A few months ago I wrote about SimulScribe, a great service that transcribes your voice mail messages at such an absurdly low cost that I am left to wonder how they turn a profit. The company has since re-branded as PhoneTag and answered the most pressing question - can it work with Google’s GrandCentral?

The answer is - finally - a resounding YES! Check out the post from Mashable and get these services immediately. If you don’t, you’re wasting your money and your time.

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Dictation is a fact of life in the consumer bankruptcy law office. Handheld digital recorders abound, and lots of lawyers need to turn that into correspondence and pleadings to maximize efficiency.

In the past, lawyers would give their tapes to secretaries to transcribe. These days, many turn the task over to virtual transcription services. For my money, the best option is speech recognition software.

The best of the bunch is Dragon NaturallySpeaking. And with the current version, it’s all you need.

If you already dictate using a handheld recorder the switch to Dragon NaturallySpeaking is seamless. Use your handheld transcriber, dictate your document including all punctuation and symbols to be included, and plug it into your computer.

You can navigate throughout your document using voice commands such as “New paragraph” to insert a new paragraph; “Go to end of line” to move to the end of the existing line; or “Select paragraph” to select the entire paragraph. You can also use menu items such File, Edit, Insert and the like by stating their name and then the “move up” or “move down” commands.

You can use speech commands to select a line, a specific number of words, a paragraph or an entire document. You can bold, underline, and italicize text; copy, cut, and paste; enter Roman numerals; and otherwise format text. You can also spell out words that you wish to train the system to recognize. Commands are also available within Microsoft Excel, Outlook, Corel WordPerfect, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox.

The application learns your voice through a simple training system, which involves reading a script displayed on your screen. The program will also look to your Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express and any documents that you have in your My Documents folder to recognize your writing patterns.

Though Dragon works with many digital voice recorders, my personal favorite is the Sony ICD-MX20. This nifty little device has 32 MB flash memory on board, but also takes Sony’s Memory Stick Duo or Pro Duo media cards for increased capacity. The advanced digital voice operated recording (VOR) feature actually stops recording during silent pauses, saving valuable recording time. Thanks to the digital buffer, this intelligent machine begins recording again without missing a single syllable. The digital recorder also comes equipped with USB connectivity so you can copy it directly to your computer for use by Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

The fact of the matter is that your secretary or paralegal has been things to do with his or her time than to listen to you prattle on. Let your software do the work for you - it’s faster, easier and more efficient than ever before.

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Google Spreadsheets is quickly becoming a more viable application - and probably a bigger problem for Microsoft. In fact, the Google team has just introduced a number of improvements to Spreadsheets. They are:

Spreadsheet Gadgets - Google and external developers have added new ways to visualize and use the information in a spreadsheet. This means Pivot Tables, Filters, Gantt Charts, even animated time-series charts, are now available in one fell swoop. Some of these are provided by Google, some by other companies and developers.

Notification of Changes Via Email - If you wanted to be notified when a spreadsheet, or one sheet, or a range of cells changed, use this feature now. You can find it on the file menu and the share tab. Best part is, the email notification contains a link to a version of your spreadsheet which highlights all the changes.

Use Arrow Keys to Select a Cell for Inclusion in Formula - Some of you will say “finally!” to this one . . . and some of you will say “huh?”

Expanded Color Palette for Font Color and Cell Color - A few more pastels have been added to the mix.

Clear Comments Feature

Auto-Complete From Previous Values in a Column - This can be a real productivity feature, as the cell you are typing in will try to guess what you might want based on what else is above and below.

Function Helper Autocomplete - You’ll notice next time you start a formula with an equal sign, that the product again tries to guess what formula you might want by matching your characters.

sort(), filter(), unique() functions

So if you’re a Google Spreadsheets user there are now more reasons to love it!

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Do you hate listening to voicemail? Play the message, listen to it, scribble down the caller’s name and number. Call person back. Toss message into garbage. Waste yellow sticky notes, messages pads and the like.

Or come back to the office after a tough day in court only to find a bunch of notes on your desk. Spend a bunch of time figuring out what the heck they all say.

Pray the phone number was written down correctly.

If those scenarios ring true, then I’ve found the answer to your problems. It’s called SimulScribe, and I’ve been testing it for about month. The results are astounding. And I’m not easily impressed.

I heard about SimulScribe about six months ago and thought it was a waste. $40 to have someone write down my messages? What a dumb idea!

Then I was driving to court and called in to listen to my voicemail. A new client was on the line, leaving a rambling message. The caller left a phone number but it was so fast I couldn’t write it down. Plus I was on the highway and not really in a position to write down the number - so I had to commit it to memory. Of course, I mixed up the numbers and couldn’t call back for a few hours after I’d had the chance to re-listen to the message. It was a very good case - and someone else got it because the client didn’t get a call back from me quickly enough.

SimulScribe converts your voicemail into text messages, and sends it directly to your mobile phone or email address. The original voicemail message is attached to the email in mp3 or WAV format so you can play it back.

It’s one of those really simple, convenient solutions that makes you wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that first?”

Try it by clicking here and you’ll get a free month of service when you sign up.

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Most lawyers like to keep Microsoft Outlook visible as often as possible. This allows them to see their calendars, email, and other things necessary for keeping in control of a hectic schedule.

Until now, the only way to accomplish this was through multiple monitors. Now, a breakthrough - Outlook On the Desktop. The program places a fully-functional Microsoft Outlook Calendar on your Desktop, pinned there so no windows can get stuck behind it. Control the opacity so you can continue to work on programs in front of Outlook, which will allow you to also switch between your calendar, inbox, contacts, tasks and notes views.

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