Same guys that told us about the most successful business models of 2010 year ago, prepared new presentation about failed business of 2011.  Learn from failure.

You might also like:

1. Food for thought: 10 business models that rocketed in 2010
2. Cool stuff digest: December 2010 & January 2011
3. Cool stuff digest: February 2011 & March 2011

You might also like:

1. Best free international iPhone apps: only smart tools, no dull time eaters
2. Zen writing: best free minimalistic word processing apps
3. If this then that review: a new web 2.0 tool

Yes, we all love TED. They probably have the best collection of video presentations online with most of them being either inspirational or insightful. But is it all there is?

Actually, there are few places where you can find some edutainment videos for you dinner watching. Here are the main alternatives to TED I stumbled upon and some introductory videos that I personally liked that can help you get started.

1. PopTech

According to the website:

PopTech is a unique innovation network – a global community of cutting-edge leaders, thinkers, and doers from many different disciplines, who come together to explore the social impact of new technologies, the forces of change shaping our future, and new approaches to solving the world’s most significant challenges. We are known for our thriving community of thought-leaders, breakthrough innovation programs, visionary annual conferences and deep media and storytelling capabilities.

A good video to start from: Sebastian Seung’s Connectome.

2. Learning Without Frontiers

According to the website:

Learning Without Frontiers is a global platform for disruptive thinkers and practitioners from the education, digital media, technology and entertainment sectors who come together to explore how new disruptive technologies can drive radical efficiencies and improvements in learning whilst providing equality of access.

A good video to start from: Gordon Brown’s Pirate’s Dilemma.

3. Singularity University

According to the website:

Singularity University  is an interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges. With the support of a broad range of leaders in academia, business and government, Singularity University hopes to stimulate groundbreaking, disruptive thinking and solutions aimed at solving some of the planet’s most pressing challenges. Singularity University is based at the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley.

A good video to start from: Aubrey de Grey In Pursuit of Longevity.

4. Open Culture

According to the website:

Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. Free audio books, free online courses, free movies, free language lessons, free ebooks and other enriching content — it’s all here. Open Culture was founded in 2006.

Good videos to start from:

1. The Age of the Dictionary – The History of English in 10 minutes

2. 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God

5. Google Talks

According to the website:

Good luck finding other gems! And let me know if you found some!

You might also like another post of mine which concentrates a little more on education than entertainment part of edutainment: How to get Ivy league education online for free: the best internet resources and video courses for distance learning.

You might also like:

1. How to get Ivy league education online for free: the best internet resources and video courses for distance learning

Just a couple of days ago I discovered a new promising Web 2.0 service called If this then that which is actually a new start-up project from San-Francisco.

Guys try to develop a kind of meta-tool which unites many others: Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Evernote, Delicious, Instagram, etc. Quite an interesting thing to play with, although it lies in a kind of geeky/nerdy field. But I actually believe that normal people can also find it useful for few things…

In short, the idea is to connect all those services through simple rules set-up by user. For example, “if somebody tags me in a photo at Facebook, send me an email about it” or “if I like a post in Google Reader, save it in my Evernote”.

The coolest thing about is that they also have SMS-service that can be used in the same manner as everything else.

Here are some usage ideas that I could come up with:

• Automatically save content from your blogs, Twitter & Delicious in Evernote for back-up purposes and to make it easier to find something in offline Evernote app;
• Getting notified by SMS when you receive a letter from somebody important or on important subject in Gmail;
• Adding a Rememberthemilk task (by sending email letter to their email-gate) via SMS. Can be useful to store those genius ideas that always come at the wrong time;
• Tweeting or updating Facebook status via SMS. Can be useful in emergency situations or just when no Internet is available but mobile network is there;
• Sending a letter to particular person via SMS. Same logic as in previous one;
• Various Email-notifications. For example, about Twitter-mentions;
• Just saving some Gmail correspondence in Evernote.

Video about the IFTT:

Currently, the number of rules is limited to 10 which can be a sign of potential monetization strategy through freemium). IFTT is invite-only. If interested, I can provide you with an invitation, but there are only 4 left.

You might also like:

1. Android apps: best and free on the market
2. Superfreakonomics review
3. How can online entrepreneur or a frequent traveler get the most of Evernote internet service (6 tips)

Name pretty much speaks for itself. Very insightful.

