In Brief: HCL Infosystems has entered into a strategic alliance with Apple to provide sales and service support for iPods in India--the company will set up distribution, logistics and service network in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune in the first phase; will distribute Macs to education, media and entertainment segments; and has launched an entertainment portal to offer downloads for iPods, personal computers and mobiles.... Layers magazine has created the InDesign Advantage Center, an exclusive online collection of content designed to provide a side-by-side comparison between Adobe InDesign software and the latest version of QuarkXPress.... Check Off 3.6 updates the free Mac OS X to-do manager to include German, Traditional Chinese and Japanese localizations as well as several bug fixes for both PowerPC and Intel customers.

MacTech is offering an exclusive article series--due in the July 2006 issue--to specifically address the needs of developers looking to optimize their applications take advantage of Intel-based Macs; it is offering a special of six issues for $20.... Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that the company is unlikely to create its own Web browser, despite competition from Microsoft's Internet Explorer; it will continue to encourage its customers to use a variety of alternatives to Internet Explorer, particularly the open-source Firefox browser and also has partnerships to encourage the use of the Safari browser on Macs, according to the AP.