I believe strongly there are things in this world that you cannot attach a price to. That objects can become more than the sum of their parts, that great design inspires great experiences, that inanimation gains life through knowing, better than the user him/herself, what it is ultimately designed to do. This car had a life. A graduation gift from my father, it was priceless not because of performance, handling or looks, but because it represented something a father I was only beginning to know at the time spent so much of his time and energy to find… for a time in my life that I worked so to make it through… in a way only it could deliver.

Someday science will catch up to reality. Engineers will invent materials that have a life of their own. Steel frames with a heartbeat, locatable by GPS anytime, anywhere. Someday they’ll phone home faster than some chop-shop can isolate and inactivate them. Someday the glass chips they leave behind will tell a story. Someday technology will be smarter.

Till then I wait for a faceless insurance company to put a price tag on a father’s love and a phenomenal five year driving experience.

Priceless.

My new roommie’s got a computer, a TV, a VCR, and a sleeping bag. Roomie says, “My M.O. is that everything I need should fit in the trunk of my car” Sure, no complaints about the new HDTV, stereo or futon in the apartment, but still… how great is that? He packs and moves like geese - anywhere, anytime. I shoot cross-state 3x/week with laptop, Nano, and cell. Production. Education. Communication. What else do you need, really?

Lao-tzu once said, “Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.”

Perhaps it’s time to eBay some complexity.

In fact, I did some research and guess what… remember last year’s standard of “thinness” in the tech world (Motorola’s uber-swank Razr phone)? Consider this…

iPod nano’s 1/2 the weight of the Razr
iPod nano’s 1/2 the thickness of the Razr
iPod nano’s battery runs more than 2-3x as long as the Razr’s

Full flavor. Zero fat. Make no mistake about it geek peeps, this is the Jenny Craig of the iPod world. I’m warning you… don’t pick this baby up unless you’re ready to throw down.

iPod nano = geek lust incarnate.

In the morning, my iPod and my JBL OnTour speakers provide my shower/get dressed podcast. Next is typically another podcast via my iPod while I walk to class. I try to find an especially good one to help me take my mind off of the fact that I’m even at school over the summer. I usually play my last podcast for the day straight out of my PowerBook while I check my email and such for the night.

One of my other secret passions is online gambling. the absolute best resource for finding online casinos is Hypercasinos.com, but anyway, this post was about podcasts, so I won’t go into deatil about that.

If you haven’t tried out podcasting yet, I highly recommend it. It puts you in control of what news you want to hear, and there are a lot of talented radio personalities behind many of these shows. This is a concept that is here to stay, and I am pretty excited about it.

The thing is that planners are great if all you want to do is budget your own time, but these days we’re connected with others in ways never dreamed of even a couple years ago. Our network is key. To succeed as one, we must let fail none. Hey, if I’m going to spend the time to put all my class exams, dates, and assignments down in a calendar, why not share the wealth a bit with the other 30 or so pour souls in my class, right?

This is exactly why I really love Apple iCal. iCal’s so much more than just a planner, it’s also the absolute best way to share the wealth with others, get your classmates in your network, and earn serious brownie points when you’re looking for that ace-in-the-hole study partner come midterms.

To get started, create a new calendar for each class you’re taking this semester. Put in all major exams/assignments. Proceed the same way with each of your classes. When finished, use the FILE -> NEW CALENDAR GROUP to keep all your classes together. Now your secret weapon… use the CALENDAR -> PUBLISH… command to share out each of your class schedules. Send the links provided to each of your classmates. If you don’t have a DotMac account, check with your school to see if you’ve got any web space assigned to you and how to access it. Most schools tie this in with your email account and you can use your email login/pass to post to it via iCal. You won’t get all the great web publishing functions of DotMac, but don’t forget… even Windows users can access the ical file format using Netscape or Mozilla’s Calendar or Sunbird projects.

Get organized, give the best gift: time, and get that Bio 101 geek on your side from day one.

Bluetooth Rocks.

I’m on the road 3 hours/day and having a wireless headset with voice-activated dialing is just insane. Press a button the side of the headset, “Say a command”, “Call Jane McFane at home”, “calling…” Talk about a great way to stay focused on the road - every phone should do this!

Better yet, click in the menubar, choose send file, and I’m popping my favorite mp3’s to the phone as ringtones and pics as picture ID’s… I can browse all the photos, videos, or voice memos I’ve recorded on the phone, then just drag them to the desktop to save…. All my Address Book contacts are immediately on the phone… All my iCal events synced up perfectly… And the real clincher? I can even dial-up to the internet on my laptop wirelessly while the phone’s still in my pocket at speeds rivaling DSL.

I don’t how they do this on Windows, but no way there’s this level of integration and ease of use. Next time someone says buy a PC if you want the latest and greatest, ask them how to show you how to setup a Bluetooth phone that sync contacts, events, music, and photos with a manufacturer that ships every one of their laptops with Bluetooth built-in and ready to rock with zero driver downloads or hassle whatsoever.

It is fun to come back to school and see what things have changed, and what things will never change. This year my campus has been renovating a ton, so that’s pretty exciting to see. Plus with renovated buildings comes new computer labs, which is always fun for those of us who get excited about that sort of thing.

In any event, this should be a great semester to start a great year. Make it your best yet, I know I plan to.

As I sit here instant messaging my friend just a couple minutes after she posted her question, I was forced to contemplate how expedient technology has made us. For communication we’ve got cell phones, text messaging, instant messaging… heck even with email if you leave your Mail application open it is nearly as fast as an instant message. To instantly entertain us we have broadband internet, RSS, podcasts, On-Demand cable, the iTunes Music Store, and my personal favorite - dvds that don’t require rewinding.

Someday we’ll tell our kids stories about how we had to spend 10 minutes rewinding a “tape� before we could watch a movie at home. Or about having to physically go to the store to buy a “cassette� when we wanted our favorite music artists’ new album. Maybe we’ll leave out the part about having to flip over the cassette halfway through the loop.

I hope everyone has enjoyed reading over the past several months, and I hope you’ll continue to read as the other student bloggers try to help you find ways to get the most out of your Mac and your college experience.

For my fellow graduates, I’m going crib a goodbye from novelist and radio personality Garrison Keillor: “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”

Example: that little shuffle switch on the back.

I’m in my car a lot and I often like to cram up on some audiobooks on the way to/from work. For that, I just setup a playlist with my audiobook right at the top and set Shuffle to play in sequence. However, when I get to work though I want to hear some music, right? For that I just switch over to shuffle mode and Shuffle’s smart enough to know that I only want to hear music. Heading back home? Flick the switch back to sequential mode, tap on play 3x and Shuffle resets to the first track (my audiobook), right where I left off before.

That’s the beauty of the Shuffle system. It’s so small I can wear it wherever I go, the shuffle mode finds music I never knew I had, and (combined with the thousands of audiobooks on iTunes) it’s anytime, anywhere learning.

Swank.