You might also like:

1. What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis, personal & business lessons
2. Cool stuff digest: December 2010 & January 2011
3. Cool stuff digest: August 2010

Recently I finished reading What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis. Judging by title I didn’t really expect lots of insights from the book but it appeared to be truly visionary and smart. It even made me kind of regret choosing Economics&Business major over Computer Science 7 years ago…

WWGD appeared not to be about Google itself but about the way business, economics, relationships and world in whole change as the result of technologies wide spread and simplification. So, in fact the book covers quite wide range of topics. From Google’s PageRank, to Facebook, new media, customized solutions, customer relations, blogging, Twitter, context advertising, search engine optimization, online communities management, government policies and many other.

I personally generated a lot of ideas when trying to project the concepts from book to my own projects and life. So, here is my personal short list of lessons that I think are worth considering and thinking about, hope you’ll find it useful!

Top lessons from What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis, in my own words:

1. Focus on platforms & networks

   Many IT companies, incl. Google itself gain their competitive advantage not so much from their products themselves but from the creative power of users of these products.

   Apple promotes iPhone SDK development platform. Facebook gives wide range of tools to their users and webmasters. They all understand that the easier it is to build something on-top of their service the more powerful it will be. Even small websites, blogs and companies can benefit a lot from crowd-sourcing and providing their customers with opportunity to contribute.

2. Gain trust by giving up control and being transparent
   
   Consumers, readers, partners. Whoever it is you interact with, they will always want to know the truth about your company, service or brand. And it becomes easier than ever with the Internet to find it. In Google search results you can find blog post titled “Yourbrandname sucks” just next to your official website. So, instead of hiding it’s better to be transparent and open in the first place.




3. Launch early
   

   It’s connected with the first idea and has a lot of implications in agile development and goes very well with current web startups trend I think. The idea is simple.Instead of trying to create 100% perfect product, website, blog post or whatever it is and then “launch it” as widely as possible sometimes it’s better to create some alpha version with minimum functionality and then cooperate with first customers, visitors, readers in order to get a better understanding of what market really needs and provide a solution. Instead of wasting time to create dozens of useless features.

4. Customer support instead of traditional mass-marketing
   

   Word-of-mouth was always the first priority in marketing world. But the most effective ways to get it are getting different now. Often it is easier to get a positive feedbacks and publicity by direct open dialog with your customers. Even, with the most irritated ones that currently hate your brand and deliver according message all over. Especially, with them.

5. Organizing communities instead of being a middle-man
   

   As Internet and Google makes it easier to find almost any information and any person middle-men have less chances to succeed  by having access to limited knowledge or connections. Instead, another model becomes highly potential. And this is finding communities that already exist or have a high potential of forming around products, services, companies, problems, interests or places and trying to create something that would bring a better level of organization to these communities.

For insights into specific industries: restaurants, insurance and even government I’d suggest you read a book.

If you aren’t sure if it’s quite your thing it might be a good idea to watch Jeff Jarvis’ presentation @ fora.tv:

And if you finally decided to give it a try, you might want to download audio-book torrent, buy audio-book or buy a paper version it on Amazon.

As my post follows the above-mentioned philosophy and is “half-baked” I would love to hear any corrections or additions from your side!

You might also like:

1. Cool stuff digest: December 2010 & January 2011
2. Food for thought: 10 business models that rocketed in 2010
3. Business model generation

RSS feeds is an awesome tool to save lots of time. You can get them all in the same place and not visit every single web-site to check if there are some updates. But often it becomes quite the opposite.

I personally have 573 subscriptions. That’s a lot. You risk looking at your favorite RSS feeds aggregator (like, Google Reader for example), seeing 1000+ unread items there and then spending half a day passively browsing through them. Instead of pursing your purpose and doing something that will bring you closer to your goals.

So, what are the lifehacks to minimize the time and maximize the value of reading blogs or other RSS feeds?

1. Attitude change

First and most important principle. You don’t need to read everything. All these unread items are not equal to your mail inbox. You don’t absolutely need to read, review, assign an action or even worse memorize every single one of them. It’s just a suggestion of the stuff that was published on the web that you might be interested in. If you are not, “marks all as read” button is there for you.

