The interview by One More thing

“In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning.”

A promising e-reader concept

This video demonstrates how people browse through physical documents and books and how ebook readers can be improved to support those natural ways to interact with documents.

Possible improvements to e-reading technology

• Multiple displays that can interact like in the video above, to support looking at several different pages from a document at the same time or spreading one page over a number of displays for a bigger view.
• Multiple displays that can show pages from multiple documents
• Multi-touch navigation
• Advanced support for using an e-reader as a digital notepad for handwritten notes, that can be searched for using user-added tags.
• An open standard for all e-reader content, so books you buy now are still readable on a new e-reader you buy a few years from now, perhaps from another vendor.
• A file format that supports electronic workbooks that students can write on, just like a physical workbook or type on using an external (wireless) keyboard.
• Fast instant-refresh color e-ink displays
• Bigger (rollable) displays

My e-reading dream: loose-leaf interactive e-paper

A reasonably big, foldable, color, multitouch, interactive, instant-refresh e-ink display. If the e-paper is big enough, two or more documents can be viewed at the same time on the same sheet of e-paper. If the interface is multitouch, no buttons are needed which saves valuable screen space.

What do you think?

What e-reading technology would you like to see?
Do you use e-reading technology?

You can leave a comment.

Englishpage.com: Free online English lessons & ESL / EFL resources.

The wikibook “How to learn a language” provides lots of helpful and original tips for learning a language.

Here at wikibooks you can find a free textbook for learning Spanish from scratch. A PDF version is available.

Do you use (free) online language learning tools? You can leave a comment.

A video by Common Craft about how to use search engines effectively.

Omnifocus is a GTD-style task manager for Mac OSx and iPod touch/iPhone that I use daily to keep track of all my todos.

Its ability to organize tasks in projects, single-action lists, folders and filter by context (the place you need to be at, the person you need to talk to or the object you need to do something about a task), due date and other parameters makes it a valuable tool.

Examples of possible contexts: Computer, Online, Phone, Harry, Kids

How do you manage your lists? You can leave a comment.

“Rice University professor Richard Baraniuk explains the vision behind Connexions, his open-source, online education system. It cuts out the textbook, allowing teachers to share and modify course materials freely, anywhere in the world.”

Google Sketchup is an accessible and free 3D-modeling programme. You can quickly create nice-looking 3D-models, without too much effort. It can be a useful tool to help pupils grasp three-dimentional thinking.

Procrastination is the habit of avoding tasks that you actually need to or want to do something about.

Overcoming Procrastination is a book, created on a wiki basis, that explains what procrastination is and how it can be avoided.

Wikipedia has an interesting article about procrastination.

Overview of the GTD methodology

Getting things done (GTD) is a way of organizing and dealing with your todos and goals, that is invented by David Allen. For me it works really well.

The goal is to get everything (todos, ideas, goals, appointments) out of your head and parked in a system that you really trust to remind you of all your commitments at the appropriate time, so your head is clear and focused.

I like his book “Getting Things Done: The art of stress-free productivity” and the “Getting Things Done Fast” audio book.

The habit of GTD

Artrage (windows, OSx) is a painting programme with an intuitive interface, that simulates real painting and drawing tools.

The starter edition is free. Of course it works best when you use a graphics tablet, tablet pc or modbook.

Dropbox video tour

Dropbox lets you sync files across computers (PC, Mac, Linux).

Sync is really fast. Your files are also available from the online interface, so you can access them from someone else’s computer.

A free dropbox account has 2 GB of storage. Pricing for more space can be found here.

At visiblebody.com you can browse a very detailed 3D model of the human body.

It was free, but due to increasing costs it is now a payed service. (pricing overview here) A 7-day free trial is available.

Have a look at the tour or watch the video below.

Big Buck Bunny – A very nice cartoon, created using Blender

The Blender software can be downloaded from the Blender website for free. Available for: Windows, OSx, Linux, Solaris

“Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one. An astonishing story.”

Voice quality

Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. It has already proven its value as an assistive technology for people who have difficulty reading.

Speech synthesis voices have improved substantially in recent years. Here you can hear some samples.

Language learning tool

If speech synthesis voices get even better, speech synthesis can be a valuable tool for learning languages. That way you could hear how any word or sentence is pronounced in a certain language.

Study tool

Speech synthesis could be useful to have your study materials or your own notes read aloud to you, so you read and hear. Generally speaking, the more senses you involve while studying, the better you remember.

Reading your notes over and over to remember them, soon gets dull. In this case replaying a speech synthesised audio version a few times can be more pleasant.

Productivity tool

Speech synthesis is sometimes marketed as a productivity tool. For instance, you could let it read aloud your email or news site. I wonder if people use it that way and whether it really works as a productivity-boosting tool.

What do you think speech synthesis is valuable for? You can leave a comment.

Web-based office suites

Collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and presentations using web-based office suites. Why and how? Watch the video.

• Google Docs (Free)
• Zoho (Free for personal use)
• ThinkFree (Paid, free trial available)

With SurveyMonkey you can create online surveys.

Basic surveys are free. Their main limitation is the limited number of 100 responses per survey.

Here you can compare the different subscriptions and their pricing.

I used SurveyMonkey for a small research project, and it was nice to have the results automatically summarized in a table.

Pear Note is a notable mac programme. It links text and voice notes in real-time. Your own text notes act as pointers to a certain position in the recording. This makes reviewing the recording easy, and ensures you wrote down all the important things that were said.

Watch the Pear Note intro video to get a good idea of the way it works.

digg.com Users post articles from all over the web to digg. Other digg users can rate those posts, so the most interesting content from all over the web is listed at the top.

When you create a digg.com account, you can post new content, rate existing content, and filter digg content, so you see articles about subjects that matter to you.

A quick tour of digg.com can be found here.

Lately I notice I should do something about my limited knowledge of English grammatical vocabulary. This would make using grammar reference materials a lot easier.

Some examples of grammatical vocabulary: adjective, noun, demonstrative pronoun, singular, plural, present continuous

At quizlet.com I found flashcards for this purpose.

If you know about other (free) materials,  you can leave a comment.