Mindful Ink     Life, Living and Productivity

Well, it’s that time of the week again. Long week? Me too.

Sorry about the site troubles yesterday, by the way. Never learned what really went down but it all seems fine now. My hosting provider is usually quite solid, but these things happen occasionally.

Best of the Week:

• Your Academic Homepage
  
• On Reading
  
• 13 Free Music Options
  
• Keeping Track of References

Links of the Week:

• eMusic to offer DRM-Free Audiobooks | Download Squad - this looks very promising. eBooks that are cheaper and without restrictive DRM!
• OpenOffice 2.3 Released - Some improvements and fixes
• Jisho - Japanese to English Translator for the Mac | TUAW - looks very promising for your Asian studies majors out there (and a number of business students, as well!)
• The New Yorks Time Web Edition Now Free! | UneasySilence - The entire paper of record now available online.
• Presentation Tools | AcademHack
• Learn a Foreign Language With Mango | Lifehacker.com - May want to revisit this myself. Mango
• How to Memorize Anything | HackCollege - I’ve seen a lot of memorization techniques loosely like this, it looks promising!
• Writing Essays - Don’t Fool Yourselves | UniversityBlog
• Leela Turns 20, Dances Away Her Weekend, Gives Up Sleep, Falls Deathly Ill and Initiates a Love Affair with Nyquil | Study Hacks - So true, and so funny. I used to have a roommate who would drink a bottle of Nyquil when he got a migraine and just sleep it off for a few days. “Once Nyquil Enters the Scene, Things Can Only Go Downhill…” Truer words have never been spoken.

Fascinating New Things:

Intermz - Intermz’ creator Ted was kind enough to give me a heads up about this upcoming new service. The goal is to teach you something new by associating it with your existing knowledge. Check out the site and see the video to get a better idea of it. This appears to be very promising!

I don’t know about you, but this week has been a bear for me! Still, it’s over and I’m looking forward to the weekend, I’m sure you are too - so let’s send you off in style.

First, I’d like to say hello to all our new readers. There’s been a lot of hooplah about the References article, and I’m enjoying reading the comments and blog entries that have arisen from it. I’ve gotten a lot of additional links that should have made the list - don’t worry, I’ll be doing a Part II soon, I’m sure. If you’ve anything else you’d like to suggest, or anything I should cover - feel free to drop me a line!

I’d also like to thank Russ Egan of The Student Help Forum for working with me on the Student Productivity Week. I’m in contact with a few other great bloggers, too, and certainly plan on more guest bloggers and events like this. If you’d like to write an article (even if you’re not a regular blogger) feel free to submit anything you like. (I prefer this either be in the text of an email or pdf file, if at all possible. If I agree to post it, we’ll make sure we get it put up with appropriate editing.)

Also, as this has came up this week - I do accept advertisers, but nothing shady. What I mean by that is if you have a product or service students would like, I’m happy to take a look. But I won’t put up ads for services that sell papers, do homework and things like that. Also, I won’t accept money for doing reviews. I’ll accept review copies of software or services, but do not expect anything but a fair review.

Okay, now that the boring stuff is out of the way….

Best of the Week:

• Microsoft wants students to “steal” Office
• The Full System: Note Taking, Scheduling, and Studying
• Beyond Wikipedia: 20 References You Can’t Do Without

Links of the Week:

• 40+ Free Windows Apps For You | Technology Bites
• Monday Master Class: Downgrade the Importance of Writing in Paper Writing | Study Hacks
• 236 Open Courseware Collections, Podcasts, and Videos | Dumb Little Man
• 50 Tricks to Study Better, Faster and with Less Stress | Scott H Young
• Complete Your First Book with these 9 Simple Writing Habits | Dumb Little Man
• Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Wikipedia Tricks | Lifehacker
• Advice for Students: How to Talk to Professors | lifehack.org

And that’s it! Have a great, safe weekend!

New feature, fairly common in blogs, though, is the catch up. I’m currently thinking this will be a weekly post, every Friday, but we’ll see how it goes and work from there. We’ll have three categories (two most weeks, I imagine). Links, Best of the Week, and any files or content I throw your way during the week. It is important to note these lists are not hierarchal, just how I happen to have them written down or find them.

So, let’s get to it.

Best of the Week

• The Study Sheet - Don’t study with notes, create your own Study Guide!
• Save Your Back for a Few Bucks! - Tired of dragging that ten pound book to class? We have the answer here.
• Guest Blogger: “The Word “Study” Is Meaningless” - Cal Newport, author and blogger, gives us the lowdown on why we need to rethink how we do the most basic academic activity - studying.
• Backpack to Go - Keep it light, people. Some help doing just that.

Links of the Week

• Lifehack.org - “Taking Notes that Work“
• Lifehacker.com - “Top 10 Back to School Tools for the Organized Student“
• Pickthebrain.com - “The 5 Keys to Success in Foreign Language Learning“
• Zenhabits - “How to Learn More and Study Less“
• DumbLittleMan - “30 Happiness Tips: Program Your Life for Optimum Enjoyment“
• Lifehack.org - “8 Tips to Getting the Most Out of Your Books“
• HackCollege - “Student 2.0: School Supplies“
• GearFire - “7 Web Apps of Highly Productive Students“
• StudyHack - “Sorry Paul Graham, I do think it matters where you go to College” - I actually come down between Paul and Cal here. GPA doesn’t necessarily reflect anything except hard work or knowing how to effectively work the system. It certainly doesn’t necessarily reflect intelligence (I both know some very stupid people with 4.0’s and very smart people with 1.5’s) but it often does. But it does matter, at least for that first job, how you do in school and college credentials mean something as well. This does really suck for us who got our acts together later in life (for whatever reason) in that many of these options are closed to us. But, once you’re out in the world the importance tends to shift on what you’ve actually done - not what schools you’ve attended. And yes, Academia is often arbitrary, inefficient, stupid and pointless - but so is the “real world.” Best bet? Get used to it, put your nose to the grindstone and work hard. When you’re done you can take your fancy credentials and try to take down the system then.
• The Student Help Forum - “7 + 3 Ways to Boost your GPA“

Handouts

• The Study Sheet