One other benefit of using the same engine is that you are able to copy and paste objects (such as charts and shapes) from any of the other apps into iBooks Author. This has major benefits if you want to build a new book based off a presentation but don’t actually want to embed the presentation.

One glaring omission we’ve noticed in Apple’s new iBooks eco system…no support for reading iBooks on a regular Mac. That means students who already own a Mac laptop still have to buy an iPad. We’ll see if that changes, but it seems like a big limitation. It’s almost like Apple’s new mantra is, “Develop only on Mac, View only on an iPad”. I guess time (and students) will tell if this sticks or not.

We had also hoped that along with iBooks Author, we’d see the release of iWork ’12, but so far nothing new has been announced or released. Knowing that NEW products from Apple are still supporting iWork, it’s a good sign that the suite has NOT been shelved as some have suggested. Hopefully we’ll see a new copy of iWork this year.

Download iBooks Author free from the App store

View the Apple iBooks page

View Apple’s iBooks Author info page

Created by the folks from growingleaders.com we present to you:

Every Presentation Ever: Communication FAIL

The official Apple description of what has changed is fairly short and to the point:

“This update addresses issues that occur when working with large Keynote presentations on OS X Lion. It also includes improvements in stability and accessibility for Keynote.”

You can get the update through Software Update, the App store or direct from this link.

The Pro Themes for Keynote line offers exceptional and easily customizable designs of top quality at a mass-market price. “Our premium collection for Keynote has been very popular since we introduced it,” says Algirdas Unguvaitis, Jumsoft’s general manager. “Therefore, we are thrilled to launch five more themes, which are suitable for various presentation topics.”

The collection now includes 20 themes for Keynote. The five new ones range from the clear-cut Dusty Blue to the colorful and classy Finesse and the retro-tinged Composure.

The new themes contain up to 34 master slides – a mix of bullet text and photo-oriented layouts. The layouts are polished and modern, with custom bullets, matching tables, and clear charts. All photo slides feature media placeholders that allow a user to crop a placed image neatly into a custom shape. The complimentary Bullets folder includes a set of 15 extra bullet designs, which can be used to further customize any of the themes for a specific case.

Pro Themes for Keynote can be purchased at Jumsoft’s Web site or the Mac App Store. For more information and design samples, readers can visit the company’s Web site.

System Requirements:
iWork 08 or later

Pricing and Availability:
Each theme is $19.99 (USD).

Jumsoft
Pro Themes for Keynote (v2.0)
Purchase and Download
Screenshot
App Icon

ProfCast Mobile is an app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that will allow you to create, give, and record presentations from your iOS device.

From the Kickstart Project page:

In January 2010, we released a cool little app called SonicPics that lets you create and narrate custom photo slide shows.  It’s great for digital story telling and people really like it too, but it isn’t a full presentation app that you could use for, say a board meeting or a lecture. That’s what we want to build with ProfCast Mobile.

ProfCast Mobile builds on the foundation of SonicPics, but adds full presentation creation and editing capabilities.  This includes the ability to have animated transitions, add text, shapes, photos and change the layout and theme of your slides.  Animated transitions will help dazzle your audience.  Once your presentation is created, you can give it directly from your iPad or iPhone using ProfCast Mobile.  Use the video out capability and the Apple Digital AV Adapter (sold separately) to connect your iPad to your HDTV or projector. Even better, you can record your presentation as you give it.  Share your narrated presentation on your web site, via email or on YouTube, all from your iOS device!

If you’ve ever used ProfCast to record your Keynote projects, you may want to jump over to the Kickstarter Project page and pledge your support!

ProfCast Mobile Kickstarter Project

Also, here’s a link to a Youtube Video describing the project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpDtspiMp8Q

Graphic Node’s Still Themes equips users with an extensive collection of design options for composing their Keynote presentations or movies. All 20 themes were developed by a team of skilled designers with a knack for novelty and sophistication. Among the highlights of the newly added themes are the spry and summery Natural, fervently stylish Edgy Carmine, and delicate Airy Fairy.

