Two heads are better than one

Not too long ago my friend Tom complained: Why, he mused, would someone as keen on gadgetry as I am not have two monitors? Of course, I made it clear that I was not interested in simple indulgence. Each and every one of my "investments" in technology had to be justified by the gains in productivity that they created. Tom was clear, however, that a second monitor was not merely showing off but extremely practical. It allowed you to place two pieces of information side by side at resolutions sufficient to allow them both to be read.

So I bought one - or rather a second one. Now I have two monitors side by side and it is fantastic. The two monitors can function both individually and as one larger screen. So if I drag a program off the left hand monitor's right hand side it appears on the right hand monitor. Unfortunately my two monitors are both different dimensions and different resolutions - so the full functionality of dual-screens is not yet mine. With identical screens you can stretch the windows of applications over the two monitors without seeing any distortion.

Even so, no longer when I am copy typing do I need to keep switching between the documents. I can simply put one on the left screen and the other on the right. When I want to check my diary whilst still making notes I can pull up my diary from Outlook, then open it as a separate screen and move it across to the other monitor. Its good for the environment too, (I speculate), because it means I don’t need to print out papers in order to have easy reference to them at the same time as drafting a document on screen. (Of course you have to ignore the energy and other costs of having a second monitor running.) If you want to have reference to a diagram at the same time as looking at a description of the diagram - like with a patent specification - open the same document on two screens. No wonder that the boffins at Microsoft have discovered that adding a second screen can raise your productivity between 9 and 50 percent!

It was easy to do too. Windows XP is set up to handle dual monitors and my computer already came with twin video sockets - one digital and one analogue. I just plugged the second monitor in and fiddled around briefly in CONTROL PANEL> DISPLAY> SETTINGS.

The only thing I didn't like was that the task bar at the bottom of the primary screen was not replicated on the second screen. That meant that I couldn't easily switch between applications with the mouse on that screen. I also wanted to have an easy way of moving programs between screens other than just dragging them between the monitors. I found all this in ULTRAMON. It was annoyingly expensive at $39.95 for a single-license given that I really only wanted it for its most basic functionality - functionality that I felt Microsoft should have included in XP anyway. But it was necessary. There is a free download so if you go down the dual monitor route - and really I can't recommend it enough - you can try before you buy.

Can't afford a second monitor? - try this piece of software that lets you divide up your current monitor.

Tom, by the way, has three monitors. And a laptop.

Nothing persuades like a demonstration

Here is a sample of a mindmap that I produced from the judgment in Dyson v Registrar [2007] RPC 27.



I have included two versions - the Mindmap as a web page . Or here is a PDF version.

I havent yet worked out how to make the full mindmap available for download. Which is a shame because - although you would need the reader - only then will you see the full functionality - and potential - of the mindmap.

If anyone has any suggestions for how to make the full mindmap available let me know. (Or indeed any comments on my Dyson v Registrar map).

Mindjet Mindmanager

One of the programs that I have used the most is Mindjet Mindmanager.

Its software that allows you to create Mindmaps or "spider diagrams" - a note taking method popularised by Tony Buzan.

The interface is well-designed and easy to use with both mouse and tablet pen. I have some minor niggles with it - the inability to fully personalise the menu bars for example - but these are minor.

So what can you use it for? I use it for two things mainly - simple note-taking and presentations.

Note-taking: Mindmapping requires real discipline because it is difficult to include large screeds of information without making the mindmap unreadable. This forces you to narrow in on the key concepts and to actually summarise and focus as opposed to simply copying out large chunks of information without discrimination.
The graphical layout of the notes means that the connection between concepts and pieces of information can be made much clearer. The only bore used to be that you would have to draw long connecting lines when a new connection became clear or even redraw the map if you realised that you had grouped concepts incorrectly. With this program the re-organisation of the topics is quick and easy so that chore is gone.
In addition it is easy to include images and colours to make the grouping of concepts clearer and to aid retention of information.
Of course, sometimes, you do need the detailed information that the mindmap format just doesn't permit. Fortunately, you can do this in Mindmanager through expandable notes section, through hyperlinks to other documents and web pages and even to other mindmaps.

