Efficient Academic

ASAP Utilities contains over 300 useful and powerful utilities to fill the gaps in Excel, and automate frequently used tasks.
Guaranteed to save you many hours of time !

ASAP utilities is really a useful addon or should i say a suite of addons for Excel and makes several taks easier.Eventhough i use Sigma Plot for several of my data analysis,sometimes for a simple graph and other simple tasks i prefer excel because of its pleasant User Interface and comfort.After reading this post from Download Squad i decided to try ASAP utilities and found it COOL!..god how much time have i wasted just figuring out how to apply a formula to a select few rows/columns..this thing makes most of your mundane activities that you can imagine on excel a breeze.

One more thing i like about ASAP utilities is the support offered by the beginner's guide which walks you through the usage.Try it out.

Full copyright applies to most stuff on the web. But this search helps you find photos, music, text, and other works whose authors want you to re-use it for some uses — without having to pay or ask permission.

What is this?

This search engine will help you find photos, music, text, books, educational material, and more that is free to share or build upon.

Why is this important?

Copyright applies fully and automatically to any work . a photograph, a song, a web page, an article, pretty much any form of expression . the moment it is created. This means that if you want to copy and re-use a creative work you find online, you usually have to ask the author's permission.

This "all rights reserved" protection is good thing for many authors and artists. But what about those who want you to use their work freely without permission — but on certain conditions?

This search engine helps you quickly find those authors and the work they have marked as free to use with only "some rights reserved." If you respect the rights they have reserved (which will be clearly marked, as you'll see) then you can use the work without having to contact them and ask. In some cases, you may even find work in the public domain — that is, free for any use with "no rights reserved."

Examples

Looking for a picture of the Eiffel Tower for a school report? Type "Eiffel Tower," choose the "Image" format, and see what you find.

Interested in music free to download and put in a movie? Type the kind of music you're looking for, choose the "Audio" format, and browse results from across the web.

Try it out. Look for books, weblogs, audio recordings, and more.

Need some stuff for your next presentation..you know where to stop by?

I came across this site from one of my bloglines subscriptions (sorry i dont remember which one ;-P…i've got hundreds of subscriptions!)

Since 1999, MindTools.com has helped improve and advance the careers of more than 8,500,000 visitors. Isn’t it time you discovered the secrets to their success?

On the navigation bars above, you'll find more than 100 essential life, career training and management training skills, freely available and outlined in easy to understand language to support your self development. These skills are supported by simple examples and exercises that expand and reinforce your understanding.

Mindtools has several useful article that give your productivity a shot in the arm.Yes the site is more geared towards non-academic professionals..but hey doesn't things like

Achieve More (Time management)

Problem Solving

Decision Making and more.. also fit into your academic life? Go ahead and if you find the articles interesting you can even have PDF's of the articles you read there..and have copies printed out.Well they've even got several books,but i'm not endorsing them..because i havent tried that yet.Add mindtools to your favourites now!

Oh i almost forgot they've got this newsletter..which has career tips,the newsletter is once in two months..so you dont have to worry about inbox clutter.Yes i would have appreciated if they had RSS..but hey..you can't ask for everything especially,when it's free

I haven’t tried GTD personally…not beyond printing that Hipster PDA ..but i know a lot of people who believe that Getting Things Done has really changed their life.Too bad i got the book but havent found the time to read it.Anyway if your interested in a productivity spike the GTD way..check out the interview by Merlin Mann to Lifehacker.It is definitely worth a read.

A while ago i was playing around with this tool called Onfolio which is a research management and organisation tool.I must say that i was impressed with its skills.The tool had different versions such as the Pro and the Academic/Scientific version.I was fascinated with the Scientific version because of the fact that it could generate bibliographies which could be imported into Endnote which made the tool a very attractive one to use for academicians.It also offered a simple no frills RSS reader that could also serve as an information channel and also compatible with firefox.Well the only disadvantage i found was that it was not free!!.I had dropped it then and switched over to Netsnippets,which is not as specialised as Onfolio, well…its vanilla but does the job.

Today as i was browsing the microsoft live portal and downloaded the live toolbar i found that Onfolio has been acquired by microsoft and the tool is now offered as a free addon to the Live Toolbar!..Incase you wish to try this tool you must download the live toolbar beta and install the Onfolio addon.You can try it out…its worth the time…!..come on Google..come out with something.. similar Goofolio…maybe!;-)
WARNING: This is for IE only..so if you’r a Firefoxer (like me)…i guess we have to wait for something similar..but free and Opensource ofcourse.

Meanwhile i’m still on the look out for a worthy internet information manager and organiser..(for Windows) .

It has been quite sometime now since i posted.Was held back by work.However after listening to my usual dose of Podcasts i struck upon a very interesting article that i believe is of utmost importance to the academic community.I heard this on Scipod (the New Scientist podcast) you can check out the article on the New Scientist site.Better yet you can check out their podcast for an interview with the author.

I will just quote a few lines from the article:

Gordon says this is the first convincing evidence that a language lacking words for certain concepts could actually prevent speakers of the language from understanding those concepts.

Need a better reason for communicating more effectively?..yes in the era where academic research is progressing at a pace which cannot be imagined it is really essential that one be clear in communicating what one has done.One must also remember the clearer someone communicates concepts and ideas the more impact he has one people which in a competitive world is worth having.

Nature is coming up with an interesting initiative where in they publish the protocols of the papers that they publish in a seperate section called the Nature Protocols.The protocols page is coming up for BETA release in ‘mid march’ as the website says with a full release in in June 2006.Too bad that they dont release this as open access as they say that the protocols page would supplement their journal papers,it wouldn;t hurt to release just the protocols as open access so that they can be picked up by search engines.Anyhow this should help people who have to go through a complete paper just to design/adapt a protocol.

Protocol categories will include:

Recombinant DNA, protein and other macromolecules
Construction and screening of libraries and arrays of nucleic acids, proteins and chemical compounds
Isolation and purification of biological molecules
Detection and probing of biological molecules
Structural analysis of biological molecules
Functional analysis of biological molecules, including trafficking
Analysis of interactions between biological molecules
Functional analysis of drugs and drug-like entities
Analysis and manipulation of gene expression
Cell and tissue culture
Spectroscopy
Cytometry
Electrophysiology
Imaging
Immunological techniques
Bioinformatics
Chemoinformatics
Model organisms, and assays on, including creation, husbandry, development, behavioural assays, disease models
In silico modelling that, where possible, has been validated experimentally
Nanotechnology

I would also urge you to check out the other BETA from Nature the Nature|Methods BETA Application Notes.It also is a similar service.

I came upon two pages that link to a number of search engines that are specifically meant for the academic community such as library search,encyclopedias,environmental resources,they’ve even got a radioactive waste resource etc.Check over you might find these useful.

Academic Search Engines

Search Engine Colossus – Academic Search Engines listing