“Still Themes is a great tool for those who deliver presentations on a regular basis,” said Jolita Unguvaitiene, general manager of Graphic Node. “It adds a touch of professionalism and provides users with an opportunity to make their slideshows more appealing.”

The themes include up to 21 master slides in a mix of bullet text and photo-oriented layouts. The layouts are polished and modern, with custom bullets, matching tables, and easily readable charts. Users can type or paste in their own text, add and remove text boxes, change fonts, and drag their photos or pictures onto presentation slides to supplant the placeholders. The themes are available in the five standard slide sizes supported by Keynote.

Users can view samples of the themes and purchase Still Themes on the Graphic Node website. After the product is downloaded and installed on a computer, the new themes will automatically appear in Themes Chooser of Keynote.

System Requirements:

• Apple iWork 08 or later

Pricing and Availability:
Still Themes is only $19.00 (USD) and available for purchase and download from the Graphic Node website.

Graphic Node
Stills Themes
Purchase and Download

Click here to view Mac 101: Using Keynote as Motion in a bind

This brings up a tip that wasn’t posted in the TUAW article…exporting Keynote animations with an alpha channel (transparency).

The basic steps are:

1. Set all your slides to a background of NONE on the Slide Inspector-Appearance tab. The slides will look white, but Keynote knows they’ve been set to NONE.
2. Choose Export from the File Menu
3. Click the Quicktime icon in the export panel
4. Check the User Transparency option
5. In the format drop-menu choose Custom
6. Set your desired video size and click the Settings… button
7. For Compression type, choose either Animation or PNG (these are the only codecs that support transparency at the moment)
8. Set the frame rate high (like 30 or 60 fps), or set it to match your video editing frame rate (you may want to try it both ways to see which works best)
9. Set the Key frames to All – this will make sure none of the animations get mangled during export (this is a good trick even if you’re not using transparency)
10. IMPORTANT! Set the Depth to Millions of Colors+. It’s that + that makes sure the transparency gets exported. If you miss this step you won’t get a transparent video.
11. Slide the Quality to Best
12. Click Okay
13. Choose your Audio settings
14. Click Next
15. Name and save your movie

You should now have a movie with an embedded alpha channel that works in most video apps (such as Motion or Final Cut Pro). This trick has all kinds of great uses, and we thought it would be good to add to the TUAW post since it’s likely someone is going to ask about it (since Motion can export transparency easily).

have fun!

Instead of manually numbering your slides (and, of course, including the total number so you know how far through the presentation you are), you can use Slide Runner to add on simple little animations to each slide. The audience is then treated to a man running across the screen, or a balloon floating to the top and then popping. You can also use it to generate simple numbering.

Once you’re finished with your presentation, you simply save it, close it, run it through Slide Runner and let it to its thing. Your numbering or animation will be added to each slide accordingly.

Only $0.99 in the Mac App Store.

For more info, and a watermarked demo visit http://www.bassetsoftware.com/sliderunner/

Instead of posting the entire press release, we’ll just make a few comments and post the link to it. First comment…WOOOHOOOO! Second comment…hmmm, how practical will this really turn out to be? One big thing we can see it being used for is to present Keynote files from your iPhone or iPod Touch. In fact, we’re going to test it tonight with the HDMI adapter to see just how well it works.

Oh, and a big Thank You! to Apple for making the apps universal, now we don’t have to buy another copy (Pages and Keynote are already on the iPad).

Click here to read the press release

We’ve broken the page into sections, so you can easily find Themes, Wireframing toolkits, support, tutorials, and other odds and ends. We’d suggest visiting each site and viewing all the demo movies and samples they post. The prices vary, but even the most expensive themes are a great deal (especially compared to some PowerPoint template prices!). Some themes (like ours for instance) come with extras and sample files which you can use to spice up your own files.

Also, don’t be afraid of buying a theme that doesn’t quite fit the bill and modifying it to your needs. Our themes are built with flexibility in mind, and most of the other companies do the same. You can also contact the theme maker and ask for help. Usually they will give you tips or even modify a template (within reason) for you. Some of them also offer full custom services (at custom prices of course). This can be anything from adding your logo to a commercial theme, to a full, one of a kind, custom design.

