templates

OrgChart Professional is a feature-packed program that allows users to create impressive organizational charts. Because of the number of features it contains, it's not the most intuitive program we've used, but a bit of time spent with the Help file will allow users to master the program's many functions.

The interface is a bit cluttered and can be overwhelming at first, with lots of menus and buttons everywhere. Although it's possible to create an organizational chart just by fooling around with the program, beginners should really start with the Help file, a 282-page PDF that contains … Read more

Cost Benefit Analysis Template provides a simple tool for calculating financial futures. With its familiar layout and excellent direction, this program makes financial forecasting simple enough for even novices.

The program's interface was immediately familiar to us since it was built within an Excel spreadsheet. The money management aspects were simple as well, thanks to its onscreen instructions, which covered navigation and interpretation of fields and equations. This program allowed us to forecast a project's financial expenses as far as nine years away. We simply entered our costs and benefits into the appropriate rows and columns and the … Read more

Blitz Document is a useful tool with built-in templates for creating office forms. The templates help you quickly design and generate common and specialized business documents for a variety of purposes, including invoices, sales agreements, letters, and memos. There are "Sales Related Documents" like Invoices, Bills of Sale, and Sales Agreements. Businesses can use the templates as-is, but they're easily edited and customized for different needs.

Under the Common Forms tab in the Template menu, you'll find templates for frequently used office type purposes: faxes, letters, meeting agendas, and more. We really liked Blitz Document's … Read more

User accounts by default are empty and contain the default system settings such as the starry space background image, the dock at the bottom with iLife and Safari in it, and an accounts folder with a template website and some PDF information documents. While in most cases this is a good starting point, in certain situations people create accounts quite frequently and would like the default desktop to be different, either for something as simple as having the background reflect a company's name, or to ensure specific applications are configured properly on new accounts.… Read more

Design Commission, a Seattle-based design house, has created a decidedly analog tool for iPhone app design: the iPhone Stencil Kit.

The Stencil Kit is made from stainless steel and ships with a Zebra mechanical pencil. The Design Commission site hosts free, printable PDF templates in letter and A4 sizes, both for use with the stencil.

The stencil lets you to trace the appropriately sized interface for iPhone app development, then add various controls such as sliders, icons, buttons, media playback controls, search tools, and dialogs. Using the stencil and one of the downloaded templates, a developer can easily sketch a … Read more

Excel Invoice Manager Express provides users with a fast, familiar way to write up invoices. By using an Excel format, users should feel instantly at home with this program.

The invoice program's interface is highly intuitive because it has been built within a spreadsheet. With a few choice command buttons, users familiar with Excel will know exactly where to input data and what to expect. However, an in-depth Help file is also available. The program's layout basically walks users through the process of creating an invoice. Well-labeled areas for customer addresses, their own company's address, and invoice … Read more

Writing a novel can seem like an overwhelming process. All those characters and details to keep track of, not to mention finding the proper structure and pacing. Many would-be novelists just don't know where to begin. MyNovel breaks the novel-writing process into manageable pieces, giving writers a clear idea of how to proceed through each step of the writing process.

The program's interface is attractive and intuitive, with a layout that's similar to Office 2007 products. Although the program's Help file is well-written and thorough, most users should have little reason to visit it. MyNovel guides … Read more

Oracle has released new tools for building virtual appliances, the software maker's first significant move in server virtualization since its purchase of Virtual Iron.

Oracle VM Template Builder, announced on Wednesday, is a graphical tool intended to help third-party developers and enterprise in-house teams create virtual appliances. The open-source product allows users to combine a JeOS (Just enough operating system) image of Oracle Enterprise Linux with applications and other software inside an Oracle VM or an OVF virtual machine. JeOS images contain only those components of an operating system needed for a specific task, reducing size and complexity, and … Read more

A security hole in Internet Explorer that opened the browser to hackers since early July was caused by a single typo in Microsoft's code.

An errant ampersand ("&") took the blame for the exploit, admitted Microsoft in a blog published Tuesday at its Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) Web site.

Michael Howard, a security program manager at Microsoft, explained in his blog that the typo corrupted the code of an ActiveX control used by the browser. The control was created by Microsoft using an older library of code, which Howard admitted has flaws. Because of those flaws, the … Read more