App/Book: The New Sunset Western Garden Book: The Ultimate Gardening Guide - IInteractive Edition (iOS, iPhone, IPad, iPod Touch)

This post originally appeared in A Gardener's Notebook with Douglas E. Welch...

One of my favorite gardening books, The New Sunset Western Garden Book, is now available for your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The price is $19.99 and I am thinking of purchasing it for my iPhone. I think and iPad would be more usable, though, due to its larger screen size. I'll have to look at some more iPhone screenshots to see how usable it might be.

From the iTunes App Store...

"Green thumbs go digital! Sunset Magazine's unparalleled reference guide for Western gardeners springs to life for iPad, iPhone, and the web on Inkling. Now, dig deeper with almost 30 how-to videos, more than 100 slideshows with high-res photography, easy navigation, and additional features and content not found in print.

As the best-selling gardening book in the country, the New Sunset Western Garden Book is already the go-to resource for any gardener in the West. With the beloved print book rebuilt for your iPad and iPhone, it’s even more useful and beautiful than ever before. From embedded videos and gorgeous high-res photos to seamless navigation tools, social sharing features, and in-book gardening notes, the interactive version of your favorite gardening resource is sure to breathe new life into how you garden.

Top Features:

* How-to videos: Watch almost 30 videos to get the dirt on gardening techniques that help you create a hardier, healthier and more beautiful garden.
* Interactive images: There are approximately 30 interactive images, including 15 Climate Zone Maps with tappable poptips to help with climate zone identification and key characteristics of each zone.
* Instructive slideshows: Tap through more than 100 high-res photo slideshows to learn how different plants will work together in your garden.
* Lush layouts: Browsing your book can be as colorful and delightful as wandering in your garden. Science and art go hand-in-hand with gorgeous layouts that automatically adapt for different screen sizes.
* Gardening notes: On every plant card, make notes about how that plant works in your gardens. Notes sync between devices automatically.
* Extra content: Use more plant listings, regional gardening calendars, and even a special new section on the history of the book itself.
* Search: Need to find something quickly? Search the book, your notes, and even Google and Wikipedia, while barely lifting a finger.
* Personal notebook: Highlight text and bookmark cards with ease. It’s all saved to a notebook that lives inside your book for easy reference.

Bonus feature on iPad, iPad mini, PC & Mac:
* Notes: Make notes anywhere in the book that can even include web links. All notes are also saved to your notebook."

Print Edition form Amazon.com

Microsoft release Outlook.com email services to replace Hotmail

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Shared calendars are one part of an organized family

by Douglas E. Welch , techiq@welchwrite.com 206-338-5832 Reader/Listener Line As a parent with a school-age child, I often hear other parents bemoaning their disorganized existence. Along with the busy schedules of two working parents you might have art classes, karate classes, Little League, soccer and more. Add in more than one kid and organizing your life can quickly become a nightmare. This is exactly why one of my most important organizing devices is a shared calendar that reflects all the activities and events for everyone in the household...and I do mean everything. If someone -- is required to be somewhere -- at sometime, it goes into the calendar. If we are given a calendar that reflects all the events for a particular activity (say, Little League), all these events immediately go into the calendar, along with notations on whether we are providing the team snack, working in the snack bar, etc. Even events that occur anytime during the day, like family birthdays, and other rem...

Google Docs adds templates

I have started to move away from using Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc) in favor of online tools like Google Docs . Even as a computer consultant, I find that I use probably less than 10% of the features in any of these projects. One feature I really like in Google Docs is the easy, online file sharing that also allows you to edit simultaneously with someone else. Today, Google Docs added some templates including business cards, brochures and more. At the moment, it looks like they are rolling out this feature over time, so you might not yet see the templates on your account. When available, you will find the templates under the New... menu item. From Open Loops ... Today, Google quietly rolled out a new feature for their Google Docs Applications: Templates! It's so new that it isn't even listed on the new features page at this time. When one opens their Google Docs account and chooses to start a new document, a new "From Template..." command is pre...

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