GearFire - Tips for Students » Links

Sunday Links – Jan 6 Edition

Chris Yeung — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:16:49 +0000

We have a couple of links today.

The first comes courtesy of Amy over at Bootstrapper who created the GTD Resource Motherload which features over 100 links to resources, tools, and guides for GTD at home and work.

After reading all those links, you’re well on your way to integrating GTD’s evil, but very seductive twin, GND (Getting Nothing Done).

Sunday Links – Nov 25 Edition

Geoff — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 01:09:22 +0000

Freezing food this holiday? Be sure to read up on this guide to freezing food.

Feeling unlucky lately? If you think you are suffering from a streak of back luck, read How to Crush your Losing Streak over at Dumb Little Man.

Pouncy emailed in and recommended iTunes Export, which lets you export your iTunes library file as a standard playlist file.

That College Kid tells us what not to do in a formal paper.
Lifehack talks about why it’s better to aim for an A in school than an A+.

Dumb Little Man says what we have been saying all along, that more screen equals more productivity.

Rebecca outlines the differences between High School Writing vs Scholarly Writing.

Frusterated that you can’t get WiFi on your laptop from upstairs? No worries, try this hack to double your WiFi strength.

Sunday Links – Nov 18 Edition

Geoff — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 20:58:06 +0000

Litemind.com wrote a great article on using top 100 lists to find creative solutions to any problem.

If you are a serious tab-user like me, you may notice your Firefox becomes a huge memory hog after a couple minutes of switching back and forth between tabs. Here is a old but useful hack that will reduce memory usage!

Another great vista-like tweak for XP can be found over at Howtogeek, where they reveal how to get vista style drive icons in Windows XP.

Donald over at LifeOptimizer talks about How to Live your Books and Not Just Read Them. This is something I need to work on.

If you have a friend or relative who has been bugging you about their computer running slowly, you can remotely control somebody’s desktop the easy way.

Sick of looking at a quadruple digit spam counter in your gmail sidebar? This nifty filter can mark spam as read, except for items which might be accidently flagged.

Finally, if you have haven’t done so yet, please help us by quickly filling out our reader survey.

Saturday Links – Nov.10 Edition

Geoff — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:33:49 +0000

Links

If you’ve noticed My Computer being very sluggish and slow to open, you might want to check out this article which presents the problem and solution you might be experiencing.

So you bought a second monitor for your computer because you heard it was great for productivity. Now what do you do? For starters, head over to Lifehacker, where they talk about How to Make the Most of Your Dual Monitors.

See how productive you really are by calculating your churn rate.

Chances are, since you last reformatted your computer, new updates have come out for all your favorite software. Update them easily using the Filehippo Update Checker.

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Productivity Links – the best from around the blogosphere

Geoff — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:42:02 +0000

How to Clear Your Memory without Restarting – Not quite as effective as the real thing, but it has a noticable impact on computer sluggishness.

How Google Docs can save your life -Definitely one of the strongest advantages of Google Docs. Unfortunately, I can’t roll without offline access, so until it gets Google Gears support, I’ll be watching from MS Word.

10 Ways to Save a Lost Word .doc – a must for any student who does rely on Word, including me.

How to use VMware to Survive a Computer Crash -a good idea that will ensure you can survive your hard drive failing at a critical time, such as during exam periods. For those who do not keep regular full disk images, it is wise to have a single image that you can restore to for quick recovery.

100 Websites you should know and use – A good resource for computer beginners, great to give to your parents to get them more comfortable with the internet.

Declare a Productivity-free day – Cal highlights one of the biggest downfalls of living a life of complete productivity, and how to successfully get around it.

10 Smartest Ways to Live Beneath your Means – A set of practical tips that you can start right now to propel yourself towards a better financial state.

“Hacking” Sleep is Stupid! -It is nice for someone to come out in the open about this. I heard of “more productive” sleep, but I was really dubious. If this post is true, people should be warned that the whole mini-nap thing is a sham, and not only will it waste your time, but it could affect your health.

Saturday Links – Oct 13th 2007

Geoff — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 13:29:38 +0000

Make Any App Portable with Mojopac Freedom [Lifehacker] – if you do a lot of your work on the go on your USB drive, this is a great program for you.

10 Surefire Ways to Kill your Crabby Mood [Dumb Little Man] – because crap- I mean crabby moods suck.

How to Create an Invisible Folder in Windows [via Lifehacker] – a good way to hide all of your um.. important files.

Email Address Verifier [via Download Squad] – a good way to check to see if that someone you sent an email to you is ignoring you, or if you got the wrong address.

Saturday Links – Oct 6 Edition

Geoff — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:40:34 +0000

I’ve been toying with the idea of posting links here every saturday at Gearfire. At first I thought it was lazy, and it wouldn’t be enjoyable to read, so I tried to not do it as often. But I have realized that many blogs do link posts on weekends, and they are quite enjoyable as long as the content is relevant. So I am going to try to record all those cool links that didn’t quite get their own article to present to you at the end of the week, each saturday. Enjoy!

