The Information Diet - Book and Tools for going on an Information Diet

Tools
Information dieting requires an arsenal of tools and tricks – and while we can constantly peruse sites like LifeHacker to give us an hour by hour dose of productivity porn, sometimes we just need to get straight to brass tacks.

This page attempts to collect everything you need in order to set up your system, presuming that you’ve read The Information Diet. It also catalogs other software tools that may be necessary. For many, just installing the software in the QuickStart section will be useful.

Keep in mind that installing these applications and setting things up like this will not put you on an information diet. Just like cleaning the junk-food out of your kitchen won’t make you lose weight if you simply choose to eat out all the time, an information diet is less about installing tools and more about making conscious decisions about the information you consume. First build good habits, then rely on software.

QuickStart

The quickstart section is a selection of tools to install and start using right away if you just want to get started on your information diet, and don’t want to shop for different kinds of tools. Simply grab the tools you need and get started.

AdBlock

AdBlock Plus is available for both the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox web browsers, as well as Safari. It’s a simple browser extension that blocks advertisements on major websites. If you so desire, you can always turn the back on – but at least you’re opting in to view advertisements, rather than having them thrown at you all the time. If you’re an Internet Explorer user by choice, I strongly suggest you switch to Chrome or Firefox. If you’re not an Internet Explorer user by choice, and are instead compelled to use Internet Explorer, then it’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to install IE Plugins – but here’s an ad blocker for IE.

AwayFind

AwayFind helps you spend less time in your inbox while staying responsive to the people who are most important to you. It does this by letting you “follow” important people and topics, then notifying you (SMS, iPhone/Android push, etc) when you get matching emails. Another handy feature is Calendar Alerts: it can notify you if someone you’re meeting with emails you just before. Free and paid versions are available.

BlockPlus

The Red Notification on all Google pages, if you’re a Google+ user, is a recipe for disaster. Every web search becomes an opportunity to get sucked in to Google’s social network. While Google gives you the ability to control what notifications get sent to you via email, the ability to control what’s in that red box is not BlockPlus is a Google Chrome extension to simply remove that Red Box.

RescueTime

Mentioned in the book, RescueTime helps track what you’re working on, keeping a diligent count of what’s happening on your computer. While it cannot track and account for your every moment, for those that are spending most of their time in front of a computer, RescueTime is the best tool. There’s a free version available, and if you want to “go pro” it costs between $6-$9/mo. Be warned – what you’ll be doing is sending every “Window Title” (the words in the titles of the windows for every application you use) to the RescueTime servers – while the data is secure, for those that are very concerned about their privacy, you may want to seek other options (see the Time Tracking Tools below for other options). RescueTime is cross platform – available for both Windows and OS X.

SaneBox*

Sanebox is like Google’s Priority Inbox on steroids. Sanebox filters your emails and learns from your reading habits to make sure that only the emails you need to see right now make it to your inbox. It takes the emails that don’t need your immediate attention and puts them into a folder called “SaneLater” – and close to the end of every day, it’ll email you a digest of those email messages so that you can give them your attention. It’s compatible with GMail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook and IMAP email providers.

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Application Settings

Facebook Settings

Let’s take Facebook out of our email inboxes. While SaneBox should filter much of that stuff out, Facebook still makes your inbox a distraction trap. Visit Facebook’s Notification Settings and uncheck the box next to “Send me important updates and summary emails instead of individual notification email.” Then, visit each section of notifications on Facebook, and uncheck every box.

Twitter Settings

Same with Twitter. Uncheck every box on this page. Make Twitter something you have to check, not something that’s pushed at you.

Desktop Notification Settings

Turn off all desktop notifications on your computer. If you’re an Outlook user, turn its desktop alerts off. If you’re an OS X User, and have somehow ended up with Growl installed on your computer, turn off all notifications.

Browser Settings

Whichever browser you use, set your homepage URL to “about:blank.” This will make it so that whenever your browser starts, it starts with a blank page, not a lure to your most visited sites. I also add about:blank to my bookmarks bar in my browser so that I can quickly “turn off” the web from my screen while keeping the web open.

Gmail Settings

If you’re a Gmail user, go ahead and hide your unread counts. It might take you a while to get used to not seeing these numbers beckon for you, but they’re hurting your productivity more than helping it. Enable the Hide Unread Counts setting in Gmail’s Settings. It’s in the Labs section about halfway down the page.

