One of Michael Sikorsky’s first business ventures, when he was seven years old, was what he calls Desk Sales. “I would open up the drawer where I put all my top possessions and auction them off to my brother and sister. I would bundle items or hold back items till the next desk sale. I loved it.”

Flash forward to 2009. Sikorsky has started six businesses, made two exits and was forced out of a company he founded. He is an angel investor, software programmer and self-professed hair product enthusiast. And he’s done all of this with a computer engineering degree from the University of Alberta and the help of books. Thousands and thousands of books. Based in Calgary, Sikorsky has created what you might call his own personal MBA-style reading list and, in the open-source tradition he comes from, posted it on Google Books for everyone to see.

Sikorsky’s list offers a peek inside the mind of a successful young entrepreneur. Unlimited talked with him about how he got started, which books have influenced him most and why he doesn’t read in the bathroom anymore.

Were you an obsessive reader as a child?
No, it didn’t really hit me till around 12. Until then, I think I had read – by volition – a few Encyclopedia Brown books. I got passionate about reading when I realized how it helped me do stuff, like learning how to program computers.

You’re not just a serial reader, but also a serial entrepreneur.
The first real company I started, when I was 26, was Servidium, which ThoughtWorks bought when I was 28. After selling Servidium, I entered what I like to call my post-exit depression. You’re supposed to be happy, so, you feign it, but on the inside I felt like my “meaning bubble” had just been popped.

Why did you post your reading lists on Google?
I love what Google is doing for books. And I knew that putting my books online would help other entrepreneurs. Most people guard their book lists or forget what books helped them grow. Being able to search the books I’ve read for quotes, for instance, is really powerful. When I search my books list for the word “enzyme,” I find one of my favourite quotes, by Gérard Bricogne: “Mankind is a catalyzing enzyme for the transition from a carbon-based to a silicon-based intelligence.” [This appears as an epigraph in Mark Buchanan’s book Nexus.]

Would you have learned as much only from school?
Reading is how I learned pretty much everything I know, so if you said I could only have one of the two, I would pick reading. But I loved university. Reading plus school plus doing is the secret combination. And doing is at least 50 per cent of the equation. Doing gives context to everything you read in a book.

What do you read in the bathroom?
I used to read in the bathroom. Now my 18-month-old twin daughters always want to come in there with me. Basically, we floss and do makeup.

If you were to write a business book, what would it be called?
Opposite George: The George Costanza Guide to Business. The premise is, basically, to do things opposite to what people expect. Why start a company when you’re 40? Start one when you’re 20. U

I have an ever-growing list of the most depressing books I’ve ever read. Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates, topped the list for a long time. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman has a place. The Da Vinci Code makes an appearance, but for reasons unrelated to subject matter. (That book is this popular? Really?)

Now I have a new addition. The Ego Boom: Why the World Really Does Revolve Around You, by Canadian Business editor Steve Maich and Maclean’s staffer Lianne George, thoroughly got me down. That isn’t a bad thing. I probably needed to read it. A lot of people, from generation X right on down through generations Y and Z (once they’re out of grade school) need to read it.

Ego Boom documents the rise of the “You Sell.” Maich and George explain, “Where marketers used to primarily sell products or brand values, they’re now selling You – an idealized, self-actualized version of yourself – back to you.” Take L’Oreal’s recent slogan tweak. The company’s catchphrase once was, “Because I’m worth it.” Now that first person singular has been replaced by the second person: “Because you’re worth it.” Or consider that Time’s Person of the Year for 2006 was none other than You.

Marketers have changed their messages from aspirational to affirmational because they’ve realized consumers are increasingly narcissistic. Such self-esteem building has created a generation of individuals who each believe they are unique – too unique for mass-produced computers, entertainment, or spirituality. Companies like L’Oreal reaffirm this trend by showing how products will enhance that individuality. It’s a compelling argument, but it makes me wonder if there is too much mythic power attributed to large corporations.