2. Think before adding

Often people (me included) add blogs to their reader just because of one cool post they read before or because of the author’s personality. None of these reasons necessarily mean that the blog will deliver any value to you in the future. What they do mean is that you will need to spend your time sorting these posts.

3. Judge by headlines

Reading the headlines is one of the principles of the smart and speed reading. But don’t forget to make decisions about reading judging by headlines.

Headlines should give a good understanding what value you get from the post. It may be new information you need. It may be just fun. Anyway, you need to be clear about the contents of the post before you read it. And only then you might want to proceed to the post itself. Example?

Imagine the headline “15 things every internet user must know”. I see it as a typical headline that screams:
“I’m totally useless blog post which conveys no specific value, only stupid generalities that everybody is already aware of, waste valuable 5 minutes of your time reading me and kill few thousands of brain cells!”

Often I browse through 30 headlines and then mark all the posts as read because I see no value in reading them right now. Imagine, what time would it take if I read every single post…

4. Delete bullshitters

You see headline like one I mentioned above? Probably you don’t even know what is that blog about? Or don’t remember why you added it?

Then, why not to glimpse at the last 10 headlines and decide if you even need it in your reader? Chances are you don’t. So, unsubscribe.

5. Structure

It’s much, much more productive and easier to read folder-by-folder. This is the structure I personally use in Google Reader.

0 ASAP
1 FAVORITES
2 COMMENT
ART DESIGN
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
HEALTH TRAINING
FINANCE MONEY
INSPIRATION SELFDEV GTD
LEARN SMTH NEW
LIFEHACKS
LIFESTYLE
MANAGEMENT CAREER
MARKETING SOCIAL SEO
PEOPLE
PHOTO
REVIEWS
SCIENCE FUTURE TRENDS
STUDY
TECHNOLOGY STARTUPS
TOOLS UPDATES
TRAVEL
TWITTER
VIDEO
WEBDEV DESIGN
WORLD ECONOMY
WRITING BLOGGING
YOGA

Well, names speak for themselves. It’s not perfect but allows me to process all the new information quickly and effectively. Try something that works for you.

6. Learn just “in time” vs “just in case”

It’s more effective to learn what actually need right now. Especially in the Google era when you can find almost anything almost any time. If you don’t currently need particular piece of information then you will probably do better if you don’t consume it. More about this principle on Lifehacker.

If you’re absolutely sure you are going to need in the future, then just clip it to the Evernote or like it in Google Reader. Alternatively, you can just find it using search through your subscriptions (available in Google Reader, you might also like to create a quick shortcut for Chrome)

7. Apply speed reading

There are lot of the free speed reading courses that can help you save some time and increase both comprehension and retention of the information at the same time. If you didn’t try it before you might like to do it now. Where to start? Wikipedia, video course, Tim Ferriss’ post.

8. Delete active instead of inactive

While doing a clean-up people tend to delete so called dead blogs. But usually they are not dangerous. You want even see them in the “show updated only” interface. And if they are still of some value there is no reason to delete them. Regardless of the fact that they are updated once a year.

What subscriptions should be looked closely at and questioned about their value foremost are ones that are updated frequently. My definition of “frequently” is from once a week to few times a day. These are the ones that disturb us mostly and should compensate with the great content. You can use Trends in Google Reader to get to know what feeds are updated more and less frequently.

9*. One in – one out

There is another way to reduce the information overload. I personally don’t currently use it. But you might like it anyway. Just keep the number of the subscriptions constant.

For example, you already have 100 subscriptions. It means that in order to add one more you need to delete one. Try it if nothing else works.

I hope my post didn’t fall into the 4th category!  

Good luck with implementation!

You might also like:

1. How I saved hours and hours of time, reduced disturbances and stress level with a simple Gmail lifehack
2. Magic shortcuts: 13 best chrome custom searches that will save you lots of time
3. Favorite blogs

Disturbances and loss of the ability to focus seem to be the curse of modern world. All these social networks, messengers and ideas of “what to google” can make it pretty hard to concentrate on writing. But sometimes you just need to “unplug” in order to finish a good text, whatever it is: a blog post, an essay or a book.