So, support these small businesses (and the Keynote community on the whole) buy visiting the theme makers and resources on our Resources page, and tell them you heard about them from Keynote.com.

Click here to visit our Resources page.

Oh, if you know of a site that we haven’t listed, feel free to use our contact form and send us a link. We’ll try to post it right away.

“The Still Themes collection presents a great choice of unique and easily customizable designs for Apple’s Keynote at a reasonable price,” said Jolita Unguvaitiene, general manager of Graphic Node. “It is a nice addition to our trio of older products for Keynote: Animations, Backgrounds, and Motion Themes.”

The Still Themes pack includes 10 themes, including the romantic and creative Cherry Blossom, the elegantly understated Purple Hint, and the ultra-simple Clean Space. It is intended for Keynote users looking for diverse ways to save time on a presentation layout and be able to focus on the content instead.

The themes include up to 21 master slides – a mix of bullet text and photo-oriented layouts. The layouts are polished and modern, with custom bullets, matching tables, and easily readable charts. Users can type or paste in their own text, add and remove text boxes, change fonts, and drag their photos or pictures onto presentation slides to supplant the placeholders. The themes are available in the five standard slide sizes supported by Keynote.

Users can view samples of the themes and purchase Still Themes on the Graphic Node website. After the product is downloaded and installed on a computer, the new themes will automatically appear in Themes Chooser of Keynote.

System Requirements:
* Apple iWork 08 or later

Pricing and Availability:
Still Themes is only $19 (USD).

Grahic Node
Still Themes
Samples

Once files have been transferred, you can open them anytime and anywhere, whether or not you have a network connection, with a powerful document viewer embedded in Acrosync. If you have access to a remote server, such as those provided by most universities and companies, or a VPS or dedicated server that you own, you can use Acrosync to sync all the files on your remote home directory to your iOS devices.

Features:

• A slick and intuitive interface that offers a superior file browsing experience
• Supports numerous media and document types, such as music, photo, movie, txt, html, pdf, word, excel, powerpoint, keynote, pages, numbers, and many others
• Re-sync is extremely efficient as only new files and modified content will be transmitted, thanks to the rsync protocol
• File transfer is secured by state-of-the-art encryption algorithms

Device Requirements:

• iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad
• Requires iOS 4.0 or later
• 1.6 MB

Pricing and Availability:
Acrosync 1.1 is free; it is ad-sponsored and lacks the ability to send files to other apps. The pro version, Acrosync Pro, which costs $4.99 USD, is ad-free and allows files to be sent to other apps. Promotion codes are available upon request.

Acrosync 1.1
Purchase and Download
Screenshot

“Over the years, Jumsoft has accumulated a wide range of add-on products for Apple’s iWork, iWeb, and other applications. However, we realized that we started to lose focus, which is not what our clients expect from us,” says Algirdas Unguvaitis, Jumsoft’s general manager. “Therefore, Graphic Node is taking over some of our design products and will continue to develop, improve, and keep them at the cutting edge.”

Graphic Node launches with a considerable product range, which consists of Jumsoft’s Keynote Quartet, Pages Templates Pro, iWeb Themes, and Aperture Themes. Further, the young company is presenting its first original product, People Clipart.

The People Clipart set contains 100 high-quality images, depicting people and their reactions in a variety of business and leisure situations. The images are suitable for anyone in search of a simple and effective way to put a friendly face on their presentation slides, posters, newsletters, Web pages, and other content.

People Clipart offers enormous creative freedom and multiple possibilities to boost documents’ visual appeal through its wide range of images and broad compatibility. Transparent backgrounds allow users to place images on top of different colors or patterns, whereas the PDF format enables them to resize images without compromising quality. People Clipart is compatible with Apple’s iWork, iWeb, MS Office, and various other graphics programs.

System Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.4.3 Tiger and later

Pricing and Availability:
People Clipart is only $9.99 (USD). People Clipart can be viewed and purchased at the Graphic Node website. After downloading the package, users can immediately open it to select and insert images into documents for creative and fun customization.

Graphic Node
People Clipart

The video tutorial consists of 27 video chapters on various subjects. This includes using transitions, to using builds, to adding images and movies, to masking images, to creating actions (movement), to securing your presentation, to sharing your presentation. Everything you need to give you best presentation using Keynote! Users can choose different video chapters to watch as they go through the video tutorial. All videos are stored on the iPad so no bandwidth is used while watching the videos.

Find out how to:

• Choose themes using the Theme Chooser
• Skip slides
• Get around the interface
• Use Keynote terms
• Add objects including text, shapes, images, and movies
• Work with transitions
• Mask images
• Layer and group objects
• Add Audio to slides and to the entire presentation
• Create self running slideshows and presentations
• Build objects into slides
• Use the Magic Move Transition to simulate movement
• Use actions to move, resize, rotate, and change the opacity of objects
• Use comments while building your presentation
• Add presenter notes

Device Requirements:

• Compatible with iPad
• Requires iOS 4.2 or later
• 583 MB

Pricing and Availability:
Video Tutorial for Keynote for Mac 1.0 is only $4.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Productivity category.

Noteboom Productions
Video Tutorial for Keynote for Mac 1.0
Purchase and Download
Screenshot

So, between my freelance joomla projects through The Peat Group, and my full time job at GlobalAwakening.com (that terrible website by the way, is on the list of things to get completely replaced with a Joomla solution this year) and just managing life…Keynoteuser.com has sat here dormant. I have several press releases that should have run last month which I hope to post later today. Things just get a head of me and then all of a sudden I have 3 or 4 stories that are months late. I have to wonder what the other theme makers think when they see that, yet again, I haven’t posted their stories of new theme releases.

Anyway, all that to say, I haven’t forgotten about this site. I have big plans for it in the future, I just have to find the time to do it. I need to overhaul the site theme (hoping to use a customize theme from the team at RocketTheme) and I have to build a companion Joomla site for the store to get it off my company site (always confuses people when they get sent to a completely different site to make their purchases). The plan is to use a “subscription” type system, so purchases would be treated as a non-expiring “subscription” that you can then log in ANY time in the future and download. They won’t be true subscriptions (because you only ever pay once for each product) but the system is more flexible than a regular shopping cart.

So, I’d like to thank my faithful readers and visitors who I’m sure check the site every so often wondering why there seems to never be anything new around here. Trust me, it bugs me as much as it bugs you (maybe more).

Lastly, I’d like to put a call out to anyone who is a serious Keynote fan who might like to be a part of a team who would maintain the site so I don’t have to. I can’t offer you anything in pay except free themes and the chance to get free review copies of software that’s related to Keynote (as long as you post a review of it). It’s possible if the site grows again and I get more income from it, I can start paying a staff to keep up on it (and I’m thinking of expanding it into iWorkUser.com instead of just Keynoteuser.com).

So there it is. Hopefully the future will be full of new and cool things for this site, I hope those of you who haven’t given up on it will stick around till I get through this low spot.

thanks!

-Brian Peat, Creator of Keynoteuser.com

Here’s Apple’s info from the KB article:

All iWork 9.0.5 Applications

• Adds public sharing and private upload options for iWork.com public beta.

Keynote 5.0.5

• Allows playback of Keynote presentations on iWork.com, with over 15 animations and effects, when using the latest version of Safari.
  • Addresses an issue with the Drop transition, Dissolve build, and shape colors.
  • Addresses an issue with rulers.
  • Adds support for Keynote Remote 1.2*, including high-resolution slides for the Retina display.

