Theme Inn has announced Bundle for MS Office 1.8, an update to its templates for Microsoft Office for Macintosh. The update adds 50 fresh designs. In total, Bundle for MS Office now contains five collections of customizable designs. It provides a variety of designs ranging from letters and brochures to greeting cards and books. All templates are available in US and international page sizes. Bundle for MS Office requires Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later and MS Office 2008 for Mac or higher. It costs US$39.99; go to www.themeinn.com for more info.

Blackmagic Design has released new software updates that add full support for Apple’s new OS X Mavericks. Customers can now download the Blackmagic Design software updates, free of charge, from the Blackmagic Design web site. The new updates include OS X Mavericks compatibility and interface enhancements for the new operating system and are immediately available for DeckLink, UltraStudio and Intensity Desktop Video products. The software updates are available now free of charge for all DeckLink, UltraStudio, Intensity, Media Express and HDLink customers from the Blackmagic Design web support page at www.blackmagicdesign.com/support .

Twocanoes Software has released Winclone 4.2.2, featuring compatibility with Windows 8.1. Winclone 4 is a solution for cloning, resizing and migrating Boot Camp on the Mac. It creates a clone of the Windows Boot Camp partition for quick recovery or migration to another Mac. With it you can transfer Windows between drives or over the network. Winclone also features the capability to migrate a PC to a Mac Boot Camp volume. It requires Mac OS X 10.7 or higher. Twocanoes offers a support package that includes two years of technical support and maintenance, including access to priority technical support and all minor and major upgrades. For more info go to http://twocanoes.com .

The Pixelmator Team has announced Pixelmator 3.0 FX for Mac OS X. Available as a free upgrade from the Mac App Store, version 3.0 features Layer Styles, Liquify Tools, and support for new features in OS X Maverick. The upgrade also boasts a new, state-of-the-art image editing engine, says Saulius Dailide, of the Pixelmator Team. Pixelmator 3.0 FX introduces Layer Style, which speeds up the creation of polished compositions. You can apply shadows and inner shadows, beautiful gradients, create outlines, or reflections. Or apply a combination of effects with any of the Layer Styles presets. All of this is done non-destructively. The new Liquify Tools bring even more ways to shape up and play with your images. You can slightly twist an element, add an artistic detail, or even completely distort the entire image. The new Warp, Bump, Pinch, and Twirl Liquify Tools are fun to play with, whether you want to subtly improve your photos or artistically distort them, according to Dailide. He adds...

Excel Software has shipped QuickLicense 7.0 with new protection and licensing features for Mac or Windows desktop software. Enhancements focus on Excel spreadsheet protection in the AddLicense tool, Trial to Product upgrades, In-App purchasing, license management by email or text message and plugin protection. AddLicense generates an application EXE or APP from an Excel spreadsheet that can be sold with a computer specific licensing process. After activation on the customer computer, it presents a control panel to manage the protected data files.  A user clicks buttons to clone, rename, import, export or share data files on licensed computers. An Update button provides instant spreadsheet enhancements from the vendor by Internet communication. QuickLicense 7 adds enhancements to provide customer assistance during the activation and licensing process. A Lookup button on the Activation dialog enables the customer to retrieve a recently purchased or forgotten Serial Number from the...

Apple has announced that OS X Mavericks, the 10th major release of Mac OS X, is available for free from the Mac App Store. With more than 200 new features, OS X Mavericks brings iBooks and Maps to the Mac, includes a new version of Safari, enhances multi-display support, introduces Finder Tabs and Tags and delivers new core technologies for breakthrough power efficiency and performance, says Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. He says that Mavericks introduces: ° iBooks, which gives you instant access to your iBooks library, more than two million titles in the iBooks Store, and works across your devices; ° Maps, which brings mapping technology to the desktop and lets you plan a trip from your Mac and send it to your iPhone for voice navigation on the road; ° A streamlined Calendar that estimates travel time between appointments, and provides a map with weather forecast; ° A new version of Safari with Shared Links, which helps you find what’s new on...

