Tuesday Tech Tools: 17 Organizers

Need to get yourself organized? Here are some tools that will help.

Airtable
Manages projects and processes-weddings, movie shoots, companies, etc. Allows you to log entries in spreadsheets which can be turned into sets of data stored in the cloud. Some limitations you won’t find in tools like Trello. There’s a video explanation here.

Boomerang (formally Baydin)
Schedule Gmail or Outlook email for a later send date.  Add-on for Firefox and Chrome. Free.

Buffer*
Popular social media scheduling service for posting to multiple sites at one time or later, including: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+. Provides analytics. Free, but $10 (and up) a month gives you unlimited scheduling so you can plan your content well ahead of time.

Evernote*
Access notes on any computer, tablet or phone. Search function lets you find a note in either text or audio format. Free for iOS and Android. For more options there is Evernote Plus $2.99 a month, while Premium is $5.80 per month.

Freshbooks
A cloud-based accounting app that helps you manage clients and projects, send invoices, and track time, expenses, and estimates right from your iPhone. Best for running a business in which you have specific projects for different clients that involve billable hours. The first three clients are free; then $20 for up to 25 clients or $30 for unlimited clients per month. 

Meetways
Find a halfway point between two locations. Great for setting up meetings between people.

Nozbe
Task management system. Organizes according to the context in which they are done (online, at the office, at home, etc.) . Designed with teams in mind-which could be as simple as sharing a shopping list. Available for most devices. Works with Google Calender.  Monthly fee: $8 for a single user, $16 for a family, $40 for a team.

OmniOutliner
Mac program that keeps lists and organizes outlines. Low learning curve to create rich, multi-column, collapsible outlines in many styles. Add embedded notes, images, links, etc. $40 to buy the standard version, $70 for the pro model. An educational discount of $25 and $50 is available here.

Google Now
Tracks your online behavior and uses this data to predict the information that you will need, such as local traffic or weather updates.

PinBoard
Bookmark things you find in social media. One time $9.94 cost.

Podio
Social work platform for basic project management tasks — calendar, contacts, activity stream — that helps teams collaborate and communicate. Both free and paid versions.

Process Street
Document, manage, and track your workflows and business processes. Records tasks in templates – lists which show what tasks to do and what order to do them in. A video explanation here.

Scrivener*
App that gives you a single place to dump all your ideas. Especially helpful for creating and managing complex writing projects: writing a novel, play, TV show, magazine feature, etc. Write in fragments and then shuffle scenes/chapters in a "bulletin board" mode.. throw in research notes, multimedia files, and character sketches.  Allows you to slowly "grow” books, scripts, and articles. Easy to convert the document to an e-book, web page, a PDF, or Word doc. Works with Mac and Windows.  Free 30-use trial. $45 for the latest version. Many writers swear it's worth it. Doesn't work on iPads though.

Trello
Organizational tool that integrations with many other apps. Tasks or projects are stored in cards which are then arranged into columns.

TripIt
Organize all your travel plans into mobile itineraries.

Ulysses
Writing app for Mac. Uses plain text or Markdown for writing, but also includes notes, exporting, organization and more. $44.99.

WorkFlowy
Digital note taking app. Excellent design, but lacks due dates, reminders of upcoming deadlines and calendar view. Free version limits you to 500 lists or "items" per month.  Pro accounts can be backed up to Dropbox. Individual pro accounts ($4.99 per month or $49 per year) and Team ($3.99 per month per user, or $39 per year per user, with a two user minimum) A short video introduction here.

Find more tools here.

The mark of an exceptional mind

The mark of an exceptional mind is its ability to question the self-evident. -Guy Deutscher

True Listening in action

Since true listening is love in action, nowhere is it more appropriate than in marriage. Yet most couples never truly listen to each other. Couples are often surprised, even horrified, when we suggest to them that among the things they should do is talk to each other by appointment. It seems rigid and unromantic and unspontaneous to them. Yet true listening can occur only when time is set aside for it and conditions are supportive of it. It cannot occur when people are driving, or cooking or tired and anxious to sleep or easily interrupted or in a hurry. Romantic “love” is effortless, and couples are frequently reluctant to shoulder the effort and discipline of true love and listening. But when and if they finally do, the results are superbly gratifying.

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Nationalism

A nationalism which is overtly antagonistic to Christianity is a less dangerous menace for us than a nationalism which professes a Christianity from which all Christian content has been evacuated. -TS Eliot

Where the value lies

Education is not acquiring knowledge; it is best defined as using knowledge. The dictionary defines knowledge as the fact or awareness of knowing something. I recognize that you have to know something to use it, but except in some television quiz shows or party games, there is little value in merely knowing something. The value is in using what you have learned. Education is worth the effort; schooling is not.

William Glasser, Choice Theory

A fool

Nature seldom creates a fool – she merely supplies the raw material for a do-it-yourself job.

Data Science articles from June 2021

The future of deep learning is photonic: Computing with light could slash the energy needs of neural networks

How NASA is looking for data science skills within its own ranks

There’s a wealth of non-Euclidian, multidimensionality data serving as the catalyst for astounding machine learning use cases

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency rethinks working remotely while meeting national security objectives

Even if a company has reason to become data driven, it prob does not need machine learning--data scientists and ML engineers are luxury employees--not many companies can (nor should) afford them

The foundation needed for effective machine learning based on the pyramid of data needs

Can reinforcement learning eventually lead to artificial general intelligence?

Will natural language processing automatically lead to natural language understanding?     