Presentations: The joy of the mindmap's graphical presentation is that it instantly makes clear the topic areas of the issue under discussion. Furthermore, you can include images and links to other data that are relevant to your presentation whilst keeping the base notes simple. Mindmanager includes a presentation mode that allows you to move through the topic areas focusing and refocusing the screen each time. As a result you can provide visual aids to your talk that are simple, dynamic and involving in a way that makes it hard to fall into the Powerpoint trap of densely written slides.

Tempted? The people over at gottabemobile have some webinars showing off the product and what it can do. Or try the free trial.

The power of hyperlinks!

Most people are familiar with hyperlinks from browsing the web. They allow you to connect together related web pages in a convenient way. They have the added advantage that they are informative yet unobtrusive because they are part of the normal wording of the document rather than a separate addition.

It struck me that such a useful technique might be incorporated into my written work. There were two areas where I thought it might come in useful: hyperlinked content pages for long documents and hyperlinked cross-references to original data.

The key to hyperlinks in documents is creating markers within the documents to indicate a location for a document to go to. There are two kinds, general reference points that identify points within a document but otherwise have no distinguishing feature, and specific reference points for identifying locations with a particular quality - e.g. section headings, authority references and so forth.

Creating general reference points in word is easy. Place the cursor at the point in the text where you want to insert the bookmark and then go to the top menu INSERT> BOOKMARK. You will be prompted to enter a bookmark name. I suggest that you be as descriptive as possible so that you can easily identify from the name what the bookmark points to. Since the bookmark name cannot have any gaps in it you may wish to use underscores to make it more readable.

You can set the bookmarks to be visible or invisible - change their status in TOOLS> OPTIONS> VIEW. If they are visible then you will see them either as a grey I bar or as brackets around the selected text. Though they are visible on the screen they will not print out.

Now that you have these reference points inserted there are all manner of things that you can do with them. If you simply want to jump to a particular bookmark then go to INSERT> BOOKMARK and the pop up menu will show you a list of all the bookmarks in the document and you simply need to highlight the one that you want and then click GO TO.


Much more useful is to create hyperlinks that lead to the bookmark. This you do by highlighting the reference text and then hitting CTRL + K or going to INSERT> HYPERLINK. This brings up a menu that identifies a number of possible hyperlink destinations. For present purposes assume that the hyperlink is an existing file. Browse to the file you want and highlight it. Then click PLACE IN THIS DOCUMENT, which will bring up a list of the identifiable locations in the document. This list should include your pre-prepared bookmarks. Highlight the one that you want and click OK. Now your highlighted words should turn blue and act like a hyperlink.

I have found this process to be an extremely useful way of creating an index for a transcript. During a long trial it is necessary to have a way of quickly finding pertinent passages in the oral evidence recorded in the transcript. Traditionally the junior barrister toils away into the night creating a "transcript bash" - an index to the transcript that identifies useful passages. The problem I have always had with this process is deciding whether to quote the passage from the evidence in the index - accurate but often time-consuming to do and quickly becoming unwieldy in size - or to give a summary of what is said - which may not accurately reflect the evidence. I also wanted to be able to re-use the index when presenting final arguments to the judge, whether by inserting references to the evidence in the written closing submissions or as a table of references. The hyperlink proves to be the answer.

At the end of each day I receive an emailed version of the transcript. I save these in a particular folder specifically for the transcripts. As I go through the day's transcript I add bookmarks next to passages in the cross-examination that I think are of particular importance. I then create a separate document in which I list the issues within the case as subject headings and below them I put short references to relevant evidence passages. These short references are hyperlinked to the bookmarks. In that way the index document never becomes unwieldy but I can quickly reference exactly what was said. Then when I creating the closing submissions I can use the same bookmarks to insert hyperlinks to passages of evidence that I particularly want the judge to see. It is then a matter of burning a CD-ROM with the folder containing the transcripts on it and the closing submissions with the hyperlinks. The hyperlinks have dynamic file names so that the links are not broken when you move them from your hard disk to a CD-ROM.

Trust me, judges love it when you make things easy for them. If they just need to click a link to see the evidence you are referring to rather than dig out a file of transcripts and turn up the right page they are much, much more likely to do it. Remember, a funky bit of technical gimcrackery beats careful analysis of the evidence 9 times out of 10!

I reckon that I could expand this process to include scanning in all the written evidence, inserting bookmarks in those files and then performing the same process as with the transcripts.