Apple says the new, radically overhauled Mac Pro will arrive in December. Designed around an innovative unified thermal core, it features the latest Intel Xeon processors with up to 12 cores, dual workstation-class GPUs, six Thunderbolt 2 ports, PCIe-based flash storage and ultra-fast ECC memory. "The new Mac Pro is our vision for the future of the pro desktop, everything about it has been reimagined and there has never been anything like it," says Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "The new Mac Pro packs up to 12-core Xeon CPUs, dual FirePro GPUs, ultra-fast ECC memory, new PCIe flash storage, Thunderbolt 2 expandability and more into a radical new design that is one-eighth the size of the previous generation Mac Pro." The unified thermal core that allows the system to efficiently share thermal capacity across all the processors. A fan draws in air purportedly makes the new Mac Pro as quiet as a Mac mini. The result is a pro desktop that's just 9....

Synology America Corp. has announced its first media-centric DiskStation, the DS214play. The play is the first DiskStation to launch with dedicated hardware acceleration, specifically for video transcoding. The DS214play can stream multiple 1080p video codecs, and is still able to handle a variety of additional processor-heavy tasks, according to Thadd Weil, public relations manager at Synology. It has a 1.6GHz dual-core CPU with integrated floating-point unit (FPU). At the core of the DS214play is Synology's DiskStation Manager 4.3. With DSM, users have access to a range of utilities, applications, and multimedia packages. The Synology DS214play is now shipping globally, and will be available in the United States over the next few weeks. It has a manufacturer's suggested retail price of US$369.99. Go to www.synology.com for more info.

Noise Industries, developer of visual effects tools for the post-production and broadcast markets, has released their newest product, PopOut from Cineflare. PopOut is a solution for creating a 3D environment for images, text, logos, screen shots, and more without having to upload a project to Motion or After Effects. Created exclusively for Final Cut Pro X, Pop Out allows editors to add up to five layers of elements using drop zones. The plugin also includes a feature where users can customize the 3D space of each individual element in the project, and the camera will automatically create the correct perspective. Whatever element users apply it to will become the center element of the five layers; editors then have the ability to control the parameters of the center element independent of the other layers. For example, this allows editors to use animated titles in Pop Out and still retain control of the title parameters, even after it becomes three-dimensional. Pop Out comes with...

Ironic Software has shipped new versions of its entire suite of applications. These applications have been updated to work with the upcoming OS X Mavericks. The applications are available both at Ironic's store (http://ironicsoftware.com) and the Mac App Store. The tags that the Ironic suite of applications make are, in addition to being first class tags on 10.9, also viewable on 10.7 or 10.8 computers on the same network, Tom Andersen, president of Ironic Software. This allows tagging to be introduced into an office without updating all the computers to Mavericks at once.

Reggie Ashworth has announced VidConvert 1.5, a OS X Mavericks update to his video converter for Mac OS X. VidConvert will convert just about any type of video into one of the popular formats. Simply add a file, select a format and a quality, and click convert. Optionally you can change your save folder from the main window. For advanced users you can select the Advanced panel if you choose to allow such options as custom frame rate, bit rate, etc. Supported formats include iPhone, iPod, iPad, QuickTime, .mp4, MPEG-1 and 2, DivX, Xvid, and audio only formats such as .mp3 and .m4a. VidConvert 1.5 requires Mac OS X 10.7 or higher. It costs US$7.99 and can be purchased at www.reggieashworth.com/vidconvert . A demo is available for download.

Chronos has released Greeting Card Shop, an app that lets you create greeting cards, invitations, and accompanying envelopes on Mac OS X 10.8.4 or later. Features include: support for double-sided cards/invitations; support for folding cards/invitations: single-fold, double-fold, and tri-fold; support for multiple cards/invitations per page: 2, 3, 4, and 6 copies per page; the ability to edit the inside panels of greeting cards/invitations; and the ability to edit edit a single panel or multiple panels at once (handy for graphics that overlap folds). Greeting Card Shop Greeting Card Shop supports popular holiday and everyday occasions The artwork collection includes 145 kits (called "iScrapKits") containing over 5,100 graphics. All of the artwork has a resolution of 300 dots per inch. Greeting Card Shop comes with 606 greeting card templates, 93 invitation templates, 94 envelope templates, and 16 photo card templates. Greeting Card Shop supports popular paper and envelope sizes in U...