There are software applications that allow you to do exactly that. Often you don’t need billions of formatting options, smart integration opportunities and other features of bloated Microsoft Office. What you need is to write. Then, you can do all the formatting, proof reading, illustration, etc. So, what are the best free tools that are perfect for this task?

Windows apps

1. CreaWriter

Great user-friendly word processor. However, a little limited in a free version.

Screenshot:

Download free version of CreaWriter, installer.

2. Q10

Highly customizable and very light-weighted. However, there is no interface, so you’ll have to set it up manually.

Screenshot:

Download free Q10, portable version.

Mac OS X apps

OmmWriter

Meditative word processor with calm music and beautiful background.

Screenshot:

Screenshot and promotional video speak for themselves.

Download free version of OmmWriter

Also, if you’re ready to pay for the right software (or know how to use torrents ), you might want to consider Scrivener designed specifically for writing.

Web-based service

1. Google Docs

Well, it’s just obvious. But if you still haven’t tried this service, that’s probably the right moment. Yes, it inherits some of Microsoft Word weaknesses and it’s still kind of beta. However it’s very easy-to-use and simply a great tool.

2. My Writing Nook

It’s a service developed specifically for books writing. Auto-saving, word count, thesaurus, etc. Nothing particularly exciting but does its job and may be a good option for some of you.

Any additions? What’s your favorite tool?

You might also like:

1. Best free international iPhone apps: only smart tools, no dull time eaters
2. Android apps: best and free on the market
3. Save time by approaching your RSS subscriptions in a completely new way: 8 principles for effective reading of blogs

As you may already know, Google Chrome has an amazing feature that let’s you edit search engines. And search engine means literally any website. What’s the practical application?

Well, if you type something like “great blog” and press enter, by default you’ll be redirected to Google. But you can set up your Chrome to use, let’s say, Yahoo when you type “y great blog” or Bing when you type “b great blog”. Sounds like a great life-hack and a time-saver, doesn’t it? So, instead of going to the other website you just add one letter before the query itself and Chrome uses the other search engine to find what you need.

First, you’ll need to know how to add a new search engine, I won’t go into details as there are a lot of tutorials on web at the moment.

I’m sure you can come up with lost of ideas on how to use this feature yourself, but let me sparkle your imagination a little with my own list of searches. Here is what I use and consider to be the most useful:

1. Google. Well, it’s kind of obvious

2. Bing

Keyword: b
URL: http://www.bing.com/search?setmkt=ru-RU&q=%s

3. Flickr – searches the biggest pictures database for what you need

Keyword: f
URL: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=test&ss=0&ct=0&mt=all&w=all&adv=1
OR URL: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=%s&l=cc&ct=0&mt=all&adv=1
for Creative Commons licensed stuff only

4. Isohunt – movies, audiobooks, software or whatever you need

Keyword: i
URL: http://isohunt.com/torrents/%s

5. Evernote – searches through all my notes instantly

Keyword: e
URL: http://www.evernote.com/Home.action?login=true#v=t&x=%s+&z=d

6. Facebook

Keyword: fa
URL: http://www.facebook.com/search/?src=os&q=%s

7. Gmail

Keyword: gm
URL: https://mail.google.com/mail/#search/%s

8. Google Docs

Keyword: gd
URL: http://docs.google.com/#search/%s

9. Google Reader – to find anything I ever read there

Keyword: gr
URL: http://www.google.com/reader/view/#search/%s

10. Youtube

Keyword: y
URL: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s&page={startPage?}&utm_source=opensearch

11. LinkedIn

Keyword: l
URL: http://www.linkedin.com/commonSearch?type=people&keywords=%s&search=Search

12. Delicious – quick tag look-up in my bookmarks

Keyword: d
URL: http://del.icio.us/YOURUSERNAMEHERE/%s

12. Academic Earth – find great free lectures

Keyword: a
URL: http://www.academicearth.org/lectures/search/%s

13. Wikipedia

Keyword: w
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/%s

14. Whois – check a domain name

Keyword: wh
URL: http://www.domaintools.com/go/?service=whois&q=%s

Hope, you are going to like it! If you have any great ideas that could make this list longer, shout!

