With producer Stuart Price in London and The Killers in Las Vegas, there was only one way for Day & Age to come of age. Using a remote Logic-based songwriting workflow, band members recorded their ideas in Logic then shared them via email and iDisk with each other and Price, who, a continent away, added drum loops, keyboard lines, and other effects to the songs before sending them back to Vegas.

If you want to get someone a phone and still surprise them, Jefferson Graham (usatoday.com) offers some advice: “Buy a gift card.” He notes that you can now purchase “a special ‘iPhone 3G Gift Card’ in any denomination you choose.” And when redeemed, he explains, a representative at the Apple Store will “customize the home screen, personalize the ring tone” and perform other setup chores.

To capture, process, and tag images for a recent National Geographic shoot, David Liittschwager took Aperture out to the beach. After all, that’s where the nudibranch hang out. There, Liittschwager tethered his Canon 1Ds Mark II to a shrouded MacBook Pro and used Aperture to make on-the-fly light and focus adjustments as he shot. How else has Liittschwager come to depend on Aperture for his work?