New media, meanwhile, has created its own constellations that revolve around you. In a chapter titled “That’s Show-Me Business,” Maich and George propose that the “me media revolution” means that “by selling us on our own individuality, putting a feeling of control in our hands, big business has engineered a new golden age based on the same old star system.”

What makes this especially depressing for me is when my generation (the millennial, generation Y, generation next, whatever you want to label us folks born from the late 1970s to the early ’90s) is singled out as the most self-involved of the bunch. We know the least, we participate in society the least, and we think the highest of ourselves.

Maybe we (and you) need the reality check of a book like Ego Boom, distressing only because it forces us to re-evaluate our relationships with ourselves, with each other and with consumerism.

A little bit of humble pie never hurt anyone. Case in point: Kanye West. “The danger,” the authors astutely point out, “is when the ascendancy of ‘You’ crowds out any sense of ‘us.’” And if the message is hard to swallow, remember it’s because we’re worth it. U

+ Enter to win one of 22 copies of Ego Boom. Contest runs from December 1 – 31, 2009.

+ Listen to Unlimited’s CareerJoy blogger Alan Kearns’ conversation with Steve Maich and Lianne George.

Hard to believe, but there are places where Internet signals are as weak as Heidi Montag’s music career. In fact, as I write this, I am vacationing in a cabin in the Quebec countryside where the only modern conveniences are running water and electric lights. I have no access to email, let alone my favourite blog, thesartorialist.com, by fashion photographer Scott Schuman. Better known as the Sartorialist, Schuman has earned a following for his street verité photography.

Fortunately I have a copy of Schuman’s shiny new book for a fashion fix. The Sartorialist is, essentially, a picture book, which makes “reading” all 512 pages a breeze. It’s surprisingly small, but substantial – like a New York deli sandwich on thick bread with extra meat. On the cover, a fluorescent orange sticker taunts me with a quote from Mario Testino: “The place to be seen!” Testino is one of the great fashion photographers of all time. I am instantly impressed, but a little insecure. Would my last season sundress even be worthy of Schuman’s snaps? Yet as I flip through images of the Sartorialist’s impeccable street fashion, I am inspired.

This is Schuman’s intention. We’re invited to look at his photography as a social study rather than an index on the latest trends like cheeky bowties and brogues. Still, among the hundreds of photos, I can’t keep count of all the sockless men and dark-rimmed glasses shot everywhere from Stockholm to Moscow. It somehow makes the world seem very, very small. Unlike other street fashion bloggers (think the Face Hunter), Schuman shoots a range of people, from slouchy 18-year-olds sauntering down the streets of Paris to dapper silver-haired gentleman in Milan. This isn’t a giant hipster love-in; Schuman, who also shoots for GQ, Fantastic Man and Vogue, hits a higher note of sophistication.

The book’s older Internet sibling also features such beautiful, naturally lit portraits, and viewing them online is easy and simple – but also ephemeral. We scroll through blogs so rapidly that the individual portraits become blurs; this makes the Internet a perfect medium for people Schuman describes as “visually greedy.” The physicality of a book instantly changes how we interact with his photography. Where the blog version is a drive-thru, the paperback is a sit-down dinner, one I can savour. And it’s delicious.

Schuman provides charismatic insights about his subjects as artfully curated as his photos. In one instance, he includes a charming story about a baby-faced kid in $1,200 sneakers. Slightly outside the photographic frame, Schuman writes, the boy’s mother holds his ice cream cone as he strikes a pose worthy of Esquire.

The Sartoralist book leaves me no less visually greedy, and I’m left wanting more. What is the full story behind the gentleman sporting hand-painted wingtips? Or the hat-tilting Hasid in Williamsburg? Perhaps once I’m out of the backwoods and can access WiFi I’ll go to the blog to find out. I still need my daily fix.

