WolframAlpha: A new tool for online research

Ever student knows that they can go to Wikipedia for an overview of a subject, that they can go to Google for a wide variety of perspectives and popular media,  Google Scholar for academic journal references, and Google Books for searching within books, both current and obscure.  The new Google Squared even organizes output into a table of key concepts to help you organize your research. But there is a key weakness to all...

Student Styles: Cheap Eyeglasses

Whether you need glasses to see far away or close up, almost everyone needs glasses at some point. Even if you only wear yours on days when you can’t get going early enough to put in your contacts, glasses can be stylish. They can reflect your style, your mood, and what makes you unique. Eyeglass stores have huge markups however, making a simple pair of glasses suddenly cost hundreds of dollars. You don’t have...

4 tips for reading better and retaining more

Reading is critical to success in school, whatever point in your education you are at.  But there are better and worse ways to do it. Here are a few tips on how to read better, retain more and save yourself study time later. Read with a purpose: Beyond “the teacher said so” there is always a reason why you are reading something.  Are you reading it to understand an argument?  Learn facts?  Background...

Quick Tip: Remember the Milk for Gmail

Remember the Milk, a great to web-based to-do list application, has released an excellent plug-in for the Firefox.  It works with gmail, creating a panel on the right side of your screen with your to-do list in it.  It’s now right there and you can add, remove, change and see all of your tasks in one place. The feature that really won me over, however, was the ability to set up either a tag or use the star in gmail to...

Using feeds to improve your school work

We’ve talked about feed (RSS, Atom, whatever) extensively in the past. Whether it was more productive feed reading or overcoming overload, we’ve tried to help you deal with the feeds you already have coming in. But did you know that feeds (other than this one of course) can improve your school work? Sure, you can read productivity blogs to improve how you do your work and social blogs to keep a life while you do...