You might also like:

1. Save time by approaching your RSS subscriptions in a completely new way: 8 principles for effective reading of blogs
2. How I saved hours and hours of time, reduced disturbances and stress level with a simple Gmail lifehack
3. Best free international iPhone apps: only smart tools, no dull time eaters

Anyone needs an invite? I still have 8 left.

You might also like:

1. What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis, personal & business lessons
2. Best free international iPhone apps: only smart tools, no dull time eaters
3. Save time by approaching your RSS subscriptions in a completely new way: 8 principles for effective reading of blogs

There are so many “best iphone apps” lists out there, but most of them are generic. They include silly games and other time eaters. Enough!

I’ve decided to create a list of the iPhone apps with the specific focus. These are smart, not dull. And so will be you. For easier usage, I’ve divided all the apps into few categories and included sources where you can find them all for free. So, what are the best apps that were created since iPhone creation till the end of 2009?

Data/knowledge management

1. Dropbox app (available for free in Itunes)

Allows you to access your Dropbox account.

If you still havent’ tried it, I highly recommend you to do it. This a the storage service that let’s you store 2 GB of any info for free or 50 GB for $99 per year.
Then, you can access your data from any computer and actually sync it between them by downloading application that creates local folder on your HDD.

2. Evernote (available for free in Itunes)

Allows you to access your Evernote account.

Again, if you aren’t the Evernote user I highly recommend you to create an account. This is the ultimate notebook for all your notes, pictures, documents or whatever you need to write down, save and organize. The best in class, IMHO.

Productivity

1. Google Calendar synchronization

Though it’s not an app, it’s incredibly useful and convenient to get your iPhone automatically synchronize with the Google Calendar. Here is how you can do it.

Again, if you don’t use Google Calendar as your planning tool, this is exactly the moment to give it a try.

2. Rememberthemilk iphone app or the ToDo Iphone app
(available for $10 in Itunes or for free in torrents)

I currently consider Rememberthemilk as the best online todo manager out there, I event bought the pro version! But as long as this is a matter of taste you might prefer something more universal like ToDo iPhone app for instance. Besides, rememberthemilk service itself only allows you to use mobile client in paid pro version (unfortunately). If you have an account on torrents.ru, you can get ToDo here or there.

Blogging

1. Twetie (available for $3 in Itunes or for free in torrents)

Supports your OCD for non-stop microblogging and reading tweets.

Again, you can steal a free version from here, if you have an account on torrents.ru

2. WordPress iPhone app (available for free in Itunes)

Obviously, allows you to update your WordPress blog.

3. Livejournal app (available for free in Itunes)

Allows you to post to the livejournal.com

Reading

1. GoodReader (available for $1 in Itunes or for free in torrents)

Allows you to read E-Books on your iPhone. Supports USB & Wi-Fi connections.

2. Wikiamo (available for free in Itunes) & Wikipanion (available for free in Itunes, “plus” version is for $5)

They allow you to read the Wikipedia articles. Yes, you can do it with Safari. But it’s hell of a lot easier and faster to search for, open and read them (because of the proper formatting) with these tools. I currently have both, just in case. Probably you gonna like one more than the other, so try both.

3. NetNewsWire (available for free in Itunes, “premium” version is for $5)

This is the first RSS reader that synchronizes with the Google Reader.

Social networks and instant messaging

Though it’s disputable if social networking and (especially) instant messaging should be considered a smart and productive thing to do or simple time wasting, I still think that it would be nice to have all the tools available to you and then decide when, how and what for to use them.

1. Facebook app (available for free in Itunes)

Kind of speaks for itself.

2. BeejiveIM (available for $7 Itunes or for free in torrents)

Best and universal IM app out there.

3. Flickr app (available for free in Itunes)

Office/work tools

1. Quickoffice (available for free in Itunes or for free in torrents)

Pdf, Power Point, Word, Excel, et cetera, et cetera.

Geolocation

1. Foursquare (available for free in Itunes)

4sq is irreplaceable if you find yourself in unfamiliar part of a city or in a new city and want to find a place to take a coffee nearby.

