Geosense capitalizes on this fact by letting people from all over the world have fun relating about the different places that we each call home.

This site allows you to play games to test your comprehension of geography, asking you to pinpoint positions of cities on maps of the world. 5 game options are available on the Geosense site, which allows you to pair up against an opponent or play alone.

If you pay attention as you play, you can learn from any mistakes you make. (Unless you are an idiot savant when it comes to geography, you are bound to make mistakes while playing.)

By making a habit of playing games on Geosense whenever you have spare time each day, you will gradually better understand the roles that each of our nations in a grander geopolitical drama, and you will flex your mental muscles so that you will avoid ever sounding like an ill-informed beauty pageant contestant.

How to Play

Getting started with the Geosense game is simple, especially if you opt to play against yourself. All you need to do is open the Geosense homepage, then sign in or play as a visitor. Once you enter, you’ll see a list of players who are either available, unavailable, or already playing. (Note: Many of these players may be teens who are using the Geosense entry page in order to bypass the network security systems of their schools or libraries, just to use the chat box beneath the game as a way to communicate with each other–thus, many of these players may list themselves as “unavailable”.)

If you are someone who thrives on competition, you’ll probably want to wait until an opponent pops up as available. However, in any case, you’ll probably want to practice using the game by opting to play alone a few times.

Before you begin, decide whether to play the game in one of five different modes:

• 1.) as a world map
• 2.) an advanced map (pretty much the same as a world map)
• 3.) a Europe map
• 4.) a US map. 

Lastly, there is a somewhat annoying mode to choose that is more a test of your verbal knowledge than your knowledge of geography: Scramble. 

In this mode, not only will you be challenged to pinpoint the location of cities & countries, but you will also need to guess the cities & countries as their names are printed only 1 random letter at a time each second. This may be fun for advanced players, but is certainly a little more complex than necessary for an absolute beginner.

The cool thing about playing Geosense is that the game evaluates your answers on the basis of their specificity. Once you submit your answer, the program will let you know how close or far from the true mark you are, and if you’re close you’ll receive more points. For example, instead of simply being asked where Boliva is, you’ll be asked where La Paz, Bolivia is. Two ways to play the game are to either brush up on your knowledge of geography beforehand, or to simply make educated guesses about where places should be found and find out whether you’re close. If you play the second way, you’ll want to pay attention when the game corrects your errors.

Quick Cheats

Of course, if you choose to play the first way and use study guides, great methods to learn geography are via Google Earth & MSN Encarta’s World Atlas.

Google Earth is especially simple to use, since it allows you to enter cities and countries into its search bar, then spins a 3D globe around to whisk you to your destination. Furthermore, Google Earth offers users a bundle of tweaks & goodies that make learning geography almost as exciting as watching a multimillion dollar summer blockbuster.

MSN Encarta’s World Atlas is a little more traditional than Google Earth. It’s basically a 2-dimensional interactive world map.  Nothing fancy. However, depending on your needs, it may be easier to use than a map with lots of extra bells & whistles. All you need to do is click on areas of interest in the map, then quickly zero in on the information you’re seeking.

What’s cool about all of these tools is that even if you’ve got a PhD in Geography, they can still be valuable tools to use. If you’re like most of us, however, Geosense can be a fun & non-threatening way to improve your intelligence.

If you’ve played Geosense, share your score with us & tell us how you like the game. Do you think it could be improved? Do you experience that it provides accurate answers? Do you know an easier way than already mentioned to learn geographical concepts? Give us your opinion; inquiring minds want to know!

Photo Credits: ooOJasonOoo, James Withers.

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GWAP (Games With a Purpose) proves otherwise.  Games themselves can actually play a part in making the internet smarter.

GWAP asserts that information gathered via gaming can serve to improve search engine functionality. Much like Microsoft’s Picture This, these games pair you up with a partner and present you with images & sounds to elicit subjective responses.  Essentially, the games ask you for your opinion.  So, in a certain sense, they are also like taking surveys.

Still, if they are surveys, they are fun surveys.

