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Editor's Blog: Leslie to Apple - Here's How You Can Improve My Alerts on iTunes

Leslie Ayers — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:53:09 -0500

My Alerts on the iTunes Store has the potential to be a kick-ass service. As it is now, though, My Alerts is pretty weak. So weak, in fact, that I just don't understand why Apple took it live. My Alerts carries the distinct air of being "in development."

For one thing, it only applies to music and music videos. Currently, you can't add movies or TV shows to your My Alerts page. This was my first disappointment when I rushed to check out the feature after it was announced a couple weeks ago. As soon as I heard about it, I headed to the iTunes Store with big plans to add all my favorite TV shows, and maybe a few movies, to My Alerts. Not so much.

The only reason I know that Weeds Season 2 is available on iTunes is because I randomly visited the iTunes Store on Wednesday. But I really wish My Alerts could have actually, um, alerted me to this fact.

For that matter, the prompt you'll get in iTunes to "manage" My Alerts is a complete misnomer. The extent of management that's possible at this point is turning the feature on or off. Once you add artists to your list, you can then turn those alerts off by unchecking a box next to their names. Huh.

What the Manage My Alerts page should offer is the true ability to manage alerts, complete with the ability to add favorite artists, TV shows, movies - and even actors or directors - and a way to control when and how the alerts are emailed, one by one or on a weekly basis, for example. The way you add artists or music videos to My Alerts now is by clicking on an album title, then clicking on Alert Me. But why can't I set up the alerts just to receive notice of a specific forthcoming album? What if I only want a certain album, not an entire body of one artist's work?

Once you add artists under My Alerts, you "manage" their presence by checking or unchecking a box next to their name.

Apple prepopulated My Alerts with recs for songs and albums by artists whose work I've purchased in the past. OK, that's cool. But how come Irma Thomas's Ruler of My Heart shows up twice? And how come there are only eight recommendations (not counting duplicates)? I'm not going to win any medals, but I've purchased songs and albums by at least 25 different artists from the iTunes Store. Where are recommendations for other albums by Tom Petty, Rihanna, OutKast, or The Shins?

Eight whole recommendations, huh? My socks are still on.

Apple may have thought My Alerts was complete enough as is because very few sites do the alerts thing that well. Amazon Alerts (which you can manage by logging in and clicking the Your Account tab, then scrolling down to the E-Mail Notification and Subscriptions area) are about as feature-less as iTunes' My Alerts. The only way to add an item to your alerts list on Amazon is to get lucky enough to find a something that has been added to Amazon's catalog but that is not yet ready for presale - like the latest Will Ferrell flick Blades of Glory, which is still in theaters (and, incidentally, not as funny as Talladega Nights or Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy - I recommend waiting until Blades is out on DVD).

And Netflix doesn't even have an alert feature. Zero stars!

Can you recommend any websites that do a good job with alert services? Ping me in the comments.

Editor's Blog: Leslie Wonders Where the There Is in Google Desktop for the Mac

Leslie Ayers — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:44:15 -0500

I know I'm a bit "late" weighing in with my opinion of Google Desktop for Mac. I mean, it's been available for a full 38 hours or so. What have I been waiting for???

Nothing. Well, except maybe some sort of flood of enthusiasm to hit me - unrestrained excitement about Google Desktop's availability for the Mac. I mean, Windows users have had it forever, right?

Well, that rush of excitement still hasn't hit me, but I installed the beta version of Google Desktop anyway (it's free!). I figured I'd listened to people complain about Spotlight long enough that I'd find out for myself whether Google can do a better job than Apple at designing search functionality.

The key complaints about Spotlight are:

1. It's slow.

2. It doesn't display editable file paths in the results list. What I mean by editable is that you can't select the file path and paste it into an email message, say, when you're trying to let a co-worker know that a certain file is saved in a certain location on the company server. You can view a file path in Spotlight, of course, by letting your mouse cursor hover over the file name in the results list.

3. You can't search for specific phrases using quote marks or Boolean operators. It takes multi-word searches, of course, but your results will feature both words out of sequence, in addition to the words as a phrase, making results less accurate and harder to find if it's a common phrase.

I can search for easter bunny in Spotlight, but not "easter bunny" (in quotes) which would tell it that I wanted only files that include that specific phrase.