“Crack a book, you lazy son-of-a-bitch.” _Fez

The likeable fount of slacker wisdom from That ’70s Show never dispensed with business advice, per se, but there’s no disputing his directive. (We’re pretty sure his bookshelf was filled with picture books.) The fall crop from publishers has many Oprah-inspired how-to offerings that are as enticing as an MSG-laced bowl of noodles. Here are two alternatives for those with a reading level higher than a fifth grader.

The Predictioneer’s Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future
Some people rely on fortune tellers. Others – devotees of game theory, for instance – look for something a little more scientific. Like Bruce Bueno de Mesquita’s book, the Predictioneer’s Game. The author, a professor of politics at New York University has built a reputation as a kind of Nostradamus by using game theory to explain such political challenges as when Iran will get the bomb.

In Predictioneer (the title refers to how you can both predict and engineer an event), he focuses on more pedestrian issues – how to hire a CEO, anticipate corporate fraud, advance your career. However, Predictioneer is more about strategy than self-help.

Can computer algorithms help predict events? Estimates put this game theorist’s success rate at 90 per cent. (A consultant for the CIA, Bueno de Mesquita’s most notable predictions – 12 years before the event – was that China would reclaim Hong Kong.) Which makes us wonder if we’re better off ditching the fortune teller and heading to the bookstore. Or put another way, reading your fortune costs about $25. For another $6, you can buy this book.
Geek level: 9 out of 10

Enough Bull: How to Retire Well without the Stock Market, Mutual Funds, or Even an Investment Advisor
First of all, our sympathies to anyone over 48½ who was thinking of retiring even remotely soon – what with the sharp nosedive most investments took (40 per cent was the figure a few people lamented when they checked their statements and then, one assumes, started throwing things).

Those of us in our 20s and 30s also don’t have any money. But then, we didn’t have any to begin with. Chartered accountant and bestselling author David Trahair dangles a tasty carrot in front of we millennials and gen y-ers with Enough Bull, a contrarian’s account of how to buy an island in the French Polynesians and spend all day drinking daquiris and reading Infinite Jest.

OK, Trahair doesn’t present this exact scenario. He does present some scenarios that are meant to provoke easily provoked investment geeks: Only buy GICs; sock away only 40 per cent of your pre-retirement income, not the 70 per cent most investment advisors suggests; pay down your mortgage before you contribute to RRSPs. Enough Bull is for risk-averse would-be investors, those who don’t want to pay an investment salesperson – ahem, advisor – whose job it is to sell, sell, sell.

Buying GICs may sound so basic that it surely won’t pay off – this is an investment strategy that seems aimed at the slackers among us. But when boomers are seeing the gains of the past 20 years wiped out, this particular carrot looks mighty tasty.
Geek level: 8.5 out of 10. U

We’ve all encountered it: Bumf masquerading as business advice. Predictors of such literature include garish dust jackets, cover quotes by people you have never heard of (but who always seem to have a PhD), and the use of words and phrases like “millionaire” and “how to make money doing [insert some form of commerce here].” It’s time for a different scorecard, time for a critical analysis that looks beyond the shining lights of national bookstores, newspaper conglomerates and daytime television. Meet the Bad Business Book Scorecard, an exclusive download available for the bargain-basement price of free ($0 is the future of business, after all).

Have you read a bad business book? Download and complete Unlimited’s scorecard now. Send us the PDF and your review could appear in an upcoming story.

THE GET RICH QUICK BOOK
If they ever need a dust jacket blurb for another printing of this slim book, I offer up this assessment: “Tired droning about following your dream, peppered with empty promises of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

*BOOM BOOM POW

THE GET WHAT YOU WANT BOOK
I eat books like this for breakfast. The book’s contents in 43 words: Negotiate for a salary that matches your skills and experience. How? Research salary using that new-fangled thing called the internet, zone in on an appropriate range for your skill set, then execute your plan by asking for what you’re worth.

