Want to know the easiest way to learn a lot of new media?

Get a Mac. It’s that simple. All Macs come with iLife built in, which gives you movie editing, photo cataloging and editing, audio and podcast production, Web design and DVD production.

Think of it as MS Office for your digital life. You can create a myriad of multimedia content with it, fun and easily. And it’s all free.

The best part, however, is how good it is. I got a new Macbook a few months ago, and I love iLife (and I have the old version. Your version will be even better). I use iPhoto all the time to manage my photos. When you have thousands upon thousands of digital photos, you need an easy way to edit and group them.

iLife is also incredibly easy to use, which is what makes it such a great learning tool. A lot of what you can create with iLife is professional quality, and yet it is so intuitive to use. My first experience with video editing was with iMovie several years ago. The concepts and confidence I got from that carried over to the work I do today in Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere.

Apple also has great integration between their products. For instance, you can drag and drop photos you have in iPhoto or audio files from Garageband into iMovie.

Apple just released iLife ‘08, which promises to be even better than ‘06. I have ‘06 and there is nothing like it on PCs, especially when you factor in the price.

Let’s face it, newspapers aren’t in the business of training people anymore. So, if you want to learn something new (something that might keep you in journalism for years to come), you probably have to do it yourself. iLife is a great way to get your feet wet and show how fun and easy new media can be.

No, iLife is not without flaws. It’s a consumer level product, and it lacks a lot of the power that people will need for professional uses. But it is a great way to learn the basics and see that video, audio or photo editing isn’t that hard. iWeb also allows people to easily make attractive Web sites.

If you don’t know new media, you have no excuse for not at least trying. So, do yourself a favor: get a Mac and play around with iLife ‘08. The best option for most people would be the iMac.

It’s powerful, has a big screen, is lightweight with a small footprint and looks great. And it comes with iLife ‘08.

There is no better way to learn than by doing, and I know many of you are very bright and motivated. Get to it.

Updates will be slow this week because I am in the process of moving from Rockville, Maryland to Alexandria, Virginia.

More quality JI content will be here later this week. This would be the perfect time to post or e-mail in any comments, suggestions or questions.

Thanks.