Jumsoft’s Year 2012 Begins with Book Palette

Are you a journalist, a copywriter, or an offshore plough mechanical technician who works on an oil rig but has always harbored a secret dream of being a published author? Are you an actual published author who would happily stuff your entire publishing company into a packing box and send it to the farthest, most deserted island on the map? Do you have a Mac? If you answered yes to at least one of these questions, you must have already heard about iBooks Author, Apple’s stunning new application for creating and self-publishing gorgeous books for iPad. Maybe you’ve even downloaded it for free. It’s that easy these days.

If you have the slightest idea of what the Jumsoft team is doing for a living, you might also suspect what comes next. Yes, it’s been less than a week since Apple announced iBooks Author, and we already have an answer to it: Book Palette, the first set of templates for iBooks Author available on the market. Actually, we almost had it ready within 24 hours after the announcement, but “almost” doesn’t count—does it?

So, the first version of Book Palette gives you 10 templates for creating various e-book styles—from glossy business publications to a traditional cookbook featuring a chef, his chef’s hat, cravat, and all. Even better, the set is more than likely to grow, and you will get all future updates from the Mac App Store for free.

All templates contain the full range of standard section and page layouts provided in the iBooks Author app, including covers, chapter pages, text pages, tables of contents, glossary pages, and more. There are lots of different text styles for different book elements, such as body text, chapter titles, captions, references, etc. You can select these styles with a single click, which will help you keep the look of your book consistent.

You can easily recolor, move, or remove most elements in Book Palette. Type or paste in your own text, add and remove text boxes, change the fonts—basically, do your own thing. Stock images are easily replaceable with your own photos or pictures. Gallery, video, and other widgets featured in iBooks Author are very neat and also have a matching look, which you can change for your own liking.

You can take a look at Book Palette samples here and purchase it for $2.99 here (the link will take you to the Mac App Store). Just make sure you have downloaded and installed iBooks Author first! Or at least hold your horses with negative reviews if you haven’t

Happy holidays!

Attention Please: Meet the New Clipart Prime!

As for Money for iPad, it is a whole different beast from both the desktop and iPhone versions. A new look, new user interface, new ways of doing things were all created specifically for iPad and allow users to make the best of its size and functionalities. The only thing missing is the iCloud features, and we promise we’re on the right track now. It also gives us extra time for testing the app extremely thoroughly, which, we must admit, we cannot always do due to time constraints.

The debut version of Clipart Prime includes 100 images of the highest quality available on the market. It covers a decent variety of themes, from business and science symbols to food, including several sweet and cozy illustrations for Christmas. A few examples of the deluxe incarnation of our clipart are a fragment of a DNA chain, a frighteningly realistic money bag, and a funny little guy in agony over writer’s block. The good thing is that you can use these images to create eye-catching icons or to spice up your presentations, websites, posters, newsletters, and practically any other content that requires a little extra attitude.

Clipart Prime images all have transparent backgrounds that allow you to position the art on a variety of colors and patterns. The images are delivered in PNG format, which enables you to change their brightness, contrast, tint, and other properties. They are available in two resolutions: 72 dpi for Web and 300 dpi for quality printing. In addition, you can use Clipart Prime with Pages, Keynote, MS Word, PowerPoint, and various graphics programs.

If you hate getting yourself into anything too complicated (which is totally unsurprising from where we stand), we can promise you that using Clipart Prime is a cinch. It’s not even an application and requires no installation. All you need to do is buy and download the package from this site, copy the downloaded folder to any location you like (e.g., the Documents folder), and use the images any time you want. You can copy and paste or simply drag and drop a selected image onto your document.

You can see shiny the new samples and geld hold of your own ace-quality images here!

iCloud and Other Things Concerning Money

We feel a time has come for us to give you a full list of all the things going on in the Money department. After all, we haven’t been sitting with our arms folded for the last few months, so let’s see what we’ve got here.

First and foremost, we are currently working on iCloud storage for all three versions of Money: desktop, iPhone, and iPad. Yes, you read that right. The iPad version is basically ready and has been ready for some time now. However, we decided to withhold its release until we achieved the full iCloud functionality for all three applications. As iCloud is still a very new system with a few quirks to iron out, our developers are struggling with finding clear guidelines for what’s allowed and what’s not. The upside is that, in the process, we’re all getting more creative and keen on experiments.

As for Money for iPad, it is a whole different beast from both the desktop and iPhone versions. A new look, new user interface, new ways of doing things were all created specifically for iPad and allow users to make the best of its size and functionalities. The only thing missing is the iCloud features, and we promise we’re on the right track now. It also gives us extra time for testing the app extremely thoroughly, which, we must admit, we cannot always do due to time constraints.

The iPad version is not the only one undergoing a thorough treatment. We’re basically cleaning up the core features of all three versions, improving their speed and stability. Also, multi-budgets are coming back by popular demand. Expect to see the updated budget feature together with the iCloud storage functionalities.