Who do they help?  Well, GWAP’s blog states that “GWAP.com is brought to you by the same people who created The ESP Game (a.k.a., the Google Image Labeler), Peekaboom and reCAPTCHA.”  Hopefully, GWAP still has an alliance with Google, and the information culled from our gaming efforts is shared with this intensely popular search engine.  However, GWAP does not explicitly state how or where its data is used.

Fortunately, the games are worth playing, and are even mildly addictive.

The Games You Can Play

Gender Guesser is a game that is featured on the homepage of GWAP.  This game presents a player with 10 chances to select a favorite between a pair of 2 pictures.  After choosing favorites from each set, the game will then attempt to determine the player’s gender.

While this game is fun to play, mostly because its pictures are visually stimulating, it hardly provides accurate results.  By playing the game, however, users generate useful data that allows GWAP’s creators to understand relationships between gender and visual preferences.

All of the other games hosted by GWAP pair players up with partners (presumably flesh & blood, as opposed to virtual).

Three of these games (ESP Game, Tag a Tune, & Verbosity) are similar in that they each require users to type responses to the clues they provide.  In the ESP Game, both you and your partner see the same image.  Your objective is to explain what you see in two words or less.  If your partner’s response matches with yours, you both receive points.  If not, you can either pass or continue to try.

Tag a Tune operates on this same matching principle.  However, you and your partner must decide whether or not the tunes you are each listening to are the same or are different.  You can both describe the tunes using single words, and when one of you is ready to decide, you are free to do so.

Verbosity is sort of like the popular television show Password.  You and your partner trade turns to either give each other clues or to choose a single word described by the clues.  Thus, if the word in question is “snowflake”, you may give your partner the clues “cold”, “winter”, & “tiny”.

Squigl & Matchin require players to use their mouse more than their keyboards.

Personally, I found Squigl a little annoying.  It asks players to circle a particular object in a picture, and then decides whether each player traced the object using a similar path.  The reason why I was annoyed by the game was because it seemed miscalibrated.  I was shown a picture of a baseball team and was prompted to circle “football”.  Next, I was shown a picture of a fish deep underwater, and was told to circle “sand”.  Maybe GWAP has a sense of humor.

The final game, Matchin, is in some ways the most fun.  Players must attempt to get into each others brains, and choose the same picture that their partners are choosing from a pair of options.  Just as in Gender Guesser, each player is presented with a series of paired photographs.  The objective of each player is to try to match their choices with each other.

For example, one of a pair of photos may be of a flower, while another may be of a building.  If you choose the flower and your partner does as well, you both receive points.  I like playing this game because it makes me feel psychic.  However, I’m not sure how the results of Matchin serve to make the internet any smarter.

Why Should You Play?

The biggest reason why you should give GWAP a chance is because it provides good, clean fun.  Its games are somehow reminiscent of early video games of the 80’s, in the best sense.  GWAP even sports Facebook functionality.  Pretty nifty.

A second reason to play is to receive prizes, although you’re not likely to receive anything.  Selected participants have won gift cards to Amazon.com.  Presently, you will need to gain a score of at least 50,000 points for the week in order to qualify for any prizes.  This sounds challenging, but each game you play will serve you with a ton of points in the span of a few minutes.

Hopefully, as time goes by, GWAP will supplement these prizes with other attractive options that are easier to win.  However, in the meantime, GWAP is still fun and there isn’t any worry that its users will simply be trying to game its system.

Tell us what you think about GWAP.  Is it too simplistic & too juvenille?  Or, do you think that its simplicity is its most appealing asset?  Are games with a purpose the wave of the future?

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While some coupons save shoppers nothing more than pennies, others dramatically slash prices of essential household items.  Ultimately, wise shoppers save hundreds or thousands of dollars a year by using coupons, and are able to receive many items virtually free.

However, there is a cost attached to using coupons.  They are time-consuming to organize.  Often, one must ask themselves if using coupons is any more profitable than simply working a part-time job.

Fortunately, Zoho Notebook can serve to help you save time & money with your coupons.  This free application allows you to copy coupons & to shuffle them around on the screen, so that you can arrange them as you wish.

Before getting started with Zoho, take a moment to familiarize yourself with other handy coupon tools that will make Sunday’s paper seem like yesterday’s news.

The Coupon Calendar

A coupon clipping service, called the Coupon Clippers, provides a very handy calendar that lets you know about each week’s coupons–both past, present, & (if you’re lucky) the future.

