Travels With Susan

 I just upgraded, at last, to an intel Mac.  As a result some of my old programs, which ran only under OS9, no longer worked.  That is when I discovered Crossover Mac by www.codeweavers.com.  Crossover Mac allows you to run Windows programs on an Intel Mac without partitioning your disc and without having a copy of Windows.  Not all Windows programs will run under it but you don't know until you try it out.  You can download a fully functional trial version of Crossover to find out if it will run the Windows version of some program you like.

What a great program!  I wanted to use it to run a Folio Views infobase--- Cal Disc DVD  from Accesslaw--.  That application is not supported by Codeweavers  but it runs fine under Crossover Mac.  This is a truly important application for the Mac because it makes the Mac almost a universal machine.  For $39.00 you should give it a try.

Okay-- this is still the greatest gadget ever. Here is one stat that conveys the real difference between an iPhone and everything else-- Google looked at its logs to see which hand held device was used most often to access Google-- the iPhone logged in 50 times as many access occurences as the next most used device. If you have an iPhone you know why. The screen is so much more readable than that of any other device. You can actually read the websites you access. Same for getting your email. I get my email on my iPhone before I get it on my computer. It keeps me in touch whereever I am. And even the old GPS less iPhone is great when you get lost. Provided you have EDGE coverage. You find yourself with the map application. tap in the address you are looking for and -- voila-- directions. I have used it several times. I love it. And--- AND--- the maps have traffic for the freeways-- you know-- red for congested and green for go. I love it. And it is only getting better. With the third party apps I can listen to the radio on my iPhone. I love it.

Okay-- I am not going to ask if this is the greatest gadget ever because, like ATMs and microwaves it kind of transcends gadgetry-- it slowly changes your life in pleasant and stress saving ways. Having grown up in a world without xerox copiers, ATMs and microwaves I can attest to the convenience that they have added to life. Now I put the iPhone in that category. It does everything I had hoped the Kyocera 735 and the Treo 650 would do, only it does it without making me want to pull my hair out in frustration. Three way calls are a breeze. I love the way I can easily add a number as a contact and add a new number for an old contact. I. e.-- suppose you call me the first time from your office line. I tap on the number and select "create new contact". Put in your name and now you are on my contact list. You call me next time from your cell, after the call is over I tap on the number and tap "add to existing contact". I dont' have to remember the number to enter it. I can look up a number without hanging up on a call. I can look up places by name OR address with reasonable success. When I get the list of, for example, Home Depots in the San Gabriel valley, The phone numbers and websites show up in highlights. I tap on the phone number and the phone asks me if I want to call the number. I tap on the web address and safari takes me to the website.

I love the screen that is twice the size of that of just about any other "smart" phone. The size and the high resolution makes reading my e-mail and surfing the web really doable. I could theoretically surf the web with my Treo but the websites were Slo-o--o-o-w and hard to read. With the iPhone, still not the world's greatest experience but now doable. Still slow but not as slow and with the ability to magnify the flick of a finger (well-- a finger and a thumb) I can actually read websites.

E-mail is great-- I have the iphone synced to two e-mail addresses that I do NOT use for subscribing to listserves and groups because I don't want to read all that e-mail on my iPhone. Both are IMAP websites. I can send e-mail easily. For a solo lawyer like me -- that is invaluable. If you attach a document in Word or pdf, I can download and read it on my iPhone. that is so terrific. And I can respond to messages right away.

I have almost two hundred pictures on my iPhone also. I can check my stocks with a tap and check the weather just as easily.

And, for the first time, I have a smart phone that really works as a calendar without a lot of work-- My secretary has an iCal Calendar, I have an ical Calendar and we both subscribe to each other's calendars. When I plug my iPhone into the computer by way of the provided USB cord-- all of those calendar notes go on my iphone and my added calendar items from iphone go on my iCal. Yay! Technically, iCal calendars are single user calendars but the publish and subscribe feature allows you to have the same as a shared calendar.-- same for contacts.

I have a script that allows me to add calendar dates to my iCal from my Filemaker data base easily.

To entertain myself and my darling grandson I have videos which are very watchable and I subscribe to some podcasts. I also have music. At night, I plug the iPhone into a Phillips amplifier-speaker built for iPods which works for my iPhone as well-- it plays my music with good fidelity and re-charges the iPhone at the same time.

I have the 8 gigabyte iPhone which was the biggest I could get at the time, for $299.00. It was a great investment. I love it. It's kind of like going from dial up to high speed broad band or from a typewriter to a computer. You can't really go back. It's the convenience.

Another feature I have just started using is the notes application. I add shopping lists and reminders there that I could more easily write on paper-- I go to the trouble of adding them to my iPhone because I always have my iPhone with me and I know I wont lose them that way. The You tube app is also very nice and fun. Because the Edge network is slow, youtube is slow so I generally prefer to download a video directly to my iphone. My grandson loves watching old cartoons. You can also download cartoons from the itunes store for `1.99 each. Put a Scooby Doo and a Spongebob Square pants on your iPhone and kids will love. you. My grandson introduced me to his pre-school teacher as follows: "this is my grandma. she has an iPhone." Enough said.

I love www.cyberhymnal.org.  You type in some part of a hymn that you remember and it gives you the music (sounds like an electrical piano for the most part) and the lyrics in written form.  In addition, it has little tidbits about the the music and the writing of it.  For example for Onward Christian Soldiers, it tells you that it is played in the last scene of Mrs. MIniver and for Oh God Our Help in Ages Past it tells you it was sung at Winston Churchill's funeral.  I know a lot of people these days don't have any favorite hymns and never go to church or any place of worship so they will find no use for this site.  For them, there are other sites.  Hymns have the virtue that most of them are in the public domain.

 So here is my list of favorite hymns for today-- Morning has Broken (NOT by Cat Stevens, by Eleanor Farjeon), Joyful Joyful We adore thee, by L. Van Beethoven, (words by Henry Van Dyke) On Eagles Wings by Michal Joncas-- This hymn makes me cry.  Here is the refrain:

And He will raise you up on eagle's wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
Make you to shine like the sun,
And hold you in the palm of His Hand.

Other Favorites:  All Things Bright and Beautiful, words by Cecil Alexander.  Rise Up O Men of God.  

I could go on but I won't.  I am one of those people who often doesn't need to open the hymnal to know the first verse of the song.   I love hymns.  So I love this website. 

I bought the Scansnap for the Macintosh months ago.  Before I set it up, the need for it had passed and it sat in the box.  Today I needed it again and got around to installing it and setting it up.  It was a snap. Sorry for the pun.  Anyway-- I scanned in a couple of documents to see how well it works.  Easy.  Really.  Fast.  Really-- it is both sides of a color document-- the printing looks great on the screen--.  That is -- the quality of the copy is pretty good. 

The Scansnap is a very small, very portable scanner that scans at a very high resolution, all things considered and at high speed-- it will scan a two sided document (both sides) in one pass in about 5 seconds.  The document will show up as a two page pdf document (both front and back) and in color if the document is not in black and white.  The device comes with a current copy of Adobe Acrobat Standard.  I already had Acrobat Professional so I kept that.  

When you open the scanned documents in Acrobat you can add a footer that says the date, a customized line of text ( like Smith v. Doe) and a page number (page 1 or page 1 of 10).  This is so cool I can hardly believe it though I have heard the same from others.  This and a laptop will enable you to copy documents on site.  The only problem with it is that it doesn't scan books and bound documents.  Still-- for about five hundred dollars including tax and shipping, it is a pretty good deal.  I highly recommend it.