cheap templates

Using a bit of detective work, Adam Metz has come up with some predictions for Google Apps in the second quarter of 2012.

Edraw Mindmap is a low-cost, easy-to-use alternative to Microsoft's $600 design program

From logo competitions to creative pitches, is spec work really devaluing the work of professional designers?

I take briefings from all sorts of vendors every day, from established companies with a new release to emerging companies with what they hope will be The Next Great Idea that the market will seize on. I am always happy to give my opinion and advice, and sometimes it's even taken. But I am usually reticent to write about most of them simply because it's not my job to provide free advertising.

At some point, you may have found yourself bored out of your mind by your current music selection, and resisting the urge to try one of the eleventy million music discovery services out there, you think, "By God, I'm going to do it myself." You rush home, download a music suite, start furiously clicking and recording, only to be sooner or later confronted by the reality that you have no idea ...

Apple is taking on textbooks directly with iBooks 2, iBooks Author, and a new version of iTunes U. Combined, these offerings let authors create textbooks, allow students to buy them for $15 or less, and give teachers the ability to create entire courses on the iPad. We've got all of the details and a few questions of our own.

The Mac OS X-based application is available for free, and aims at making it easy to create an e-book for the company's iBooks store. Originally posted at The Digital Home

The tech press gathers to see what Cupertino has in store for schools

Although the tools fell somewhat short of the widely expected " GarageBand for e-books " -- there was no "magic guitar" for turning out javascript widgets, for example -- the overall message was clear: it's going to be a lot easier in the future for publishers and educators to create a new generation of interactive textbooks ... as long as they do it the Apple way.

Some people come to revisit their lost childhood or to introduce children and grandchildren to what they once knew, but others come to make money, to thin out growing collections or to cash in on the latest wave of interest.