This calendar gives you pre-organized information on all of the coupons that come in Sunday’s newspaper.  You will no longer need to cut the coupons & organize them yourself before heading to the grocery store.  Only cut the ones you need, after you have checked the calendar’s database to see what the best deals are.

Incredibly, the coupons usually get posted to this site a little ahead of time.  So, you can find out what Sunday’s deals are on Saturday evening, or maybe even Friday night.  This gives you more time to strategize, and to get the best deal before supplies have vanished.

My Grocery Deals

This is a very helpful site, which lets you compare the best deals from local grocery stores.  However, it does not seem to include non-food items. Plus, like other items listed here, it is useless outside of the United States. (However, other useful sites exist for regions such as the UK.)

Items are searchable, both by category as well as by brand name.  To search for a brand name, you will first need to enter a category.  There is an index of categories available to the left of the page, as soon as you enter into “category” search mode.

A similar search engine, which also includes perishable items can be found at GroceryGuide.

Zoho Notebook

Zoho Notebook is easy & requires no installation to use.  However if you want to use Zoho’s plugin, I recommend doing so since it simplifies the process of saving images & text to Zoho.

When using it, you can highlight anything on a webpage, and transfer it into a note.

Logically enough, you can clip coupon information from the couponclippers website & pair it up with store information either from the mygrocerydeals website or the stores’ circulars themselves.

Any notebooks you make can be shared with others, by selecting “Share” options at the top of the note, once you have first saved your note.

Anyone with whom you share the note can modify it, and send it directly back to you.  So, you can delegate tasks to one another.  For example, one person could find the best deals in Store A, while another could find the best deals in Store B, etc.  Then, you could compile all of your notes, so that you would each have a big list of the week’s best deals.

Circles Of Couponing Collaboration

If you would like to publicly cultivate circles of collaboration, there are 2 resources which capitalize on the sharing potential of coupon organizing.

The first will be found at the Pinching Your Pennies Forums, which are organized by state. Predictably, states containing strong suburban & rural markets will be lavished with more attention in the forums (i.e., Utah & Arizona), while those with urban markets will rarely receive posts (i.e. New Jersey & Connecticut).  Deals are best where stores are challenged to lure customers from miles away with attractive rebates & incentives, such as in the suburban markets.

If the forum for your state gets heavy traffic, you may want to get to know your fellow forum-visitors.  Tell them about Zoho, and try to begin collaborating together.  The worst thing they’ll do is to laugh at you.

A final place to visit is the Slickdeals Drugstore/Grocery Deals Forum.  You’ll usually be greeted by a handful of posts regarding upcoming ads for stores such as Walgreens, CVS, or Safeway.  Not only do advance ads get posted here, but savvy forum users will begin to strategize plans-of-attack, so that they can maximize coupon savings on sale items from the ads.

Fortunately, this is a highly active forum.  To improve your results, use the “search” feature of this forum, in the top right corner beneath the ad.  Type in a store to see recent messages about it.

Hopefully, you will find these forums enlightening at the least, and if they’re not useful to you perhaps they will be to one of your relatives or neighbors.

While couponing is not exactly the average shopper’s idea of fun (even if she’s a housewife on a budget), these 21st century tools are sure to bring couponing out of the Stone Age & give many families the help they desperately need in these troubled economic times.

If you know of any other coupon sites, tell us about them in the comments.

Image Credits:  Bramus!, James Withers, & ratterrell

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While few people will be so careless as to attempt using a computer while taking a bath, poor online & offline habits can certainly shave years off of one’s life.

By simply modifying your own behavior, you can use your computer in ways that will keep you in good health rather than putting you in an early grave.

Stress Kills

Furthermore, no matter how technologically-prepared you are, computer equipment is sure to malfunction as soon as you touch it.  Doubtlessly, you will want to smack your computer and perhaps even get fired from your job for doing so.

However, you should learn to handle your stress in productive ways instead of letting it get the best of you.  Avoid visiting sites that are sure to make your blood pressure rise, routinely backup important documents, and train yourself on how to deal with minor glitches.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Don’t Slouch

Slouching is easy to do when surfing the internet.  Nevertheless, there’s no reason to break your back while online.