I imagine all of these problems will be addressed in Leopard. But until then, Google Desktop is a great free alternative. Gmail users will have all the more incentive, since it can index your Gmail email, too.

Here are my top three most fave features of Google Desktop, with a couple of complaints thrown in:

1. It's fast. It indexes the files on your Mac in short order, and you can still work while it's doing its thang after you first install it. And it returns results fast, too. We do wish, however, that it would not do that annoying thing that Spotlight also does: starting to search before you're done entering the full search phrase. Argh!

Google Desktop's speed is, I suspect, probably partially due to the fact that it starts searching before you're done typing your full search phrase. Spotlight does the same thing, though, and it's annoying.

2. It can search (and then call up) results from deleted documents. That's right - all is not lost! Even if you accidentally or even intentionally trashed something then emptied the trash.

3. You can search for files on your Mac exactly as you would on Google, using quotes to enclose exact phrases, plus and minus signs to note inclusion and exclusions, and so on.

For a free app, there's really not much to knock about it, although some privacy wonks/Mac system purists have registered suspicion about how and where Google Desktop installs the various pieces and parts that make it work. I figure everything I do is being spied on by someone - Hi, Rod! (Rod works in our IT department here at Mac|Life) - so I don't worry about that kind of thing. I leave that up to Rik and Eugene.

Lemme know in the comments what you love (or hate) about Google Desktop. Or why you, too, had a hard time getting out the pom-pons when it launched yesterday.

Editor's Blog: Leslie's Take on the Apple TV - Not Enough Bang for My Buck

Leslie Ayers — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 17:48:53 -0500

The Apple TV is a nifty device. Roman got it set up in the multipurpose room in our office in like two minutes (not counting the seven hours it took to sync all his iTunes content). A 5-year-old, or a 75-year-old for that matter, can navigate through the menus to find content to display on the connected widescreen TV. Though I was a bit disappointed by the choices of movies and TV shows in Roman's collection (sorry, dude).

Roman's taste in video programming aside, the Apple TV does exactly what Steve Jobs told us it would when he unveiled it in January: It connects your iTunes library to your widescreen TV so you can watch and listen to your media from the cushy comfort of your family room couch.

Kudos to Apple for doing it before anyone else - and creating an interface and user experience that is a tad more limiting but much easier and, as a result, more satisfying than using the Netgear EVA8000 or the video features of the Xbox 360. And, since I'm complaining about the Apple TV's price tage, I should also point out that the EVA800 costs $350 and you'll pay $399 for an Xbox 360 - although, of course, you also get a videogame console with the Xbox. But considering what the Apple TV doesn't do, I just can't see spending $300 of my own money (plus $20 for the HDMI cable).

Why? Three big reasons:

1. The Apple TV has a puny 40GB hard drive. I mean, the largest-capacity iPod comes with 80GB. What gives?

2. It doesn't actually offer any content in HD - except for HD content I've created and added into iTunes myself. And it has to be formatted as MPEG-4 or H.264.

3. You can't make purchases on the fly from the device; you have to buy (and download) all content on your Mac from the iTunes Store first, then transfer it or stream it to the Apple TV. That's too many steps.

Actually, I've got a fourth reason: The picture quality just wasn't that impressive. On standard-definition stuff, it's fine. I mean, standard def is standard def. For letterbox movies, though? The experience was just so-so. Shrug-worthy even. I'm not one of those people who even cares that much about being able to see an actor's pores on the screen. I just want the picture to look as good as possible. Fuzzy patches and pixelation - which makes me feel like I'm watching YouTube - aren't good enough.

I'm sure Apple has big plans for the Apple TV - many of which are likely to address my four beefs above. But until then, I'll be keeping my 300 bucks in the bank. How about you?

Editor’s Blog: Leslie Hopes to Achieve Better Living Through Shareware

Leslie Ayers — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:48:03 -0500

The farther away I get from college, the more I realize how cool it was to be in an environment that was solely focused on the gathering and applying of knowledge. (And, um, beer.) Even though I don't have the time (or the inclination, while we're being honest) to get a second degree, I've recently realized that there are a lot of ways I can smarten up without spending tons of time or lots of money. Starting with these five free and low-cost Mac apps.

If you have any fave shareware or freeware apps like these, let me know in the comments.

