Apple iWork 09 9.0.4 Update – Adds ePub Support

While I’ve recommended Apple’s productivity suite, iWork to to plenty of people doing family newsletters or related documents, I normally don’t mention it here except in passing, but iWork 09 9.0.4 fixes some issues in all three apps – Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, including with tables.

More importantly the word processing app, Pages, now has the ability to export to the standard ePub file format. This is a very big deal as you can now export your documents and newsletters to a format that can be read across a lot of mobile platforms, including iBooks on the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, Barnes and Noble’s nook, Sony’s Reader, plus Google’s Android platform.

Changes:
Keynote 5.0.4
* Addresses an issue when printing handouts with rule lines.
* Fixes an issue with the slide switcher.
* Resolves an issue when automatically resizing some images while changing slide size.
* Fixes an issue with tables.

Pages 4.0.4
* Fixes an issue with tables.
* Includes compatibility with the standard ePub file format (for use with iBooks) when exporting.

Numbers 2.0.4
* Fixes an issue with tables.

This is the official support article: Support.Apple.com/kb/HT4165.

If you already have it installed, check your Software Update – it showed up on mine this morning.

If you don’t have it, but are interested, you can pick up a free trial (30 days) from the iWork trial downloads.

It can be purchased through there for $79, however it’s on sale through a retailer on Amazon.com for $49.

FAQ Added, Note-Taking Software Updated

Over the past few days, I’ve done a large update/revision of the Mac note-taking and journal software page. There was very little there before and now there is hopefully an up-to-date guide of sorts that can point you in the right direction if you are looking for information on applications to help organize and manage genealogy research. I’ll be expanding it and doing full reviews of some of the software mentioned.

More importantly, I’ve added a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to the site, which you may have seen in the navigation menu above (“FAQ”):

Mac Genealogy FAQ

It’s going to cover a lot of the questions I receive in email and hopefully clear the air on some things. We don’t directly sell or develop genealogy software is one example of a question I get asked about a lot. The overall focus of the FAQ section is going to be on helping people who have migrated from Windows or older Macs and the genealogists migrating from Windows or older Macs section will be expanded greatly in the next few days.

There will also be FAQs for specific Mac genealogy applications and questions. Here are two examples:
* FAQ – Family Tree Maker for Mac
* FAQ – Personal Ancestral File (PAF)

I’ve got a lot left to do on it, but you can see the start of what it will be from the above links.

If there is anything you think that needs to be added or expanded, please contact us.

Review of Reunion 9 at MacGasm.net

Grant Brünner at Macgasm.net has put together a review of Reunion 9 as part of his “Genealogy on your Mac” series. He took a look at the user experience / user interface and talked a bit about it.

He also took a look at syncing up your Reunion 9 genealogy data with your iPhone (or iPod touch/iPad) using Leister Productions’ Reunion iPhone application. He brings up the point that you do need to be on the same network and do have to have both Reunion on the desktop/laptop and Reunion on the iPhone if you want to sync up your data.

Read the full review: Macgasm.net

iScrapbook 1.1.0

iScrapbook 1.1 was released today. iScrapbook is the newest Mac OS X scrapbooking application.

It requires Mac OS X 10.4 and sells for $49.99 and comes with over 40,000 photos/clipart. It can be downloaded here (ChronosNet.com/Products/iScrapbook).

Changes:
* Added several image optimizations that make the software more responsive and result in much smaller files when documents are exported in PDF format.
* There’s now an “Image Display Quality” preference that sets the resolution of images displayed in the software. The “Print Quality” preference sets the resolution of images when they are printed. So it’s possible to display lower resolution images in the software for faster performance while still outputting high resolution images in printouts.
* Text boxes can now be defined as Image Placeholders so when an image is dropped on the text box, the image will be cropped by the text.
* When a grouped set of graphics is selected, the resize “knobs” are drawn differently so the user knows that a group is selected. Plus, the inspector window provides a button for selecting individual members of the group.
* When an image is cropped, the inspector window provides a circular slider and angle field for precisely controlling the rotation of the image being cropped.
* Added Spotlight support. Spotlight can now be used to search for the title of a scrapbook page or for any text that appears on the page.
* Moved the iScrapbook album/page library to the Documents folder.

iScrapbook 1.0 Available

iScrapbook 1.0 is now available. It’s the latest Mac scrapbooking application to come out, and is from Chronos. It’s $49.95 and comes with the “SOHO Art Pack” which includes 40,000+ photos/clipart. It can be downloaded here

From the developer’s website:

iScrapbook is a digital scrapbook tool designed for both novice and professional scrapbookers. Its class-leading assortment of design tools are sophisticated, yet so easy to use that everyone can achieve stunning results. iScrapbook manages then entire scrapbook process from page design to album organization.

iScrapbook will help you get more scrapbooking done in less time with more professional results than traditional scrapbooking.

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