THE ESTABLISH A MEDIA EMPIRE BOOK
Two Harvard undergrads and best friends make their first billion in attempts to gain social acceptance and increase their chances with the opposite sex, thereby ditching the 9-5 and starting the business of their dreams.

Have you read a bad business book? Download and complete Unlimited’s scorecard now. Send us the PDF and your review could appear in an upcoming story.

Douglas Tompkins, who co-founded North Face and Esprit, had a vision while hiking in Patagonia. Already a multimillionaire, he was inspired to combine his love of the outdoors and his assets and become the second highest private land purchaser in the world. With a “buy low, sell never” approach, he started a journey towards mass sustainability. “He understood what Pablo Neruda, Chile’s Nobel laureate poet, meant in writing, ‘Anyone who hasn’t been in the Chilean forest doesn’t know this planet,’” recounts Edward Humes in the compelling new book Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet. Tompkins, who already had something of a reputation as an environmentalist — publicizing his green message in company catalogues, building urban parks and supporting conservation groups — went on to give up consumerism, leave Espirit, buy (and donate) large swathes of land in Chile and move south. He became, in Humes’ words, a “green sugar daddy.”

In Eco Barons, Humes tells the inspiring stories of “eco-preneurs” like Tompkins to show where a green vision can take us and what means we need to get there. Consider Roxanne Quimby, who co-founded Burt’s Bees. She started by selling beeswax candles at craft fairs in 1984 and went on to make sales of US$250 million by 2006. (Burt’s Bees is now owned by Clorox.) Although Quimby and Tompkins and many of the other people profiled — Ted Turner shows up — had sweet nest eggs to fund their endeavours, money wasn’t entirely the point.

Humes understands the overload of statistics that we’re presented with and puts faces and stories to those statistics. He humanizes the environmental movement by detailing the long, complex journeys that these successful business people have made and the different approaches they’ve taken — from the lone wolves to the community agitators. The result is a business book without the jargon.

I don’t, like Tompkins or Turner, have millions or even thousands of dollars to invest in conservation. I am the “use fewer Post-it notes” type. And, naturally, I take other steps. I drive a low-emissions car, I use cloth bags for groceries and consider the importance of a memo before I print it. What else can I do? No business book would be complete without an action plan. Humes passes on some common suggestions, along with one stats-based idea that surprised me: Lose 10 pounds. If Americans alone did so, they’d save 350 million gallons of jet fuel a year.

Eco Barons is entertaining and full of inspiring stories, but the examples set by the people Humes profiles are difficult to emulate. I can’t, say, take my helicopter to survey the land my money helped conserve. However, these eco barons set precedents for how I consume and provide me with an investment opportunity. By buying their products, I am investing in their vision and, my own small way, helping them achieve a greater green. U

Gaping Void blogger Hugh MacLeod doodles wisdom about work-life on the back of business cards. He’s turned those visual brainwaves into a new book that is part manifesto, part guidebook to unlocking your Creativity. Some are prosaic, some are things we all know but could use a refresher on, but all are choice bits of insight to something deeper and more meaningful than a corner office – the keys for opening the door to career sovereignty. Here are few I found. Read the book to find yours.