1. World of Where ($15.95)
Geography whizzes need not apply. But if you are, like most Americans, light on your knowledge of world geography, World of Where can help you learn the lay of the planet in no time. Spend 20 minutes a day in World of Where and you'll soon know the difference between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, or the capital of Malta.

I started my geography lesson with the Middle East. So that's where Qatar is...

2. Who Said This? (free)

I love a witty or pointed quote. What's even better is knowing who spoke or wrote it. This freeware app quickly made me feel stupid (I rarely guessed the quote's author correctly). But it's nonetheless enjoyable.

Will Rogers! I should have known.

3. Before You Know It Lite (free)
It's depressing to admit how rusty my Spanish has gotten since college, when I minored in it. The "lite" version of Before You Know It comes with lists of animals in a dozen languages (including Dutch, Irish, and Polish) and you then download more lists from the BYKI website.

Now I know why farfalle (bowtie) pasta is so named.

4. Aquallegro (free)
If I had one wish for any children I might have in the future, it's that they be musically inclined. I played the violin and piano as a child but gave them up too soon - before I realized what I was missing. And I can't sing on key to save my life. (Patrons at the various karaoke bars where I have "performed" will attest to that.) Aquallegro can't help me sing better, but it's taught me a lot about music that I'd forgotten or never knew. Maybe one of these days I'll sign up for piano lessons.

I'm pathetic at recognizing notes by ear. But I vow to improve!

5. Organized Gourmet ($15)
There are quite a few flashy recipe organizers out there for the Mac, but I recently stumbled upon the decidedly unflashy but truly useful Organized Gourmet. The best part about it is not that it can store all of recipes and export them to my iPod, but that it also lets me plan out menus and combine ingredients for multiple recipes on the same list. It even comes with a couple dozen recipes preloaded - which all seem to be vegetarian. I'm not vegetarian, but for some reason I found this endearing.

It's beer tofu and strawberry shortcake for dinner tonight.

Editor's Blog: Leslie's Favorite Word Shortcuts

Leslie Ayers — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:43:12 -0500

Last week I had a little too much fun (and whiled away a little too much of the workday) coming up with a list of 10 things that make me happy on my Mac. Today I'm in a more businesslike mood.

That's probably because I have just spent that last hour digging through the recently shipped Mac|Life special issue: The Ultimate Mac How-To Handbook (available on newsstands soon). It's a fabulous collection of brand new and greatest-hits how-tos for getting more out of your Mac. And, lest you think it's all about work, there is a ton of cool stuff for working with music, video, and photos. But, because I'm a word/Word dork, I turned first to the how-to tantalizingly titled "Be More Productive with Microsoft Word" (p64).

One of our frequent freelancers (and former staffer) Cathy Lu contributed to this section, and she also wrote a collection of productivity tips included in our "Make Your Mac Your Own" feature in the February 2007 issue (p29). As far as I'm concerned, Cathy is a Word guru. She makes me (who lives and dies by shortcuts and customization tricks in this app) look like, well, an amateur. For example, Cathy saved me much hair-pulling by explaining how to create a custom toolbar in Word. See, in Word for Windows (go ahead, gnash your teeth), the keyboard shortcut for Save As is F12. In OS X it's...nothing. That's right, nothing. Now, I am not so dim that I didn't know I could set my own custom key command (Tools > Customize > Customize Keyboard). In OS X, as you may know, the default key command to call up the Dashboard is F12. And, of course, I know I can turn that off, too (System Preferences > Dashboard & Expose). But here's my problem: I'm so weirdly obsessive that I wanted to have it both ways - a fast way to get to the Save As command and using F12 to call up the Dashboard.

So I just made my own damn toolbar in Word. Which saves me way more time than the F12 key ever did. Here's how to do it:

Go to Tools > Customize > Customize Toolbars/Menus. Under the Toolbars tab, click New and give your new toolbar a name. Look at how pretty: It's a tiny empty toolbar that you can remake in your own image! Click the Commands tab and go through the list to add your desired commands to the toolbar by dragging them onto the toolbar. Once you're done, click OK and drag your new toolbar to the top of your screen. I've turned off all the other standard Word toolbars so all I see is my custom one. It makes me so happy! (Which, makes me feel kind of like I need to get out more.)