Just as your mother probably scolded you to do as a child, you should sit up straight while using a computer.

Even slight maladjustments in good posture can cause severe backache over the long haul.  You should be careful not to strain muscles in your neck, by correcting the bad habit of craning your neck to read fine print or check out content of interest to you while you’re working on your PC.

Consider typical scenarios:  if you’re using a handheld mouse,  you’re probably leaning at an angle in the first place in order to wiggle the little creature around a mousepad; if you’re using a chair with wheels, you may not remain fixed at a stationary spot as hours slowly pass; if you’re resting on a sofa, you’re likely to be tossing all of this useful advice out the window in exchange for the freedom to rest on soft pillows while still putting stress on your muscles.

Googling Toward Blindness

Staring at the sun is a foolish thing to do.  Staring at a bright computer screen for hours is only slightly less foolish.  While experts conclude that computers give off little if no harmful radiation, users frequently forget to use common sense when staring at their bright PC screens.

For example, eye strain is quickly caused if a user forgets to blink regularly while sitting in front of a computer.  Similarly, just because you want to use the computer for hours at a time doesn’t mean that your body is ready to let you.

Perhaps you’ve been up too late, or you’ve got a bad case of jet lag.  In both cases, your eyes may be taxed by trying to read through pages of search results, all buried beneath the glare of your computer screen.

Throw Your Hands in the Air

Why give yourself carpal tunnel when you can navigate the computer with your voice?

Although clicking a mouse hundreds of times per hour may not seem to pose a great health risk, doing so causes fatigue in small muscles or tendons in the hand. Furthermore, typing or texting can create undue stress that can easily be avoided if a user resorts to a little common sense.

By using free speech macros for Windows Vista, offered by Microsoft, you can feel free to throw your hands in the air & accomplish most of your work with voice prompts. You won’t need to give up using your mouse or keyboard, but you can save yourself a little energy by using speech to supplement your handiwork.

Set Yourself Free

Sometimes, you should remind yourself that you are not a slave who is bound with chains to your computer terminal.

• Get up & take a walk.
• Stretch at your desk periodically.
• Pour yourself a glass of water.
• Take a break to call a friend.

Simply enough, let your computer be of service to you rather than living simply to serve your computer.  Remember that the computer is a man-made invention that was designed to enhance your life rather than to deprive you of life.

Go forth, add favorites to your bookmarks, & prosper.

Photo Credits: Adi Setiawan, Exiree, robad0b, enggul, massdistraction, Daniel Greene

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Fortunately, online stopwatches are easy to find & to use.

Gently enhance the value of your time by making intelligent use of one of these free stopwatches.

Punch In & Out

It’s easy to lose track of time when you’ve got 1) the internet as a playground, & 2) a nice, cozy couch to rest on while you work.

Instead of losing huge chunks of time during a stay-at-home workday, practice a procedure of punching in & out using a clock.  Whenever you begin working, simply start the clock. (My favorite version is this one, a simple full-screen online stopwatch which I can keep minimized at the bottom of my screen as I work).  When you take a break, even if it’s only a quick restroom break, stop the clock. When you resume your work, start the clock again.

Simple. Punch in & punch out. However, don’t waste time after you’ve punched in. Stay on task.  If you find yourself drifting, punch out and give yourself a little pep talk before punching in again.

Log Your Results

Recently, I wrote about the benefits of using the Firefox extension Zotero. This free application allows you to easily drag & drop online material into a notebook extension. Zotero is great to use when paired with an online stopwatch widget called Chronme.

Chronme not only counts time, but it also logs the date & time of day when you put it to use.  This is a powerful asset when you’re keeping track of your productivity, because a log is automatically retained for every break you take while working.

Periodically, you can drag & drop this data into a Zotero standalone note.

Furthermore, since Chronme is a widget, you can place it into a private blog where you can daily record your own performance.

Analyze the Data

At the end of the day, take a look at the total amount of time you worked, and try to find out when you may have wasted time. Consider practicing this experiment with a friend or two, and try to compare productivity with one another.

Perhaps your friend will be more effective in his work than you are, even if he worked less time. Perhaps not. If so however, try to discover the secret to his success.  Be willing to learn how to improve.