Our developer Žymantas insists that we mention that iCloud will change your life. It had better, because he can neither sleep nor eat over the intimate and apparently abusive relationship he has forged with the cloud computing service. However, he and his colleagues should be done by the end of next month. Stay tuned to find out when exactly that happens!

Back to Work with Pro Themes for Keynote

We want to wish you a Happy Halloween, even though we’re a little late! Down with all the phenomenally not scary ghost faces, slutty pumpkins, and this year’s dark horse – Michele Bachmann’s eyes. After all, there’s still so much work to be done by the time the clocks ring in 2012. And guess what? We bet that most of you are gonna have to prepare 5 to 114 presentations by the end of the year, depending on the nature of your employment. We hear this slide show thing has been all the rage for the last forty years or so.

Naturally, at this stage, you would expect Jumsoft’s blog to mention something new in the Keynote theme department because that is what Jumsoft’s blog does. Sure enough, you’re right. We are talking about five charming additions to the Pro Themes for Keynote collection: Composure, Dusty Blue, Finesse, Glass Cotton, and Scrap Board. No pumpkins, we promise.

Now Pro Themes for Keynote includes a total of 20 first-rate themes for your presentations. Each of the latest themes has 34 different master slides, offering a mixture of bullet text and photo layouts so you can find the ultimate combo of visual oomph and practical features.

The layouts are polished and trendy, with custom bullets, matching tables, and charts that are refreshingly easy on the eye. All photo slides have media placeholders to help you crop a placed picture into a custom shape – just drag and drop! The extra Bullets folder includes a set of 15 bullet designs you can use to further customize any of the themes for a perfect Keynote presentation.

Some shades don’t go with your corporate style? Fonts too large, logo too small, photo too close to the bottom? We wish all problems were so easy to solve. In Pro Themes for Keynote, you can basically change anything you want: recolor, reshape, move, remove, copy and paste entire layouts from one presentation to another, and customize designs until they look just the way you want them.

A full description and samples of Pro Themes for Keynote are available here. You still have time to become the Keynote Speech Star in 2011!

Bill Engine Is Out Now!

In the universe of small business and self-employment, most people would probably believe that invoicing is the most frustrating task they face. People hate all the calculating, filling in forms, emailing, taking care of due dates, and, worst of all, trying to figure out just how many hours were spent on designing that home page, which was revised at least nineteen times. Admit it: you only do it for the money, don’t cha?

That’s why you should give our latest release a try. Bill Engine is an application made specifically for invoicing, and it does the job so well. Actually, it also does a bit of time-tracking, which is a welcome bonus. Anyway, you get the picture.

In a nutshell, Bill Engine allows you to keep a list of people and companies you work with and shows all client information that matters in the billing process. The Inventory list displays all kinds of products and services that your business provides. These two lists come together in the Projects feature, where you can enter the products sold to a specific client and track the time spent on the provided services. Once a project is set up, you can produce an invoice with just a couple of clicks and email it with a couple more.

With Bill Engine, you can also line up and remember repeated invoices very easily. The Recurring feature allows you to select relevant frequency for your invoices and set reminders, which you can then sync with iCal. As we never forget the pretty side of business, Bill Engine also gives you five pre-designed invoice styles, along with an option to create your own custom design. Finally, you can also peruse five straightforward reports to help you analyze all your billing activities.

If you used Money 3 to create invoices, you can import your old data to Bill Engine. Sync with Money 4 is also planned for later versions.

As with all our business applications, you’re welcome to try Bill Engine for 15 days. Download it here and discover that invoicing can actually be fun.

Jumsoft Clipart: We Never Stop!

Once we had started down the road of drawing an obscenely large number of silly little images to enhance your text, there was no going back. It’s no wonder then that we are proudly announcing yet another update of Jumsoft Clipart–now with 1400 mesmerizing images of excellent quality, including a map of pressure points for foot massage and a couple of highly sophisticated tadpoles.

So, yeah, there are now 1400 of them with the 200 fresh and shiny additions. Most of them are nowhere near as avant-garde as the foot massage drawing, but they cover a wide range of items, from food and household items to medical appliances and office stationery. However, if you ever find yourself in a situation when you urgently require an image of a car freshener in the form of a Christmas tree, we’ve got you covered.

The best feature is that you can actually use the Jumsoft Clipart images to boost your presentations, invitations, Web pages, posters, newsletters, and virtually any text content.

The newest Jumsoft Clipart gives you the same benefits that made you fall in love with the previous version: transparent backgrounds that allow placing images on a variety of colors and patterns, as well as PDF format (apart from the standard PNG) that enables resizing images without losing the great quality. Besides, you can use Jumsoft Clipart with Apple’s Pages and Keynote, MS Word and PowerPoint, and various graphic editors, which makes it a pretty great package to own and use.

