of AFAs: Law Firm Side

Search Engine Optimization for Small Law Firms

This issue also contains links to every article in the October 2009 issue of Law Technology News. Don't miss this issue or future issues.

How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. To stay on top of all the noteworthy articles published in blogs and other online publications you could either hire a research assistant or simply subscribe to BlawgWorld. The BlawgWorld newsletter has received rave reviews and is free. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to Answers to Questions: Darrell Stewart discusses security considerations when choosing a fax-to-email service, Ashley Hallene explains how to save Web pages with Adobe Acrobat Professional and PrimoPDF, and Philip Franckel reviews File Shredder for securely erasing hard drives. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive Answers to Questions
Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In Answers to Questions, TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers. This newsletter's popularity stems from the relevance of the questions and answers to virtually everyone in the legal profession. The Answers to Questions newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 59 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:

The Lawyerification of Litigation Support

70 Sizzling Smartphone Apps for Lawyers

Don't Criticize or Blame Others Until You Look in the Mirror

Where to Focus With Social Networking

How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. To stay on top of all the noteworthy articles published in blogs and other online publications you could either hire a research assistant or simply subscribe to BlawgWorld. The BlawgWorld newsletter has received rave reviews and is free. Please subscribe now.