Despite its old school design, this site provides some fairly decent Java script games that are easy to use and fun to play. So if you have some time, you should definitely take a look.

The Basic Rundown

A Game A Day is one of the simplest sites that I’ve ever had the pleasure of using – no sign-ups, no hassles, no contract statements that involve me selling my future firstborn. It does exactly what would be expected of any good site, and that is for it to do what it is supposed to do. All it takes is for you to head over to the website once every single day to make this whole thing work.

The premise surrounding A Game A Day is that it provides one simple little brain teaser for you to play each day out of the year. Sometimes it’s just a question. Other times it’s simply a puzzle. Typically, these games are not very long seeing that they only involve one single problem, so this is great for people that are on the go. However, some of them actually seem to loop, so you can play once your brain has been fed. Basically, if you can check Facebook once a day, then you can play A Game A Day, too.

Raise The Bar

The games for the month are available at all times, so if you’ve missed a few days (or you want to skip ahead) then you’re in luck. However, if the month has already passed, then you are only able to play for the given month. The games come in two flavors – Level I and Level II – and while the first one is always good for casual players, the second one is just a smidgen harder. Dive in if you have a vast vocabulary and a mind with a knack for complex thinking. Granted, the games aren’t hard, and I believe anyone can figure them out. It’s just that one level might take a little more time out of your day than the other.

Most of the games are word puzzles dealing with antonyms or synonyms with a fill-in-the-blank type of format. However, there are quite a few meant to build up your word, geography, and visual knowledge. Some of the many games are listed below.

• How Do You Say? – Match up a common phrase in five different languages.
• Inquiring Cartographer – Identify countries on small land masses.
• Match Ups – Match symbols or images with their meanings.
• Antonyms – Simply write all the antonyms of the words you are given.

At first glance, the games may seem a little corny or too easy. However, they are great for a simple mind tease once a day, and they can get the brain going.

Conclusion

Like I said, this site is incredibly simple to use, and it serves its purpose well. The games are constantly updating, so you know that you’ll get something different each and every time.

What other brain teaser sites do you know of? Do you have any favorite games on A Game A Day?

I am also intrigued by the other way around – devices and apps that have the ability to affect your brain. Jackson seems to be equally as intrigued as I. In 2009 he wrote a couple of cool articles covering just such apps, like his list of apps that help you sleep, relax or concentrate. His list of 9 iPhone apps that help you sleep were along the same lines as well. This week, I was complaining at work about being tired and not getting enough sleep, and one of my colleagues mentioned that I might want to consider trying binaural beats.

Improving Your Life With Binaural Beats

“Binaural what?” you ask.

That’s right, binaural beats – sounds of varying frequencies that, when played in each ear, supposedly produces a sort of “resonant frequency” in the center of the brain that can actually induce a specific mental state. The evidence for this interesting brain artifact comes from published research at the University of Florida, the University of California, and discussed in publications like the MIT Press and Scientific American.

If you want to try this phenomenon for yourself and you have an Android, you can. The goal with the apps I’m going to review in this article is to play those frequencies long enough to induce your brain toward that desired mental state.

Binaural Beats Therapy

If you’re ready to try this out, I highly suggest you first download my favorite app, Binaural Beats Therapy. This app consists of 7 preset frequency configurations that will play a carefully modulated tone in each ear, in order to produce the desired mental state that you choose in the main menu.

The display screen while the tone is playing is fairly boring – just flashing dots on the screen or the entire screen may flash different colors.

The audio itself is pretty high quality, and with this app there doesn’t seem to be any lag at all, even for audio that lasts about 2 hours.

Brainwave Tuner Lite

A similar app is Brainwave Tuner Lite, which has only three selections to choose from – one for each major “state of mind”. That includes “sleep and healing”, “meditation and relaxation” and “Focus and Learning”.

It took me a while to choose between using this one or the previous app the majority of the time that I was writing this article. I like the constant tone of Binaural Beats Therapy – Brainwave Tuner fades in and out, which I don’t particularly like. However, it does have a more creative screen while the sound is playing, which I do like.

One of the things that my colleague described to me is an iPhone app he uses to run through an entire program of frequencies. That’s really what I want to do, so I continued hunting for just such an app.