Games

I’ve been thinking for quite a while before putting games here, but decided to do it. I personally couldn’t find time to play a lot, but these seem to fall into smart category:

1. Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima
(lite version is available for free in Itunes, full version is available for $5 in Itunes or for free in torrents)

2. Chess iPhone apps

For those who are into chess.

Music

1. iScrobble (available for free in Itunes)

If you’re last.fm user, you’re going to like this app. It allows you to scrobble everything that you listen to on your iPhone.

Miscellaneous

1. Flipclock (available for $1 in Itunes or for free in torrents)

Very nice app that turns your iPhone into clock.

2. Dictionary.com (available for free in Itunes)

Definitions for 275 000 English words.

3. Sleep Cycle (available for $1 in Itunes or for free in torrents)

Theoretically, this is an alarm clock which wakes you at the proper sleep stage in order for you to wake-up easier and feel better. Frankly, I didn’t notice any significant diference, but probably you’re going to be more lucky?

4. TED iphone app (бесплатно в Itunes)

All TED talks videos without searching for them on youtube or official site.

5. Open Culture (available for free in Itunes)

Allows you to access various intelligent content on your iPhone, made by openculture.com

Guys, I hope you find this collection useful! It would be great if you could share some apps of the similar kind!

You might also like:

1. Android apps: best and free on the market
2. Zen writing: best free minimalistic word processing apps
3. How to get Ivy league education online for free: the best internet resources and video courses for distance learning

I’ve been re-reading Getting Things Done by David Allen recently and thinking about other ways to get closer to the “Mind Like Water” state and suddenly I’ve come up with a very simple, but useful lifehack for GMail. It aligns very well with all the recent trends in productivity, time management and lifestyle design set by Tim Ferriss in his Four Hour Workweek and assumes you should minimize all the unnecessary disturbances and batch your typical actions in order to save time.

So, what I did is very simple yet really helpful and I highly recommend you to try the same approach.

1. Create 2 labels in your GMail.

First one is “! once a wk” and another one “! once a mnth”.
The idea is to group all the not so important mail and not to get interrupted every two minutes. It doesn’t necessarily need to be once a month or once a week. Probably once a day and once a week will work better for you. Anyway, you got the basic principle.

2. Create filters for these labels.

For example:

Matches: subject:(“Facebook” OR “Linkedin”)
Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label “! once a wk

and

Matches: subject:(“Twitter” OR “Microsoft newsletter”)
Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label “! once a wk

Obviously, “Facebook”, “Linkedin”, “Twitter” and “Microsoft newsletter” are just examples. The point here is to put subjects or email addresses of those letters that you receive from time to time, but don’t need to read/process/reply the same second it’s received. It’s up to you to decide what these letters are, but I’m convinced that absolute majority of the letters fall into this category.

Then, you should tell your Gmail to apply the appropriate label for those letters and skip the inbox.

3. Schedule checks

Put view “once a week mail event and view once a month mail on your Google Calendar (or whatever calendar you’re using), make this event repeat every week/month correspondingly and create an email reminder.

3. Now, the most difficult step to actually practice: do not (do not!) check these two labels any other time than your scheduled time. I know these two labels look so yummy-yummy attractive when the number is more than zero, like in this screenshot (which is BTW the final result), but believe this is the habit worth developing.

Putting it all together.

So, if everything is done properly, you will have all the important mail (which is usually 1-10%) in your inbox right away and all the time consuming stuff (social networks, subscriptions, newsletters, etc) that prevents you from doing really important and inspirational things with your life will be held under two labels which are always available. Usually it takes very little time to process it all at once instead of doing it every single time when letter is delivered.

This is pretty much it. Good luck with implementing and improving! Hope, you won’t be spending the time saved in Twitter, but do something that you always wanted to start doing, but didn’t have enough time. And of course, I’m looking forward for your feedback!

You might also like:

1. Save time by approaching your RSS subscriptions in a completely new way: 8 principles for effective reading of blogs
2. Magic shortcuts: 13 best chrome custom searches that will save you lots of time
3. Best free international iPhone apps: only smart tools, no dull time eaters

Why even think of educational online courses?

In my opinion, full freedom implies self-improvement and the ability to learn new things every day. And you know what? I don’t really think that joining the university is absolutely the best way to do it.