Gaping Void author Hugh MacLeod's corporate pyramid scheme

1. The secret to success = me putting the hours in. Quote/Unquote: Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it’s managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, instance, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong, they are stupidly wrong.
2. Doing what I love will be an emotional and financial roller coaster. Quote/Unquote: Good ideas have lonely childhoods… They alter the power balance in relationships. That is why good ideas are always initially resisted.
3. Someone took my crayons away and I’d like them back. Quote/Unquote: Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
4. Always keep sex and cash under your pillow. Supporting thesis: The Sex & Cash Theory (page 32).
5. Human tapeworms have been feasting on my creativity. Evidence: The modern, scientifically conceived corporation (pages 35 through 37), that is churning out what MacLeod describes as non-autonomous thinkers. The “I don’t know, what do you think” people.
6. It looks like I’m going to have to climb the mountain. Quote/Unquote: Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb. Let’s say you never climb it. Do you have a problem with that?
7. I need a red marker to draw my red line. Quote/Unquote: The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do from what you are not.
8. Work for a boss who lets you hunt the woolly mammoth. Quote/Unquote: Wanting to change the world is not a noble calling, it’s a primal calling.
9. Mess around with insanely high ambitions. Quote/Unquote: One part of me thinks it’s good for kids to mess around with insanely high ambitions, maybe one or two of them will make it.
10. Careful when you’re messing around with insanely high ambitions. Quote/Unquote: Looking back I see a lot of screwy kids who married themselves to their “Art!” for the wrong reasons.
11. DIY.

Hugh Macleod’s book is published by Penguin Canada. His next book is tentatively called Evil Plans and will have insights gleaned from a “Seth Godin-meets-Jack Kerouac” road trip.

Sometimes life is simpler by the book. Financial planning, for instance. Or, for that matter, any kind of planning. Since I have difficulties in these areas, I set out to find help. I came across John Eckblad and David Kiel’s book If Your Life Were a Business, Would You Invest in It? The 13-Step Program For Managing Your Life Like the Best CEOs Manage Their Companies. I figured what works for CEOs will work for me.

Illustration by Scott Dutton

STEPS 1-3: THE ANNUAL REPORT
I am my own stakeholder, so the first step of my life-changing management program is to map out expenditures of both time and money. “By reflecting on your past year’s activities and financial expenditures,” the authors write, “you can discover important realities that will give you a new understanding of what you’re doing and what you care about.”

The authors make an obvious value proposition: people with money and lots of friends are happier than those with neither. I review not only my profit and cost centres, but also my customer satisfaction – the customer and company, in this case, being me. Still, in a world that is over-complicated and under-compensated, the money part of this equation is difficult to balance. Twenty-seven pages into the book, I look at my last bank statement and am discouraged. (Hence the authors’ tips on how to deal with the emotional impact of the annual report.)

STEPS 4-5: THE MARKET REPORT
In these steps, the company (me) considers what key stakeholders (spouse, sibling, child, parent, broker, colleague, etc.) want and need from the company. I’m also looking at major trends – technologic, political, social, economic – that will likely affect my business. This is where the program gets fuzzy. To get in touch with my stakeholders I should “reflect and observe” their actions, put myself in their shoes and, fuzziest of all, “rent a significant other,” which involves presenting potential scenarios involving my stakeholders to a friend for feedback (aka going for coffee). I live a simple life – no kids, no spouse. I can’t help but wonder if a pet goldfish counts as a stakeholder.

STEPS 6-8: THE STRATEGIC PLAN
Setting goals and planning for the future is an integral part of managing my life as a business. To do this, Eckblad and Kiel have devised a “Strategy Matrix” to prioritize my goals. This matrix uses dogs (goals that are good in no shape), cash cows (goals that are only relevant to the present), rising stars (goals that are relevant to the present and near future) and stars (goals that are relative only in the future). I jot down a few of my goals. Get my laundry done, find a dress to wear to an upcoming wedding, finish this review… Three quarters of my life, it turns out, is within the first two quadrants – no-good goals and immediate goals. Fine if you die young, but happy. Not so good for the long-term viability of your personal business.

Lesson: Be future thinking.

STEPS 9-13: THE BUSINESS PLAN

The final steps of the program tie together everything I’ve done so far. My final goal, the authors say, is to build personal net worth, not the net worth of your money – in other words, your net worth is about more than the balance in your savings account. The authors outline 10 business principles, which include the confusing: Rediscover the true meaning of hijacked business vocabulary. And the practical: Who needs profit when you have cash flow?

Since my monetary assets are modest, I look for ways to apply these principles to my daily life, like flossing my teeth (an act I can perform today) to better my oral hygiene for years to come (my long-term goal). Somewhere along the line I will be able to firmly apply a few of these principles to build my assets.

