Mobile Apps for Legal Research #13: The White House App

The White House App is the official mobile app of the White House, home to the President of the United States. The federal government is embracing mobile technology and has released a variety of apps, such as the Library of Congress's Constitution Annotated and the NSA's CryptoChallenge. Many of these apps are surprisingly good. The White House App is no exception.

The White House App is available for both iOS and Android devices. I reviewed the app on an iPad. Not everything in my review will apply to the Android version of the app.

The White House App is designed for current awareness. It is a bit like a magazine for your mobile device. Through the app, you can access the latest news, pictures, and videos coming from President Obama and the White House. But there are no past issues with this app. News that isn't recent isn't available. If you want to dig into news about the president from more than 2 or three weeks ago, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Once I understood the purpose of the app, I liked it. In the app, you can access the latest posts on the White House blog, read through more official news from the briefing room, flip through publicity photos, and watch videos.

 

The content is not limited to the President. The White House press office covers the First Lady as well, so the app contains many stories, pictures, and videos featuring Michelle Obama.

If you want to stay abreast of the absolute latest information on the President, you can watch live streaming of White House events through the app. The app does not include a schedule of events, but it will notify you whenever an event starts.

As you read through news in the app, you can share the articles via email, Twitter, or Facebook. Or you can save them to your favorites list for easy return access.

Everything in the White House App is also available on whitehouse.gov, which you can easily access on your mobile device through your browser. But the app's content feels like it belongs on the mobile device, and whitehouse.gov doesn't. The app may not offer me more or different content, but it brings it to me better. When I open the app, I want to keep using it. The app captures the essence of the mobile experience in a way I can't explain, other than to say this app delivers the combination of simple and beautiful that is supposed to define the iPad.


While I like the White House App a lot, it isn't perfect. It offers a search, but the search redirects you to whitehouse.gov. Though you're still "within" the app, you leave the app's interface and go to the web interface.

Article accessed using search in the White House App

The same article viewed on whitehouse.gov in the browser

The app's search would be much more attractive if it let you view the articles you find in the native interface. As is, the search is close to no search at all.

Overall, I highly recommend the White House App. Whether you're a political junky whose day isn't complete until you've read all the news out of Washington, or you just want to see the occasional picture of the President shaking hands and kissing babies, or you fall somewhere in between, you'll find the White House App worth downloading.

Helpouts by Google--A New Resource for Legal Research?

A new Google product just showed up on my radar: Helpouts. Helpouts is a platform to give and receive help over live video. Google has combined Hangouts, Google Wallet, and Google+ to create a system where users can seek help by connecting via live video with self-proclaimed experts, often for a fee.

Google's goal is to supplement its search by connecting users with people who will answer the users' questions. I, like most people, depend on the Internet as a source of answers to all sorts of questions. If I need a recipe for French onion soup, I search for french onion soup recipe on Google. When I wanted to replace the stereo in my car on my own, I looked up a video with step by step instructions on YouTube. If I used Helpouts, I could instead ask a restaurant chef how he makes French onion soup, or have an experienced mechanic talk me through the car stereo install.

As Google describes Helpouts, "With Helpouts you can get help anytime from people with expertise across a range of topics - teachers, counselors, doctors, home repair specialists, personal trainers, hobby enthusiasts, and more. You can choose who to get help from based on qualifications, availability, ratings and reviews. Also, you can choose to get help right away or schedule a Helpout for later."

Google released Helpouts with more than a thousand companies and individuals already enrolled to provide help to users, so there is plenty of content. For instances, Home Depot offers free home improvement help through Helpouts. Rosetta Stone offers 30 minute language tutoring session for $30.00. Weight Watchers offers free menu reviews.

Helpouts may be useful for help retouching a photo, learning the guitar, or applying makeup (if you believe Google's marketing), but is it the new answer to legal research? Can you save time finding a form for a commercial ground lease by asking a real estate attorney? Or locate a case by talking to a law clerk instead of searching Westlaw or Lexis on your own?

To find out, I tried searching Helpouts for legal topics. I did not find much. I found a social studies teacher offering tutoring to high school students on the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Several people offer LSAT tutoring. My favorite result is a former law professor who offers half hour sessions on which law school, if any, a prospective student should attend. But nothing I found would be of much use for legal research.

I discovered the reason for the lack of legal research help when I went to the Helpouts policies page. Google lists legal services as restricted content. The policies page states that "At this time, Helpouts does not allow the promotion of legal services." Google naturally prohibits giving legal advice as a legal service. But it also prohibits any "informational services" related to legal topics. So help conducting legal research would be a violation of Google's current Helpouts policies. Even law school tutoring is prohibited. When it comes to the practice of law, Google is not taking any chances with its new platform.

Helpouts might someday become a resource for legal research. While lawyers may not line up to help you with your research, I can imagine law librarians offering to help formulate search strategies and evaluate sources via Helpouts. So Helpouts is worth watching for the time when Google re-evaluates its content policies. Until then, maybe I can finally master making souffles.

Searching Twitter (even without an account)

While perusing a recent Law Practice Today article, I discovered that you can conduct searches on Twitter by going to http://twitter.com/#!/search-home. You can search even if you don't have an account. As discussed in previous posts by Neal Smith and Elliott Hibbler, there are a number of reasons Twitter could be useful to you, such as for conducting legal research.

