pages

Pages for iOS may not be as sophisticated as other desktop word-processing apps, but it packs plenty of punch when you just want a way to produce nice-looking documents on the go. After only a few minutes playing around with the controls, we were able to create documents with stylized text, imported images, tables, and graphs, and make formatting changes on-the-fly, all using the touch-screen keyboard. The program comes with 16 Apple-designed templates to start from, including standard letters, letters with photos, resume layouts, project reports, and many more. With Apple's keyboard dock connected, Pages performed much like a … Read more

This was a big week for Apple with the announcement of the new iPad, and though I got to play with it a little bit at the event Wednesday, I really can't wait to put it through its paces when it's finally released March 16.

With that said, the new iPad wasn't the only thing released on Wednesday; Apple also announced the availability of several updates to iOS apps, including the new iPhoto for iOS.

This week's collection of iOS apps is a little different than usual. Instead of a themed collection, I'm going to list the Apple apps released this week so you can have them all in one place. Click the name of the link to head to our download page, or click the link at the end of each one to read our hands-on articles about each of the apps.… Read more

Companies with a Facebook profile can now update their page to use the new Timeline feature.

Doled out to individual FB users last year, the Timeline presents information in a more visual two-column format. The design allows friends and followers to view a company's products and scroll down to see a history of its Facebook posts from the past.

Organizations with pages can jump to the Timeline starting today, but the new look and layout will become mandatory on March 30. The Timeline feature applies to anyone or anything with a public page, including local businesses, national companies, products, … Read more

Well, I'm bummed. I paid $75 for this product just a few months ago. But I needed it at the time, and it was worth it.

That makes this deal all the more un-pass-up-able.

Today only, PricePlunge has Serif PagePlus X5 for $14.99, plus $1.99 for shipping. Yep, it's an actual boxed copy, not a download. How quaint!

Update: Sold out! Rats. That went really fast. The closest I can find elsewhere is $42.99 shipped at Amazon. Viewed in a vacuum, that's still a great deal. (But not as great as $15, I admit.)… Read more

Facebook users who want to control what information pops up when a friend searches for them at Bing have a new option.

Rolled out yesterday, Bing's Linked Pages let Facebook users manage which of their Web pages, profiles, and blogs show up on Microsoft's search engine. So whether you want to promote yourself or keep your other Web pages off the grid from your friends, Linked Pages will give you a certain level of control.

The feature requires a Facebook account, but you can use it to manage any Web pages about yourself, not just your Facebook profile. … Read more

Apple offers a number of options for securing your data on a Mac, including enabling FileVault for whole disk encryption in Lion (or home folder encryption in prior versions of OS X), and encrypted disk images for securing collections of documents.

In addition, as with other software developers, Apple has included options to secure individual documents for some of its programs, such as those in its iWork productivity suite.

To do this in iWork, create or open a document in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote, and then open the inspector window by clicking its icon in the toolbar or by pressing … Read more

Rather than fret about the rise of e-readers and tablets and the seemingly imminent demise of the book as we know it, book artist and poet Amaranth Borsuk decided to reimagine the digital-versus-paper struggle as a kind of dance, and make it the basis for an artist's book of her own.

Along with her husband, Web developer Brad Bouse, Borsuk created "Between Page and Screen." It's a digital pop-up book that contains nothing but elegantly rendered QR codes on its printed pages. Readers go to the book's Web site, hold a page in front of their Webcam, and watch onscreen as a poem pops out of the quick-response code (and moves along as the book is moved).… Read more

It has become increasingly clear that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had a bit of a complicated relationship. The two tech luminaries were fierce competitors, cooperated from time to time and had a healthy respect for each other over time (jabs aside of course).

Jobs and Gates were like two boxers. The difference was that they traded jabs in computing. One was elegant liberal arts type and the other was an engineering wonk. When Jobs passed away late last year one of the questions instantly revolved around his replacement. Who would be the next Jobs? Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos came … Read more

Text substitution is a convenient option for quickly composing documents without needing to learn special methods for accessing symbols or full names or phrases that you regularly use.

This option is so commonly used that OS X has a central text substitution service that you can set up in the system preferences; however, not all programs are built to use this. Unfortunately many word processors, such as Microsoft Word and Apple's Pages, do not use central text substitution services, and instead incorporate their own text substitution options. As a result, if you set up text substitution in the OS … Read more