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Other Applications

OS X: Think helps you focus on one particular application at a time on the Mac – it’s like the Full Screen setting in OS X Lion, but more versatile.
OS X: Concentrate is a compelling application that allows you to launch and quit apps by activity. When you want to work at a particular thing, Concentrate will launch the applications needed for that activity, quit the applications that are not needed for it, and start a timer to measure how long you’re working.
OS X, Windows: Freedom locks the Internet down on your Mac or Windows computer for up to 8 hours. You turn it on, and you cannot get the Internet back until the timer is finished unless you reboot your computer.
OS X: SelfControl lets you lock down parts of the internet while leaving the rest open for useful work. Cannot be stopped by killing the app, deleting it, or even rebooting. You actually have to wait for the timer to end.
OS X: Time Sink is a an application that tracks how you use applications on your Mac. Like RescueTime, it stores window titles and the time spent with them, but it does it locally. Might be an option for people who don’t want their data on someone else’s server.
Python, PHP: Get Shit Done - For the command-line types out there, Get Shit Done is a small command line program that blocks websites known to distract us from our work. Configurable by an easy to edit text file.

10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer

Tono Stano White Shadow - YouTube

What's the best way to visit Naples and Puglia?

I would recommend staying in Naples itself for three nights, and picking up a hire car on the morning you’re due to drive down to Puglia.

Naples is a fascinating city, but not one I’d ever risk driving in (and I’ve been in Italy for almost 30 years), as the traffic is chaotic to say the least.

The Chiaia area, along the bay west of the centre, is a good base as it’s close to the sights but a little more relaxed and upmarket than the ramshackle old town further east.

Micalo (micalo.it), a cool, contemporary b & b owned and run by an English art collector, is worth looking into; for something a little more luxurious, book into one of Naples’s most effortlessly elegant hotels, the Vesuvio (vesuvio.it).

Both Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius are reached easily by public transport. For Pompeii, take the Circumvesuviana (vesuviana.it) line from Napoli Centrale (journey time around 42 minutes).

For Vesuvius, it makes sense to start from Pompeii as you have more choice: 11 daily buses run between Pompeii’s station and the car park and visitor centre just below the volcano’s peak, while only two run direct from Naples.

For both services, see eavbus.it. Staying in Naples also gives you the chance to hop on a hydrofoil in the port and visit Capri or Ischia for the day.

ISS Expedition 31 Welcomes Three New Crewmates - YouTube

Expedition 31 crew members Gennady Padalka, Joe Acaba and Sergei Revin were welcomed aboard the International Space Station after the hatches opened Thursday at 4:10 a.m. EDT. They docked to the Poisk module at 12:36 a.m. after a two day journey that began in Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft.

The Soyuz TMA-04M that launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on May 15 carrying cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and astronaut Joe Acaba successfully docked with the International Space Station Poisk module on May 17.

After joining ISS residents Oleg Kononenko, Don Pettit, and Andre Kuipers for a welcome ceremony, the new crew will begin familiarizing themselves with the station. They will need to get up to speed quickly, since delays in their launch have reduced their stay to126 days.

The next few months are expected to be very busy, starting with the May 19 docking of the SpaceX Dragon capsule, the first commercial cargo vessel to attempt to dock with the ISS. Unlike the automated Soyuz docking, the Dragon will be manually grappled to the ESA Columbus /Harmony node using the robotic Canadarm2.

25 Handy Words That Simply Don’t Exist In English

Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language, in fact it’s the 3rd most commonly spoken language in the world (after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish). Interestingly enough it’s the number 1 second language used worldwide – which is why the total number of people who speak English, outnumber those of any other.

But whilst it’s the most widely spoken language, there’s still a few areas it falls down on (strange and bizarre punctuation rules aside). We look at 25 words that simply don’t exist in the English langauge (and yet after reading this list, you’ll wish they did!)