Intego, a provider of security products built exclusively for Mac users, has released Washing Machine 2014 for Mac OS X 10.6 or higher. Intego has completely rewritten Washing Machine from the ground up, transforming it from an Internet security tool to a Mac utility. It seeks out and removes large, unneeded files, freeing up valuable hard disk space and speeding up the operating system, says Intego CEO Jeff Erwin. Washing Machine also features tools to organize the dock and desktop, and lets users create Smart Folders for quick access to frequently used files. The app: ° Seeks out files the user no longer uses or needs and quickly cleans them from their machine, freeing up gigabytes of space and increasing Mac performance. These files include downloads, caches, logs and trash. ° Identifies duplicate files by analyzing the bits, and lets the user select which versions to remove. ° Creates Smart Folders. Smart Folders offer quick access to frequently used files and applications....

Eternal Storms Software has released ScreenFloat 1.5, an update to their screenshot tool for Mac OS X. The update comes with several new features, including timed screenshots and posting to ImageShack. ScreenFloat lets users create screenshots that float above all windows to keep information visible at all times without having to resize or move windows. Shots can be kept for later use and organized in the app's Shots Browser. ScreenFloat 1.5 requires Mac OS X Lion or later. It's available at the Mac App Store (http://tinyurl.com/n6cd8zk) for US$6.99. A 15-day demo is available at the Eternal Storms web site (http://www.eternalstorms.at).

Apple has determined that certain 64GB and 128GB flash storage drives used in the previous generation of MacBook Air systems may fail. These systems were sold between June 2012 through June 2013. Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) will replace affected flash storage drives, free of charge. To see if your drive may be affected, go to the Mac App Store, click on Updates and choose the MacBook Air Flash Storage Firmware Update 1.1. The firmware update will test your drive to see if it is affected. You'll be directed to http://tinyurl.com/o6wp5tb if needed.

BinaryFruit (http://binaryfruit.com} has announced DriveDx 1.2, an update of its Mac OS X solution for SSD and HDD health diagnostics and monitoring. The upgrade offers improved SSD/HDD health diagnosis algorithms, hints and descriptions for all health indicators (SMART attributes) and support for more drives. DriveDx measures the overall health of both SSD and HDD drives. Among other things it provides users with advanced warning before their drives fail. DriveDx performs overall drive health diagnostics using drive health indicators (like SSD wear out/endurance, reallocated bad sectors, offline bad sectors, pending sectors, I/O errors, and more) that most closely correlate with drive failures according to the statistics reported in the latest researches focused on identifying drive failure trends. This gives a user a picture of a current drive health status and enables foreseeing potential problems with drive failure and loss of sensitive data. DriveDx 1.2 has four types of...

Mosa Motion Graphics has introduced NYC TimeLapse for iMovie and FCPX 1.0 for Mac OS X. This stock footage app packs 12 New York City time lapse animations. All videos are presented as h.264 Mp4 files as 25 Mbps 1080p videos. See a city in motion, accentuating man and nature's hidden rhythms. NYC TimeLapse is compatible with iMovie and Final Cut Pro X. NYC TimeLapse requires OS X 10.7 or later. It costs US$9.99 and is available worldwide through the Mac App Store in the Video category (http://tinyurl.com/l4v7qte). For more info go to www.mosamotiongraphics.com .

