MacGyver’s Notebook
To any origami master, a crisp, single sheet of paper can be turned into a beautiful creation with just a few folds.  The Japanese art of taking a simple object and turning it into something beautiful is just that, artistic.  In TechLife, “the useful” is much more my area of expertise.  Television’s poster-child of usability was MacGyver, who seemingly every week used duct tape and a paperclip to defeat the bad guys.  One utility item MacGyver always carried was his Swiss Army knife, a multi-utility tool about the size of a cigarette lighter.

While there doesn’t appear to be a revival of the television show, the idea of a utility tool in all areas of life is always appealing.  I have a special treat for you today, something I call MacGyver’s notebook, also known as a PocketMod.

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Live is Better

While some people think live albums are just a sales ploy, most fans would much rather see their favorite band performing live than listen to a studio album.  Seeing all the members working together to create beautiful music onstage is part of the whole experience.

In the past “your band” could play together on stage, but when writing lyrics or tracking things like album sales, it was tough to keep everyone playing the same song at the same time.  Even worse while things like MySpace.com made creating a band editable site easier, creating a community was pretty difficult.  So our word for the day is collaboration, specifically online collaboration.    

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The recent explosion of email to techlife [at] dkworldwide dot com has been great. Thank you. I try to answer all the emails I get, and some are just interesting enough to get published.

Food for Katrina

Dear TechLife,
My son recently inquired about how to make the donated canned food for the Katrina victims taste good. I tried to explain that canned food is non-perishable, which was promptly replied to with, “you mean non-edible?” I decided to look online for good recipes to cook for him and there were a lot of sites, but I couldn’t find exactly what I needed. Any suggestions?
Hungrily yours,
Katie D.

More after the jump (more…)