lynda.com helps you learn and keep-up-to-date with your software, pick up brand-new skills, or explore new hobbies with easy to follow video tutorials. Whether you want to take better pictures and video with your DSLR, learn the programming skills to develop your own mobile app, or edit your own video footage using Final Cut Pro X or Premiere, lynda.com offers thousands of video courses in a variety of topics.

Featuring over 2,400 courses taught by industry experts (with more added weekly), lynda.com works directly with software companies to provide timely training, often the same day new versions or releases hit the market. Courses available on lynda.com aren’t like low-quality, homemade screencasts available elsewhere on the web: they are professionally-produced, high-quality courses that feature project files, transcripts, playlists, and that are broken into bite-size pieces to be viewed at any time.

Courses encompass all experience levels, so whether you’re a beginner or advanced user, you’ll always find material to improve your skills, keep up with technology, and learn new software applications. One low monthly price of $25 gives you unlimited access to the entire lynda.com library, which includes, among many others, iOS tutorials, photography courses, and hundreds of Apple tutorials. The lynda.com iOS app, available for iPhone and iPad, includes a visual, intuitive interface, and offers offline course and video viewing (making it easy and convenient to learn even in environments without Internet access).

lynda.com is providing a special offer for MacStories readers to access the entire library for free, for 7 days. Visit lynda.com/macstories to start your 7-day free trial.

Our thanks to lynda.com for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Dropzone is a productivity tool that enhances drag and drop on your Mac. Drag files onto the menu item and a beautifully designed and animated grid of all your actions opens. Share with services such as AirDrop, Imgur, FTP, Amazon S3, Facebook, Twitter and many others. Move and copy files, launch applications and even develop your own actions using the powerful Ruby based scripting API.

Dropzone 3 is a huge update to the app that takes Dropzone to a whole new level. You can now add actions to your grid faster thanks to the new quick add menu or by dropping folders or apps onto the ‘Add to Grid’ area. Quickly reorganise your actions using drag and drop and delete them by holding the option key. The new in-grid progress bars let you keep track of task progress. Also see how tasks are progressing at a glance in the new animated menu item.

Drop Bar is another great new feature - Drag files you know you’ll need later onto the Drop Bar area of the grid to stash them tempororily. Drag stacks on top of each other to combine them. You can even drag a stack onto another Dropzone action.

In Dropzone 3, the developer API has undergone a major overhaul. You can now duplicate existing actions and tweak them to your liking. A new bundle system lets you distribute needed libraries or tools along with your action. Actions can now be auto-updated as they are improved. With a little Ruby knowledge you’ll be thinking of your own uses in no time - check out the developer documentation here.

Our thanks to Aptonic for sponsoring MacStories this week.

You’ve heard that task management is coming to Igloo with their next release – but how is another task management system actually going to help get work done?

Think about all the tasks you do that aren’t part of a specific project: updating a graphic in a presentation, requesting text get corrected in a Word document, or delegating to-do’s after a meeting. Igloo makes this easy by keeping these tasks with your content.

When you view a document, blog, event, forum, or wiki inside your Igloo, you can add a task right there. You don’t need a project or list (but you can use those, too). These tasks show up on your content, informing your team if document needs edits or if it’s ready to go to the client. Content tasks are particularly great for recurring meetings; when you view tasks assigned in last week’s meeting, it’s easy to see what was completed and what wasn’t.

And when you’re the one assigned tasks? Whether it’s on a project list, on content, or a personal task, all of your tasks show up in one view. It’s the easiest way to manage your day-to-day work. Tasks are a free for all Igloo customers, coming this summer as part of Igloo’s latest update, Unicorn.

Our thanks to Igloo for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Igloo, the intranet you’ll actually like, is about to get better.

Igloo’s next release, Unicorn, is coming this summer. With it comes social task management, a brand new feature fully integrated throughout the Igloo platform, providing the perfect balance between project management and getting your day-to-day work done.

You can manage projects with task lists, optimized for large groups of people; assign tasks from any piece of content, like requesting changes be made on a document; and you can create personal tasks that are assigned to you or another person. And you can see all your tasks in one unified view.

Learn more at Igloo’s Unicorn landing page. Or come see Unicorn in person – Igloo is hosting an event in Toronto on June 12, with customer presentations by Hulu and Nextel International. Register today as seating is limited.

Our thanks to Igloo for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Our thanks to WriteRight and Tag Journal for sponsoring MacStories this week. WriteRight and Tag Journal are two excellent apps for writers who want to enhance their writing workflows on iOS.

WriteRight is a unique text editor with synonyms, antonyms and phraseology. With support for Markdown and full iCloud and Dropbox integration, WriteRight lets you easily select words and expressions to check for synonyms/antonyms, choosing from a set of A4, Letter, and Manuscript previews with colored folders.

You can find out more about WriteRight for iPhone/iPad here.

Tag Journal is a complete diary to record your thoughts and ideas with photos, videos and sound recordings. Tag Journal supports Markdown for fast text entry and formatting, and you can add multiple photos per entry. Entry/note merging helps and speeds up your writing workflow, and notes can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, iMessages, Mail, or as PDF.

You can find out more about Tag Journal for iPhone/iPad here.

Federico’s note: I personally use WriteRight (which was developed in Italy and the US) when I write on my iPad, and I truly enjoy the app’s feature set for synonyms and antonyms that lets me quickly replace an active selection in the text editor with other words.

Our thanks to Docsforce for sponsoring MacStories this week. Docsforce is a new service that delivers electronic statements and invoices from companies (providers) to their clients (consumers) securely and privately.

Businesses – Tired of sending paper invoices to your customers or maintaining a download site? Use Docsforce to deliver electronic statements to your customers. We offer a secure download site private to your business. Keep using your PDF statements, invoices and accounting system. Sign up for a free trial, invite your customers. It takes just minutes.

Are you a service provider preparing statements? Whether you are a cloud company with lots of consumers, or a provider of accounting solutions, we can integrate Docsforce into your organization and turn your business into a magnet for growth.

Consumers – tired of dozens of websites and receiving paper statements? Automatically receive all your Docsforce statements in one place, no manual downloading from every provider. Our consumer apps or a browser let you view and export. We keep your statements stored in a super-secure cloud.

Visit docsforce.com and start living your paperless future today.

Our thanks to logtempo for sponsoring MacStories this week. logtempo is the easiest way to log time spent on any task: it only takes two taps.

Whether you’re a freelancer, consultant, or other professional who needs to account for time spent on client projects and tasks, logtempo removes all of the complexity and potential for error of time tracking tools and lets you focus on your work instead of your timesheet.

A natural progression from those hand-written notes and timesheets, with the reporting side already taken care of, logtempo takes a pragmatic approach: multiple tasks can be added to the app, and logged time can be added with another tap by choosing a time amount. When you don’t need a task anymore, you can remove it from your task list, but times logged against it are kept. Reports with times logged for the current day, working week, and last 7 days can be emailed or otherwise shared directly from the app, with an option to delete logged times from the summary report.

logtempo is a new approach to time tracking. Check out logtempo here, and subscribe for updates on Twitter and Facebook.