THE BOTTOM LINE
Like many self-help programs, If Your Life Were a Business is a complex system of dos and don’ts and rules. Thirteen steps seem a little extreme, seeing that alcoholics only have 12. Still, I learned a few things. Newfound knowledge:

• A degree in cartography would have been useful to help map out my Life Business Plan.
• I got more value from reading the quote on my Starbucks cup this morning. To wit, “The Way I See It #26”: “Failure is hard, but success is far more dangerous. If you’re successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever.” – Po Bronson

Sitting on my kitchen floor with a chopstick and a pickle, I was well into Exploration #53 when the realization hit that I was six explorations away from ending one of the best books I’ve picked up in years. How to Be an Explorer of the World is the latest book to inspire creative thinking by illustrator-turned-guerilla artist Keri Smith. One sleepless night Smith created a list of things she learned and discovered a parallel between the way artists and scientists analyze things. That discovery served as the catalyst for this gem, which is based on the premise that at any given moment, no matter where you are, there are hundreds of things around you that are interesting and worth documenting. Here’s what I discovered by following Smith’s 13 guidelines on how to be an explorer of the world.
_Rachel Singh

1// Always be looking. I looked. At my street, at the trees, at my neighbours staring at me staring at the cracks in the sidewalk, then I went home and googled cement. Discovery(ies): A building can be made to function like a tree and you really can fry an egg on the sidewalk.

2// Consider everything alive and animate. OK! Discovery(ies): Studies show that yelling at inanimate objects will not make them do what you would like them to do.

3// Everything is interesting. Look closer. I watched paint dry and recorded everything I saw in detail. Discovery(ies): Watching paint dry is like doing yoga – once the incessant chatter in your head stops, you go into a meditative state where enlightenment transpires.

4// Alter your course often. It looked like this: YMCA > Police Station > (Oh!) Chocolate Shop > Stadium > Hammock. Discovery(ies): Boys > Boys (in uniform) > BOYS and chocolate > B-O-Y-S, B-O-Y-S, B-O-Y-S > Conclusion that it’s time for me to reconnect with the often-ignored details around me.

5// Observe (for long and short terms). I did this with a bowl of navel oranges. Discovery(ies): The bottom of a navel orange looks like a belly button, or a navel, which is where the name came from.

6// Notice the stories going on around you. Story: Your finger size can be linked to your earning power. Discovery(ies): According to Cambridge scientists, financial traders whose ring fingers are longer than their index fingers make the most money.

7// Notice patterns, make connections. See No. 5.

8// Document your findings (field notes) in a variety of ways. Studied the ShamWow. Discovery(ies): Graphing the effectiveness of the ShamWow is the only data that comes close to proving that it holds 12 times its weight in liquid.

9// Incorporate indeterminacy. Hello, Exploration #53. Discovery(ies): A pickle does a better job than a chopstick of wearing the pants of a writing utensil.

10// Observe movement. I watched Space, particularly Venus. Discovery(ies): Venus is peculiar. For example, a day on Venus lasts longer than a year on Venus.

11// Create a personal dialogue with your environment. Talk to it. See No. 2

12// Trace things back to their origins. My brother Gavin. George Bush. ThighMaster. Discovery(ies): Mum & Dad… too many cocktails =  Gavin. Voters… too many cocktails = George Bush. Suzanne Somers… too many cocktails = ThighMaster.