There are two options for searching in Twitter; you can enter a search directly into the search box or you can choose the advanced search option. As a librarian, I'm happy to see you can incorporate operators in your search query. If you remember the operators, you can enter them in the initial search bar. You can see from the operator chart that there is some date restriction capability. Note: there is no space between the colon and the date.

If you have trouble remembering the operators, you can put your terms in the advanced search template. It is easier to locate the Advanced Search option if you use the search link provided above because there's a link for it on that page.

If you are signed into your Twitter account, you can find the Advanced Search option on the left-hand side of your results screen, after you run your initial search.

Once you've formulated the perfect search, you have the option of saving it for future use by clicking "save"  on the top right-hand corner of your results page.

You can retrieve your saved searches by clicking anywhere in the search box and they will appear in the drop down menu after your recent searches.

A little off topic, but a special thanks to Sabrina Serra, one of our student employees, for sharing that you can change your account background by going to "settings and help" and choosing "Design."

Some features, such as changing your background, may not be available from mobile devices. In that case, you may want to check out one of the many third-party apps.

Have more questions about searching in Twitter or questions about Twitter in general? The Twitter Help Center may have the answer.

Mobile Apps for Legal Research #12: The American Lawyer Digital Edition

The American Lawyer Digital Edition is an iOS version of ALM's American Lawyer magazine. The digital edition app is not the official American Lawyer app. The official American Lawyer app is Am Law, which I may discuss at a later date. The American Lawyer Digital Edition does not provide as much content or as many features as Am Law, but it offers a superior reading experience.

The American Lawyer Digital Edition ("ALDigital") replicates the print journal in an app. It delivers content in the form of issues, and each issue is a page-for-page copy of the print issue, including the advertisements.

I do not think this approach would work well on the iPhone, but on the iPad the content is both beautiful and easy to read. A single page of the magazine fits perfectly on an iPad in portrait mode. 

In landscape mode, the app displays two pages at once, allowing to you take in cross-page graphics while still reading the text, which is noticeable smaller but still quite legible.

The app also delivers crisp, clear images, which add to the overall reading experience. The pages of the magazine looked clean and beautiful, with every bit of information where it is supposed to be. You know you are seeing the magazine as the publishers intended, every word, graphic, and ad.

ALDigital is more than just a faux print journal. The app takes advantage of the digital format to provide several useful features. You can bookmark individual pages for quick return later. You can open a table of contents from anywhere in an issue. The table of contents shows a copy of the print table of contents with each article hyperlinked for easy access.

Or you can switch to a thumbnail view of every page of the issue. Tapping on a thumbnail opens that page of the issue.

The app allows keyword searching both in and across issues. If you tap the search icon while viewing an issue, the app will search only that issue. If you tap the search icon while in the main library page, the app searches across all available issues.

When you find an article you want to read, you can view it as it appeared in print (my recommendation), or you can change to text view using the Show Text button. Text view formats the article as a webpage, allowing you change the article's font size and to select and copy text from the article.

ALDigital also lets you email articles from within the app, or post articles to Facebook or Twitter if you so desire.

ALDigital currently provides access to issues of American Lawyer from Dec. 2010 to the present. Each issue must be downloaded separately. Downloading can take a long time because of the size and quality of the issues, but once you download an issue, it is stored on your device, so you don't have to download it again. If you are concerned about memory space, you can delete downloaded issues under settings.

In addition to the print content of American Lawyer, ALDigital contains an RSS feed of articles published on the American Lawyer website. Selecting a headline from the RSS feed takes you to the American Lawyer website. The articles in the feed may not be accessible without a subscription.

ALDigital is a simple app with a simple purpose: deliver the American Lawyer to the iPad without losing anything in translation. And it succeeds with flying colors.

An Interesting Resource for Free Criminal Justice Material

I just learned about a resource that could prove very useful to researchers in the area of criminal justice. To back up, the Executive Director of the the Prison Policy Initiative (“PPI”), Peter Wagner, spoke at the Law School on February 10th. The mission of PPI is to “document the impact of mass incarceration on individuals, communities, and the national welfare in order to empower the public to improve criminal justice policy.” 

 

In addition to their attacks on various inequities of the prison system, PPI also works to make tools available to help bring about change in the areas of criminal justice on which it focuses. These tools include the PPI Research Clearinghouse and visual data aids.

 

The Research Clearinghouse contains links to 1,700+ empirical criminal justice reports and publications. The reports and publication are classified in 31 topics such as Prison and the Economy, Prison Gerrymandering, International Incarceration Comparisons, to name just three. There is also an option to do a keyword search or simple Boolean searches.

 

Another interesting resource on the site are graphs created by the PPI staff illustrating various issues of interest in the criminal justice arena. For example, there are charts illustrating differences in rates of application of New York’s stop and frisk policy, the effect of prison gerrymandering, and race, ethnicity, age, gender and the prison population, among other topics.

Finally, PPI has a strong list of legal resources for incarcerated people on their site (under “legal resource database”) that they keep updated.

 

In the interest of full disclosure (and pride), Peter Wagner is a 2003 graduate of the Law School, and the seed for PPI was planted during a research project he became involved with while here at the Law School.