Make the Most of Your Time

Time can be money if you make a habit of putting your time to good use. Free up time in your day by getting the most out of the least amount of time.

Why slave for hours over a project that does not deserve more than 30 minutes of your time? By evaluating your own psychology about time, you will see that procrastination tends to waste away precious minutes, hours or even entire workdays.

Try out the methods suggested here to save yourself time & money, and feel free to suggest your own time-saving tips. We’re all ears.

Photo Credits: James Withers, Lady Amada

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In fact, as long as you sign into your Qitera account, this tool will function behind the scenes whenever you perform a search on Google, Microsoft or Yahoo. As quickly as you can receive your search results, you’ll also receive a listing from Qitera of relevant bookmarks that you or your friends have added to Qitera’s database.

There’s no longer any need to go on a scavenger hunt to find a webpage you saved 6 months ago. Just think of a keyword contained in the page, and you can draw it up with a Google search.

Are Your Bookmarks Getting Buried in Bookmarks?

Bookmarks are meant to be simple. They are entrusted with the chore of reflecting a user’s personality. However, as humans, we are complicated creatures. Soon, our personalities rub off on our bookmarks, and they can swiftly become complicated as well.

As they breed and multiply, bookmarks become difficult to search through.  However, Qitera offers a remedy for this.  Rather than lock bookmarks into cages, Qitera sets them free and links them directly to Google search results.

You Can Be the Ghost in the Machine!

By synching your bookmarks with Google, you can inject your own personality into Google’s search results. To do so, you will first need to log into Qitera. Once you’ve done so, Qitera will respond to any Google search you submit by simultaneously searching your bookmarks. It will serve up its results a few fractions of a second later, just above Google’s results.

That’s right. Your own homemade search results will trump Google’s findings. This is helpful if, for example, you’re performing a search on “colleges”, and you’d rather browse through your own bookmarks on the subject than to wade through Google’s voluminous (often irrelevant) discoveries.

Listen to Your Friends & Family

In a roundabout way, Google’s search results are organized on the basis of their popularity. However, popularity has its pitfalls. Popular results are of no use if what you’re searching for is not important to anyone outside of your inner circle.

With a Qitera-powered Google search, you can let friends and family chime in with their search results.

Top results will be shown inside of your search page, yet you can still access other related bookmarks by clicking a nearby link stating “Show Results on Qitera”. Doing so will let you browse through screenshots of your bookmarks.

Surveying Your Bookmarks

Personally, I’m a fan of both Firefox & Stumbleupon. Firefox is efficient, giving me the ability to save windows & tabs, so that I can draw up 40 or 50 essential webpages in seconds. Stumbleupon, on the other hand, provides hours of sheer entertainment while at the same time reducing clutter. Plus, it is searchable by subject, such as “Interior Design”.

Do you have a favorite bookmarking application? Do you tend to use multiple apps, as I do? Take a moment to survey your bookmarks, and share with our readers which tools are your favorites.

Photo Credits: James Withers, ycc2106, striatic, and deryckh.

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Skip the hassle, and archive information the easy way. Just flip out your cellphone and take a few snapshots. You can refer to them later, they’re easy to delete, & they will cost you next to nothing.

In a Rush

Imagine you’re at the local library scrambling to complete a research project at the last minute.  However, a voice over the intercom has just informed you that the library will be closing in 15 minutes. You’ve found some solid reference material, but you don’t have any change to use in the Xerox machine. Plus, you need to copy 20 or 30 pages of material. All you’ve got in your pocket is a cellphone. Don’t worry. Just find a good light source and use your phone’s camera!

Clarity of Photos

Clarity is a must whenever you reproduce a document. If you’ve ever made a copy on a machine that’s low on toner, then you know exactly how important clarity is to your reproductions.

Without clarity, your documents are rendered worthless.

Therefore, it is essential that you take photos from an optimal distance when using your cell phone as a copy machine. In my experience, I can safely take photos of half of a page of material without the words on the page looking blurred or unreadable.

Also, I recommend that you take a snapshot at an angle where no shadow will be cast over a page, espcially when words are difficult to read close to a spine of a book.  Additionally, pages will be easier to read later if you mark the divide of the page with your thumb or any other available marker, so that you will know where one photo’s information picks up from the last.