Binality

I found such an app in Binality. Like the previous two binaural beat apps, Binality offers a decent list of target mental states that you may want to pursue. These include concentration, lucid dreaming and meditation and more. Although, I’m not so sure about the “out of body experience” option…

What I really like about this app is the display while the tone is playing. It shows you the entire programmed frequency range as the program works its way through it.

You can jump around if you’d like by choosing a spot on the control bar, but I hear that you get the best results if you allow the entire program from start to finish.

edenBeats

Another interesting binaural beats app is edenBeats. It offers far fewer options as far as preset frequency tones – the menu only lists four at the moment – but the app is much more flexible because it allows you to alter each frequency as you see fit.

The tone generation screen allows you to turn off or on each base and beat frequency settings if you want to.

Best of all, you can create your own custom binaural beats from scratch if you want – and if you really know what you’re doing.

One-Use Binaural Beat Apps

There are two other apps that I should mention briefly. These are intended to be used for one particular purpose – as very targeted therapy. The first app is called Confidence Now. Be forewarned, when you first launch the app, you’ll need to download multiple large files, so try to do it while on Wi-Fi.

Confidence now offers a very long session created by certified hypnotherapist David Ridgeway, which takes you through relaxation, hypnotic induction, and the main session where Ridgeway makes hypnotic suggestions to improve your confidence, with a binaural beat in the background.

The last app is one that claims it can help people that suffer from depression, called Depression Help. This is a very simple app that just plays one preset setup of tones which the app creators claim can eventually alleviate symptoms of depression.

As to its effectiveness, I can’t really say. The comments area for the app has about half of the users saying it worked and half saying it did zilch.

So why not give binaural therapy a shot, and see if you notice any impact in your daily life. If you’re always tired, groggy or distracted, maybe one of these apps could give you the mental boost that you need. If you do give any apps a try, let us know how it works out. And if you know of any other cool Android apps similar to these, please share them in the comments section below.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

As you can probably tell by the name, AnkiDroid is compatible with the free learning application and website Anki. It also synchronizes with Anki, so you can split your learning between the PC and your Android device, and it has a cool homescreen widget and a reminder system.

The Basic Concept

If you’ve never used a flash card application for learning something, the concept might bear a short introduction. Flash card learning is good for memorizing factoids and small pieces of information, such as the letters of a language or key terms. It works using question and answer pairs. You’re asked a question, try to think of the answer, and then press a button to see the answer. You then need to tell the app how hard or easy coming up with the right answer was.

According to this, the application knows when to next ask you this question. If you know something well, it won’t ask you about it often. This produces a very focused and personalized learning process, where you’re constantly drilled only on your weak points.

The App

Just like Anki, AnkiDroid’s system is based on “decks” of flash cards. The screen you see above is where you can see the status of your local decks, and sync them with the Anki server (requiring a free account). As you can see by the thin white progress bar, my NATO Phonetic Alphabet is going better than my Russian (I’ve been using AnkiDroid for about two months now).

In case you’re not so much into phonetic alphabets or reading Russian, there are many other decks you can choose from.

These are just card decks regular folks like you and me created for Anki and decided to share with the world. Some of them are better than others, and there’s no ranking system, so picking a high-quality pack is a matter of trial and error. There’s often more than one deck about any given subject. Let’s take history, for example:

I could keep scrolling – this is a wide field, and as you can expect, there are lots of decks. Some of the decks are very focused, aimed at one specific test (SOLS Unit 2 above, for example), while others are more general. Also, some packs are just enormous – check out that Hebrew Vocabulary pack (two screenshots up) with 11,670 facts.

If none of the decks available offer the facts you need, you can always create your own deck. You can do this using Anki’s PC application, or right on your device. Once you have a deck you want to learn, it’s time to start!

The Study Process

The deck review screen looks like this:

Before you start studying (or “Reviewing”, in Anki parlance), you can see your progress on the pack so far (ever since you started learning it), as well as how many cards you need to review today. Let’s Start Reviewing:

This is a very simple deck, so the question consists of just a single letter (meaning, “what’s the word for U in the NATO phonetic alphabet?”). Once you’re done thinking, tap Show Answer:

You can rank your answer in four different grades. “Again” usually means you just didn’t know the answer, and the others are self-explanatory. As you can see, if I say this was a hard question for me, I will be shown the question again much sooner than if I say it was Easy. In both cases the interval is really long, because I’ve been working on this deck for a while and I actually know this stuff already (and AnkiDroid correctly picked up on this).