I guess I’m not the only one here who has a feeling that education in the traditional meaning of this word is dying in the 21st Century. Sounds like a bold statement, but it’s true. Even now, in 2010 amount of the information available for free is unbelievable. And it’s increasing exponentially. If you still have doubts I recommend you to watch this truly amazing video:

I’m not sure about you, but it definitely made me think a lot. Old traditional universities with big names won’t disappear overnight, of course not. Degree is still the best available indicator of credibility, top universities still have an opportunity to provide their students with the wide range of various subjects and classes. The point is if you worry about practical knowledge more than about degree and credits there are some alternatives available for you. Probably, you just don’t have that much time to spend on educating yourself in a traditional way or probably you don’t want to settle down in one place for a few years?

The change in the educational system is not going to be revolution. It resembles evolution more. And we can see it now: more and more universities (even the top ones) discover alternative ways of providing people with opportunity to learn and acquire the knowledge. Currently, it’s possible to find lots of free courses on economics, psychology or science and study any time that’s comfortable for you.

Okay, let’s make the long story short. I guess everybody knows how to use Google and/or wikipedia here. That’s true, you can get virtually any piece of information using these two tools. But there are a lot more opportunities for distant learning and broadening you mental outlook. So, what are the best places to search for free and high-quality educational videos, lectures and cases?

Here is the brief list of sources I personally liked and highly recommend you to try:

1. Academic Earth.

Academic Earth is a website which offers free online video lectures from universities such as UC Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale [3] in the subjects of Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Engineering, English, Entrepreneurship, History, Law, Mathematics, Medicine, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, and Religion.

Free. Online. Video. Lectures. If you feel like watching something online and stupid youtube “funny videos” isn’t quite for you, then Academic Earth should be your first choice. Every lecture can be viewed in either text, mp3 or video format.

If you have difficult time deciding where to start I can suggest you try the Yale course of the Introduction to Psychology lectures by Paul Bloom, it’s insightful, funny and extremely easy to understand at the same time.

This site alone is almost infinite source of interesting, insightful and various lectures that will make you forget about your TV for a long time (in case you didn’t give up on it yet).

2. TED conference.

I’m totally in love with TED! This is where you can find the most amazing presentations given by the most interesting people!

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design)

is an annual conference that defines its mission as “ideas worth spreading”. The lectures, also called TED Talks, cover a broad set of topics including science, arts and design, politics, education, culture, business, global issues, technology and development, and entertainment. Speakers have included such people as former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Nobel laureates James D. Watson, Murray Gell-Mann, and Al Gore, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and Billy Graham.

I’m personally subscribed to the TED youtube channel and TED blog via RSS. I honestly consider TED the best online video channel that I’m aware of at the moment. Speakers vary from the entrepreneurs to scientists and politicians. Topics vary from the cutting-edge technology to the hunger in Africa. But few things remain the same: amazing speakers, incredible topics, leadership, insights and vision. The only reason why this is on the second place after Academic Earth is because it’s partially entertaining and not totally educational. The objective here is not really to educate you in the specific narrow field, but to widen your horizons, to make you think about things you normally wouldn’t think about and to inspire you to discover more on the presented subjects yourself.

Here are some of my favorites:

Dan Gilbert: Why aren’t we happy?

Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that well be miserable if we dont get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

Jill Bolte Taylor: How it feels to have a stroke

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment.

Hans Rosling: No more boring data

With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling uses an amazing new presentation tool, Gapminder, to debunk several myths about world development.

A.J. Jacobs: My year of living biblically

Speaking at the most recent EG conference, author, philosopher, prankster and journalist A.J. Jacobs talks about the year he spent living biblically — following the rules in the Bible as literally as possible.

Jonathan Harris: The art of collecting stories

At the EG conference in December 2007, artist Jonathan Harris discusses his latest projects, which involve collecting stories: his own, strangers’, and stories collected from the Internet, including his amazing “We Feel Fine.”

Of course, there are hundreds more that you’ll probably like more than these, so feel free to explore the TED site.

3. The best way to learn languages online for free

There are at least two web-sites that can help a lot with your foreign languages learning:

http://livemocha.com/

Livemocha is the world’s largest language learning community with over 2 million members. A lot of learning courses for all the aspects of learning: reading, writing, speaking, etc. Plus, the social aspect and opportunity to connect with people learning languages and foreign cultures around the world.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/

Another great source.

