If you’re wondering what iCloud is or know but just need to know how to use it, then you may be interested in the new book from Joe Kissell entitled Take Control of iCloud from TidBITS. The 143-page ebook will help you understand the differences between MobileMe and iCloud and what stays, goes away, and what’s new. Examples of how to configure aspects of iCloud, such as syncing your calendar, are all part of this new digital release. Get it and learn the iCloud.

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Office 2011 for Mac is easy to use, but to unleash its full power, you need to go beyond the basics. Fortunately, you’ll find crystal-clear explanations on the features you use most—and plenty of power-user tips when you’re ready for more—in Office 2011 for Mac: The Missing Manual (O’Reilly Media, $34.99 USD).

“Ask a Mac user what they want from Microsoft Office and before long they get around to: 1) Make Office more Mac-like, and 2) Give Office for Mac the same features as the Windows version. Office 2011 for Mac doesn’t completely resolve those issues, but it’s certainly a welcome improvement,” notes expert author Chris Grover. “And you’ll find all the Office features, new and old, covered in Office 2011 for Mac: The Missing Manual.”

This entertaining guide not only gets you started with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the new Outlook for Mac, it also reveals useful lots of things you didn’t know the software could do. You’ll learn how to:

Take advantage of new tools. Navigate with the Ribbon, use SmartArt graphics, and work online with Office Web Apps.
Create professional-looking documents. Use Word to craft beautiful reports, newsletters, brochures, and posters.
Crunch numbers with ease. Assemble data, make calculations, and summarize the results with Excel.
Stay organized. Set up Outlook to track your email, contacts, appointments, and tasks.
Make eye-catching presentations. Build PowerPoint slideshows with video and audio clips, animations, and other features.
Use the programs together. Discover how to be more productive and creative by drawing directly in Word documents, adding spreadsheets to your slides, and more.

Popular Science has just unveiled a special edition Android app for the Samsung Galaxy tablet called Popular Science+ Top Tech 2010. It’s the first PopSci Android app, designed specifically for the Galaxy tab, using the Mag+ platform.

The mobile magazine issue features the annual Top Tech awards and offers readers an in-depth look that the 100 most innovative products of the year (some of which you have probably covered!). Browse through the 11 categories (ranging from a variety of industries including green, automotive, health, aviation & space, home entertainment & more) using full-screen animation.

Setting this apart from the iPad version of Popular Science is Galaxy’s widescreen orientation. The horizontal view gives articles and images more space for easy-to-read flowing text and images, creating an interactive experience.

It’s available on the Android Market for $1.99.

How can you make your iPad or iPhone app stand out in the highly competitive App Store? While most books simply explore the technical aspects of iPad and iPhone app design and development, App Savvy (O’Reilly, $29.99 USD) also focuses on the business, product, and marketing elements critical to pursuing, completing, and selling your app—the ingredients for turning a great idea into a genuinely successful product.

Author Ken Yarmosh details a proven process for developing successful apps, and presents numerous interviews with the App Store’s most prominent publishers.

• Learn about the App Store and how Apple’s mobile devices function
• Follow guidelines for vetting and researching app ideas
• Validate your ideas with customers — and create an app they’ll be passionate about
• Assemble your development team, understand costs, and establish a workable process
• Build your marketing plan while you develop your application
• Test your working app extensively before submitting it to the App Store
• Assess your app’s performance and keep potential buyers engaged and enthusiastic

Whether you’re a designer, developer, entrepreneur, or just someone with a unique idea, App Savvy explains every step in the process, with guidelines for planning a solid concept, engaging customers early and often, developing your app, and launching it with a bang

Elements 9 offers much of Photoshop’s power without the huge price tag. It’s an ideal tool for most image-editing buffs—including scrapbookers, photographers, and aspiring graphic artists. But Elements still doesn’t come with a decent manual. Photoshop Elements 9: The Missing Manual (O’Reilly Media, $44.99 USD), will help you get the most out of the program, from the basics to advanced tips for both Windows and Mac.

“Elements 9 has some major new features, like Layer Masks, and the??Organizer for Mac, that are very powerful but not easy to figure out, as well as some fun new features that you may well overlook if you don’t know where to find them,” says expert author Barbara Brundage. “I hope that the book will help my readers understand how to get the most from all of them.”