Let’s take a look at the Russian pack I’ve been studying, where I haven’t been doing as well:

In this card, “Hard” would make AnkiDroid show me the card again within 21 days, not 1.1 months. AnkiDroid has all sorts of other nerdy goodies, such as a statistics browser showing your total review time and other data about your progress. These are all secondary to the core of the app, which we’ve just seen. It does have one other key feature:

The Widget & Reminder System

AnkiDroid comes with a large (4×1) widget which shows lots of information about your progress. Apart from the cryptic “0 15 0″, the whole thing is quite clear. Tapping it, as you would expect, launches AnkiDroid.

The reminder system is configurable – for me, it kicks in once there are 25 cards pending review. So you don’t have to constantly check on the widget. If you leave AnkiDroid for a while, notifications will just start appearing in the Notification Bar whenever you need to review your cards. They’re slightly annoying (most notifications are, to me) but are very effective. If you really don’t like them, you can always just switch them off.

Final Thoughts

As I said, I’ve been using this application for a while now, and it just works. It is one of the best applications on my device, and is a fantastic way to learn a new language or any set of data. Just for a sense of proportion, the Anki client for iPad (by another developer) retails for a whopping $25, while AnkiDroid is completely free.

If there’s anything you want to learn, grab AnkiDroid now. And if you make any decks, don’t forget to share!

What a question. Just think of the necessary evidence that one would need to produce in order to prove, or disprove, that statement. In fact, what is the question about really? Is it whether a human brain or a computer is faster, or is it which form of information processing is better? Is it even a fair comparison? Today, I’d like to engage MakeUseOf readers into a debate on this subject by first providing my own take – and then asking for yours.

The Question: Does a Human Think Faster Than a Computer?

The question itself represents the fallacy of how people think about computers. When a person uses a computer, if it’s slow then it’s junk. But there are certainly other factors to consider when examining intelligence – what about image recognition, language recognition, multi-tasking capabilities or self-learning and self-healing features?

First, to partially answer the “speed” question we need to examine data transmission. In the Hartford Examiner, writer Joy Casad answers the question, “How fast is a thought” by describing the chemical/biological propagation of “thinking” neurons before getting to the point in the final paragraph – these neurons transmit signals at 0.5 milliseconds. That’s pretty fast!

In 2006, the fastest reported fiber optic transmission rate was 2.56 terabits a second. Okay, but a bit is nothing more than a zero and a one. Well – the current state of the art is the cutting edge subatomic technology created by Stanford researchers representing one bit with 35 electrons, or 35,000,000,000 electrons a millisecond. Due to the fact that axon/neuron electrical transmission depends on the chemical and biological environment it is in, data transmission of one neuron is actually millions of times slower than the fastest electrical transmission rates over copper electrical wire, and even slower compared to fiber optics. Score one for computers.

What About Processing Power?

The question of processing is a tricky one. According to the Top500 list of super computers, the fastest one as of 2009 is the RoadRunner BladeCenter at 12.8 GFlops (floating point operations per second).

A GFlop represents a billion operations per second. Now, you’re thinking of that Monday morning in class when your professor asked you to perform a simple calculation and your mind went blank. You’re ready to chalk up another point to computers, right? Wrong.

While the transmission of electrical impulses may be slower in the brain than over wire, the processing power of the brain is represented by not one, but thousands of processors backed into one major super computer. One example is the retina, which is sort of like your computer web cam, in that it transmits light (images) to the brain for processing. Except the retina itself has its own processing power, sort of like a subprocessor – 100 million neurons packed into a one centimeter by one millimeter space.

This stunning little processor is capable of processing ten images, each of about a million light points, every single second. Not only that, the data isn’t transmitted over a single fiber of nerve cells, but over a cable to the brain made up of a million of these fibers, all transmitting bits of data at the same time in parallel. If you multiply the processing power of this volume of neurons by the overall size of the average 1,500 cubic cm human brain, the overall processing power of the brain is about 100 million, million operations per second. For those of you who are trying to do the math with your super computer brain – that’s over 100,000 times more processing power than today’s cutting-edge super computer.

Image and Language Recognition, Learning and Common Sense

If our brains are such super computers, then why do we feel so dense and so slow sometimes? I don’t know about you, but I’m horrible at doing calculations in my head. The problem is that people think of computers only in terms of how many calculations it can do per second. The truth is, when it comes to intelligence there’s so much more to process than calculations alone. How do you calculate what the tone of someone’s voice implies they are really saying?  How do you calculate the irony of a joke that, when taken literally, makes no sense at all? This is where the true power of the human brain makes itself known.

