In case you'd like to reconfigure your Mac from the Setup Assistant screen - a bit like the new resolutions we make, and break, on January 1 - or you'd like to give your Mac your 10 year-old niece, here are a couple of tips to tell the Mac to appear to be straight out of the box.

The hard way:

1. Restart in Single User mode (restart holding down apple-S)
2. type:
3. $ mount -uw /
4. $ rm -R /Library/Preferences/
5. $ rm -R /Users/username/
6. $ rm /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/username.plist
7. $ rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

The easy way:

1. Dowload Clean Install.app and run it from one Mac to the one you want to "clean" in Target Disk Mode (hold down the "t" key as you startup, and connect with FireWire).

Unfortunately, the easy way didn't work for me. So, to paraphrase Elvis, "I did it the hard way."

Alan November talks about the Net Generation from TVO's Big Ideas. A great quote:

Don't ban Facebook. I was talking to a CIO of a province that banned Facebook.
I said, "Why did you do that." He said, "Well, because young people are wasting their time at work."
And I said, "Well, if young people are wasting their time at work, that's a management problem not a technology problem. That has to do with motivation, supervision, and workflow. "
And I said, "What was the effect of banning Facebook?"
"Well, everybody went to MySpace."
[...] It said to all the young people: we don't understand your technology, we don't get collaboration, and we don't trust you.

Replace "work" with "school."

MacLife had a great article with 7 tips for taking better iPhone photos. My favourites are tips numbers 3 and 4, namely, to avoid camera shake by steadying yourself and your arm before taking a picture, and remembering that the camera takes the picture as you release the shutter button, not as you depress it. The new iPhone 3Gs improves both these issues through hardware and software improvements, but it doesn't hurt to improve the humanware either.

I'm not a meek conformist, I'm a tired non-conformist.
- Rod Sterling, The Twilight Zone

"Having lost sight of our goals,
we redouble our efforts."
- Mark Twain

Digital citizenship (or really just citizenship) - learning how to function effectively (civilly, ethically, and collaboratively) as an individual and in community (online and offline) - is key to a child's safety and well-being at school, online, or anywhere. I'm talking about psychological, social, and reputational safety as much as the physical kind. [...] The other essential half of online safety, I think, is *new* media literacy - media literacy that includes critical thinking about what one says, produces and uploads as much as what one reads, consumes, and downloads in all environments, online and offline, fixed and mobile.

- Anne Collier, http://www.netfamilynews.org/