1 Age-otori (Japanese): To look worse after a haircut
2 Arigata-meiwaku (Japanese): An act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favor, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude
3 Backpfeifengesicht (German): A face badly in need of a fist
4 Bakku-shan (Japanese): A beautiful girl… as long as she’s being viewed from behind
5 Desenrascanco (Portuguese): “to disentangle” yourself out of a bad situation (To MacGyver it)
6 Duende (Spanish): a climactic show of spirit in a performance or work of art, which might be fulfilled in flamenco dancing, or bull-fighting, etc.
7 Forelsket (Norwegian): The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love
8 Gigil (pronounced Gheegle; Filipino): The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute
9 Guanxi (Mandarin): in traditional Chinese society, you would build up good guanxi by giving gifts to people, taking them to dinner, or doing them a favor, but you can also use up your gianxi by asking for a favor to be repaid
10 Ilunga (Tshiluba, Congo): A person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time
11 L’esprit de l’escalier (French): usually translated as “staircase wit,” is the act of thinking of a clever comeback when it is too late to deliver it
12 Litost (Czech): a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery
13 Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan): A look between two people that suggests an unspoken, shared desire
14 Manja (Malay): “to pamper”, it describes gooey, childlike and coquettish behavior by women designed to elicit sympathy or pampering by men. “His girlfriend is a damn manja. Hearing her speak can cause diabetes.”
15 Meraki (pronounced may-rah-kee; Greek): Doing something with soul, creativity, or love. It’s when you put something of yourself into what you’re doing
16 Nunchi (Korean): the subtle art of listening and gauging another’s mood. In Western culture, nunchi could be described as the concept of emotional intelligence. Knowing what to say or do, or what not to say or do, in a given situation. A socially clumsy person can be described as ‘nunchi eoptta’, meaning “absent of nunchi”
17 Pena ajena (Mexican Spanish): The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation
18 Pochemuchka (Russian): a person who asks a lot of questions
19 Schadenfreude (German): the pleasure derived from someone else’s pain
20 Sgriob (Gaelic): The itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whisky
21 Taarradhin (Arabic): implies a happy solution for everyone, or “I win. You win.” It’s a way of reconciling without anyone losing face. Arabic has no word for “compromise,” in the sense of reaching an arrangement via struggle and disagreement
22 Tatemae and Honne (Japanese): What you pretend to believe and what you actually believe, respectively
23 Tingo (Pascuense language of Easter Island): to borrow objects one by one from a neighbor’s house until there is nothing left
24 Waldeinsamkeit (German): The feeling of being alone in the woods
25 Yoko meshi (Japanese): literally ‘a meal eaten sideways,’ referring to the peculiar stress induced by speaking a foreign language

52 Great Google Docs Secrets

Google Docs is such an incredible tool for college students, offering collaboration, portability, ease of use, and widespread acceptance. But there are so many options, both hidden and obvious, that there’s a good chance you’re not using Google Docs to its fullest capability.

We’ve discovered 52 great tips for getting the most out of Google Docs as a student, with awesome ideas and tricks for collaboration, sharing, and staying productive.