Space for Memory

Unless you use a state-of-the-art phone, memory space is something of a concern if you attempt to convert your cell phone into a copy machine. I recommend that you make a habit of regularly transferring your pictures to your P.C. (which I’ll discuss in a moment). This will free up space, so that you will always have room to take random photos, as well as to document more of your research.

Another option is to buy a digital memory card which can be slotted into your phone (but obviously your phone would need to be built to accept memory cards, which a lot of the new phones do these days).

You never know what will catch your eye next, so it’s best to be on the ready.

Transferring to Computer

Ideally, your cell is already able to connect to the internet, as an iPhone is able to do.

However, if you are a pauper, viable options are still available to enable you to transfer your pics.

While many cell phones give you the option to email files, using this feature may be more costly than a Xerox machine would have been in the first place.

Some phones are equipped with a USB port, and it is possible to upload files from your phone to your computer with the aid of a USB cable.  This is fine if you don’t mind keeping track of the cable.

However, a more satisfying option may be to invest in bluetooth software, which will permit you to link your cellphone up to your computer and to wirelessly transfer your files. This software may cost $25.00 or $30.00, but it will definitely be worth the investment when you consider its superiority alongside of the other alternatives I’ve mentioned.

Online Storage

Photobucket allows you to upload pics from your cellphone directly into an album in your Photobucket account.  Flickr offers a similar service.

If however, you’re only using your photos for reference purposes, you may want to place them in Skydrive, and delete them when you’re finished with your research.

As always, before uploading pics, be aware of any per-picture charges imposed by your cellphone provider.

Save Time & Money

While printing your images at home will still cost you the price of printer ink, you can take measures to defray these costs. For example, you can crop your pics, then copy & paste several cropped images onto a single page. Another easy way to save money when printing is to refill printer cartridges instead of buying new ones (periodically, Walgreens even offers to refill printer ink for free).

Nevertheless, even if you fail to save money on the ink, you’ll still be saving yourself time.

For an extra thrill, clip your pics into Evernote (in cahoots with Eye-Fi to create an instant photographic memory) and you can make text within your photos searchable.

Have Even Better Ideas?

How do you use your cell phone to save time or money? What other uses do you use your cellphone camera for? Which online application is most useful for handling your uploads?

Let us know what you think. We’re always eager to follow up on new trends, so don’t be afraid to be a new trendsetter!

Photo Credits : Mac Funamizu, lastyearsgirl, lincolnblues and JulianBleeker

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Marketed as a research tool, it is actually a tiny miracle.  Not only can it be used to bookmark information, but it also permits its user to highlight or add sticky notes to pages.  Furthermore, it sports an impressive search capability, just as Google Notebook has done.

Fortunately, Zotero also allows users to drag and drop highlighted information directly into a note, eliminating the need to press a “clip” or “paste” button.  For this reason, Zotero is an excellent program to use if you desire to put together a mailing list.

Download Zotero

Zotero is a free & handy piece of software that is easy to install. Equipped with a portable bookmarking tool, the Zotero application provides space for you to deposit information you discover on the internet. Doing so is easy.  Once downloaded, Zotero’s extension can be opened from the bottom corner of your screen (just like Google’s soon defunct Notebook extension). Once opened, it will expand to fill a third of the screen.

To get started with a new notebook, you will only need to press an icon titled “New Standalone Note” and begin to type into a blank page in the 3rd column of the Zotero pane. Next, highlight any information from the internet that is of particular interest to you, just as you would do if you were preparing to copy & paste it into a document . However, instead of needing to worry about opening up a Word document, you can simply drag the info directly into the notebook. Here, it can be modified, and can later be exported by being dragged outside of the notebook to a desired spot.

In addition to this convenient drag & drop feature, Zotero also permits users to simply record a page’s URL, as well as record a screenshot of the page.

Research Your Prospects

Plenty of information exists online to suit the needs of a wide range of aspiring entrepreneurs. When useful email addresses are collected in one place, they can be worth a pretty penny. Instead of worrying about needing to purchase this information from data gathering experts, why not just gather it yourself?