13// Use all of the senses in your investigations. Me + Blindfold + Kids x3 + Sugar + Scissors + Arts & Crafts Project. Discovery(ies): When paying attention to a wide variety of different information, there seems to be a fine line between creativity and psychosis. U

Giving: How Each Of Us Can Change The World
by Bill Clinton [Alfred A. Knopf]
Bill Clinton has worked hard to change his reputation from shameless philanderer to generous philanthropist. His latest book, Giving, is an attempt to guilt the über-rich into making similar commitments. Clinton’s assistant did a lot of research, and the book introduces several humanitarians who have done tremendous good, despite being young, infirm or scraping by on poverty-level wages. But Clinton goes for quantity, not quality, and each subject gets so little airtime the book feels more like a directory than a narrative. If you can get past the endless name dropping, Clinton comes across as an earnest champion of giving. But he still tells his best stories on the witness stand, not at the keyboard. I doubt Giving will inspire anyone to buy a box of Girl Guide cookies, much less part with their hard-earned cash and valuable downtime. _Lindsey Norris

Remember-fx��
I have the memory of a gold fish. After every 30-second lap of the fish bowl that’s my life, my memory resets and the world around me begins anew. I desperately need help. Hence my willingness to become a pill-popping guinea pig. For three weeks I tossed down handfuls of Remember-fX, a tiny, cream-coloured capsule that’s supposed to enhance memory and increase mental alertness. To gauge improvement, I challenged seven-year-old Vishal to a game of Memory (you turn over face-down cards to find matching pairs, and you get to keep flipping if you find a pair). Vishal kicked my ass, 27 pairs to nine (a humbling loss for someone with two master’s degrees.) Then I hit the Remember-fX. Twenty-one days later, I still lost the rematch, but I managed to rack up 44% more pairs. The conclusion? I may be an idiot, but this shit works. _Jesse Semko

Google Apps
[google.com/a/]
From the Mountain View, California monolith, a free, online, shared working environment for spreadsheets and websites. But does free mean good? Well, you won’t have to pay Microsoft to upgrade Excel every six months, and you can set up conference calls and get live updates during budget meetings. Same deal with collaborative work on websites. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of fancy programming tools, but it has a passable creation tool. Frankly, though, I’m not sold. Having a spreadsheet online can be convenient, but our high-speed goes south on occasion, which would stop you cold. Also, unless things have changed, there are limits to file sizes and questions about security. If you’re keen on an alternative to Microsoft Office, try Open-Office (called NeoOffice on Mac). It’s free and maturing nicely. Either way, it’s nice to have choices that don’t involve making Bill Gates richer. _Gunnar Blodgett

Loft Living��
My downtown loft has everything a young professional needs – exposed brick walls, 20-foot ceilings and hardwood floors. “It’s perfect for dinner parties,” the former owner remarked when handing over the keys. Talk about being duped. I rarely invite friends over for an evening of drinks and tapas or entertain impromptu visitors. The problem is that my so-called fabulous loft is in a constant state of disorder, the result of having no storage space. The developer preserved the original aesthetics of the 1940s building, not spoiling the open floor plan with practical features like, say, a closet. The trunk of my car doubles as a storage unit; it’s where I keep my camping gear, winter jackets and anything else that can’t be hidden under my bed or under the sink. I may be the envy of my friends, but I feel like I’ve been condemned to a living hell. _Tracy Hyatt��

Preview

Bedouin Soundclash
Calgary: Dec. 6, MacEwan Hall; Edmonton: Dec. 7 and 8, Starlite Room

One of Canada’s biggest bands of the here and now, Bedouin Soundclash is reminiscent of late ’70s, early ’80s English ska-punk acts like The English Beat and The Specials. Their name is a shout-out to a record by dub artist Badawi. The band released its first album, Root Fires, in 2001, but really started making waves with the hit “When the Night Feels My Song” in the summer of 2005. That tune made it to No. 1 on the Canadian charts and penetrated top-40 lists around the world. (When the band played a festival in Leeds, England in the summer of 2006, vocalist Jay Malinowski found himself too sick to finish the show; no worries – the crowd sang that song it for him.) Bedouin Soundclash performed at the 2006 Junos and picked up the New Group of the Year award. Their latest album, Street Gospels, came out in August. _Natasha Mekhail