1. Access your documents from anywhere: Whether you’re in your dorm room or the school library, you can access your Google Docs. Take advantage of this to make it easy to do your work on-the-go.
2. Use Docs reference tools: Take advantage of the Define option to use Docs’ built in dictionary, as well as a thesaurus and an encyclopedia available for use right in your document.
3. Go mobile: Google Docs is available on most smartphones, and has a number of capabilities available on the go.
4. Save to different file types: You can easily save your documents and spreadsheets to commonly used file types like DOC, XLS, CSV, and HTML.
5. Use keyboard shortcuts: With keyboard shortcuts, you can speed through all of your tasks in Google Docs.
6. Use templates: Google Docs has a template gallery for just about anything you can imagine, from an apartment bills organizer to a doc for organizing college visits.
7. Convert PDFs to images and text: Use Google Docs to make PDFs easily editable.
8. Create forms: Gather research information, ask for opinions, and more by creating Forms in Google Docs.
9. Search EVERYTHING: Search through pretty much everything you’ve got by searching Docs and Gmail together, thanks to Gmail Labs settings.
10. Autodetect links: Simply add links in Google Docs by having them automatically detected, instead of having to input full URLs.
11. Adding video: You can embed video in documents, slides, and more to dress up your presentation.
12. Insert photos with drag and drop: Instead of going through the process of attaching, you can just drag and drop files from your hard drive into the document, then wrap text around the photo.
13. Create graphs: Visuals are great tools for getting your point across. Using charts in Google Spreadsheets, you can create your very own information-sharing graphs.
14. Look up live finance data: In Google Spreadsheet, you can use special formulas to pull live information from Google’s finance service.
15. Self-update spreadsheets: In addition to inserting live finance data, you can create a live link to that data for a document that constantly updates itself as accurate.
16. Draw in Docs: Using Polyline, snap to guides, and other drawing features, you can easily create the images your documents need.
17. Insert facts: Using Google Spreadsheet, it’s easy to insert facts, like the population for a city, which is simply pulled through the Google search engine.
18. Simply add equations: Google Docs has found a way to make it easy for students to take notes in class, offering an Equations editor for adding equations onto your pages.
19. Embed Docs anywhere: Get a link to your document or spreadsheet, and you can embed or publish it anywhere, including Facebook or a class blog.
20. Just share: Get the ball rolling on collaboration through Google Docs by sharing your document through email links.
21. Turn it into a webpage: Download your document in HTML, and you can share it as a webpage with a minimal amount of hassle.
22. Chat away: In Google Docs, you can see anyone who is currently editing the document, and if needed, send a message to chat with them.
23. Team up with anyone: Using Google Docs, you can collaborate on a document with friends, classmates, and professors.
24. Share an entire folder: If you’ve got a collection of documents to work on together, just open up a shared folder that everyone can access.
25. Work on documents all at the same time: Google Docs allows users to simultaneously work on a single master document, so you can come together with other team members and professors to work on a document at the same time.
26. Allow editing without signing in: If you’re sharing a document with classmates who don’t have a Google login, just make it available to edit without signing in.
27. Track visits: Using Google Analytics, you can track how much traffic a published document is receiving.
28. Set notification rules: Find out about the changes made by your collaborators on any given document by setting up notification rules.
29. Use Docs instead of emailing attachments: Rather than emailing revised versions of documents over and over again, you can just use Google docs and see revision histories.
30. Kick slackers off of a project: Simply remove collaborators doing more harm than good by clicking None next to their name.
31. Freeze to stop editing: If you’ve perfected certain rows and columns in your spreadsheet, just freeze them so they’re not accidentally edited.
32. Revert back to old versions: If your group doesn’t like a certain set of changes made, it’s very simple just to revert back to automatically saved previous versions in the revision history.
33. Save brainstorm notes for group projects: Get everyone’s ideas all together in one place by using Google Docs for brainstorming.
34. Use data validation: Make sure that your collaborators aren’t adding a mess to your spreadsheet by using data validation on shared documents.
35. Use color coding: You can change text colors based on rules, like setting green for one classmate, blue for another, and red for yourself.
36. Clean up your main Google Docs page: Move items to individual folders, and you can make your landing page a lot cleaner and easy to navigate.
37. Insert a bookmark: Make it easy to access other parts of your document, like a table of contents, by inserting bookmarks throughout.
38. Create subfolders: For an extra step of organization, create folders within folders.
39. Get color coded: Color code the names of your folders for quick and easy identification.
40. Get synched: Using tools like Syncplicity, you can get all of your Google Docs synched up with documents from Microsoft Office.
41. Create your own shortcuts: Put together shortcuts to launch Google Docs, create a new document, and even access frequently used documents in a flash.
42. Print multiple Docs at once: If you need to speed through printing several documents at one time, just download and open them as a zip file.
43. Quick View PDFs: When you see PDF files in search results, you can just Quick View them to open them up in Google Docs.
44. Check your translation work: Google Docs has added a translation tool, which can easily be used to double check your work when writing a foreign language essay.
45. Get a grade before you turn assignments in: Using Flubaroo on Google Docs, you can get quick feedback on your assignment, giving you a chance for improvement before you need to turn it in.
46. Write in full screen mode: Make your toolbar, menus, and other tempting distractions disappear by displaying your Google Docs in full screen.
47. Automatically correct your common mistakes: If you have words that you just can’t spell to save your life, set up a preference to automatically find and replace your mistakes with correctly spelled words.
48. Customize your styles: If you like a consistent look for your documents, set up a customized style so you don’t have to go back and fix it with every new document.
49. Work offline: Use the offline feature of Google Docs to work on the bus, plane, or anywhere you plan to go without an internet connection.
50. Save web pages to your Google Docs account: Turn any web page into a PDF for viewing later by using the send to Google Docs extension for Chrome.
51. Back it all up: Google Docs itself offers a great way to back up your documents, but it never hurts to save elsewhere, right? Back up and download all of your Google Documents and save them to a hard drive for safekeeping.
52. Use Google Docs for everyday stuff, too: You can use Google Docs to track expenses, maintain your calendar, and more.