Efficient Academic

Yeah well..these are the Powerpoint bullets that we’re talking about here.Ok this tip helped me a lot to improve my presentation.Ok incase you need to know how and why i reached the conclusion that Bullets are bad for presentations..(oh but not at all times..especially in academics) you should head over and read this post and an even more detailed article here.I completely agree with the point..atleast in academic presentations i’ve seen bullets being used unnecessarily.Well there are slide where they’r a must but then there more slides where they are not required.So if you think i’ve got a valid point here…then you must be prompted to the questions..”but how do i get rid of them ?”.Here ya go.

Update:

Pierre sent me this..productivity tip

It was a time when i used to scour technorati to find bloggers who blog on research papers..yes am very lazy to read through complete papers..so i kinda skim through these blogs that give you the cream of research papers in a more appealing language.But then i had a hard time doing it.Infact i was thinking about creating an index sort of thing where i would list all these blogs that wrote on research material.Well somebody just hit on the same idea and have come up with something even better.

Welcome to .This one really rocks.Ok what is about..?

Postgenomic collates posts from life science blogs and then does useful and interesting things with that data.

For example, it allows you to get an instant picture of which web sites are being heavily linked to by researchers in the medical sciences, or which papers are being cited or reviewed most often by bioinformaticians, or which buzzwords are being used the most frequently by evolutionary biologists.

It’s sort of like a hot papers meeting with the entire biomed blogging community.

Sort of.

Postgenomic is a community driven, open source project. Your help would be much appreciated. More detailed information is available in the get involved section.

This is a cool resource, it surpassed my expectations as just an aggregator/indexer of academic blog posts but also gives data like which of the research/science papers, news are hot in the blogging arena.Ok i’ll stop here..you do the rest.

One more thing if you’r an academic blogger do check out the “get involved” section and let your writing help out people like me

I came across this useful article over at Search Engine watch about “Searching Online from an Academic Perspective”.Probably you must be using Google to track down most of your academic searches..i’ve hardly seen people(academics) making use of the fantastic Google Scholar search engine which i believe is better tailored to suit academic searches.Furthermore Scirus does a better job when it comes to finding literature from an academic perspective.I could write a page long post on this…but then i found this article which does exactly that.So go ahead skim it and develop/enhance your search skills.

Yes google is the best out there when it comes to Information…well eventhough they define themselves as basically an ad company..there is not doubt that their information services are the best around.Hey but then what di you use google for?…do a few searches..look up a few references on Scholar..that’s all there is to academia from google?…well i am sure that you tried this Google earth thingy…at some point of time..interesting isn’t it..!.But how about putting Google earth to use in you academic work.

Incase you subcribe to Nature News alerts then you must have come across this wonderful read that helps you in understanding Google earth from an academic point of view.So if you are interested then you can check that out.A far more down to “earth”, of using Google earth that i’ve tried is using snaps that i have used from Google earth to show off statistical data ..corelated withe places,the things that you show on plain graphs or a coloured map of the earth.Well this is not a brainer of an idea..but..hey it sure impresses!

Something like this..

Wll definitely look better..this way..

PS: Hey by the way the pictures are not related in anyway..just an example of making things more appealing..!!

Update:

After Pierre’s comment i went over to Connotea to check this feature of Geotagging!..gosh i really did miss this one.

Connotea supports geotagging, which allows you to use special tags to associate latitude and longitude coordinates with your articles, and then view their geographical distribution using Google Earth.

In order to geotag something, you must discover the latitude and longitude of the relevant geographical location. Once you know these, enter geotagged and the appropriate special tags geo:lat=xxx and geo:long=yyy along with the other tags you are using for that article.

For example, if you were geotagging an article about somewhere in London, you might enter geotagged, geo:lat=51.534484, geo:long=-0.121622 into the tags box.

I just went through this article.This is really a breakthrough and i would love evrybody to be aware of the same.Well it is cutting edge physics..but who’s worrying about that..the implications are more important.I’ll stop here..go ahead and read the article.Here’s a brief summary:
Physicist to Present New Exact Solution of Einstein’s Gravitational Field Equation from PhysOrg.com

New antigravity solution will enable space travel near speed of light by the end of this century, he predicts.

