A Nervous Sophomore The following question came from a sophomore finance major at a well-known state university: I have read and heard that entry-level investment bankers have to work long hours doing meaningless grunt work assigned by bosses (sometimes portrayed as evil)…How can your career craftsman philosophy be applied to high stakes fields such as [...]

Many Study Hacks readers are also fans of Ben Casnocha, so it’s probably no surprise to hear that Ben’s new book comes out on Tuesday. He co-wrote it with Reid Hoffman, one of the founders of LinkedIn. It’s titled: The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, Transform Your Career If you’re [...]

The Five Year Eureka Moment Daniel Kahneman met Amos Tversky in 1969 when Tversky came to Hebrew University to give a talk. As Kahneman recalls in his 2011 intellectual biography, Thinking, Fast and Slow,  the two researchers hit it off and decided to pursue a joint project: figuring out if some people had more of an [...]

The Banjo Player Steve Martin made the comments around twenty minutes into his 2007 interview with Charlie Rose. They were talking about how Martin learned the banjo. “In high school, I couldn’t play an instrument,” Martin admits. “I remember getting my first banjo, and reading the book saying ‘this is how you play the C [...]

The following line is from an e-mail I recently received from Georgetown’s HR department. It references “GMS,” the slick new database system they installed to unify all employee services: Please remember to log in to GMS a few times each day to check your Workfeed for any items requiring your attention and/or approval. Among the [...]

A reporter from a major national newspaper is looking to interview people about their experiences with “passion.” In more detail, he’s looking for the following two types of people: Those who set out to follow their passion and were disappointed. Those who discovered the more complicated reality of how people actually end up loving what [...]

A Reddit Gem A reader recently sent me a link to this fascinating Reddit thread. It’s titled:”I’m not as smart as I thought I was,” and it features a high school senior worried that his intellectual abilities are lacking. Over 700 people wrote comments in response. One of the top comments was from an MIT [...]

A Deliberate Day Earlier this week, after three days of trying, I proved an interesting theorem. I was studying a certain type of scheduling problem in graphs. I was finally able to prove that without lots of knowledge about the graph no algorithm can solve the problem fast. This morning I set out to extend [...]

The Deliberate Student I just received the e-mail reproduced below from a computer science major who successfully applied the deliberate practice hypothesis to his academic work. This is good food for thought for students home for Christmas break. As you think about your fall and make plans for your spring, remind yourself of the following [...]

March 1st marks the date when Google’s new unified privacy policy takes effect, and once the new privacy policy goes live, Google will be able to combine all of your search history with each of your Google profiles, and use it to target you with (in their opinion) better search results as well as advertisements. Google’s [...]

Hey everybody! Today on OS Tips, I’m going to show you a nifty little trick to even more quickly sleep, restart, or shut down your Mac. Instead of using your mouse and moving your cursor all the way up to the upper left hand corner, then choosing one of the three options, why not just [...]

CamerAlert for Android is now free in the Android Market, previously $0.96. AndroZip Pro File Manager for Android is now $2.75 in the Amazon App Store, previously $3.49. The Wolfram|Alpha Android app is now $0.99 in the Amazon App Store, previously $2.99. Call Screen Maker for iOS is free today only, normally $1.99. PocketCloud Remote Desktop [...]

Sorry for being out of commission so long folks! But now I’m back and here to present to you another fantastic App of the Week! This week, I’m covering the Unarchiver, a free, fantastic archiving utility that tightly integrates with Finder and handles all of your uncompressing needs. Platform Availability: OS X 10.4 and up [...]

All of us have our favorite websites that we check everyday. Whether it’s Facebook, Google Voice, or ESPN, there are some websites that you know you’re going to keep open all the time. Whenever you restart your browser/computer, don’t you find it annoying to have to reopen those same sites in new tabs? To remedy [...]

Over the next few days, as people draft their New Year’s Resolutions and 2012 predictions, I’ll be providing tools to help you Achieve Your Resolution – valuable webapps and web sites that I’ve found in the past year that help achieve popular New Year’s Resolutions. Last week, I looked at my bank account. It was [...]

It’s officially tax season, and for many of us students with part-time jobs or paid internships, it will also be the first time filing a federal tax return. The process of filing taxes can seem extremely intimidating and confusing to newbies, so H&R Block provided this list of tips for students and other first-time filers. [...]

