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Category Archives: Cool Tools

Mar 07 0 comments

Why the common nap might be your best friend

: Image by seq via Flickr

The one thing I love about the weekends is that I get to take a recharge nap, and the one thing I miss about living in Spain is the Siesta. Reports though coming out of NPR today indicate that the nap, or the Siesta might be the best thing you can do for your body and your mind.

While this might be a hard argument to pass by your boss, it might explain why I get sleepy after digesting a large pile of information, or dealing with the normal morning chaos of my email inbox, randomization of what I am doing, and the many office visitors that poke their head in to say good morning. While well intentioned, the randomization and derailing that happens on a daily basis might just call for that recharge nap.

Looking for an excuse to work in a quick snooze in the afternoon? Here you go: Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that naps may help your brain work better later. Matthew Walker, who led the study, says we know that sleeping is critical to cementing new memories, but this research looked at whether getting sleep before learning is equally important to prepare your brain to soak up information. Source: NPR

One of the great things about living in Spain was the afternoon Siesta; it was a time to spend with family, recharge, and often in the heat of summer, the recharge nap after a very large lunch. This is a common thing in many countries in the Mediterranean that I visited or lived in, and one of the better ideas. I know that I was more likely to stay late at work if I had that quick 30 minute snooze, and often felt recharged afterwards. The research might point out that the 30 minute power nap is a good thing for people to have. The problem is that bosses across America are going to be calling people who do this “slackers”, but now that there is research pointing out that the power nap is the way to go, it might just help the argument that I learned in Spain so many years ago, and relearn ever weekend. The power nap is a great way to recharge your brain, and get back to work.

Science vindicates afternoon naps, yet again (crunchgear.com)
Sleep on This: Nap Boosts Your Brain’s Ability to Learn (neatorama.com)
Naps Can Seriously Improve All-Day Learning Abilities (lifehacker.com)
Nap ‘boosts’ brain learning power (news.bbc.co.uk)
People learn more after a siesta, say scientists (guardian.co.uk)

Mar 06 1 comments

Cool Tools, business, technology

Amazon rolls out new Web Store for Sellers

My first and only experience with Web Store by Amazon was a disaster from my viewpoint. Where I expected tightly coupled information between my Amazon catalog and the Amazon Web Store there was none. Realistically to use the site correctly we were looking at going back and touching every single item in our 12,000 plus Amazon merchants account inventory. The time it would take to do that would be phenomenal as it took us two years just to get where we were at when we looked at Amazon web store.

For me, this was the deal killer, but Techflash is reporting that Amazon is rolling out a new store, and honestly I will go take a look at it, but I really do want tightly coupled, not the loose item set that the Amazon Web Store was as an experience a year ago. I rely on Amazon, but they know what is a book, a DVD, and a comic book, going back through a mid sized inventory would take a very long time to make that happen with the old model.

The news and information is sketchy at best about what Amazon is changing, but Techflash is reporting that there is a new inventory tool set to make this easier. I am hoping that they are looking at the process of keeping inventory tightly coupled between the pro merchant account and the Amazon Web Store. Really that is the killer option here, that Amazon Web Store automatically knows what is a book, a DVD, and a comic book when the Web Store comes up.

Without that simple chunk of functionality, any attempt at a web store for mid sized Amazon sellers is going to be problematic. No one has the time to go through a large inventory and touch every single item in it to accurately dump it into its larger type box (comic, book, DVD).

If Amazon is listening, I would love to use web store by Amazon, but I need a tightly coupled inventory management system, one inventory entry system, that when the item is entered drops the entry in the Web Store by Amazon into the right bucket without having to go back and touch each item that is entered twice.