4. Open Universities

Open Yale courses

http://oyc.yale.edu

MIT free courses

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

5. Business Education

Sloan School of Management

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Management/index.htm

One of the first business schools that made a lot of materials available online. Management, psychology, economics, entrepreneurship or finance, pick what interests you most.

Distance Learning topic @ businessweek

http://bx.businessweek.com/distance-learning/

Case Study of Harvard Business School

http://harvardbusiness.org/search//100011

If you don’t mind paying for your distant education there are a lot of paid courses available for you at Harvard web-site.

List of universities and websites offering free business and entrepreneurship courses online

http://education-portal.com/articles/7_Universities_and_Websites_Offering

99 Free Online Classes on Business and Entrepreneurship

http://www.cheaprevolution.com/the_cheap_revolution/2008/01/85-free-onlin-1.html

6. Other resources

If you are looking for more these links may help:

Wikipedia article about distance learning (not a bad place to begin with)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_learning

Dmoz Directory: Distance learning (dozens of links to the online courses, institutions and so on)

http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Education/Distance_Learning/

Best distance learning courses available on the internet list created by British Council (lots of highly useful links)

http://www.britishcouncil.org/ge-education-distance-learning-courses.htm

Distance learn @ about.com (this site is mostly focused on the online colleges as an option to get a distance education)

http://distancelearn.about.com/

List of cultural and educational video sites:

http://www.openculture.com/2009/06/intelligent_video_the_top_cultural_and_educational_video_sites.html

I guess this is more than enough for now. Hope, you have more time than me to spend on these sites!

Guys, I hope you found this helpful! Can you recommend anything else?

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What is important for the entrepreneur who travels around the world? To be totally mobile. And part of being mobile is to have all your information, both business and personal available with you at the any part of the world. Preferably, without carrying anything with you. Well, Evernote lets you get precisely that.

This is the online service which allows you to store any images and texts (even Microsoft Office documents in the paid version) that you want to use as a reference in future. You can save the data right from the browser by selecting pieces of information and pressing just one button or using the shortcut or you can type something manually. All the notes can be viewed and updated if it’s needed either with the Evernote application or online web-site.

But the most important thing about online storage services like this is that they lower your level of worry. When you know will not lose any information because it’s stored on the server and accessible 24/7 from any place in the world that has the internet.

What makes Evernote even better is that it has a very powerful search engine built-in. It means that even if you upload a picture with text, it will be automatically recognized and transformed to the text format. To make the long story short, this is a priceless tool for me. And if you still don’t have an account I recommend you to get one right now.

So what are the useful lifehacks that can help you get the most of Evernote?

1. Use the web clipper

It’s ten times easier and faster to use Evernote if you integrate it with your browser. First, you need to install the Evernote application itself and then you can get Evernote Add-on for Firefox. With a web clipper Evernote becomes a bookmark manager and your personal knowledge base at the same time.

2. Take digital pictures of all the important documents and upload them to Evernote

It allows you to have a backup copy of your documents and be able to get any details (like passport number of issue date) very quickly anywhere in the world if you have the internet access. Same thing applies to your tickets BTW.

3. Take pictures of all the business cards and upload them to Evernote

It allows you to save time and be able to find necessary contacts no matter how far from home you are.

4. Use tags

There is a great search tool built-in, but still tags are very useful if you want to find one of your notes.

5. Use the phone application

This is how you get really 100% mobile. Any information you found useful once and saved in Evernote is available any second on your phone if you have the internet connection. But be careful using your mobile internet in the roaming, some mobile operators charge ridiculously high prices for this kind of service.

6. Use the audio notes

You can also record the audio notes which will also be uploaded to the service. It’s very useful if you don’t want to forget your genius thoughts that always come at the wrong time. And it’s also less time-consuming compared to the text notes.

The other ways of using Evernote include files backup, creating photo galleries, storing your birthdays there and using it as a complete GTD system. But in my opinion there are tools that are better suited for these purposes (and I’m going to tell you about them) and it’s better to use Evernote for the purpose it was created for: information storage.

Do you have any ideas what to add to the list?

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