F.lux, forget eye strain

Another all nighter? Hundred pages to read and eyes wanting sleep. In addition, your body demands that it is time that the burning sensation comes to an end.

The best is to have anti-glare glasses. However, that is not all. You can combine the best of technology to get amazing results. The solution is f.lux . A software that ‘makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.’

So no more itchy eyes, longer reading, better productivity and yes, better vision. Free of cost, flux is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, iphone and ipad.

Connect your computer, with the nature.

‘f.lux makes your computer screen look like the room you're in, all the time. When the sun sets, it makes your computer look like your indoor lights. In the morning, it makes things look like sunlight again.

Tell f.lux what kind of lighting you have, and where you live. Then forget about it. f.lux will do the rest, automatically.’

And yes, do share your experience. Sharing is caring :)

 

Image from http://homeanxietyremedies.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/late-night-work.jpg

Read More...

Cooperate to Dominate - Class Notes Online

Don’t’ go the Photocopier. Don’t loiter around girls’ hostel (at least for notes). All that has come to change.

Saving you time, effort and paisa! Here is something which everyone searches for but rarely gets on the internet (unlike certain other stuff). Point Noted

Yes, class notes for you, class notes for us. And if you have been reading us for a while, you know the line. Sharing is caring J So contribute and enjoy the fruit.

Law of Torts, Contract, Jurisprudence, and even Constitutional Law! Starting out small, to help the junta to clear their exams. Point Noted is here.

Point Noted in short is our series of digitized (yes, typed not handwritten) comprehensive notes. Currently we have notes on:-

• Jurisprudence
• Constitution
• Law of Torts
• Contracts

Grab them for free from here.

PS - Save paper and do not print these notes.

Read More...

All Nighters, No More!!!

Well, no more. Presenting the Basics of Law series, which will make your life as easy as you want it to be. Taking law the tech way, these small applications will change the way you did that last minute study. Now, both on Torts and Jurisprudence.

Dealing point wise with every topic that your curriculum may have, the apps offer a no frills user interface with no popping ads. The apps also mention the important case laws with citations and also the point of law laid down in them, whenever required.

So, no all nighters and you pass as well! Whoever said life can’t be easy, maybe was not having a smartphone!  

Read More...

Enhance Your Office Experience – Tabs in Word, Beautiful PPTs, Automated Proofreading and much more

It’s a product which we use everywhere and we will tell you the tricks to take the experience a notch higher!

MS Office has become indispensable part of many of our lives (Open Source just died a silent death somewhere?)  Though office on its own is pretty complete in itself I would tell you here of some add-ons which will take your Office experience to the next level. I would be mainly focusing on Word and PowerPoint in this article as these two software are what mainly used by legal fraternity.

Yet to get that law firm job, Outlook will come after that ;)

Automated Proofreading – Remember that time when your supervisor at your internship took your case because of that missed comma/bad formatting/ misspelling etc. We all hate Grammar Nazis, don’t we?  At least I hate them for sure.  (Pro tip – When confronting a Grammar Nazi, softly say to them, “There, their, they’re”) So now to avoid this not so welcome situation, I offer you Ginger. Yeah sounds funny name for a proof-reader but believe me it’s a life saver. Ginger has many medicinal benefits, the first one being that it saves you from headache.

But do remember that Ginger at the end of the day is a software prone to err, use your brain before accepting the recommended changes by the software. Add Consistency Checker to Word and your formatting is also taken care of.

Tabs in Office – We all love Tabs, don’t we? One of the most horrid aspects of MS Office and especially word is that each document opens in a different window making use multiple windows simultaneously a PITA. Well we have a solution here all you need is Office Tab and you are good to go.

Better Presentation – I suck at making presentations. I am pretty sure there are many of you who fail miserably when it comes to making an attractive PowerPoint presentation.

Yes, we all dream of that powerful and beautiful board-room presentation, even though it’s going to be presented in class.

I have a way out! Add Visual Bee to PowerPoint make a simple PPT and click on enhance PPT. Select a nice theme and you are good to go. Alternatively you could also use import PowerPoint in Prezi and come up with an attractive flash based presentation in a single click.

Flowcharts – Remember that Property or Family case law which had more parties to the case than characters in the Lord of the Rings? The only way to remember who was who was by making a flowchart. Lucidchart and Gliffy Diagrams are two great free add-ons which let you make complex flowcharts in MS Word. Yes, absolutely free!

Citation Management – One bane that legal writing suffers from is citation. Often I found easier to write a legal paper than correctly cite it. These guidelines are so stringent that it takes forever to cite only. The details are too many, italicize the author’s name, and write this in upper case, that in lower case and so on. Zotero is the solution. Just feed the basic info to Zotero and it will generate the correct citation for you.  (I personally prefer CiteThisforMe for one or two citations). Zotero’s integration with MS Word is quite handy and makes life a bit easier. Mind you, just a little bit J

Dictionary – How about Merriam Webster Dictionary, integrated in MS Word itself? You know what the best part about it is, it’s completely free and yes, it’s authoritative too.

Drafting – Ever heard of legalzoom the legal documentation website? Well, you have now.  They have created a free nifty addon for MS Word which provides common templates used for drafting. (You could also check out kagzaat, a simple legal documentation site).

Note – Some of the suggested apps above may not be compatible with your version of MS Office.

If you liked this, do also check our series on enhancing your web browser over here and here.

Read More...

Using Macros – Making Life Easier

The big question is what are macros?

Well macros are set of repetitive instruction that help you do the job faster.

Well so without further ado lets begin

So in order to explain how Macros work I am gonna teach you how to make a macro that could do multiple kind of formatting option in one go

i.e. from 'I love this blog' à 'I LOVE THIS BLOG ' (Yeah all this with one single command)

In Word 2010 Go to View and click on Record Macros (I am guessing its same for Word 2007 but if its not then please figure it out) 

Name macro anything just don’t give spaces in between it should be one word only. Basically keep it simple and don’t try to add special character etc as you might get an error.

Type a description if you want. 

Now click on keyboard and assign a shortcut key. I am going to assign it Alt+M. To assign shortcut key , press required key/key combination in box and click on assign.

Now when you press close you will see the mouse pointer attached to a macro symbol.

Now comes the real job. So suppose you want to change text to small caps. Now lets set rules first say you want this text to be bold, underlined, and small caps. Lets do that. Go to your font panel and click on bold, then click on underlined optioned. Now select the desired font and size.  Then click on font ribbon. And select the ‘small caps’ option. 

Should look like this.

Now go to Macro and select Stop Macro.

That’s all. Now you are done just select any text and press Alt+M or the shortcut key you had typed assigned to the Macro.

Think up of some innovative uses of Macros and let us know about them here.

Also in case you want to script macros grab a free sample chapter of Macro Cookbook click here.

Read More...