I use key commands for things like cutting and pasting, but the Paste Special feature requires you to click the toolbar, so I added it to my custom toolbar to avoid having to go up to the Edit menu every time.

The other custom tip I learned a long time ago and like to share with anyone I know (especially those whose files I have to open and edit at some point) is how to turn off some of Word's truly annoying auto features - particularly the one that makes a Web link a live Web link. I am a freak, I know, but I prefer cutting and pasting rather than launching websites from within Word. And, of course, I must have "smart" (curly) quotes and apostrophes turned on. (Except when I'm writing a blog post in Word, of course, since it's too much trouble to do the HTML formatting for curly quotes.)

To customize those and other AutoCorrect options, just go to Tools > AutoCorrect > AutoFormat As You Type. I advise turning off all the automatic formatting things that Word does to be "helpful." Personally, I don't like my software trying to predict what I want to do. I may be in the minority, but that's how I feel. Remember: Whatever you turn off (or on) here, you must also turn off or on under the AutoFormat tab as well.

For more great Word tips - plus another few dozen tips and 32 projects you can do on your Mac - be sure to check out the Ultimate Mac How-To Handbook!

Editor's Blog: 10 Things Leslie Does on Her Mac That Make Her Smile

Leslie Ayers — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:23:26 -0600

Believe it or not, I could have made this list longer. But I need to finish this blog post today (plus we're shipping the May issue, so it would look really bad if I neglected to proof pages because I'm too busy having fun on my Mac). If you're left wanting more, be sure to catch our May 2007 cover story, which will bring you 50 cool things you can do with your Mac or iPod, from dawn until dusk. (The May 2007 issue starts shipping to subscribers in late March and hits newsstands in early April.)

But until then, here are 10 things I've been doing on my Mac and iPod lately that have brought me great happiness:

1. Replacing the standard OS X icons with custom ones.

How freakin' adorable are these custom icons?

I know there are lots of websites out there that offer icons for Mac OS X. But my hands-down favorite is Pixelgirl Presents. She (I assume she's a she) has an amazing collection of icons, desktop images, and other graphical goodies on her site. Many are free; most are mind-blowingly well-done. She also runs a little store that sells an array of pop and modern art-y goods like crocheted iPod covers and a lamp with a shade that looks like flower petals.

I just replaced a bunch of my regular system icons with Felt Critters (top) and What Whats (bottom).

In case you're not into colorful felt...

2. Belting out "I Love Rock and Roll" with help from Griffin's iKaraoke.

Full disclosure: I have not yet had time to test Griffin's iKaraoke. But I will, oh I will. And when I do, the first song I'll sing is my go-to, "I Love Rock N' Roll" by none other than Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. For now, just anticipating the fun I'm going to have this weekend is putting a smile on my face. Our downstairs neighbors probably won't be as happy.

3. Spinning the plate on the Dine-O-Matic widget.

Get this fun and handy widget and never agonize over where to eat again.

This widget is a quick, fun way to decide where to eat for dinner. It's the perfect thing for when you're so hungry you'd eat a piece of cardboard (which impairs your ability to choose a restaurant), or if you're just indecisive, like me. Get it free from Iconfactory.

4. Tracking and rating my favorite wines in WineCellar.

There are quite a few OS X apps out there to track a wine collection. But I tend to drink the wines in my collection, and I care more about trying to remember which ones I liked (and why I liked them) than keeping track of unopened bottles. (And I don't think one wine rack's worth really counts as a "collection" anyway.)

That's why discovering WineCellar - a shareware app that lets you track your favorite wines in a database on your Mac and transfer the info to your iPod - brought joy to my heart and made me wish it was 6 o'clock already so I could go home and pour myself a generous glass of Hess California Collection Cabernet Sauvignon. Three more hours to go...

5. Turning photos into works of art with Corel Painter.

See, I made this wood-cut painting all by myself!

Well, "work of art" might be a bit of an exaggeration. I'm not very good at using Corel Painter X yet, and since I don't have a pen tablet, I don't have a lot of manual control for sketching and such. But there are a lot of cool automatic features in Painter that let you take images and apply neat effects to them, like Woodcut, for example. It's a way to take your photos (especially those that aren't that great) and make them frame-able. Painter is a serious creative app (and priced accordingly at $419), but they offer a free trial, which I'd recommend if you feel like doing something artsy someday when you have an hour or so.