Machine learning is booming in medicine. It’s also facing a credibility crisis  

Data science articles from May 2021

The Essence of Nonlove

Keeping one's eye on a four-year-old at the beach, concentrating on an interminable disjointed story told by a six-year-old, teaching an adolescent how to drive, truly listening to the tale of your spouse's day at the office or laundromat, and understanding his or her problems from the inside, attempting to be as consistently patient and bracketing as much as possible--all these are tasks that are often boring, frequently inconvenient and always energy-draining; they mean work. If we were lazier we would not do them at all. If we were less lazy we would do them more often or better. Since love is work, the essence of nonlove is laziness.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Tuesday Tech Tools: 12 Animated GIF Makers

Want to created your own animated GIFs? Here are some options:

Animated GIFs in Photoshop
A tutorial for creating Animated GIFs in Photoshop.

AwesomeGIFs
Animated GIF maker. 

EzGif.com
”Animated GIFs made easy.” Includes many images that could be turned into GIFs or use your own saved files. Adjust the speed, resize, etc.

Gickr*
Create animated GIFs. Free but a small watermark is placed in the corner.

Gif Me
App with control options such as speed, filters, adding text, stickers, etc.

GifSoup
Find animated GIFs.

Gifbin
Find and create animated GIFs.

Giphy
GIF search engine.

Picasion
Create animated GIFs. Free but a watermark is placed in the corner.

RecordIT
Simple screen record and save for creating GIFs.

Screen to Gif
Select a portion of your screen and record anything that happens in that specific area.

Video to GIF
This GIF-making app is tailored to iPhone users. Easily convert GIFs from videos in your iCloud library and add moving text. Free.

Find more tools here.

A man's got to know

A man's got to know his limitations. -Harry Callahan (played by Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry series)

A strong faith in the ability of students

The best teachers we encountered expect “more” from their students. Yet the nature of that “more” must be distinguished from expectations that may be “high” but meaningless, from the goals that are simply tied to the course rather than to the kind of thinking and acting expected of critical thinkers. That “more” is, in the hands of teachers who captivate and motivate students and help them reach unusually high levels of accomplishment, grounded in the highest intellectual artistic, or moral standards, and in the personal goals of the students.

We found that the best teachers usually have a strong faith in the ability of students to learn and in the power of a healthy challenge, but they also have an appreciation that excessive anxiety and tension can hinder thinking. Thus, while they help students to feel relaxed and to believe in their capacity to learn, they also foster a kind of disquietude, the feeling that stems from intellectual enthusiasm, curiosity, challenge, and suspense, and from the wonderful promises that they make about what students can achieve.

Ken Baine, What the Best College Teachers Do

Society's Soundtrack

I’ve decided to turn down the volume on “society’s soundtrack.” I want to listen more closely to the creative music in my own heart. -John P. Weiss

The man who has an arrow stuck in him

In obsessing on techniques, tricks and effects, we are a bit like the man who has an arrow stuck in him--our situation is urgent and painful, yet we are asking the wrong questions and focusing on that which is relatively inconsequential. -Garr Reynolds

More Alive

So many people who glowingly report that their lives have been turned around by a seminar, a church, or a counselor sometimes make me think of figures in a wax museum. They look like the real thing, but they don't breathe. You expect them to move like living people, but they never do. These are not the folks you want to be with when you're in real trouble or deep pain. Their words of encouragement are always appropriate and warmly offered, but they fall flat. You never feel more alive after a conversation with them- a bit cheered or instructed, perhaps, but never alive. Developing the spark that is the unmistakable evidence of life is the challenge before us-and also the mystery.

Larry Crabb, Inside Out

Verification bias

Verification bias refers to a stubborn resistance to accepting the null hypothesis – the assumption that there is no inherent relationship between the variables being studied. The null hypothesis is the default position in experiments. This is what the researcher is attempting to eliminate through experimental investigation. For example, continuing to repeat an experiment until it “works” as desired, or excluding inconvenient cases or results may make the hypothesis immune to the facts. Verification bias amounts to the repression of negative results. 

Augustine Brannigan, The Use and Misuse of the Experimental Method in Social Psychology

Taking responsibility

When we abdicate taking responsibility for ourselves, we are giving up our ability to create and discover meaning. -Auschwitz survivor Edith Eva Eger

The best performers

Self-regulation begins with setting goals - not big, life-directing goals, but more immediate goals for what you're going to be doing today. In the research, the poorest performers don't set goals at all; they just slog through their work. Mediocre performers set goals that are general and are often focused on simply achieving a good outcome - win the order; get the new project proposal done. The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but rather about the process of reaching the outcome.

For example, instead of just winning the order, their goal might be to focus especially hard on discerning the customer's unstated needs. You can see how this is strongly analogous to the first step of deliberate practice. The best performers are focused on how they could get better at some specific element of the work, just as a pianist may focus on improving a particular passage.

The best performers make the most specific, technique-oriented plans. They're thinking exactly, not vaguely, of how to get where they're going.

Geoff Colvin, Talent is Overrated

Who controls you?

If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize. -Voltaire

250 articles and links about finding media jobs

More than 250 links to articles & sites about jobs and internships.

Teaching Critical Thinking

Give (children) many opportunities to use their reasoning abilities as they tackle fascinating problems and receive challenges to their thinking. Ask them to consider the implications of their reasoning, implications for themselves, for the way they view the world, for policy debates, for significant philosophical questions, or even for moral or religious issues. (Help them determine) what intellectual standards (can) test proposed answers and (how) to weigh conflicting claims about the “truth”. Help (them) learn to assess their own work using those standards. Ask them about their assumptions and about the concepts and evidence they employ in their reasoning.

Ken Bain, What the Best Teachers Do