To those unenthusiastic about trying anything complicated (also known as homo sapiens), we’d like to remind you that Jumsoft Clipart is just about as easy to use as it gets. It is not even an application, so it does not require installation. All you need to do is download the package from this site, copy the Jumsoft Clipart folder to any location you prefer (e.g., Documents) and use the images whenever you like. Use Copy & Paste or simply drag a selected image onto your document and drop it.

Intrigued? We know you are, so check the samples here, and grab your own 1400 images here!

At Last, Money 4 Has Come Along

Ok, so after 3 long months of beta-testing, fixing, changing, adding, and removing, we are eventually ready to present the very final version of Money 4, which is available for purchase now!

In case you don’t know, Money is one of the most popular accounting and budgeting applications for Mac. It allows you to create different types of accounts to keep track of your transactions, follow a pre-planned budget, create scheduled transactions, analyze all this information using the report capability, and sync your data with Money for iPhone 2. All of the features are packaged in Money’s trademark classy design and easy-to-use interface.

As we mentioned in our earlier post, there are heaps of new or improved features in Money 4. It offers a slicker interface, document-based system, which is great for multiple users, account overviews, a whole new way of entering transactions, direct downloads from banks and other financial institutions, smart importing rules, fully redesigned reports, more convenient budgets, asset accounts, check-printing capability, and file attachments. The best part is that, after the seemingly never-ending beta phase, all of these features actually work. Thanks so much to everyone who has contributed with their invaluable feedback!

With two of the promised versions of Money released, we’re super busy working on the third one, Money for iPad. We also seem to be on schedule at the moment. Keep your fingers crossed for us

Now, let’s talk money. Money 4 is available for $18.99 from the Mac App Store. The offer is valid until July 31, and the price will jump back to the usual $38.99 afterwards. If you want to try the app first, you can get 15-day trial period by downloading it on our site.

Make sorting out your finances fun with the sweetest accounting application!

Stationery Set for Printing

Ever since we revamped our Mail Stationery 3.1 pack and released the new Stationery Smart, we’ve been receiving certain requests from you, our customers. It’s probably not hard to guess that you’ve been asking us to adapt those beautiful e-mail stationery templates for printing. Swamped with other projects, we’ve been putting this off for quite a while, but it’s better late than never, right? Ladies and gentlemen, we proudly announce Stationery Set, the Pages counterpart to our templates for Mail!

The new set contains 100 recognizable stationery designs that make the best use of the customization capabilities provided by Apple’s illustrious page layout application; these designs also equip you with an endearing blend of both style and function. With an extensive range of greetings, invitations, notes, and commercial newsletters crafted by a crew of professional designers and adapted for Pages, you can now have all your stylish letters printed, signed, sealed, and delivered to your clients, friends, or loved ones.

Stationery Set includes 100 templates, each consisting of up to 6 layouts with different color schemes or design elements—just like in Mail. Many layouts include placeholders for your photos or drawings and allow you to simply drag and drop a selected image.

The best part is that you can actually change any and all elements of the templates, which is not the case in Mail. With Pages, you can effortlessly reshape, move, remove, or recolor anything you want. Type or paste your own text. Add and remove text boxes. Change the font if you wish. There are no limits on customization with Pages!

Stationery Set is available at the Mac App Store for only $14.99. As usual, once you download the Stationery Set app, you can open the templates directly from it or consult our FAQ section for a smart way to save all templates in Pages.

Cranking up the Bill Engine

After a couple of discreet references to the imminent release of Bill Engine, our fresh-as-a-daisy app for invoicing and timetracking, we feel that it’s high time we told you more about it.

First, let’s tackle the unavoidable question of why we are making a new invoicing app even though we have an invoicing feature in Money 3. There are several reasons for this. One is the fact that the invoice feature is used by only a fraction of Money 3 users, which makes it a bit irrelevant, which in turn makes it underdeveloped. Soon after we started thinking about invoicing improvements for Money 4, we ended up with a list so extensive that it made more sense to start from scratch.

And this is another reason: Starting from scratch allows us to make the application simple and straightforward and avoid getting tangled in the existing framework with all of its flaws and limitations. It’s going to be both simpler and more extensive than what you had in Money—we promise.

Bill Engine will allow users to create invoices for both products and services. There will be an inventory feature for products, much like the one in Money. Regarding service invoices, you will gain a completely new timetracking function, which will help calculate the time it takes to complete your projects and bill accordingly.

Of course, we never forget the pretty side of business, which is why Bill Engine will contain several superbly designed, customizable invoice templates. Also, you will be able to enjoy a full picture of your invoicing activities with a report feature. Finally, sync ability with Money 4 is also in the pipeline, but it will most probably be added in later versions.

So that’s that. We can’t wait for the release; although, as usual, it might take a while. Summer is the most specific date we can give you at the moment. But we believe that Bill Engine is well worth the wait!