jumsoft
Latest
Daily Mac App: Book Palette adds ten new templates to iBooks Author
That didn't take long. Only a few weeks after Apple's iBooks Author app debuted, template publisher Jumsoft began shipping Book Palette (US$2.99), a collection of ten professionally designed templates for iBooks Author. I had an opportunity to try Book Palette, which is packaged as a Mac app. Once installed from the Mac App Store and launched, the app displays ten textbook templates. To start using a template, you can either select it and click the Open in iBooks Author button, or just double-click the template. In either case, iBooks Author launches and the template opens right up. If you've modified your own iBooks Author templates before, they're saved in the /Application Support/iBooks Author/Templates/My Templates folder. You can choose to save the templates into that folder so that they appear with all of the rest of the standard templates in the template chooser. Like the other templates that are included with iBooks Author, Jumsoft provides layouts for textbooks only -- remember, that's the focus for iBooks Author at this point at this point in time. The templates include Biology, Cookery, Decision Making, Dental Hygiene, Environmental Design, Interior Design, IT Strategy, Managing Change, Psychology, and Team Building. All of the templates include the standard iBooks Author attributes, including a title page, a place for introductory media, a table of contents, and a glossary. The templates also follows the Chapter / Section format of the Apple-provided templates, and pages in a variety of layouts (one, two or three columns, and blank). %Gallery-146617% Of all the templates, I thought that Cookery was probably the most unique and least like a textbook template, but I now fear of a future of poorly written and self-published cookbooks that all look identical. On the other hand, the Biology and Dental Hygiene templates uses the Chalkduster font for call-outs, an unfortunate design decision that can be fixed by simply changing the font in those areas where it shows up. I also found the use of Didot Italic as the standard text font in the Interior Design template to be a nightmare, as it's hard to read a lot of text in such a flowery font. Most of the other templates were well-designed and very readable, and wouldn't require much (if any) change to create good-looking electronic texts. Jumsoft plans to release additional templates as app upgrades in the future, so book designers will have plenty of base templates to start with. For those who are currently beginning to work with iBooks Author, Book Palette is an inexpensive way to add to the paltry selection of six templates provided by Apple.
Jumsoft offering 50% off Money for Cha-Ching customers
Yesterday, we posted that Intuit was basically discontinuing Cha-Ching after hiring the developers and purchasing the app, and it was a little disappointing that they weren't offering any upgrade plan. While Mint.com is free (and some of the Cha-Ching know-how was going to go into the Mint.com iPhone app), it'd be nice to at least get a discount on Quicken or something like that for current users. Fortunately, competitor Jumsoft is stepping up into the void -- they're offering 50% off of their Money app for OS X to current Cha-Ching customers. Usually, the app is $40, but if you submit proof of a Cha-Ching purchase (as I said yesterday, Cha-Ching was included in a MacHeist bundle a while back), they'll give you half off until September 30th. Jumsoft also has a free iPhone or iPad app of their own to sync with. So if you need a new financial app because Intuit has left you high and dry, this sounds like a great deal. Of course, Cha-Ching isn't going to stop working just because it's not for sale, but going forward, it will eventually need to be updated along with OS X, so if you depend on it as a financial app, you might have to look at switching over. Good on Jumsoft for picking up Intuit's slack.
Not too late to send some free holiday cards from Mail.app
Ah, the virtues of email. Quick, convenient and free -- but most email greetings don't really look all that spiffy. Jumsoft comes to the rescue with some free email templates you can easily customize and get to your friends in plenty of time for the holidays. Jumsoft makes all sorts of apps and and adds on to Keynote, Aperture, Numbers and web templates. They've offered a nice sampling of goodies for free, and I like their holiday card mail templates designed as Apple Mail stationery. I think most users never check the stationery feature, either because they don't know it exists, or because they find the templates tacky or not relevant. If you've never seen the templates at all, open Apple Mail, create a new message, then click on stationery in the upper right of the message window and you'll see the default catalog. Jumsoft provides some tasteful and graphically dynamic holiday cards that are certainly worth exploring. They also offer a paid set of mail stationery that covers just about anything, and are the best I've seen offered. It might be worthwhile to explore the Jumsoft goodies page. There are free downloads for Keynote objects, iWeb, Freeway and RapidWeaver themes, and some polished themes for Keynote. They are all samples of larger sets that Jumsoft sells, and a great introduction to the quality of their work. And do get those greeting cards out before the 26th! Thanks to Dick for the tip on the freebies.
