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

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!

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!

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!

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.