This morning my son, Jack, asked me if he could see the Panama Canal on a map. Should I get out the atlas and show him? Maybe Wikipedia? There were lots of things we could have done, but I opted to pull out my smart phone. My phone is a Droid with Google’s android OS, but other smart phones or my wife’s touch would have worked as well. A computer could do the trick as well, but that is so last year. Here is what I did:

    1. I turned it on and pressed the maps app.
    2. Pressed the search button
    3. Pressed the voice search button
    4. Spoke the words “Panama Canal”