Feb 23 1 comments

Cool Tools, Participation, education, technology

TeachStreet goes all Lead Gen for Colleges

: Image via CrunchBase

Colleges have had a hard time lately getting students in the door, not just because of the economy but because the demands that employers are putting on the surviving employees to keep working. The only real problem with this is that as technology changes, people have to keep their skills up. In addition, while I am biased because I work in Higher Education, lead generation and getting good students into any college program has become a very real challenge. This is where TeachStreet steps in to help colleges, any college get the right students into the right program.

TeachStreet along with Kaplan Test Prep is offering a free online GMAT and GRE for people seeking higher degrees. The GMAT and GRE are the quintessential test for getting into many of the Master’s and Doctoral level programs at traditional colleges. This is part of TeachStreet’s effort to reach out to traditional college minded students that need to get their Masters degree to reach the next level in terms of promotion. TeachStreet has two new sites up for the GMAT and the GRE where you can prep for and get your hands on tools that will help the prospective student customize the test for how they learn best.

TeachStreet is also launching a new blog that will help students find the right college for them and what the GRE and GMAT scores are for those that are accepted into the program. The more interesting part is how TeachStreet is rolling up multiple resources into a concise package of tools, processes, and information that will help a prospective student find the right college teaching the right degree program for them and their career.

To celebrate the launch, TeachStreet and Kaplan Test Prep announced the giveaway of two test prep courses, making it possible for students to win a Live Online GRE and Live Online GMAT course. For official entry details, visit http://bit.ly/gregmat

This is one of the reasons why Seattle Startups like TeachStreet are very cool, they come at problems with a more global approach looking to help the greatest number of people. TeachStreet is no different and the launch of their new sites and programs will help people find the right traditional college for them. There are always alternatives to this like my own college that do not require the GMAT or the GRE as an entrance hurdle. But in the longer run, it does not matter where you go to college as long as you do keep up on the skills and education required for keeping employed. This great service being offered by TeachStreet and something which will have a big benefit to anyone who is college bound and are seeking a higher degree.

Kaplan Takes GMAT Prep to a New Level with the Industry’s First Wholly Interactive Online Center, Social Media Networking, Personalized Analytics, Official Pearson Test Center Experience (eon.businesswire.com)
Funding cuts: how will universities cope? (guardian.co.uk)
Andrew Reinbach: Why Teachers Teach (huffingtonpost.com)
Universities hiring managers at ‘three times the rate of academics’ (telegraph.co.uk)

Feb 09 0 comments

Cool Tools, idea, technology

Zoom Media Plus memory card for you Apple Iphone or IPod

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Venture Beat is surprisingly covering hardware and wrote a great article about a product due in April from Zoom Media Plus. This is a memory card that you can attach to your Iphone or Ipod using the 30 pin connector that automatically gives you a memory boost to drag and drop music or files from one system to another.

Of course, this is immediately useful technology which is nice to see, but also coincides with the Apple Ipad that is on its way in the latter half of March 2010. What Zoom Media Plus does is offer an adapter between the SD card and the 30 pin connector on your IPod or Iphone. Looking at how the Ipad works, and the idea that it also has a 30 pin connector that hooks to your computer, you get an automatic memory boost for your Ipad. Great news for folks who were thinking of picking up the cheapest Ipad to play around with a knowing that 16 Gig’s on the cheapest model is not going to go far.

What makes this one of the more fun ideas to come around is that you can also load windows on an SD card, so with some serious hacks and some work, it is highly likely that you could get your Apple Ipad to launch and use windows, or launch a VMWare instance using a native Iphone/IPod VMWare system. The possibilities here are endless and can change much of how we do things. Especially if you can boot a VMWare session to back end systems using the Ipad with or without the extra memory stick from Zoom Media Plus.

With a 32 Gigabyte SDHC Card going for roughly 75 to 90 dollars, you can get an instant upgrade to your Ipad without paying the extra overhead about getting the memory from Apple itself. In total, you can do this yourself for under 150 bucks, and load what you want on it. This is a liberating technology, especially if you can use it the way you want to and extend the Ipad to work with windows, or better yet run up a virtual machine to interact with many of the back end systems that are based on windows. I can see many immediate uses here especially for IT workers, and education. That is the fun part, companies come up with OEM hardware and software, and people immediately start finding uses for it that the OEM just did not think of.

