If you’re like me, before you buy a magazine, you first flip through the pages. You couldn’t do that –– virtually ––online until last week, when Barnes & Noble began selling digital downloadable magazine subscriptions with its “See Inside” feature, which enables customers to experience interactive previews of the magazine’s content. I clicked through the May 2008 issue of ELLE, and it was almost like standing in line at the grocery counter flipping through a magazine: I could hardly find the articles for all the ads. “See Inside” allows access only to the first pages of the magazine –– not so good for “back-flippers,” those who flip through magazines from back to front. The good news is you can move your magazine habit to your laptop. Digital downloads are convenient, and the price is all right. Save beaucoup on Saveur, $20 for a one-year subscription, dwell for $20, Reader’s Digest for $10, and Woman’s Day, $10. Who says last month’s magazine is trash? Reading the last six months of a beloved publication can be a wonderful pastime, as anyone who has spent some time in their doctor’s waiting room or at the beauty shop can attest. One of the coolest features of this new B&N service is you can download individual back issues. Missed last December’s Cosmopolitan, which had this juicy perennial on its cover: “Guys Spill: White Lies they Tell Women All the Time”? Or perhaps you’d like to read about 45 things to do before you die, no doubt balanced by Jack Nicholson’s rules for living in the January 2008 issue of Men’s Journal ($5).

Online shopping is tops for convenience, but what about those times when you crave personal attention or even a more manageable way of sifting through the avalanche of online offerings? Turn to the virtual personal shopper. Shop It to Me starts you off by asking you to zip through checklists to specify your interests by designer, size, type of garment, etc. (I had great fun checking Armani, BCBG Max Azria, Prada, Eileen Fisher, etc.) Once signed up, you’ll receive daily e-mail alerts tailored to your choices whenever they show up on sale or discounted –– it’s almost as if your personal store arrives in your inbox every day! At ShopStyle, you can create your own stylebook for almost any brand of clothing, shoes, accessories and cosmetics, build your gift registry and share your stylebook with friends or groups; I saved this purple Norma Kamali dress (pictured) from Nordstrom for $395 in my favorites. You can even set price alerts to receive notifications when the price drops on certain items. At Personal Shopper, once you sign up and fill out a survey of your preferences, you can search for everything from clothes to home décor and sort by price, discounts, stores and brands. StyleFeeder operates in a similar vein, with the difference being that you can rate items brought to your attention and over time, StyleFeeder will be more selective about what is sent to you. You can also “grab” things from other sites to build a personal wishlist and track items of interest. One word of caution: If you thought going to the mall could take all day, these sites can take just as long –– clicking through the array of offerings can be downright addictive! If you’d like the more personal touch, you can select a shopping expert from the list at LivePersonalShoppers for advice and guidance through live chats or e-mail for a small fee per minute, payable through your account with LivePersonalShoppers. Retailers with personal shopping options include Shade Clothing (which will send notices about special promotions and sales and offers 5 percent discounts on orders placed through your personal shopper) and that grande dame of department stores Neiman Marcus.

John Adams, American’s second president, is receiving a renewed amount of attention this spring because of HBO’s seven-part miniseries John Adams. The miniseries is based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning book of the same name by David McCullough and stars Paul Giamatti as John Adams (pictured) and Laura Linney as Abigail Adams. If you do not have HBO, you can pre-order the DVD set from Amazon for $39, but it will not be released until June 10. Meanwhile, you can catch up by reading McCullough’s John Adams in either paperback ($20) or in hardcover ($25). Whitehouse.gov has an abbreviated, one-page history of Adams’ life; a similarly short biography of Abigail Adams can be found at Firstladies.org. If your summer travels will take you near Quincy, Massachusetts, consider visiting the Adams National Historical Park, run by the National Park Service. The HBO site also has downloadable educational material for teachers and students. Lastly, this mug declaring “John Adams: Join or Die,” is only $10, and perfect for your coffee as you absorb the miniseries or book.

