Applications

Darcia writes to recommend Chatterblocker (Windows or Mac) a piece of software which helps to eliminate background noise. Unlike Noise (my software of choice for this task), Chatterblocker works not by creating white noise, but rather by distoring the current noise (i.e. altering current conversations enough that they cannot be followed.) Because I like studying …..

SmileonmyMac is offering back to school discounts for educators and students. Normally I wouldn’t mention a software companies sale offers here, but SmileonmyMac has two programs that are useful for academics. The first is Textexpander one of my favorites, and the other is PDFPen which some educators use to grade papers. If you are an …..

It seems that more and more I find myself wanting to manipulate/work with PDFs. I generally only accept work from students that is in PDF or RTF form, many of the articles I download are formatted as PDFs, even many users manuals are PDFs. So here are some tips/tools for managing PDFs: Organizing PDFs: This …..

The other day when I wrote a post about free software, Charles left in the comment section a link to a list of programs for academics which he wrote. Charles’s list is even better than the aforementioned wiki, and contains references to audio, reference, RSS readers, . . .well the list goes on and on. …..

Looking for a Word Processor? Zaine Ridling at Donation Coder has written a thorough review, and by thorough I mean over 15,000 words, covering various word processors. Not only does he review major and minor desktop word processors, but he also has a rundown of online ones. With each Word Processor he presents the good …..

Free Software: Everyone loves Free Software. This site is a wiki which lists various sources of free software that might be of use to those in Academia. The list is not vary extensive right now, but hey its a wiki, so you can just add to it. It does cover the major ones though: Ubuntu …..

Supposing you have time, here are some things of note. Find a tutor: Lifehacker post on a service that helps you find a tutor, or if you are a tutor find a student. As of now the service only works Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Just as instructive though is the discussion about the post, …..

I was talking with a faculty member the other day who was complaining about being sent a .pdf, as he was unable to “edit” it in any way, he wanted the more friendly Microsoft Word document. (If you don’t know what a .pdf is click here, most of the “professional” documents you get are in …..