On Tuesday, Feb. 14, noted physicist Dr. Franklin Felber will present his new exact solution of Einstein’s 90-year-old gravitational field equation to the Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque. The solution is the first that accounts for masses moving near the speed of light.
[...]

Most academic users of computers run several programs on their PC and quite possibly the only way to access these programs on Windows would be the notorious “Start” menu “programs”.An applet launcher help’s one to bypass this menu system and directly run the software in question by typing a name/word.Ask any mac user and they would be faimiliar with app launchers.Well windows users..we have our options too.

Previously i had been using AppRocket which was not a free version and therefore i had to forego the same with time…untill i ended up with SRlauncher.

This cool program just does the job..without any fuss…does not drink RAM and is very light to run.Just type the word or the “magic word”..and voila…it tries to autocopleteand hit enter…the program open…i just type “word”..on the launcher to open MS Office Word!…probably this might seem to be a very silly tool….start using it for a few days..and you’ll wonder how you lived without it so long.

Technorati Tags: software,usability,appletlauncher, programlauncher

Dr.Levine from a Michigan State University has a wonderful guide available online and in PDF for a handy printed copy,that walks you through the nitty gritty details of writing you Thesis/Dissertation.Along with the article,if you scroll down there a handful of selected links on the same topic which are informative and extremely useful.

For further links you can also check my bookmarks @ http://www.blinklist.com/bala/ .Give a search using the tag “academic”.

Technorati Tags: academic-writing, dissertation, thesis

Overfrom Successful Academic i came across a few tips from Dr.Mckinney for effective dissertations.I must say that these are one of the most effective and down to earth practices that would really make a difference.The article begins with an introduction as to why the dissertation is widely considered to be a herculean task and gives practical suggestions to problems such as:

Problem: Self-structure project
Solutions: learn to organize the work, your time, your space and to develop systems to monitor your progress.

Problem: Newness Factor
Solution: Thoroughly research available models.

Problem: No Clear-cut Deadlines
Solution: Develop the ability to follow through on self-imposed deadlines and to create useful external deadlines.

Problem: Perfectionism Trigger
Solution: Understand and combat unrealistic expectations and learn to let yourself write really awful first drafts.

Problem: Loneliness
Solution: Establish social support networks: join a support group; find a dissertation buddy; hire a coach.

No wonder Dr.Mckinney teaches courses such as Graduate School Survival Skills and Written Communication at the University of North Carolina.

Podcasts have become the current rage that is sweeping the net.Like all that get pulled in by this powerful/useful phenomenon the academia has also succumbed to it.Over from Productive Strategies there is nice post listing several of the academic podcasts that are available for free.If you can then please do go over to the comments section also,they contain some useful links to study materials and several more.It is unfortunate that i missed this post this long.But as they say better late than never .

Everyday i make it a point to read atleast one research paper…but then sometimes i am able to finish only half or even less of that.As i presume most academicians at times prefer to read the softcopy of a paper because it offers certain advantages over their print counterpart.One reason for me..is i feel lazy to take a print out and then carry it around reading.Somehow that feels quite dragging.However when i read a PDF i can concentrate more on the paper and annotate,refer, comment and do lot of things (i’ll write a post about that later) which is impossible with paper.So if you are with me on the softcopy philosophy then Adobe Acrobat/Adobe Reader would be a software that you would handle frequently.Now getting at ease with software can enhance your reading experience.

I know most people read a PDF by using the “drag” hand icon that pops up…but do you know that you can resize the PDF to view it fullscreen and at a suitable resolution for you to study using just 2 shortcuts (Ctrl L = fullscreen,Ctrl 2 =adjust resolution/view).Ok this just a small example…there are plenty more. Incase you forget it often take a print out and the shortcuts and stick around your workplace..or near the computer..Here’s the PDF for the shortcut keys.

Technorati Tags: PDF, Adobereader, Adobeacrobat, keyboardshortcuts, productivity