Great Free Language Lerning Tools Collection

If you want to learn a language you may want to check out the link collection at Mahalo. For example German. I like that they are referring to Prinzen videos, they pronounce very good in their songs. How sweet a song praising bicycling?

Never Eat Alone author Keith Ferrazzi asks: What are some basic things you wish you had started doing as a teenager to really boost your career and your life?

He got some good answers (skip over the self-promotors ;-). Example:

TRY MANY THINGS--GET INVOLVED

1.Decide what you want, what you REALLY want.

2.Decide if you are willing to pay the price to achieve it.Everyone must pay the price.How bad do you want it?

3.Pay the price.

Remember the Four Agreements: Always Do Your Best, Don’t Make Assumptions, Be Impeccable with Your Word, and Don’t Take Anything Personally.

Good reminder. Have to work on these.

Wired: Education 2.0 resources

Wired is listing the top resources for Education with a community component. It is part of a whole week of education tools posts. Check it out.

Online Education Free

Online Education Free: "Getting an Education Online for Free"

Nice list of resources for your own education. I didn't know that Berkeley is offering their courses as webcasts. Excellent.

MySpace?

There has been a growing dilemma in the cyberworld. That dilemma is of the growing popularity of MySpace. I will address some of the issues it raises in an unbiased examination of it.

Before we begin let me put this out there, I do have a MySpace account and no, I do not check it everyday. The last time I checked it was like... long ago. My personal preference is blogger, but the rest of the post will be a (mostly) unbiased test.

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Test 1: Safe to use (Blogger definetly wins)

Spyware and Adware has been a growing concern among people who surf the internet. It can drag your system down and potentially get personal information. The reason it is such a big concern is because it isn't illegal like viruses are. In this test I will scan my computer and remove any spyware it has, and then I will surf myspace for a while and do another scan.

Results of the first scan:



No Spyware or Adware.

Results of the second scan after about an hour of only myspace surfing:



I had to say, the results suprised me, normally on a week of regular internet browsing (no myspace) I might get like 15 tops... 23 is a record and after only an hour of myspace browsing.

Test 2: Ads (Blogger wins)

Blogger has no ads, in fact, if you do like me and host your own blog you don't even have the nav bar at the top.

Other ads include political bashing like this one:



Test 3: Content (Neutral)

The content of the profile is up to the individual who creates it, and it can be good or really bad. While that is also true for blogger, it is more prevalent and easier to see on MySpace.

Test 4: Interactiveness (MySpace wins)

You can have a community on blogger, it just takes more work than on myspace, thats the reason so many people use it. Also, on myspace you can leave generic comments instead of leaving comments on each blog. MySpace also has a profile page where you can put stuff, unlike blogger. You can invite friends, send private messages, make bulletins, create events and other things on myspace. MySpace has definetly got blogger beat on an easy community.

Conclusion:

In the 4 tests, Blogger came ahead twice and Myspace once, with one tie. Sure, you can interact and comment, but at the expense of your computer becoming infected? You can do all that stuff in real life or on blogger, or the phone... the possibilities are endless.
Should you use myspace? That's a personal question you need to answer yourself

-Phill

This is really great ...

Check this out because it is a good site: Future Salon

24 hours of solitude best for brain development

The Edge is one of the most interesting pages for deep thinkers. They yearly ask a question that gets answered by high regarded people from different fields. In 2006 it was: What is your most dangerous idea. I like the answer from LEO CHALUPA:

"My dangerous idea is that what's needed to attain optimal brain performance — with or without prior brain exercise — is a 24-hour period of absolute solitude. By absolute solitude I mean no verbal interactions of any kind (written or spoken, live or recorded) with another human being. I would venture that a significantly higher proportion of people reading these words have tried skydiving than experienced one day of absolute solitude."

The Power of Clarity by Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlin about the importance of setting goals: "First, you must decide exactly what it is you want to accomplish. Most people never do that in their entire lives. And secondly, you must determine what price you'll have to pay to get it, and then resolve to pay that price."