Have you ever had a friend who was such a genius that they could perform the most astounding calculations in their head, or they could fathom the most complex equations or problems imaginable – yet when faced with the simplest common-sense joke, they just didn’t get it? This is the major difference between a human brain and a computer.

Author Gary Marcus writes, in his book on the human mind that, “The fundamental difference between computers and the human mind is in the basic organization of memory.”

What he means is that a computer organizes information in a logical way. To retrieve data, the computer uses logical storage locations. A human brain, on the other hand, remembers where information is stored based on cues. Those cues are other pieces of information or memories connected to the information you need to retrieve. This means that the human mind can connect an almost unlimited number of concepts in a variety of ways, and then sometimes disconnect or recreate connections based on new information. This allows the human to step outside the boundaries of what has already been learned – leading to new art and new inventions that are the trademark of the human race.

There are a lot of other ways the human mind blows computers away – it can self repair itself, it can produce chemical reactions within its host body to induce instinctive reactions and protect itself from danger, it can handle every last function required to operate the machine of the human body while simultaneously processing information from outside that body, and most importantly it can continue learning and building new connections within that contextual storage array in ways that seem infinite.

In short, the answer to the question “Does a human think faster than a computer?” is yes. And it can also do a whole lot more than that.

Geeks out there – weigh in with your opinion in the comments section below!

Image Credits: cbowns

However, if we are to be killing time at work, what better way of doing so than to give our brains a good mental work-out?

Today, we’ll take a break from all those first person shooters and online multiplayer fantasies. Instead, MakeUseOf brings you an assorted compilation of three wonderful, yet challenging puzzle games.

Stopple

A desktop recreation of the ever so popular Bloxorz flash game. The concept is simple: get your moving block to land vertically on the circular pad. Proceeding to do this is another matter – as special tiles, buttons and hatches will make your life miserable for the effort.

This game is guaranteed to bring you tons of fun, as you work your way through the 32 levels of the original game. However, you can now enjoy it in full screen without any distractions and play it offline as well.

Supported Operating Systems
Windows 95 to Vista

Known System Requirements
Pentium II® 400
64 MB RAM
5 MB Free Hard Drive Space
16 MB or Greater DirectX 7.0 Compatible 3D Graphics Accelerator

DUOtris

The creator of addictive arcade shooter mono surprises us again with DUOtris. Don’t get misguided by the title and looks of the game, because the concept couldn’t differ more from Tetris.

Your objective in the game is to piece together at least three blocks of the same color to eliminate them. Not only that, you’ve got mirrored zones with different colouring. That means, different coloured blocks moving dependently on both sides of the screens.

The only way you’re going to get through this is through a masterful combination of agility and compositional thinking. And of course, by deploying the various powerups, which are mixed with the other blocks.

Supported Operating Systems
Windows

Known System Requirements
DirectX 9.0b or higher (Download DX10/DX9)

Floating Islands Game

FIG, or Floating Islands Game, can best be described as an innovative solo Lemmings adventure. The game features code and artwork by Arvu Teikari (Hempuli) and has been praised already by innumerably on the web.

In the game, you guide a brain-dead guy through a series of floating islands, while collecting all the stars. However, direct interaction with the character is impossible and the only way of manipulating him is through the environment. So pull the switch, burn the rope, do whatever you can to get your little guy from one side to another.

There’s also a secret blue star in each level. You’ll need all of these blue stars to unlock and play the last five levels. It won’t be an easy task, but it’s sure as hell worth it.

FIG is an incredibly imaginative and addictive game, so prepare to loose complete track of time. The artwork won’t hold up to the Mona Lisa, but it’s a fun and playful style to depict the craziest of worlds.

Supported Operating Systems
Windows

If you liked these games, you might also like 4 Flash Games To Kick-Start Your Brain, or James Withers’ article about GWAP Brain Games.

If you’ve got any other suggestions or comments, don’t be shy to share them below.

But anyone can do something for their brain’s fitness. Here’s a small selection of things you can do online:

1. Search the internet

Apparently, searching the internet requires decision-making and complex reasoning, which is a challenge for the brain and keeps the respective key centers in a top notch condition. But instead of using Google all the time, try something new. There are hundreds of search engines out there and you’ll find some of these have been covered on MakeUseOf. Don’t be lazy, give them a chance!

