What do you do with your iPhone?

I’ve been asking this question a lot lately, along with “what do you do with your iPad/Blackberry/Smartphone?”, because I think the answer has profound implications for CCH as an information provider. For starters, the third most popular thing to do with a mobile phone (behind calling and texting) is finding information (AIMIA Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index 2009, p44). In fact 30% of respondents indicated that they use their phones to find information at least once a day.

My theory is that the type of information you seek from your Smartphone is quite different than the type you seek from your PC or laptop. It needs to be quick and easy to access via touch screen. Often it has direct relevance to what you’re doing Right Now (the AIMIA survey found the most common information services accessed from mobile phones are weather, news and maps). In other words, people seeking information from their phones are usually not settling in for an intensive research session on a complex question of law. They want a quick answer for themselves or for a client.

This is why I’m so excited about the launch of the CCH Income Tax Rates Calculator app for iPhone and iPad.

This app allows you to calculate the estimated income tax for an individual by answering a few short questions. It’s quick, it’s easy and it answers your question right away. In short, it’s designed for the professional who turns to their phone for an answer on the go.

Click here to learn more or download the CCH Income Tax Calculator app for free. And leave a comment below about how you use your iPhone, iPad, Blackberry or Smartphone because we are genuinely interested to hear it!

Recently we blogged about a new feature on IntelliConnect, PDF reproductions of printed case reports.  Since then a few of our customers have asked for more information on the feature, in particular whether older cases will have the option added to them. 

The official word from our Editors In Chief is that contingent on current web deadlines being met, we aim to have the PDF versions of the following in IntelliConnect by the end of April:

• Australian Tax Cases 2004 – 2008
• Australian Company Law Cases 2004 – 2008
• Australian Family Law Case 2004 – 2008

We will then assess usage of and customer feedback on the Print to PDF function before scheduling further development.

Another new feature that has sparked interest is the “last reviewed” date.  This datestamp appears at the top of a paragraph of commentary and indicates when that particular paragraph was last reviewed. 

Several customers have expressed interest in how this works.  Does it apply to individual paragraphs or complete chapters?  When will “last reviewed” dates be available for all content?  Our legal Editor In Chief Peter Rodrigues provided the following explanation of the “last reviewed” date.

The date is updated when we have reviewed the paragraph for currency and either changed the substantive content of the paragraph because a change was necessary, or decided that it does not need changing.

Our goal is to update our content as closely as possible to developments occurring. This means that there are times where an external author or CCH writer will update specific CCH paragraphs, because a development has only impacted those paragraphs. They will then update the last reviewed date for those particular paragraphs. There may, therefore, be instances where it has only been necessary to update a particular CCH paragraph and its relevant last reviewed date. Where the author or writer has reviewed the content of paragraphs surrounding those that they have actually updated, they will update the last reviewed date accordingly.

External authors and CCH writers also review entire chapters or sub-chapters in one go to ensure that the entire content of that chunk of content is up to date. In those circumstances, the last reviewed date is amended for every CCH paragraph within that sub-chapter or chapter.

The “last reviewed” date that is displayed is dependent on a field of metadata being updated by an editor/writer. Because we have only recently made it compulsory for an editor to update this field, some of our content may currently have a date that indicates it was last reviewed quite a long time ago, even though that content may have been reviewed more recently. It is also possible that some commentary content will have no last reviewed date at all because this metadata field has not been completed.

We are in the process of updating all our last reviewed dates so that they do accurately reflect when we last reviewed the content. As we have a lot of content this process will take some time.

There are more feature updates planned for IntelliConnect in the months to come, so watch this space or contact your CCH representative for more details.

Regular IntelliConenct users may have noticed a few changes over the past few weeks.  While most folks were away on holiday over the new year, the IntelliConnect team were busy adding some new features.  Here’s a look at what they were up to:

Search Results

Scanning through a list of search results is now easier thanks to the inclusion of source details in the title of each result.  Here’s a quick summary of the changes:

• - Legislation results now displays the title of the Act
• - Rulings and releases display the issuing body and the issue date
• - Case results now display the citation, court and date of the judgment
• - Commentary, news and other secondary sources now display the title of the publication

IntelliConnect's new-look search results

Printing for Court

PDF reproductions of printed case reports are now available for online case reports.  Most cases from 2009 have court-ready versions, and all cases from 2010 onwards will also have this option. CCH is also looking into progressively adding Print PDFs for older cases.

To print a case for court, simply go to the full text of the case you are looking for and click on the “Print PDF” link that appears under the party name. A PDF reproduction of the print version will open in a new window.

Printing the "print" version of a case

Printing via the “Print Menu” will continue to provide an online version of the document for printing, rather than the court-ready version.

You may notice that very recent cases may not have a “Print PDF” option yet. That is because we update the online product faster than the print version – and we can’t reproduce a print version of the case until we’ve actually printed it! The links are added once the print update is published.

One of the great things about IntelliConnect is that we will be continually upgrading it and adding features according to what our customers want.  Be sure to keep an eye out here for more IntelliConnect news in the future.

We recently held our second Innovation Cafe at CCH.  Once every six weeks we conduct a coffee, croissants and creativity session in the CCH Australia office in Sydney. All staff are invited and those who are interested come along to participate in a creativity-boosting workshop or to hear an external speaker. Last week we invited along Dr Jeffrey Tobias, the Managing Director of The Strategy Group, to talk to us about Open Innovation. Dr Tobias has extensive experience in innovation, including being global lead for innovation in the Innovations team in the Internet Business Solutions Group in Cisco Systems.

Using examples from a range of companies and industries – including Cisco, Proctor & Gamble and Pepsi – Dr Tobias explained that Open Innovation involved creating an innovation ecosystem that extends beyond the four walls of your office to include customers, suppliers and partners. Effective innovation doesn’t mean that you have an isolated R&D or engineering team coming up with new ideas in perfect isolation. Instead, companies need to engage with all internal and external stakeholders to maximise idea generation and execution.

After hearing about Open Innovation, we then spent some time with Dr Tobias discussing how we could use Open Innovation concepts to improve innovation at CCH. Our program had already started opening up innovation to all staff at CCH but could we do more to include suppliers and customers? What would be an effective way to do this? Dr Tobias gave us plenty of food for thought and it was a very worthwhile morning.

And as luck would have it, two days later we met with representatives of Lonely Planet, the travel publisher, who it turned out were implementing their own Open Innovation model. We had a great discussion with them about the challenges both our companies face in today’s dynamic publishing market, and talked about ideas and strategies for maximising our respective opportunities.

Next step: engage in Open Innovation with our customers. We have plenty of ideas of how we can do this so I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Accessing individual titles in IntelliConnect has been a topic of much discussion among our customers – especially the cataloguers! To make this process easier CCH Australia has produced a Deep Linking Guide which also includes a list of hyperlinks for each title. You can view the guide here.

The deep linking functionality extends beyond linking to a title. You can also link to a chapter or even an individual document. How these links are used is totally up to the user.

For example, a lecturer or university librarian could post links for readings on their course site. All students would have to do is click on the link and they will be asked to sign into IntelliConnect with their library ID and then be taken directly to the document.

Similarly, in a law firm legal practice groups can post links to key documents on their intranet or team site.

The good news is that because it links directly into IntelliConnect, the content will be “live” and therefore always up to date.

One thing to remember is that IntelliConnect defaults to an “all content” search even if you enter via the deep link. Just tick the box next to the title and it will switch to searching within the title.

Check out the Deep Link guide for more information!