6. Backing up using a Terminal command.

You don't need a fancy backup utility; just memorize this Terminal command.

It's hard to pinpoint why this brings me so much joy. But it does.

All you need to do to back up is launch Terminal and type:
sudo rsync -aE --delete --progress ~ /Volumes/name_of_backup_location/name_of_folder

"Name_of_backup_location" should be the actual name of the external drive you're backing up to (remember to use underscores in the name instead of spaces, which can cause problems) and "name_of_folder" is the name of the folder where all your backed up stuff is going to. This particular Terminal command will show you a progress report as the contents of your home folder gets backed up to the external drive.

When you press Return, you'll be prompted for your admin password. There won't be any indication that it's registering your keystrokes, so be sure to type it in carefully and cleanly. Then press Return again and it should do its thang.

7. Listening to podcasts of "This American Life" from Audible.com.

Ira Glass is an acquired taste. But the stories he and his contributors dig up are almost always engrossing, often funny, and they help me feel less pessimistic about American society. And this way I don't have chain myself to a radio between noon and 1 pm on Saturdays (when "This American Life" airs on my local public radio station) because for 95 cents I can download the episodes to iTunes and listen to it whenever I please, on my Mac or iPod. If you're into audiobooks, Audible.com is the cheapest way to acquire those, too.

8. Taking stupid iSight pictures of self (or others) with crazy Photo Booth effects applied.

Like this one.

Or this one.

You get the idea. It's hours of totally pointless fun. Oops...better get back to work.

9. Keeping multiple iChat windows neat and tidy with tab separators, thanks to Chax.

I'll admit, I've had a hard time getting used to iChat. As Mac-cute as it is, it's not a very full-featured chat app. (And I know you'll skewer me for this, but when I was forced - forced, I say! - to use a Windows PC at work for so many years, I got used to AIM, which is way cooler and more robust for Windows than it is for Mac. Chax fattens up iChat in some areas, adding some features I never even knew I missed (since they weren't featured in AOL for Windows), particularly a tabbed chat window. I have a very strong aversion to a cluttered Mac desktop, so the option to keep multiple chats in a single window, on separate tabs, makes me very happy.

Now I just have one thing on my iChat wish list: a more noticeable (yet still inaudible) cue that someone wants to chat. AIM just pops that new chat window right up into your face, which is annoying in a way, but also impossible to miss.

10. Surfing the Web while watching TV.

It's the ultimate couch-potato experience! And at least I can do it much more securely, now that I'm using the AirPort Extreme to wirelessly siphon off my own DSL connection (instead of siphoning off those of my neighbors' the way I was before - thanks, neighbors!). Like watching TV and doing crossword puzzles (my other favorite living room multitasking combo), browsing the Web and watching "The Daily Show" make me feel somehow more active. Because, you know, I can get those online errands done while listening to Jon Stewart and John Hodgman discuss steroid use among pro athletes.

Editor's Blog: Leslie Goes on (Another) Rampage About Font Management in OS X

Leslie Ayers — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:48:01 -0600

As anyone who sits within 10 or so feet of my desk (and that basically includes all Mac|Life editorial staffers) knows, I have a major problem with the way OS X manages fonts. My neighbors have heard me complain - loudly - about this issue on many an occasion.

I'd like to know why 10.4.8 comes with Apple's own Font Book, but also bundles a way-out-of-date version of Extensis Suitcase? (Although I hear the latest version of Suitcase, Suitcase Fusion 12.1.3, is pretty rad. But I'm too cheap to shell out $100 for it.) Both Font Book and Suitcase are activated by default, and they conflict with each other in ways that are understandable yet also mystifying. While I resisted using Suitcase for many weeks, I finally succumbed - but only because it seemed the only way to easily access the fonts I need daily for Mac|Life. (I'll spare you the boring details about how there was this one font that Font Book just didn't take a shine to, and the only way I could install it was by surrendering to Suitcase.)