• Quickly learn your way around. Customize Elements to suit your working style.
• Get to work right away. Import, organize, and make quick image fixes with ease.
• Retouch any image. Learn how to repair and restore your old and damaged photos.
• Add some pizzazz. Give images more zip with dozens of filters, frames, and special effects.
• Find your creative flair. Create scrapbooks, greeting cards, photo books, and more.
• Use advanced techniques. Work with layers, blend modes, and other tools.
• Try out your new skills. Download practice images and try new tricks as you learn.

About the Author
Barbara Brundage is the author of Photoshop Elements 6: The Missing Manual, an Adobe Community Expert, and a member of Adobe’s prerelease groups for Elements 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. She’s been teaching people how to use Photoshop Elements since it first came out in 2001. Barbara first started using Elements to create graphics for use in her day job as a harpist, music publisher, and arranger. Along the way, she joined the large group of people finding a renewed interest in photography thanks to digital cameras. If she can learn to use Elements, you can, too!

View Barbara Brundage’s full profile page.

With the iOS 4 software and the new iPhone 4, Apple has a world-class hit on its hands. This sleek, highly refined pocket computer comes with everything—cellphone, iPod, Internet, camcorder—except a printed manual. Fortunately, David Pogue is back with this expanded edition of his witty, full-color guide: the world’s most popular iPhone book.

“I’m so proud of this one,” Pogue says. “I really dug deep into the new phone and the new OS. It’s the perfect book for exploiting your iPhone—and an even better book for giving to the relatives or coworkers who keep bugging you for help with their iPhones.”

iPhone: The Missing Manual, Fourth Edition (O’Reilly Media, $24.99 USD) is, in essence, the iPhone Bible. It covers:

The iPhone 4. This book unearths all the secrets of the newest iPhone, including its video calling, the front and back cameras (with flash), and the world’s highest-resolution screen.
The iOS 4 software. Earlier iPhones gain multitasking, app folders, the iBooks app, better email and Web, and much more.
The apps. That catalog of 250,000 add-on programs makes the iPhone’s phone features almost secondary. Now you’ll know how to find, manage, and exploit those apps.
The tricks. As usual, Pogue’s specialty is undocumented tips, tricks, and shortcuts. In this new edition, he teaches you how to make the phone read e-books out loud, how to double the battery’s life by operating it with the screen off, and how to unhook from AT&T’s congested 3G network when you can’t get a call through.
The iPhone may be the world’s coolest computer, but it’s still a computer, with all of a computer’s complexities. iPhone: The Missing Manual is a funny, gorgeously illustrated guide to the tips, shortcuts, and workarounds that will turn you, too, into an iPhone addict.

Ubuntu has been hailed as the Linux distribution for newbies, but getting it up and running isn’t always a walk in the park. Linux is different—but the same unique features that make it shine can also prove intimidating for new users.

Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, 4th Edition (No Starch Press, July 2010, 496 pp., $34.95, ISBN 9781593272579) makes the transition to Linux easy by offering readers hands-on instruction to help them get up, running, and comfortable with Ubuntu, fast. In addition to covering the latest features of Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), this edition includes five new chapters that take readers through common tasks like installing games, accessing social networks, troubleshooting common hardware and software problems, connecting with the Ubuntu community, and accessing the files on their Windows installation.

“A lot has happened since the first edition of Ubuntu for Non-Geeks came out, and Linux has attracted more users than ever before,” said co-author Rickford Grant. “Our goal with this edition was to address the needs of the ever-growing, varied population of Linux users and to gently welcome newcomers into the world of Linux.” Co-author Phil Bull went on to say, “We didn’t want to introduce readers to Linux with list upon list of dry instructions. Instead, our approach was to concentrate on doing interesting things, tinkering with settings, working through cool projects, and generally having fun, while still covering the fundamentals.”

In Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, readers learn how to:

Install Ubuntu and keep it updated
Set up printers, scanners, USB flash drives, and other hardware
Install and play free games like Frets on Fire, Frozen Bubble, and Warzone 2100
Watch DVDs, listen to music, and sync their iPod, iPhone, and other mobile devices
Edit and share digital photos and videos
Create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations
Customize the look and feel of their system
Work with Windows files and programs on Linux
Connect with the Ubuntu community to get support or join in
Work with the command line (or avoid it altogether!)
Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, 4th Edition is just what readers need to get started with Linux.

