Tuesday, September 07, 2010

LawTech Blog

07

A friend called and needed a referral, rather than turn on the speaker, search my contacts, and read the number aloud I said I would send the info. Later, I went into the iPhone contact list, searched for the target contact and got ready to commit the number to memory to include an SMS text* and then noticed a button: “Share Contact.”   (I have yet to adjust to the fact that iPhone now has copy and paste)

I touched “Share Contact” and iPhone attached a VCF file, the standard format for contact info, to an email.  Cool, I thought, and started typing my friend’s name and clicked on his email address when iPhone brought it up in the list an then touched send.  On the other end, when my friend clicks on the file to invoke his email client, e.g. Outlook, Entourage or Mac Address Book and then he’ll have all the info just that easy.  And since this friend has trouble keeping track of numbers, maybe he won’t call for that one again, but that probably hoping too much.  

Then I wondered, but had a strong suspicion about, what would happen if I opened the VCF attachment on the iPhone.  As I suspected, when I touched the file and iPhone opened it and asked if I wanted to add it my contacts.  

So, if you have MobileMe and an iPhone, you can have people email VCF, open them on iPhone to create new contacts which will sync through MobileMe and be on your Mac when you get back to the office.  See Paperless Express Step 1.  

When I added the OS Law Center as a contact to test this, I thought neither “work” nor “home” email was appropriate so I made a custom label.  That’s easy too.  While viewing a contact, touch Edit and then the desired item and then the label under it, then touch “Add Custom Label”  

FYI: The callout on the main image are just standard PDF commenting tools.  Acrobat opens image files too. Getting the images back on the web takes a few more steps and if anyone is interested I’ll demo that too.  

*My friend also has an iPhone and I was going to use SMS text because iPhones recognize phone numbers in text messages, which can be called with a touch. He got the iPhone based on my recommendation and thanked me for it. I also recommend the Mac and Fujitsu ScanSnap with the same result.  These products are so good that recommending them is like picking low hanging fruit grown on the neighbor’s farm.
 

Posted in: iPhone

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By Seth Azria, Esq.

 

 

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