For someone like me who isn't a "creative professional" (meaning I don't spend every daylight hour in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design, or other graphics programs), there's just no need to make font management complicated. Why not just automatically activate all the fonts on my system when I start up (a la the Operating System That Shall Not Be Named)? That way, I wouldn't have to worry about certain fonts not showing up in Word or In Design. Launching either of those apps, which are not yet Universal, is no small undertaking. Having to quit then relaunch them because I realized too late that I'd forgotten to launch Suitcase and turn on the right fonts is one of those time sucks I'd just rather not get sucked into.

Thank goodness I finally got a clue and added Suitcase to my Login Items list (System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items). Now I don't have to remember to launch it before I start Word or any other app that uses fonts.

If you've been looking for a good font-management app, check out this thorough review of three different apps on ArsTecnica. Dave Girard suffered a lot of pain so the rest of us don't have to. (And, hallelujah, he also pointed out a font manager, Linotype FontExplorer X, that is good and FREE.)

So now that my font-management problems seem on their way to being solved, I'll take a minute to bring another one of my font-related crusades to light, namely, a fantasy that someday Comic Sans will be eliminated from the world of fonts. I am not sure why I hate this font so much. (You might assume it's because of its association with Microsoft, but, no that's not it at all.) It's just ugly, is all. And I just try to avoid ugliness. It's also goofy. And not in a good way. In a stupid way.

The folks at the website Ban Comic Sans feel my pain. They feel it so much they've started a real campaign to educate the public about the evils of this ridiculous font. The worst is when someone uses it in a business context - whether it's a presentation, signage, or even (as happened to me when I was offered a job at Future) in job-offer letters. Sadly, my mom uses Comic Sans in her personal and professional correspondence, despite my gentle (and then not-so-gentle) entreaties to stop. She says, "It's easy to read." But what about Arial, Book Antiqua, Century Schoolbook, Times New Roman, or (my favorite) Georgia? They're easy to read too - and easy on the eyes. Unlike Comic Sans.

What fonts do you hate? (Or love?)

Editor's Blog: Leslie Laments Steve Jobs's Push for Textbook-Free Schools

Leslie Ayers — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 05:11:35 -0600

Steve Jobs's inflammatory comments at a Texas education summit earlier this week got me thinking.

Before he makes statements like, "This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy," Steve needs to do his research. Because he's living in a fantasy world if he thinks running schools like companies will solve all their problems. Giving a principal carte blanche to hire the best and fire the worst doesn't take into account a common problem: That the principals and other administrators might not be up to snuff themselves.

I was also reminded of an email I received a few months ago from a reader in Anchorage, a technology coordinator for a large high school. He told me in passing how he had to turn down a grant offer of 400 new MacBooks for his school because he simply didn't have the tech admin resources to manage all those shiny new machines. Can you imagine? It's like handing out cans of soup to people who are hungry, then refusing to give (or even lend) them a can opener. Kind of shines a different light on Apple's 1 to 1 program, doesn't it?

But beyond bashing unions and insulting teachers, Steve said something else that gave me pause. According to the eSchoolNews article:

Before his comments on teacher unions, Jobs told the crowd about his vision for textbook-free schools. In the future, he predicated, traditional textbooks would be replaced by online resources that could be constantly updated, much like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

"I think we'd have far more current material available to our students and we'd be freeing up a tremendous amount of funds that we could buy delivery vehicles with computers, faster internet, things like that," Jobs said. "And I also think we'd get some of the best minds in the country contributing."

While I applaud the idea of making the most current information available to all schoolchildren - and working toward ridding school texts of cultural and religious bias (or at least presenting all the sides) - the idea of textbook-free schools scares the crap out of me.

Here's why: Being able to look up anything, anytime on Wikipedia (and find a cogent, reliable answer) is truly amazing. But I've long feared that a side effect of this instant access to information will give young people, especially students, the mistaken idea that locating information online is the same thing as becoming educated. In various editorial capacities, I've had enough students contact me over the years asking me to answer questions that amounted to completing a term paper for them - or at least doing a substantial amount of research on a complex topic so they didn't have to.

Does it bother anyone else that primary school students might equate "doing research" with typing a search term into Google?

Plus, what's the deal with technology evangelists dissing books? I couldn't live without my Mac. But it just can't replace a paperback (or, for that matter, a newspaper or a magazine) on my train ride to work.

The Internet is a beautiful thing. So is technology. But education and learning are as much about critical thinking as they are about assimilating information. Steve Jobs, of all people, should know that.