If you can’t do without Google, at least try another interface, such as Sputtr for example:

2. Read blogs

But don’t stick to the same old, variation is what counts. So discover and read a new blog every week, for example by following links in Blogrolls or from interesting comments. You can also search randomly or by category using the Find Blogs search engine. There is quite a selection to enjoy. Interestingly, MakeUseOf is not listed…shame on them!

3. Read news

And not just those that are obvious. Try to find out about what’s going on in another country. Keeping the brain active is all about feeding it with information. Not just any information, but rather things you have a natural interest in, including things you may find difficult to understand at first. News is a door opener to many topics, for example politics, international relationships, history, landscape, the local food or language.

I am not going to recommend any mainstream site as I’m sure you all know CNN and the BBC and whatnot. For a bit of a different view in 43 languages, try World News. And remember, if you were not curious about anything at all, you would not be reading this in the first place!

4. Play Games

Games where you have to use your mind that is! Sudoku, crossword puzzles, riddles, all great ways to challenge the mind. But after some time you’ll need to increase the difficulty or switch to another stimulus to avoid monotony.

Braingle is an excellent source for different brain teasers! Besides that, the trivia, games and community, I found the Mentalrobics section very inspiring. Within the categories creativity, vocabulary, memory, and stress you’ll find lots of useful information on how your brain works and how you can take advantage of that, for example to master stress.

Also have a look at Simon’s article on web games for Brain fitness and Games for the Brain for a broader spectrum of games in different languages. Other than the same old, there is Guess the Flag, Crime Scene where you have to identify people, Memocoly where you memorize colors, and many more. The twist is that while you’re playing games, an IQ score evaluates your achievements.

5. Can you raed, Tihs?

Ins’t it urtlety cnosufnig waht the mnid can do? We otefn do not raielze jsut how mcuh our biran is cabalpe of. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig!

And the truth is, recruiting the potential your mind actually has is key to brain fitness. So never tire to try new things, especially if they may seem difficult. Maybe you can even see the 3D image in this:

For more 3D Stereogram Images and other illusions check out Eyetricks.

6. Socialize

Interactions with other people stimulate the brain. Even if these interactions happen online. So if you’ve been avoiding social networks (like myself), pull yourself together and give it a try. Everyone will find a community they can benefit from. Who knows whom you will meet, the world is only a fingertip away. And besides, connecting with other people brings happiness. The challenge is to figure it all out!

7. Listen to music

On MakeUseOf we have shown you tons of ways to discover music. While most music recommendation engines go by what you already like to suggest new things, to stimulate your brain cells you should actually try to listen to something completely different. Use your newly developed social skills and follow the musical likes of random strangers. Did you know music can trigger emotions?

8. Learn a language

When you search MakeUseOf for “learn language” you’ll find several websites that will teach you foreign languages for free or in a community based setting, where you can teach someone else at the same time.

One Minute Languages is a new one that has not been covered before. With all the things we have to pack into our lives today, One Minute Languages gives you an opportunity to sneak peek into a language. There are ten lessons to each language and each lesson is only a few minutes long. So it’s actually more than a minute, who would have thought!

Once you have completed the ten lessons you’ll be far away from actually speaking that language. However, you may be encouraged to study it in depth. And nothing is more challenging for the brain than to learn, speak and think in a foreign language. Think big, but start simple.

9. Make her turn the other way around…

Is she turning clockwise or counter clockwise? Try to make her turn the other way around. It really works, but don’t interpret too much into it!

10. Learn more!

If all of this made you curious about your own brain, check out Sharp Brains, a website that provides plenty of brain-related information. As “the brain fitness authority” they present the latest news and research on brain-related matter, including studies on exercises, improving memory, stress management and they feature interviews with the leading experts in the field.

Other websites to consider are The Brain from Top to Bottom and Your Amazing Brain, both of which offers detailed background information in Wiki-How style. The Brain from Top to Bottom is especially fascinating. You can select your level of understanding from beginner to advanced, learn about the brain from different points of view, even in French and I just love the overall concept of the site.

Taken together, the secret of brain fitness is to constantly challenge the brain. Doing crossword puzzles or playing Sudoku is great, but in the long run it’s monotonous. To keep your brain fit, you should learn something new every day. What did you learn today?