The Oatmeal

Would y’all all please sign up for Verizon? Cos I’m stuck with bloody AT&T bastards for another year-and-a-hellish-half, and I’m hoping-beyond-hope that a mass exodus will improve my reception. It’s a safe bet that iPhone 5 will make me slaver and snort and I won’t be able to wait another year for my contract to expire.

BTW, everyone should know that you can’t surf and talk simultaneously on Verizon (or on any CDMA network), which is a dealbreaker for me:

“Hey, did you read my email?”
“No. Let’s hang up so I can read it and call you back.” 

Feh. It’s interesting that it took the iPhone announcement to highlight that significant distinction between AT&T/T-Mobile vs. Verizon/Sprint. We are given to understand that this will not be a limitation of Verizon’s faster LTE network, but there’s no LTE iPhone yet, and the coverage map (yes, a Flash site) is still small.

Good ole phone companies. Note to selves: Let’s not have a business model based on hating one’s own customers.

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January 24, 2011 | Filed Under Tech | Leave a Comment 

Some time-tracking alternatives to Timeslips for law firms

Just listing these informally, as I haven't used most of them.

Legal:

One law blogger put up this list of solutions, well worth looking into. I looked at the offerings, and Bill4Time is the one that offers a) logins for multiple users, and b) a way to integrate with QuickBooks, which would be crucial for your operation. At $30/month, it looks pretty tight. 

That blogger had a few articles on web-based practice management, and seems to have concluded that Rocket Matter and Clio are the two most suited for a smaller firm. I've had one client try out Clio, but it didn't work for them. (Worth mentioning that they offer a discount through ABA.

A law blog that gets frequently referenced in my world is The Mac Lawyer, who really loves him some Rocket Matter. The service is pricey — y'all would pay 60+(50*5)+(6*40)=$550/month, and since it's unclear to me that you would use all of its features, Rocket Matter may not be the direction you want to head. (Though I have to say that, if I were starting a law firm today, I'd sign up for Rocket Matter straight away.)

Not specific to the legal industry: 

I don't know that you would need a solution specifically tailored to legal practice. I have been using FreshBooks for a year, and it has totally changed my business. I also have two clients using Harvest very happily.

Whenever I want to search for "cloud-based" solutions, I start with Google Apps Marketplace, not because it's comprehensive, but because I can cover a lot of ground quickly, getting a sense of the current offerings with some very helpful user feedback.

In their Accounting section, I found a couple of services that look very promising: I like FreeAgent's pricing scheme of $20/month with no restrictions. And Invoicera received some good reviews. I have looked at the Zoho products before, and while they seem nice and clean, I always run into some major thing that they're missing. If my new switch to Xero for online accounting doesn't pan out, I might give FreeAgent a go.

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January 18, 2011 | Filed Under Tech | Leave a Comment 

Verizon iPhone: Mashable’s Infographic

http://mashable.com/2011/01/11/iphone-comparison-infographic/

I keep forgetting that CDMA doesn’t support simultaneous voice and data. That’d be a dealbreaker for me. Perhaps an LTE-supporting iPhone 5 would change that. Wonder if I can go a year without buying that year’s iPhone. Maybe if I stay on AT&T, and everyone else defects to Verizon, AT&T’s network will get better… and maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.

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January 11, 2011 | Filed Under Tech | Leave a Comment