The Mac is no stranger to education, and one of the best study applications available is Genius, a virtual flash card program. By utilizing repetition patterns, Genius aims to help in memorizing miscellaneous items.
Genius works by allowing for entering a series of questions and answers. Each of these questions can be assigned to categories with individual keywords. Then, it can be used to either learn terms or review them. It will darken the screen and ask the entered questions in a pattern that will help you remember them.
It determines the order of questions based on which answers you get correct and which are incorrect. The questions that you answer wrong will appear more often then those that you answered correctly. Once the quizzing process is over, the main Genius window displays the score for each question, and the overall percentage of understanding for the set of questions.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to easily take Genius on the go. There is no iPhone application available, and printing off flash cards is not easy. In fact, Genius has been rarely updated in the past few years and could become nonexistent in the near future.
So, I bought my iMac *maybe* 4 months ago. The day after I got it, the SuperDrive crapped out on me. I bought it refurbished, but they guaranteed it to be like new. Anyways, my question is this: I fixed it about 4 times after a disc kept getting stuck in there. It was a DVD. Brand new each time. I cannot afford to be without my Mac and cannot send it in. I have an external CD/DVD drive that was originally built for PC but it’s runs on my Mac. I would like to know what would be an affordable Mac friendly external drive that would play DVDs too. I don’t want to buy a SuperDrive for fear it will do the same thing again. Any help would be fantastic!
This one’s out of my league so I thought I’d throw it up the greater minds out on the tubes. Anyone out there got some advice for our pal John? I’m sure he as well as I and most likely many others will be eternally grateful. As always, I thank you in advance.
I spent the day test driving Wondershare DVD Creator for Mac, and I must say that it was time well spent. DVD creator is similar to iDVD, but it takes it to the next level of simplicity. (If that makes any sense).
The Wondershare DVD Creator was a pleasure to use. The interface is extremely intuitive, with no instruction I was able to start immediately encoding, and burning a DVD. The application, was able to encode, a quicktime movie file to mpeg format pretty quick.
The beauty of this application is everything is where you expect it to be, from adding the the movie content to creating the menu, the entire process is very satisfying. The price is also very enjoyable. $39.00 for a download version and $49.00 for the CD version. The site can be found here.
While I am an Apple fan, and I do own iLife 09, Wondershare DVD Creator beats iDVD hands down. Applications like this are the reason I switched to Macintosh in the first place.
The popular online reviews service, Yelp, has been ported to the iPhone as an application. If you’re familiar with the online service, you’ll know that Yelp allows you to find, rate, and contribute information to local businesses.
As an iPhone application, Yelp takes advantage of the Core Location feature built into the iPhone OS. It allows you to see the local businesses in relation to your current location and then find directions on how to get there.
Of course, it also allows you to write and see reviews, upload photos, bookmark favorites, see activity from friends, call businesses, and add quick tips. As a nice feature, the iPhone bookmarks sync with your online favorites.
When traveling, or simply trying to find something nearby, the Yelp app excels. It’s fast, works well, and has the right features. Best of all, it is completely free and available for download in the app store.
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The popular online reviews service, Yelp, has been ported to the iPhone as an application. If you’re familiar with the online service, you’ll know that Yelp allows you to find, rate, and contribute information to local businesses. 
