If you haven’t visited your library’s website lately, you probably should. The resources might surprise you. They certainly surprised me. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a university freshman this year. One of the biggest transitions has been the responsibility shift of homework. I attended a high school with a strong academic reputation. I believe this was largely due to the emphasis on homework, complete with daily checks. However, in university, there are no teachers scolding you. Non-submitted work is much easier for them to mark.

Fortunately, I found Cal Newport’s post on the GTDCS (GTD for College Students) system. In this system, he designates a project called “Weekly Assignments,” which makes each piece of homework a date-specific action. GTDCS has been critical to surviving the transition, while many of my classmates routinely let homework fall through the cracks. Following is how I’ve implemented this portion of GTDCS using Vitalist.
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Iwantsandy is a new breed of organizational system to keep people organized on the go. It is marketed as more of a virtual secretary than a personal to-do list. Instead of adding items into your to-do list or tickler files manually, you can CC Sandy when you send an email with important information, and she will intelligently scan the email and try to pick out things you want her to remember. She’s pretty smart by herself, but you can further the accuracy by using her name or keywords such as “Remind me” or “Remember” to flag the surrounding area as being important information. Here are some of the examples they give for students:

• Remember reasonably priced used 2005 Vespa at AutoTrader @shopping
• Remind me about Literature 101 study group Mon 6-9pm @weekly
• Remind me to call Mom on her birthday on 9/16/07 @yearly @birthday
• Remember I work at the book store Tue 9-11:30am @work
• Remember to sign up for extra credit hours at the Psych lab on Friday afternoon.

I was lucky enough to have gotten a beta invitation a couple months ago, but I haven’t really used it. It’s not that iwantsandy is bad or anything, it just doesn’t fit my style of organization. I prefer spending the extra time to personally organize my tickler files and to-do list. However for the average busy student who doesn’t want to spend time with to-do lists, iwantsandy is an amazing tool.

Sandy

You’ve got to love Pandora Internet Radio. Many such as Last.fm have tried, but no one has succeeded in showing you tunes you love than Pandora.Based on the Music Genome Project, Pandora takes a song that you like and finds songs with similar attributes, such as speed, genre, lyrics, melody, etc. This also makes it an amazing source of studying music. Just type in one of your favourite study songs, and it will spew out an endless stream of similar songs.

Pandora is great, but not perfect. It’s three main flaws are: 1. you cannot download tracks that you listen to, 2. it is only avaliable in the US, and 3. the page is ridden with ads, and a big distraction if you are doing something else and just want to switch to it to change the song. Using the technique below you can eliminate all of theses problems, and download tracks anywhere in the world from an ad-free Pandora.

 How to Download MP3s Using Pandora’s Jar

This web 2.0 app is very unique. It is sort of a webOS/calendar/social networking mashup. The calendar is great, a nice and usable UI, and it is very snappy - not something you see in all web 2.0 apps. 30Boxes calendar looks to me like a matured project, as everything is very fluent and sensible. You can add events at the click of a mouse button, and have reminders sent to you via SMS (depending on if your provider is supported) or email. It also has many standard holidays marked in right off the bat such as Halloween, Christmas, New Years etc. Not only can you have reminders rent to you, but you can subscribe to your own or others’ calenders via RSS, iCal, Google homepage Yahoo and Bloglines. All in all, the calendar is a great app worth signing up for.

Thatcollegekid has posted the top three academic apps for Macs. This was supposed to be a little double-post between us, but I was on a trip over the weekend, and I didn’t get my part finished in time. With a slight delay, i present to you the top 3 academic applications for students who use windows.

1. Microsoft OneNote - OneNote is an invaluable tool to me, and one that I use every day. This year I have really taken the transition from hand-written notes to a completely digital set of notes. I don’t think I could have done this without OneNote. Features such as auto-save, organization by virtual notebook and tab, and an array of mark-up tools for putting notes in the margin make OneNote a beautiful alternative to taking notes by hand. OneNote may cost you, but I highly recommend it, and I think it is well worth the price.

2. DoPDF - DoPDF is a cool piece of software that adds itself as a virtual printer, and lets you print out any document into a PDF file. What do you do if you are trying to keep digital notes, and you create a document such as a spreadsheet that contains information you need for studying or later reference. Printing it off would be easy for a regular notebook, but that is out of the question. The solution is to print the document via DoPDF, and place the PDF file in your notes.

3. StudyPerfect - StudyPerfect is the best flash card software for windows that I have ever seen. I spent quite a while looking for good flash card software last year, but I was disappointed until I came across StudyPerfect. A nice interface, robust formatting options, and good reviewing modes make StudyPerfect a solid study application for only $15. But if you still can’t afford it, take a look here.

Mindmapping is a wonderful brainstorming technique that can yield great results, and show you ideas that you hadn’t previously imagined. Most people are familiar with mindmapping and its problem-solving potential, but many people do it inefficiently. If you follow these 10 simple tips, you should find your mindmapping sessions to me radically improved.

1. Eliminate Environmental Distractions. Start your session in a quiet, light environment where you will not be disturbed until you are finished.

2. Eliminate all paper / digital distractions. If you are doing your mindmap on your computer, turn off MSN, email, Kazaa, and everything else that you have running except the mindmapping software. It is too easy to “take a small break” that turns out to waste 30 minutes. If you are using paper, make sure your desk is clear, except for the paper and your writing materials.

3. Start with a good question or idea. Think about what you want to accomplish during your session, and start with an idea that is precisely defined, so it will help you work towards your goal.

4. Start with that goal, but feel free to deviate from it. As your brainstorm grows, follow your creativity and expand it however you like. Don’t feel constrained by that bubble in the middle, because it is only there as a starting point.

5. Leave yourself enough room to expand. Don’t expect to fit everything onto one piece of paper. Make sure you have extra paper, and draw your branches generously far apart, so you have room to expand on ideas. Obviously this does not apply to brainstorming software on your computer, as you can move stuff around easily.

6. Don’t try to make it too clean or professional. Remember you are doing this for yourself, so there is no reason to constrain your creativity.

7. Write down every semi-decent thought or idea that comes to you. Do not judge your ideas too heavily before you put them down, because you may change your mind later and regret throwing them out.

8. Color code, doodle, scratch out and do whatever else you want to your brainstorm, if it will help you get a better understanding of it. Again, you don’t have to be neat and tidy. Think of your brainstorm as art, and act creatively.

9. If you need to, familiarize yourself with the materials before your session begins, but try not to impair your creative juices during your brainstorm by reading from a textbook or sheet.

10. Get started right now! Use a tool such as Mindomo, MindMeister, or Mind42, and start your brainstorm. The best time to start is as soon as you can.

Yahoo Answers and similar Q&A sites are great because they allow anyone to ask questions, and get answers from the community. But what if you have a more serious legal question that you need answered accurately, by real attorneys? Maybe you need an answer for a school assignment, for your current situation, or maybe you are just curious. This is where LawGuru comes in.

LawGuru is a website you can use to ask a legal question to a database of over 5,000 registered attorneys. This ensures you will get a fast and accurate answer from the experts.

In addition to asking a question, you can search past questions and answers, and see how your question has been answered in the past.

And if you are looking for a local attorney, you can search their database, and evaluate attorneys by their answers to questions before you hire them.