Since Zotero’s extension does not require repeated users to enter user IDs and passwords, it is an easy place to store useful information about potential business prospects. In fact, getting in and out of Zotero is even easier than logging onto the internet.

Open & Title a New Standalone Note

While Zotero permits you to tag items with the URL code from which they originate, the easiest way to save email addresses is to simply drop them one by one into a standalone note. Should you later have questions about the email address you’ve saved, you can always Google the email address in question and you’ll most likely get a list of results that includes the site from which you extracted the address.

Conveniently, Zotero automatically saves your work, just as Google’s Notebook & Google Docs does. This can be a lifesaver if you’re called away by an instant message, by a co-worker, or by a family member.

Send Your Mail Via Gmail

I recommend Gmail over Hotmail because, of the two, Zotero proved to be more compatible with Gmail when I performed a side-by-side comparison.  A chunk of email addresses can be pulled out of your Zotero notebook and dropped directly into the BCC line of an email.  Although Standard Edition Google accounts permit users to send 500 emails per day to external recipients, Google itself recommends to users to bypass this restriction by creating multiple email accounts.

And this is the least of what Zotero can do.  Although using Zotero takes a little work & ingenuity, it is a real lifesaver in the end. It frees up your energy to tackle complex projects without having to worry about getting overwhelmed.

Better Than Google Notebook?

Now it’s time for the big question:  Do you feel like Zotero is a worthy replacement to Google Notebook?  Let us know if you’ve tried Zotero yet.  If you have, how do you like it?  Do you have any tips for others about how to make the most of Zotero?

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Seriously.  You’re going to be doing most of the legwork anyway if you’re planning a party.  Why send out precious invitations printed on smooth matte cardstock paper when you can just give friends a heads-up through email?  It’s less expensive, and much cooler to anyone with a laptop or iPhone.

So let’s see how Google can save you a lot of money on your next event.

Telephone Lookup

Whether choosing to hire or fire an event planner, certain research still needs to be done in order to prepare party invitations.

How many of your friends’ addresses do you keep stored in your memory?  Probably not many.  However, calling friends up on a cellphone is as easy as pressing a few buttons.  Why not find their addresses just as easily?  Just type their phone numbers into the Google search box (only numbers, without hyphens), and receive their addresses as search results.  Then, start mailing out your party invitations.

Google Notebook

Once you locate an address through a Google search, you can save it just as easily by bringing Google Notebook into play.  This app can be accessed through your Google account, and the cool thing is that you can download a mini-notebook that can be drawn up at will from the bottom corner of your screen.  Just open it up (without leaving your search page), highlight the address you’ll be saving, press “clip” in Google Notebook, and ta-da!  The info is saved.

Plus, you can even search your notebooks just as you would Google itself, to find any clips that you might misplace.

Google Street View

If you’re going to make a map to send with your invitations, why not use Google Maps?  Furthermore, why not just go the full distance and use Google Street View?

Just type in your own address on Google Maps, and press the “street view” option included in the bubble containing your address.

What you’ll find is a photo-realistic, interactive map that will give your friends a perfect idea of how to get to your house.  If you choose to send a snailmail invitation, you can use the Street View pic of your residence as a reference; however, if you send your invites out via the internet, you can give your friends a Street View pic that they can manipulate with their mouse.

Google Bookmarks

While in the process of party-planning, you’ll probably get distracted quite often.  As soon as you begin to discover interesting sites on the internet, you’ve got to go to work or to run an errand.

Don’t worry.  Google’s Bookmark tool will allow you to save whole sites for future reference.  In order to keep your thoughts organized, you can comment on the sites & even add tags to them.

Of course, your bookmarks are searchable.

Google Calendar

Every event planner needs a calendar, and Google’s got you covered.  Google Calendar is easy to manipulate:  you can plan far into the future, to the very hour of the day in question.

You can even share your calendar with others, and when your friends agree to be at your event they’ll receive confirmation email reminders in Gmail.

Google Sites

Once you’ve planned your party and you’re ready to send the invites, you can do it via Gmail by including a link in your letter to a customized Google Site.

This recent app lets you build your own free web pages.  Save your friends the trouble of having to open up attachments in their mail, and simply upload all of your photos, info, & links to your Google site.  Then, send out a carbon copy email to everyone on your invite list, giving them a direct link to the webpage.