An SD memory card adapter for your iPhone (venturebeat.com)
zoomMediaPlus’ zoomIt is the iPhone’s long overdue SD card reader (engadget.com)
Analyst: Apple Might Lower Price Of iPad (ubergizmo.com)
Wyse talks up Apple iPad as thin client (v3.co.uk)
Windows on the Mac (computerworld.com)

Jan 07 1 comments

Cool Tools, award, business

Better CPC than Google Adsense at MyLikes dot com

: Image by Likaholix via CrunchBase

Bindu Reddy has updated Likeaholix – and the new updates provide a way for someone to make a little extra money via targeted Twitter and web site campaigns on things that truly interest you. My average CPC on Google Adwords is about 4 cents per click, and people just don’t click on Google Ads that often to make it interesting. Right now it takes over six months just to hit the minimum payout amount of 100 dollars from Google. Enter MyLikes, my CPC is 23 cents per post/tweet that someone clicks on. Yeah, I can work with that.

What I like about this too is the quality of the companies participating. Unlike Izea/Social Spark/Pay per post – there are companies here that make sense for where I blog and my interests. Meaning I am more likely to use this in my blog and twitter entries than I am to use Izea. In my experience with Izea, I have only written three sponsored posts for them in the two years I have been participating because of the lack of great technology products or services. This is also an issue with a number of other technology companies, rather than focus on the minor digerati – technology companies tend to focus on the big scores they can get at Mashable, Techcrunch, or Robert Scoble.

Mylikes makes this more interesting for the minor digerati – those without their tweets showing up in Google’s real time search. Using Mylikes to not only make a little cash, but showing off that you can be an influencer in the technology community might not hurt your blogging career. Depending on how many click throughs happen from what you tweet and blog about it might just end up being a better way to bring in operating costs for your blog than AdWords. The better part is that in some respects the idea is better than simple ads, which have caused controversy, as long as it is properly disclosed.

That will end up being the bigger issue, so far on MyLikes I have not seen where I need to disclose that this or that will be compensated if you click. However in an interview on Regular Geek – she takes on Izea/Social Spark directly and discusses how her program is different.

Besides disclosure this is a great new feature of Likeaholix which I am a huge fan of already especially with the ease of use and the integration between my Amazon account and my Likeaholix account. Overall cool new stuff from Bindu and worth checking out.

In the mean time help me work on my 23 cents CPC by Supporting Elance Following this code link:

Elance – www.elance.com

I have used elance in the past and will use them on a regular basis in the future. There are some awesome contractors on the system

sponsored like

Dan Morrill’s profile on MyLikes

Should You Reserve Ad Budget for Sponsored Tweets? (readwriteweb.com)
Get Paid For Your Likes With MyLikes (regulargeek.com)

Dan Morrill’s personal views on Technology, Education, Web 2.0, bringing people together

Category Archives: Cool Tools

Why the common nap might be your best friend

Amazon rolls out new Web Store for Sellers

TeachStreet goes all Lead Gen for Colleges

Zoom Media Plus memory card for you Apple Iphone or IPod

Better CPC than Google Adsense at MyLikes dot com

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Dan Morrill’s personal views on Technology, Education, Web 2.0, bringing people together

Category Archives: Cool Tools

Why the common nap might be your best friend

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Amazon rolls out new Web Store for Sellers

TeachStreet goes all Lead Gen for Colleges

Related articles by Zemanta

Zoom Media Plus memory card for you Apple Iphone or IPod

Related articles by Zemanta

Better CPC than Google Adsense at MyLikes dot com

Related articles by Zemanta

main control center:

Let me introduce myself

Oddly Not Normal

Subscribe to the Blog here

Blogroll

RSS Feeds

Meta