MacBundler is offering a bundle of 9 popular Mac Apps worth $330 for $39. The bundle includes SnapFlow ($129), FX Photo Studio PRO ($40), Koku ($30), Sidekick ($29), DVD Creator ($49), Nottingham ($20), Mac DVD Ripper Pro ($20), App Delete ($8), and Elmedia Player Pro ($19.95) and can be purchased through Feb 21. BeatPad for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad is on sale for $0.99 for a limited time, normally $6.99. Meta Notebook [...]

Right now, Dropbox is offering up to 5GB of free space to all users who test the new feature of automatic photo and video uploading. To take advantage of this great offer, all you have to do is download the latest beta version of the Dropbox desktop client for your operating system, and then use [...]

I know it’s hard to believe, but apparently there are many people who don’t like PowerPoint. Obviously there are a lot of bad presentations created with PowerPoint, but it seems to me the blame rests on the shoulders of the presenter and not the tool. Besides, PowerPoint’s a versatile tool that’s used for more than [...]

A while back I shared an example of how to create more engaging course objectives. It’s a great way to get past the bullet list of learning objectives that we often see in courses. I then did a follow up post on how to quickly find images for your elearning courses. The tips in that [...]

Many people are stuck in the world of linear, click-and-read content. Sometimes it’s because that’s all the organization wants. And sometimes it’s because we’re not quite sure how to make something more interactive. It’s probably the subject I’m asked about the most. One of the most frequent questions I get. The cool thing is that [...]

In a previous post, we looked at five free desktop image editors.  Here are a couple of additional free desktop applications shared by some blog readers. They both look very capable. PhotoPlus SE PhotoFiltre A challenge with free software is that sometimes your organization isn’t comfortable with you downloading and installing applications that aren’t approved. [...]

In an earlier post we looked at how to combine elearning with an on-the-job mentoring program. I received a lot of questions about the learning journal. So in today’s post we’ll look at the basic structure of the learning journal and how you could use something like it to complement your elearning courses. The Value [...]

I’m always asked what skills a rapid elearning designer should have.  One of the most important skills is basic image editing.  You don’t need to be a professional graphics designer.  However, you should be able to do some basic editing.  Because of this, an image editing application should be in your tool chest. Today we’ll [...]

Recently someone asked how to combine their mentoring program with elearning courses.  This is something I’ve worked on a few times over the years.  It usually involved a production environment where peer coaches were tasked with training new employees on the floor.  But the ideas in this post could work in any type of training [...]

It’s hard to believe but another year’s come and gone.  The good thing is that it looks like 2012 will be a good year.  Although sometime in June, you may want to break out the DVD player and watch 2012.  Then practice your survival skills because come December, things may change.  But until then, just [...]

It’s that time of year to share gifts, so here’s an elearning template that you’re free to use as you wish.  It’s inspired by a Christmas tree with the green background and colored bulbs. The template comes with a few layouts and they’re easy enough to modify, which you’ll see in the tutorials. I see [...]

In case you missed some of our new posts on our Help Desk Blog, here are the following  common questions that the Litmos team received last week. Take a moment…

Statistics show that 800 million people are on Facebook. Fifty-percent of those users visit the site more than once a day.  As a user myself that makes up that fifty-percent,…

It never fails. As a lover of technology, I am always lusting over the latest tech gadgets, only to find that after I purchase something, a newer version comes out…

On Wednesday 8th February our development team released the following new features and enhancements: Custom fields available on the user profile. A highly requested addition to the system, you can…

Culture is defined as ‘the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group’ (Dictionary.com). When working with a culture that is different from your own, one…

I wrote this article about iTunes U back in February 2010 when it was really more of a place that educational institutes were using to store and distribute course material securely…

As January comes to an end it’s time for us to let you know what we’re up to! Our dev team is secretly working away on a number of cool…

The ASTD’s Tech Knowledge conference is fast approaching next week on Jan 25 – 27 at the Rio resort in Las Vegas. It’s not too late to get a ticket, or just come…

Do you feel like you are being more efficient and productive when learning online? Are you maximizing your capacity to retain information? Or are you feeling the extreme opposite? Are your…