This summer, The Disney Parks – Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Hong Kong Disneyland, Tokyo Disneyland Resort and more – will be the destination of millions of families worldwide. If you belong to one of those families, or if you plan on taking a trip on a Disney Cruise Line voyage, we’ve rounded up some resources to help you plan. One easy place to start is ordering a free trip-planning DVD from Disney: there’s a DVD about a vacation to a Disney theme park, and one for a Disney cruise. Mousesavers.com is a great site for people wanting to find discounts and deals for their Disney trip. It’s been recommended by Arthur Frommer, founder of Frommer’s travel guides, as a good source of tips. For example, Mousesaver’s quick-start guide on planning your Disney World vacation breaks down the best deals you can get for hotels, tickets and other things, as well as offering good advice on when to go to avoid the crowds. Mousesaver also contains important cautions against getting ripped off by con artists selling “partially used passes. ” (For example, don’t be tempted by a 7-day pass that the seller claims still has 3 days left on it.) You’ll find these on Ebay, Craigslist or storefront vendors in California or Florida, and they are usually scams. Mouseplanet.com is another good online resource, with updates and guides about the parks, and articles about new developments and upcoming events. If you like your travel advice in book form, there are plenty available. The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2008, by Bob Sehlinger and Len Testa, (13.59 on Amazon.com) claims to help save you from hours of standing in line. It also has a dining guide for the theme park restaurants, and ratings. Birnbaum’s 2008 Disneyland Resort tells you about the Anaheim park, how to plan your days there and other tips, for $10.17. Give your kids some reading material for the flight or drive with Birnbaum’s Walt Disney World for Kids 2008, $10.36 on Amazon.com. For children who like to collect autographs, there’s the Guide to the Magic Walt Disney World Resort Autograph and Sticker Book. Your child can check off the characters she’s seen, and figure out what autographs are missing. A Disney vacation can be magical to children, but doing a little planning can keep that magic alive despite long lines, heat and lots of walking. 

The great Bette Davis would have turned 100 on Saturday, and of course that occasion is being marked in the marketplace. (And by cable’s Turner Classic Movies, which will show 24 hours of highlights from her career.) Two medium-sized boxed sets are being released: Volume 3 of Warner’s Bette Davis Collection, available now, and Fox’s Centenary Celebration Collection (billed on its box simply as The Bette Davis Collection), which comes out Tuesday. The Fox set offers fewer films (five to Warner’s six), but boasts more famous titles — notably, the classic All About Eve, which has already been available on disc (a few of these have) but here gets a full second disc of new bonus features. The set creeps into the mid-to-late period of the actress’s career, when she found herself being cast in menacingly spinsterish roles like The Nanny. The Warner set, on the other hand, highlights Davis’ youth (despite a film titled The Old Maid), in which she won audiences over in melodramas like All This, and Heaven Too. Box sets like these tend to be a bit random in their approach to stars’ histories, since most actors with long careers wound up working for many studios, leaving different companies rights to the films. Fans looking for a more comprehensive picture of Davis’s career might check out last fall’s biography Dark Victory, or Bette Davis: The Performances That Made Her Great, released in paperback about a month ago, which is less a bio than a recap of what the author believes were her best performances.

Movie lovers who’ve been itching to dive into high-def home video but didn’t want to do it until the format war was settled can now buy with confidence. While owners of HD-DVD players are scrambling to score bargain discs in their imminently defunct format (see, for example, Amazon’s half-off bonanza), the rest of us can settle in to the Blu-ray world. What are the best movies available already in Blu-ray? Families will be happy to know that Pixar’s Ratatouille and the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy are already in stores, while grown-up comedy fans can look for Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the Eddie Murphy/Dan Ackroyd classic Trading Places and the goofy charm of Talladega Nights. Plenty of great dramas are out already, from recent hits like The Departed to classics like Unforgiven and Goodfellas. There’s a slew of Stanley Kubrick films on Blu-ray already, and even a handful of foreign gems — like Volver, The Lives of Others and Pan’s Labyrinth — have made it to the format. But everybody knows that, for high-tech home theater enthusiasts, action is the big seller, so it’s no surprise that trilogies like Mission: Impossible and Terminator are already out in Blu-ray high-def glory, alongside action titans The Fugitive, Speed and Bullitt.