5 Quick and Easy Memory Tricks [Dumb Little Man] – Some sweet memory tips that will definitely help you in different situations. I have been meaning to try number two for a while, but I haven’t gotten around to it.

Reboot Your Brain with a Caffeine Nap [Lifehacker] – I don’t drink coffee, but this seems like an interesting idea. I’m curious though as to how people can feel instantly “woken up” when they drink their first cup of coffee, even if the caffeine takes 15min to kick in.

Americans are less happy with positive events than asians [PsyBlog] – an interesting study, and something that I have noticed in general here in North America. This is something I would definitely like to change.

How to Fit 10 People into a Single Hotel Room [HackCollege] – This simple and slightly uncomfortable technique can make staying at a hotel for the night cost 1/3 of the regular cost for 10 people.

Weeks of Hell: How to Get Through Them by Preparing Ahead [Scholastici.us] – Studying can easily consume you, but keeping yourself in good condition will pay off, because you will feel strong the whole way through.

DIY: Noise Reduction Headphones for $20 [Lifehacker] – that is clever idea, but the problem is those cheap earphones are usually horrible quality. If you want to spend $35, go to K-mart and buy a pair of medium quality Koss headphones, and use those.

10 Easy Arithmetic Tricks [ListVerse] – must read for any student who is struggling with math.

Do you sign the back of your credit cards? [Lifehacker] – I agree with using photo ID. If you have ever read “Credit Card Hoax” you will know that they don’t always check the back of credit cards.

Productivity Links 5/19/07

Geoff — Sat, 19 May 2007 08:37:16 +0000

Beginner's Guide to Running [Zen Habits] – Running is a hard activity to start. I have been a horrible runner for most of my life, but I have been training for the last couple months, and have improved drastically. If you are starting on your own, this guide will be useful for you.

Wakoopa: Social Networking by Software – I saw this featured on Lifehacker a couple weeks ago, and I just started using it myself. Basically, you install a little application that tracks your usage of other programs, and uploads it to your profile. You can then search and connect with other people who use the same software to relate and discuss ideas. Privacy could be an issue, and many people wouldn't trust having all their usage stats uploaded to the internet. Personally, I am not over-sensitive about that kind of thing, and this seems like a good idea.

29 Happiness Hacks [Scott Young] – A great list of useful ideas to pick yourself up when your feeling unmotivated or unproductive. My favorites are Exercise, and setting Goals. Great list Scott!

Nutrition All-star: Oatmeal [Small Bites] – I didn't know that oatmeal was this healthy before. I guess I should stock up!

Extra Handle added to Shovel (fun) – Curious to see this in action. Seems to be a nicer way to do yardwork.

PDF Conversions

Jordan Slaman — Wed, 16 May 2007 21:29:46 +0000

In a recent article we covered how to make .pdf files, an Adobe file format which provides a clean simple way to handle large files containing text, images and advanced formatting. One of the features The default software (Adobe Reader) lacks, is the ability to edit a .pdf. Which makes things difficult for any one looking to make a couple quick changes.

Here's where one of my new handy web applications come in. FreePDFConvert.com can take your .pdf and export it to you in a Microsoft Word, or Microsoft Excel file format. (It can also be used to convert those same file formats into a PDF.)

It's simple to use; just upload the file using the form, insert your email address and then check your mail. So anywhere you can access your mail server you can have your converted .pdf.

In other words, FreePDFConvert.com provides a extremely useful, simple service. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked about how to edit a .pdf, They make it as easy as Microsoft Word.

How to Reduce the Size of Microsoft Office Files

Geoff — Tue, 15 May 2007 15:27:28 +0000

Have you ever had to send or store a huge power point, word, or publisher file? You have probably been in a situation before where you needed to send someone a file with many pictures, but the file size was just too big.

This happened to me a couple weeks ago, sending a powerpoint to a friend. The powerpoint had about ten pictures that I had taken straight off of my camera, so the total file size exceeded 30MB. Even uploading it to DivShare was slow and painful. So what is the solution? I found it a couple days later at Digital Inspiration.

1. Click the Compress Picture button (available in Picture Tools Format ribbon of PowerPoint 2007) and select "Options". Now choose Email (96 ppi) as the target output and click OK. This should change all the pictures used in your Presentation to an optimal size.

This article lists a couple ways to shrink the file size, but realistically,#1 will likely do the trick. Basically, it involves using a hidden (or at least not well-known) feature in MS office that allows you to compress pictures in the documents. However large the actual image is displayed, the entire size of the image will remain in the document. So even if you take a big picture and just use it as a small thumbnail, its the same file size as if it was blown up. Usually however, you don't need this. Depending on your quality restrictions, you can reduce the file size by 1000-5000% by compressing the image into small print or email quality.

Reduce the File Size of PowerPoint Presentations [Digital Inspiration]