As tributes pour in for one of the information world’s acknowledged geniuses, we thought it would only be right that we too remembered Steve Jobs for the way he changed computing for so many people.

His death this morning (Singapore time), when he was just 56, marked more than 20 years of endeavour to bring computing to the masses in a fun, accessible and imaginative way.

Not all his decisions and products went well with users, and not everything he touched turned to gold, but there is no doubt the former Apple CEO and founder of a company that created the iMac, iPhone and iPad had a profound influence in the way everyone used their digital gadgets today.

Here are four ways Steve has changed our computing lifestyles. …

What does a goalie do as he prepares to step up to a penalty shootout at the end of a gruelling 120-minute cup final? Turn on his iPod.

That’s what Manchester United goalie Ben Foster did yesterday, as the Carling Cup final between the Red Devils and Tottenham Hotspurs moved to the lottery of a penalty shootout after a 0-0 stalemate.

According to Soccernet, he checked out how his opponents would take their kicks by watching past videos of them on an iPod just before taking his place between the posts.

Soon after, he saved two of the three spot kicks that Spurs took, allowing Man Utd to win 4-1 on penalties eventually. …

Tired of the increasingly bloated and unwieldy beast called iTunes? Give Songbird, a new open-source music player a spin.

It has a lot of the nice Apple interface, but it doesn’t come with the heft of iTunes. The most important piece of news is that it supports iPods via a plug-in, letting you sync your PC’s tracks with your portable MP3 player. You can also manually manage your tracks.

Besides being relatively light, Songbird can be customised with plug-ins, a la Firefox. There’s a particularly useful one that lets you look out for both doppelganger MP3 files and orphaned ones, so it’s great if you got a large collection and are trying to keep track of your thousands of songs.

And what’s not to like, especially when you even get attractive MediaFlow album covers on screen! All you need is an add-on, and of course, you only install it, if you want, so there’s no bloat.

I haven’t sync’d my iPod nano, which I mostly use just for jogging, in months because of the problems with the increasingly fat iTunes. Am I glad that something has come along from a third-party that is actually this good.

On the face of it – a rather “thin” face of it – Creative seems to have finally come up with a solid MP3 player with its Zen X-Fi.

This little gizmo is slim at just 12.8mm (a few credit cards thick) and should fit into the pocket well. Yet it has most of what the pricier – and longer – Apple iPod Touch has and more.

Wi-Fi? Check. Video playback (including DivX and WMV)? Check. SD card slot for additional expansion? Check.

Wait, there’s also built-in FM and a microphone, so it should come in handy for recording meetings and, for us reporters, for recording what interviewees say (and later deny!).

Best of all, the price is right. Creative’s online store is selling the 32GB version for S$399 – that’s less than the S$848 what Apple asks for its 32GB iPod Touch.

With such capacities, there’s finally enough capacity for the whopping 20+GB of music that is quickly expanding on my PC, thanks mainly to my encoding stuff in WAV instead of MP3 these days.

I’ve always said MP3 players, unlike computers, are lifestyle products and Apple’s done a better job with them than a “PC” company like Creative. But would you pay twice as much for a player with less stuff just to look cool?

I know I didn’t buy a Sony Walkman or Discman just because it’s Sony in the past – I bought an Aiwa or Panasonic that played (mostly) just as well. Now, after two iPods, maybe it’s time for me to consider Creative seriously.