Stopframe has published a new ebook: "iPhone 5s Complete Guide."Available today in the Amazon store, the title is packed with in-depth tutorials and high-resolution imagery about the iPhone 5s. Beginning with basic tuition through to advanced tips, you'll learn how to film and edit slow motion videos, add and use a fingerprint, use built-in apps and much more. It's written by author, T.A. Rudderham, and brought to you by the team at iOS Guides. They say that readers will learn the very basics such as syncing with iTunes and setting up emails, through to advanced tips such tweaking photos and seeing your frequent locations. Also included are detailed tutorials related to the latest technologies included with iPhone 5s. "iPhone 5s Complete Guide is priced at $4.99. You can buy it at http://tinyurl.com/lo3kjgt .

Judge Denise Cote has assigned former Assistant US Attorney and Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich with the task of monitoring Apple as part of the five-year injunction she hit the Mac, iPhone, and iPad maker with in an ebook price fixing case, reports "The MacObserver" (http://tinyurl.com/lmlsgvp). Bromwich will watch over Apple's business practices for two years, but that could be extended to five. The legal brouhaha centers on Apple's move to change the way that publishers charged for e-books as it prepared to introduce its first iPad in 2010. Traditionally, publishers sold books to retailers for roughly half of the recommended cover price. Under that "wholesale model," booksellers were then free to offer those books to customers for less than the cover price if they wished.

Jumsoft, has updated Money, its financial management and budgeting tool for Mac OS X, to version 4.5. The upgrade includes a number of improvements, including full support for the upcoming OS X Mavericks. What's more, it features new Dropbox functionality, which allows users to store Money documents on the popular cloud service and access them from a Mac, iPhone, or iPad. The updated app presents the possibility of storing Money documents on Dropbox and viewing, editing, adding, or removing data from any of the three versions of the application. Money is available for purchase from the Mac App Store. It requires OS X 10.7 or later and costs US$38.99. For more info go to www.jumsoft.com/money/ .

Soundness has launched version 3 of their SoundSoap audio noise reduction software. The upgrade sports a new user interface and 64-bit compatibility. Designed as a companion solution for anyone creating videos, screencasts, podcasts, LP restoration, music, or dialogue, SoundSoap solves audio noise problems like unwanted hiss and background noises, clicks, pops, crackles, electrical hum, and rumble. It works as a standalone application or as an audio software plug-in for use in popular applications like GarageBand, Logic X, Digital Performer, and Final Cut Pro X. The SoundSoap standalone application also works with iMovie, iPhoto, Premiere, Skype, or any other audiovisual software. SoundSoap 3's new user interface includes an improved high-resolution Wash Window. The Wash Window enables users to visualize the "before" and "after" results of the noise reduction processing. Earlier versions of SoundSoap required 2-3 seconds of isolated material to use the Learn Noise feature. SoundSoap...

Open Planet Software has announced Smoovie 2, an update to their stop motion animation app for the Mac. The upgrade boasts a new look, live effects, time lapse features and more. Smoovie includes 18 live effects, including chroma key, toon, color splash and more. You can customize each effect and make changes as you build your movie, so that the effects themselves can be animated, too. Effects can also be chained together Smoovie 2 requires Mac OS X 10.7.5 or later. It's available from the Mac App Store and is on sale at US$29.99 for a limited time. The full price will be $39.99. As a thank you to early adopters, Open Planet Software is offering the upgrade from Smoovie 1 to Smoovie 2 free of charge. A demo is available for download from the Smoovie website (http://www.smoovie.com/).

JixiPix Software has introduced its US$99.99 Premium Pack Plugin bundle of apps for Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Lightroom. The Premium Pack Plugin bundles the Ultimate Photography Suite, the Artista Series and the Creative Collection to give you 15 products. As a special bonus they are also giving you Aquarella and Artoon for free. The Premium Pack requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later (64bit) and Adobe Photoshop CS3  (34 or 64bit), Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, or Adobe Lightroom 4. Go to http://www.jixipix.com for more info.

Apple has updated printer drivers for Mac OS X. They're for HP printers and Canon laser printers. Both require Mac OS X 10.6 are higher. You can download them via the Software Updates component of the Mac OS X Systems Preferences app.