Is Google The Best There Is?

All of the services described above can be accessed by logging into Google & entering “My Account”.  Let us know if you’re a fan of Google’s services.  If not, are there other services that you recommend over Google’s?

A lot of companies seem to be using Google’s apps as a model, and some are creating software that is even more functional than what Google has to offer.

Feel free to comment about any other apps that are worth looking into.

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Photo Credit : Alexander O’Neill
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All you need to do (after registering for an account) is to open up your cellphone and speed-dial Jott’s toll-free number (1-866-JOTT-123).  Record a bundle of free notes to yourself, which will quickly be converted into text for you to access later online.  Once you access your notes, you can make use of the popular (and free) Google Notebook application to assemble these notes into usable material.

Outline Your Writing

While Jott is a handy & free tool, it suffers from a minor limitation unless you opt for an upgrade.  It will only allow you to record a message that is about 10-15 seconds in length.  However, unless you’re a blabbermouth, this drawback is actually a Twitter-like asset.  It forces you to be succinct when making your notes.  For this reason, it’s good to rehearse what you’re going to say before you make your call to Jott.  Simply take a few seconds to mentally outline your idea.

Remember however that the notes you make don’t even necessarily need to be structured as sentences.  That’s right, just fire off ideas as they occur to you if you wish.  Whether you want to dictate title ideas, keyword ideas, or the opening paragraphs of the next Moby Dick, feel free to dial Jott when you’re ready to get started.

Trust Your Memory

Once you speak a note into Jott, you cannot access it unless you get online.  So, you will achieve good results with Jott if you learn to trust your memory.  Keep your writing simple, starting with a basic outline, and expanding your thoughts step-by-step.  Don’t lose your train of thought by rambling or ranting.  Instead, voice simple ideas that you can build on later when you’re at home.

Connect-The-Dots

Once you get home, you can complete your work by first logging into your Jott account.  (Set one up for free, and add your primary & secondary contacts).  You will find notes that you sent to yourself, hopefully completely transcribed.  Occasionally, these notes contain small errors, and rarely Jott is unable to transcribe your message.  In such cases, it allows you the convenient option of being able to listen to your original telephone recording.

Here is where Google Notebook comes into play.  (Google Notebook is offered as a free perk to anyone with a Google Account).  Open up the mini Google Notebook at the corner of your browser.  Create a notebook to place your recent Jott clipping in.  Next, simply open the Jott notes you made while you were out, and copy them one by one to paste into your new notebook (unfortunately, the Google Notebook’s “clip” feature won’t work with Jott’s notes).  Once you are done, add comments if you wish.

Next, you can choose to export this new notebook to Google Docs, where you can edit it into publishable form.  To do so, all you need to do is press the “Tools” button in Google Notebook, above the “Save Now” button.

Inspire Yourself

If you begin to regularly record your ideas in this way, you may notice yourself becoming accustomed to the routine of realizing your most creative ideas while standing in grocery lines or waiting in the lobby of a doctor’s office.  Perhaps you would even like to prompt yourself to action in the middle of the day, while away from your computer.  If you want to become your own boss, so to speak, another relevant service exists that you can make free use of.  Wakerupper will let you record simple telephone reminders to yourself, which you can schedule to be sent hours, days, or even months ahead of time.

You can inspire yourself with the use of this service if you do a little homework ahead of time.  Let’s say you want to prompt yourself to write blog posts that are filled with popular & punchy keywords.  Just research the keywords in the middle of the night when you’re up for a midnight snack.  Then, schedule a call to your cellphone for the following afternoon.  Hours later, when your cellphone rings, a friendly computerized voice will repeat the keywords back to you, and you’re ready to make use of them.  You can then scribble them down for reference or simply keep them in your memory, as you think of ideas that you will want to send to Jott.

Have You Used Jott?

If you’ve already used Jott, and you’d like to share your own ideas about how to get the most out of its service, we welcome you to share your tips with us.  Tell us about whether you use Jott on a routine basis, or just every once in a while.  Have you made use of any of Jott’s paid services?  Do you use it to write emails, or just to record your random thoughts?  What would you like to see changed about Jott?

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