Pages 4.0.5

• Improves the readability of exported ePub documents.

iWork.com public beta

• Allows playback of Keynote presentations on the web.
  • When using the latest version of Safari, the following transitions and builds are available:Transitions:
    • Magic Move
    • Cube
    • Dissolve
    • Drop
    • Flip
    • Motion Dissolve
    • Move in
    • Pivot
    • Push
    • Reveal
    • Scale
    • Twirl

    Builds:

    • Appear/Disappear
    • Cube
    • Dissolve
    • Drop
    • Move In/Out
    • Pivot
    • Pop
    • Scale
    • Twirl
  • Other animations will display as Dissolve when using the latest version of Safari.
  • Appear/Disappear animations will be used on non-Safari browsers and older versions of Safari.
  • Dynamic, onscreen navigation controls are provided to control web presentations.
  • Keynote presentations can be embedded on websites and blogs using the embed code.
  • Improves user experience of iWork.com on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

You can download the iWork update via Software Update or through the Apple support area.

Keynote Themes Plus, the developer of add-ons for Apple’s Keynote application, is pleased to introduce 10 new Keynote Themes: Blue Map, City Time, Green Orbit, Ink Drops, Medicine, Official, Orange, Thumbs Up, Warning and White Oval. In addition, two free themes – Cheers and Snowflakes – were released as a Christmas gift for all Keynote users.

There are 5 sizes available for each theme including HD. They are: 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×720, 1680×1050 and 1920×1080 in pixels, so everyone can find the perfect size for widescreen (16:9, 16:10) or traditional (4:3) displays and projectors. All the presentations made by using Keynote Themes or Keynote Themes in Action with moving backgrounds can be transferred to the iPad easily. They look gorgeous and can be used to share your ideas with friends or colleagues on your mobile device in every place or situation. To use Keynote Themes from Keynote Themes Plus requires just a Mac with iWork ’08 (Keynote 4.0) or later.

Pricing and Availability:
Ten new Keynote Themes can be purchased for $19.99 (USD). Ten Keynote Themes in Action available for $23.99. The package, which unites all 20 Keynote Themes, is priced at $29.99. Each single theme with the moving background costs $11.99 while the static one is only for $7.99. Three Keynote Themes are free for everyone.

Keynote Themes Plus
Keynote Themes
Free Keynote Themes
Purchase

iPresentee, the developer of add-ons for Apple’s iWork and iLife applications, is pleased to announce the release of Keynote Themes 7.0, to be used with Apple’s Keynote presentation software. Keynote Themes 7.0 includes ten new brilliant themes: Black Diamond, Cooking, Medicine, Solid Grey, Windmill, Wave, Triangle, Relax, Notebook and Blue Style.

Each Keynote Theme is available in standard or HD formats and has from eighteen to twenty three different master slide layouts. Keynote Themes 7.0 includes an installer to make sure the themes end up in the right place and will be displayed in Keynote’s themes menu automatically. Furthermore iPresentee offers to download Keynote Objects, Keynote Alphabet, Keynote Countdown Timer and seven Keynote themes free of charge.

Minimum Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.4.3 Tiger and later
• iWork 08 or iWork 09
• 1 GB Hard Drive space

Pricing and Availability:
Keynote Themes 7.0 may be purchased for $30 (USD). Free Keynote add-ons are offered free of charge and can be downloaded from iPresentee’s website. Samples and more information about Keynote themes are available immediately at the iPresentee website.

iPresentee
Keynote Themes
Keynote Show
Purchase

KeynoteStage themes collection offers a variety of presentation styles with coordinated fonts, colors, great backgrounds, unique bullets and picture frames. Keynote themes include an installer to make sure the themes end up in the right place and will be displayed in Keynote’s themes menu automatically.

Minimum Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.4.3 Tiger and later
• iWork 08 or iWork 09
• 1 GB Hard Drive space

Pricing and Availability:
Each individual Keynote Theme is priced from $5 (USD). More information about Keynote Themes is available immediately at the KeynoteStage website.

KeynoteStage
Keynote Bundles

Macworld has more info on the new features (and some great screen shots). Click hear to read the Macworld story.

Or help us out and use one of these affiliate links to buy one of the iWork apps:

Get Keynote from iTunes
Get Pages from iTunes
Get Numbers from iTunes