Apple calls the iPad a “magical and revolutionary product,” and it certainly is. It’s cute, lovable, and fun to play with, but it’s also a bit mysterious. As with all Apple products, the iPad’s basics are easy to understand, but many of its best features are well beyond the basics, and many users will look for guidance to get the most out of their new toy.

In My New™ iPad (No Starch Press, June 2010, 368 pp., $24.95, ISBN 9781593272753), Wallace Wang, bestselling author of My New Mac and My New iPhone, shows readers how to do useful and entertaining things with their iPad—like surf the Internet, send email, listen to music, take notes, read ebooks, and play with photos. As a simple user’s guide, My New iPad doesn’t drag readers through pointless details. Instead, as with the other titles in the My New series from No Starch Press, Wang takes readers step-by-step through the iPad’s many useful features, making it easy for them to pick and chose which tasks they want to learn how to accomplish, and when.

“Unlike other types of computers, the iPad can appeal equally to both experienced computer users and novices,” said author Wallace Wang. “The iPad isn’t just a new type of computer; it’s a new paradigm in computing devices, and My New iPad will help both beginners and computer veterans painlessly learn the basics of their iPad so they can start having fun and being productive right away.”

In My New iPad, readers learn how to:

Sync and share photographs, calendars, and contact information
Set up email accounts and browse the Web
Shop on iTunes and the iBook Store for new music, movies, TV shows, and books
Customize their iPad by rearranging icons and changing the wallpaper
Set parental controls and control privacy settings
Edit Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files
Get organized with the Notes, Calendar, and Contacts apps

The iPad can do hundreds of amazing things. Readers who want to get more out of this elegant and powerful device need look no further than My New iPad.

People who love to read and share their favorite books with friends now have a new iPhone app to help them recall each book they’ve read, enter notes on what they liked about each one, jot down the titles they’d like to read, and share favorites with friends by Facebook or email. BookLover, by Electric Pocket, also automatically fetches the book cover and, in many cases, a synopsis of each book in the reader’s collection or on their Wish List.
BookLover is ideal for true book lovers who not only are always on the lookout for good books, but eagerly share with friends after they’ve read a great one. They simply input the title and author (if known) and BookLover goes online to retrieve the cover art and any other information available.
Books are displayed on BookLover’s beautifully designed bookshelves for easy access when chatting with friends or shopping at the bookstore. Users can organize the books on the shelves however they’d like, and can easily drag and drop books between shelves to change how they are categorized.
For members of book clubs, or those who just enjoy discussing books with friends, BookLover enables them to jot their notes down for each book so they are prepared for the discussion with their insightful thoughts. This is also a handy feature to simply record who a book has been loaned to.
Sharing book reviews is a snap with BookLover’s Facebook and email sharing options. Users simply write their thoughts in BookLover’s text editor and with the click of a button, can email directly to friends or post on their Facebook walls.
BookLover for iPhone is available in the Apple App Store at an introductory rate of US$.99.

More information can be found on the Electric Pocket website at electricpocket.com/booklover.

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs boasted about the iPads ability to display books, magazines, and newspapers just two months ago to a crowd of by invitation only reporters with the new iBook Store. Of course, in classic Jobs fashion, he neglected to give details. Well, he didn’t neglect, those details hadn’t yet been signed into contracts between Apple and publishers. But no worry, because you will be able to read over 1,900 consumer magazines and 300 books today. What? The iPad isn’t out yet? Yes, I understand, I forgot to mention that this all comes to you from Zinio…on the device of your choice. Today.

Zinio is an e-Ink, if you will, reader that brings todays most popular magazines to your desktop and mobile device – I did say today, right? – without the need to purchase a specific device while maintaining the original layout of the publication. Zinio has been around since 2001 and with nearly a decade of experience behind in the Digital Media field, I think you’ll be very impressed with Zinio. I know I was. Read why in the review.

But what about the heavy competition? When I asked Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Jeanniey Mullen about the Kindle and the pending iPad digging into their game, “We don’t see it as a loss,” was how she responded. Mullen pointed out that Esquire is already available for the iPhone and Zinio and sales of the magazine have not been burdened for Zinio. Mullen feels the same will be true when the iPad dawns itself on April 3rd.

Oh yes, don’t worry, Zinio will also be available for the iPad as well.